WASHINGTON — At least 28 high-level federal employees have degrees from bogus colleges or unaccredited schools, only a slice of a problem that ranges from worker quality to national security, congressional investigators say.
The employees with dubious or worthless degrees serve in eight agencies; three are supervisors with security clearances in the office overseeing nuclear weapons safety, the General Accounting Office found.
Some workers were driven by ego to get quick, lofty-sounding degrees; others were duped by schools that choose misleading names and marketing messages to pull in major profits. Either way, diploma mills, which require little if any academic work, are a federal problem, said the report by the investigative arm of Congress.
The GAO review, which covered civil service workers and political appointees, did not name names. But some top officials unwittingly have made news of late when their college degrees came into question.
Two high-ranking Pentagon officials, Charles Abell and Patricia Walker, both list degrees from schools identified as diploma mills. Laura Callahan, deputy chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security, resigned over a controversy about the doctorate she got from a bogus school.
The names of the 28 senior-level workers have been forwarded to the offices of the inspectors general in their agencies for review, said Robert Cramer, managing director of special investigations at the GAO. It is not clear whether listing a bogus degree is a disciplinary offense, he said, because some jobs don't call for specific degrees, and some workers may not have meant to deceive.
The government has no uniform way to check whether employees' schools or degrees are legitimate, and many employees' education records are incomplete. The matter is complicated because some unaccredited schools are legitimate, while others doctor up fake transcripts and sell degrees for a fee.
Both in terms of wasted tax money and workers with bogus degrees, "It's a much larger problem than the evidence we have to date shows," Cramer said.
An earlier GAO report revealed how easily a degree can be bought from a diploma mill; the one presented Tuesday to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee showed that the federal government is a customer.
"Clearly, this nationwide problem merits a federal response," testified Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who requested the study with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "It is unthinkable that while the government is sending people to jail for other forms of corporate dishonesty, we should allow this practice to fester in our ranks."
Collins, who chairs the Senate committee, said the damage is vast: workers and employers get deceived; people with real degrees get passed over for promotions; the value of degrees from legitimate but unconventional schools drops; and workers in positions of health and safety stand to be unqualified.
"Do we have people in these jobs who might represent a threat to our national security?" Collins said.
"Certainly if someone has listed a degree that they have not done the work for and do not have the knowledge — and they're working in a position where that knowledge might be critical — I think it would definitely have an impact," said Paul DeSaulniers, the special agent who conducted the GAO study.
Three workers with bogus degrees in the review served in emergency operations roles at the National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the Department of Energy. One of those workers paid $5,000 for a master's degree from LaSalle University, an unaccredited school unrelated to La Salle University in Pennsylvania. The worker attended no classes, took no tests and told the GAO his degree was a joke.
Three unaccredited schools investigated — Pacific Western University, California Coast University and Kennedy-Western University — reported that 463 current or former students were federal employees. Most of those listed were in the Defense Department. The bill to taxpayers at just two of the schools was $169,471.
Lewis Phelps, a spokesman for Kennedy-Western, said the school is not a diploma mill but rather has qualified faculty and requirements that students show mastery of their work in courses and a final project.
Federal workers are supposed to receive government tuition only toward academic degree training at schools sanctioned by a recognized accrediting body. Some schools go out of their way to get federal money even if they don't offer courses. An undercover GAO investigator found three schools would divide the flat fee they charged by the number of courses a student needed so it appeared a per-course fee was charged.
The investigation took place from July 2003 through February. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee will hold another hearing Wednesday, with testimony from government personnel and education officials.