Written by: Beck

Guess what? Thousands of American federal bureaucrats, many of them in highly important and/or sensitive positions, received their degrees from buy-a-diploma unaccredited schools. Three cheers for Big Government!

Long-time readers of this site will know that I'm no fan of bureaucrats & bureaucracies. Yes, some bureaucrats are honest, qualified, hard-working people essential to the health of our nation and without whom things would fall apart. I even know a few. And some bureaucracies (i.e. the military) are absolutely necessary. But for the most part...

I'll leave it to you to fill in the rest. And now, the excerpts!

Looking at the personnel of eight federal agencies chosen at random, the GAO found that 463 employees showed up on the enrollment records of just three unaccredited schools. (It actually looked at four colleges, but only three responded to its request for information and only two fully cooperated.) This was merely a sampling of the dozens of mills operating nationwide, not an exhaustive audit; given the limited nature of the GAO's investigation, the true number of federal employees who are academically unqualified to fill the positions they hold could be in the thousands.

Agencies tasked with defending America from terrorism were among the top employers of workers with phony diplomas identified by the GAO. The Department of Defense employs 257 of them. Transportation has 17. Justice has 13; Homeland Security, 12; Treasury, eight.

The GAO also found that two diploma mills alone have received a total of nearly $170,000 in payments from a dozen federal agencies for tuition for 64 employees.

(Hat tip: CrimProf Blog)