Fake Degrees And Fraudulent Credentials In Higher Education

This book addresses an important topic in higher education: credential fraud. This includes, but is not limited to, fake degrees, diploma mills, admissions fraud, and cheating on standardized admissions tests. The book directly addresses fake and fraudulent credentials in higher education. It explores transcript tampering and fraud in varsity athletics and discusses lazy practices in the higher education hiring processes that open the door for professors without proper credentials to get jobs in post-secondary institutions. The book also discusses how technology is being used to stop the proliferation of fake and fraudulent credentials in a variety of ways, including blockchain technology.

When the first edition of Degree Mills was published, fake universities and counterfeit degrees were already a significant problem. Fueled by the Internet, this scam continues to grow—now more than half of all people claiming a new PhD in fact have a fake degree. In this updated edition, experts Allen Ezell and John Bear go beyond exposing these fraudulent practices to provide detailed recommendations—for government agencies, educational institutions, and individuals—on what can be done to rid us of them. This eye-opening and definitive guide shows how degree mills operate and how to check the validity of anyone’s degree—an indispensable reference book.

The book brings together diverse views from around the world and provides a comprehensive overview of academic integrity and how to create the ethical academy. At the same time, the Handbook does not shy away from some of the vigorous debates in the field such as the causes of academic integrity breaches. There has been an explosion of interest in academic integrity in the last 20-30 years. New technologies that have made it easier than ever for students to ‘cut and paste’, coupled with global media scandals of high profile researchers behaving badly, have resulted in the perception that plagiarism is ‘on the rise’. This, in combination with the massification and commercialisation of higher education, has resulted in a burgeoning interest in the importance of academic integrity, how to safeguard it and how to address breaches appropriately. What may have seemed like a relatively easy topic to address – students copying sources without attribution – has in fact, turned out to be a complex, interdisciplinary field of research requiring contributions from linguists, psychologists, social scientists, anthropologists, teaching and learning specialists, mathematicians, accountants, medical doctors, lawyers and philosophers, to name just a few. Because of this broad interest and input, this handbook serves as the single authoritative reference work which brings together the vast, growing, interdisciplinary and at times contradictory body of literature. For both established researchers/practitioners and those new to the field, this Handbook provides a one-stop-shop as well as a launching pad for new explorations and discussions.

Powerful generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has defined and transformed our modern era, and the fundamental conceptualization of academia stands at a crossroads. Academic Integrity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence delves deep into the seismic shifts and intricate challenges brought forth by the proliferation of AI technologies, exploring the intricacies between innovation and integrity. The rise of generative AI, exemplified by ChatGPT, has set a cascade of change across diverse sectors, including higher education, medicine, and the arts. This book dissects the multifaceted impact of AI on the academic landscape. With AI's ability to craft text and imagery mirroring human creativity, the lines between authentic scholarship and synthetic deception blur. The book examines the delicate balance between productivity and ethics while weaving a comprehensive tapestry of insights from various stakeholders. From academics grappling with the definition of AI-assisted breaches of academic integrity to policymakers reshaping the future of higher education, this book engages a myriad of voices. It scrutinizes the nascent challenges in assessment design, the urgent need to update antiquated integrity policies, and the importance of research ethics in an AI-driven world. This book is ideal for educators, policymakers, students, and technologists through the complicated terrain of AI ethics.

This book explores how AI and mechanism design can provide a new framework for international politics. The international political system is all manners in which countries, governments and people relate. Mechanism design in international politics relates to identifying rules that define relationships between people and countries that achieve a particular outcome, e.g., peace or more trade or democracy or economic development. Artificial intelligence is technique of making machines intelligent. This book explores mechanism design and artificial intelligence in international politics and applies these technologies to politics, economy and society. This book will be of interest to scholars of international relations, politics, sustainable development, and artificial intelligence.

This international book provides a series of viewpoints on academic integrity from the perspective of social sciences. It brings together multiple aspects of academic integrity, but with the consistent theme of being at a level of analysis that considers people and their place in the world. It covers topics such as how academic integrity can be taught, and why academic integrity breaches occur. This book informs the work of researchers, educators, and practitioners as we go forward in understanding academic integrity and addressing academic misconduct. The social sciences include academic disciplines such as sociology, economics, psychology, education, anthropology, political science, and criminology. Researchers and theorists in these fields offer a range of unique and valuable perspectives on academic integrity with questions ranging from: “Why do students cheat and how best do we teach them not to?” to “What are the societal and political implications of academic cheating?”

A quality education must be free of corruption! Further to the clear political commitment made by the European Ministers of Education at the Helsinki Ministerial Conference in April 2013, the Council of Europe launched its Platform on Ethics, Transparency and Integrity in Education, ETINED. ETINED is a network of specialists representing the 50 States Parties to the European Cultural Convention, which carries out initiatives at European, regional and national level to take effective action against corruption and encourage all the relevant stakeholders in society to commit fully to a set of fundamental ethical principles for public and professional life. This publication reflects the discussions held at the 7th Session of the Prague Forum and provides strong evidence of the drive in Europe to promote high quality, corruption-free education based on common ethical principles. Offering many national examples and good practice in this area, it also raises several issues relating to the ethical behaviour of all education players, academic integrity and plagiarism, and the problem of the recognition of qualifications obtained by distance and online learning. It also covers how ETINED came into being, how it has developed and how it is applied in various countries.