{"id":5464,"date":"2009-06-14T19:27:37","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T02:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/?p=5464"},"modified":"2009-06-14T19:42:17","modified_gmt":"2009-06-15T02:42:17","slug":"diploma-mills-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/archives\/5464","title":{"rendered":"Diploma Mill Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span> have a long-time love affair with the underworld of diploma mills which, in a society overawed by credentials, is an unending source of amusement and entertaining copy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So I was unsurprised to learn that, as recently as February 2007, the New York City Department of Investigation reported<\/a> that fourteen city firefighters had used bogus diplomas, purchased from St. Regis University (an on-line institution, supposedly located in Liberia) to seek promotion to officer positions such as deputy chief, battalion chief, and captain. This stemmed from a relatively new Departmental policy requiring college credits as well as practical firefighting experience to gain promotion.<\/p>\n

Four of the fourteen were actually promoted on the strength of these counterfeit credentials, including Daniel O\u2019Gara, who was advanced to Battalion Chief<\/a> after obtaining a St. Regis baccalaureate for $550.<\/p>\n

At the end of the scandal, the fourteen paid fines totaling some $136,000.\u00a0 According to the New York Post<\/em><\/a>, those who had been promoted kept their jobs because they had all, since their promotions, obtained enough legitimate credits to qualify for their new jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a long-time love affair with the underworld of diploma mills which, in a society overawed by credentials, is an unending source of amusement and entertaining copy. So I was unsurprised to learn that, as recently as February 2007, the New York City Department of Investigation reported that fourteen city firefighters had used bogus … Continue reading “Diploma Mill Redux”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[116,117],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5464"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5467,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5464\/revisions\/5467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cityofsmoke.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}