With an increasingly competitive job market, the demand for qualified job candidates has initiated a rise in colleges granting fake degrees, institutions known as “diploma mills.”

Diploma mills provide job-seekers with a degree at the click of a button and for a fraction of the cost of a traditional four-year bachelor’s degree. With the rise of such mills, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation have stepped in to bar the use and success of such companies.

Judith Eaton, president of CHEA, said the two groups have been working to create a statement for governments, institutions and students about how to deal with diploma mills.

“Students of [diploma mills] don’t have to prepare papers, don’t have to do course work — (they) just provide money to receive a degree,” Eaton said.

Eaton added that phony credentials can be dangerous, especially in instances of the degrees necessary for high-risk jobs, including people with fake medical degrees giving health care advice or fake engineers working on a bridge.

George Gollin, a member of the board of directors at CHEA and a professor of physics at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, added UNESCO and CHEA have created a “diploma mills working group” as an international effort to stop fraudulent companies.

Gollin said the group has met twice, most recently in November, and primarily focused on creating a “usable definition for international use that will hold up in court.”

He explained the prosecution of diploma mills is difficult because most services are Internet-based and avoid detection.

“Often times, a state attorney general will sue the company to try to have the court order them to stop selling degrees, but often the outcome will be the court ordering the company to stop selling within the specific state,” Gollin said.

Gollin added that many diploma mills avoid being shut down by simply relocating their Internet address to a different state. He added this provides a good argument for federal legislation addressing diploma mills because only up until the reauthorization of the Higher Education Opportunity Act was the term “diploma mill” defined on a federal level.

The group also addressed ways to implement technological approaches to the issue, specifically ways for accredited schools to securely send academic documents over the Internet, according to Gollin.

Eaton added that the group’s suggestions to prevent the success of fraudulent schools is in the final stages of review and will soon be released to the public.