How Far Could You Get In Life With A Fake College Degree?

[THUNDER HANDS]

From what you've experienced, do any employers actually check to see if you've received a degree from whatever college or university you've claimed to graduate from?

If you just lied on a resume, how long do you think you'd be able to get away with it, assuming that aside from not having a degree, you were otherwise qualified for the position.

[XemaSab]

1. .

[progmom]

2. seems like lies always come back and bite you

it's probably safer, and more karmically sound, to skip the fake degree.

[arwalden]

5. It Might Be Safe To Use Defunct Businesses As Previous Employment...

... how could they check references or verify that info?

[THUNDER HANDS]

9. I have done that

but in my case, I've worked for a lot of places that either don't exist anymore, or the whole management staff has turned over - so nobody current can verify my references.

[Patiod]

17. I learned that one from a friend of mine

He had bummed around the country, worked as a video DJ in Phoenix (around the birth of MTV), a model and a bartender. He had amazing GMATs, and wanted to get into Kellogg at Northwestern, which was, at the time, the most competitve MBA program in the country.

He totally made up the resume portion based on his friend's jobs at small defunct companies, and a made up a very impressive job with his best friend's sole-proprietorship business.

He got in.

[ET Awful]

3. Why? Are you looking for a job as the CEO of Radio Shack?

:evilgrin:

[formerrepuke]

4. You could get to be the Head of Media Relations at NASA...at the

age of 24, and know absolutely nothing about science.

[asthmaticeog]

6. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts,

which, by any sane measure, is a fake degree. And I'm doing OK.

[Misunderestimator]

8. LOL! Me too!!

And I'm in a field in an entirely different universe than Fine Arts now. Never lied about where my degree came from either. Lying's bad... :D

[AzDar]

13. I have a B. A. from ASU ..'Interdisciplinary Arts'. I sometimes just

leave it out of discussions entirely..LOL

Oh dear lord, I misspelled 'interdisciplinary'.
Paging Dr. Freud..

[Misunderestimator]

14. I usually list it... Otherwise, it would look like I had no degree at all.

:) I do not however list any of my professional jobs in the music field on my IT resume. :D

[AzDar]

15. You have a point! Besides, how else would I explain those 8 years

it took me to get it?

[madinmaryland]

23. What is that? Sounds like this...

:spank:

[AzDar]

30. LOL...this is embarrassing, but when I started out at ASU, the same

degree was called 'Liberal Arts'. I got a bit side-tracked..heh,heh, and by the time I actually had 124 semester-credits, the 'name' of the B.A. had been 'updated' to 'Interdisciplinary Arts', although the requirements were the same.

[madinmaryland]

32. I don't mean to be dense,

but what is an I.A. degree. I went to a university with a liberal arts college, where you could get a BA in music, math, history, religion, philosophy, etc. Just curious.

[AzDar]

33. Do you mean an 'Interdisciplinary Arts' degree? If so, it's just the

'updated' B.A. offered at ASU..there isn't a 'Liberal Arts' degree available there anymore, to the best of my knowledge.

On edit: I started out as a theatre major; changed to communications...art history at one point. This degree sort of encompasses all of that without,uh, really pinning any particular field down. I know they offer a 'Liberal Studies' program there currently, but I think it might be an Associates' Degree. It is MUCH more a technical school, these days.

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. People from unaccredited schools seem to go far,

especially in the Christian community, with fake degrees from fake "learning" institutions like Bob Jones and Liberty Bible College and etc., plus all the secular unaccredited "colleges".

[leftofthedial]

10. every company I've worked for actually checked.

I hired a web developer once whose credentials didn't check out. I didn't care, as it was irrelevant to his job. But HR went bugnuts. It was a serious problem.

It probably depends on the size of the organization, the kind of job, the pay level and the diligence of whoever is fulfilling the HR role.

It also is a valid reason for firing you later.

Unless of course, you work in the bush crime gang. Then, lying on your resume is a prerequisite.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

11. Meet Jeffrey Archer

The young Jeffrey became a policeman, but soon left to go to America, where he claimed to have won a degree in anatomy from the University of California, and become a Fellow of the International Federation of Physical Culture.

On the strength of this, he got into Oxford - though if the university had checked, they'd have realised there was no Californian degree. And the fellowship? Well, Archer did belong to a body-building club.

"Archer is essentially Mr Toad," says Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye. "Anyone who reads children's books knows who Archer is. He's a fantastically bumptious character who makes things up."

According to Edwina Currie, a former Conservative MP, "He's a fantasist. He really doesn't see the difference between the fantasy world and reality."

http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/feature_stories/article_890.asp?s=1

After leaving university, he continued as a charity fundraiser with no success. He also began a career in politics, serving as a councillor on the Greater London Council. At the age of 29 he was elected as a Member of Parliament for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth, holding the seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election. Later, he would claim to have been the youngest MP ever, but he was not even the youngest in the House at the time.

In 1974, Archer became heavily indebted after falling victim to a fraudulent investment scheme involving Aquablast, a Canadian company. Faced with likely bankruptcy, he stood down as an MP at the October 1974 general election, and turned to writing. His first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less was a success, and he ultimately avoided bankruptcy. Kane and Abel proved to be his best-selling work, reaching number 1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. It was made into a television miniseries. Archer purchased the Old Vicarage, Grantchester, a house associated with the poet Rupert Brooke.

(...)

Archer's political career revived once he became well known for his writing. He was made Deputy Chairman of the Conservative party by Margaret Thatcher, created a life peer in 1992 by John Major, and was selected by the party as candidate for the London mayoral election of 2000. William Hague, then leader of the Conservative Party, publicly supported him and rejected doubts about his suitability in the light of his previous career.

But then it all went wrong

He was forced to withdraw from the race when it was revealed that he was facing a charge of perjury. Throughout his later career, he was investigated by the journalist Michael Crick, who has become semi-famous as Archer's unofficial biographer and nemesis.

(...)

On July 19, 2001, Lord Archer was found guilty and sentenced to a total of four years' imprisonment. These events cast considerable public doubt on the verdict of the libel case. The most ironic aspect of his trial was that he had fabricated the alibi for the wrong date.

(...)

In July 2003 he was released on probation, after serving half of his sentence, from HMP Hollesley Bay, Suffolk. In September 2003, the government announced reforms that would prevent convicted criminals from serving in the House of Lords; supporters argued that many peers with far more serious convictions, such as Harold Wilson's friend Lord Kagan, were not stripped of their titles. Those reforms are yet to be implemented.

In November 2005, after being expelled from the Conservative Party in 2000, he made a bid to rejoin the party once again. The Independent newspaper reports of the ?coincidence? that his bid to rejoin the Conservative party, and the ensuing publicity, coincides with details of his forthcoming book being released.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Archer

[mdmc]

12. forever

just complain about student loans...

[NewJeffCT]

16. I think it depends on the company

In a bigger corporation, you could get lost in the shuffle if it's a lower to mid level job. Usually, I would expect a thorough check if you were coming in at a higher level position... but, that wouldn't explain the guy at Radio Shack now, would it?

A smaller business might not have the money to hire a firm to do a background check, but you certainly wouldn't slip through the cracks if they did do that.

But, I think background checks are becoming more the norm these days as more & more people fake their resumes in these tough economic times.

[Patiod]

18. Can't you just donate money to Republicans?

They don't care if you're qualified or not.

I think a job as FEMA Director may be opening up soon....

[SOteric]

19. That depends on what you do.

If you're a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer...any number of positions where the degree, your coursework and the reputation of the institution can make a difference, then they'll definitely check. You're not likely to get along without a genuine degree for long.

If you're a middle manager in a large company where the degree you claim is largely ceremonial, you might get away with it indefinitely, depending on the individual company's policies.

It also depends on what your false claims might be. For example, I recall some time back we had a blarney distributor blow a lot of air about having graduated from prestigious university and drop the names of some pretty impressive people. Folks are always going to check on that kind of thing, if only because you've made yourself obnoxious in mentioning it and they'd love to take you down a peg. If that same turkey had claimed a basic degree from one of our local podunk state colleges and mentioned no special affiliations, I suspect he'd have gotten away with his load of crap substantially longer than he actually did.

[davsand]

20. If you gave that application to a headhunter maybe forever.

I worked as a headhunter years ago (in another lifetime.) We never checked that kind of stuff on a resume. We figured that it was up to the company HR people to check that stuff out so we never bothered to. At one point, I was on the phone with an employer and he asked me about an applicant's education. I told him the applicant had listed a Bachelor's Degree in the appropriate subject area, and he said, "Well, OK then. That's good enough for me." End of story. The company never checked it.

Frankly, I honestly think that if you list a Bachelor's Degree in some general sort of subject area from some average university you could probably go a very long time without anyone noticing it. The big stumbling block could be if you pissed off your boss someday and he/she decided to just CHECK you out fully. I've seen it happen, and I have seen people fired for lying on applications.

I think people probably DO fudge resumes pretty regularly--maybe they pad it with jobs they never had or they extend dates of employment to cover up gaps where they were not working--but I do think that you are probably much better off in the long run to just tell it straight out.

:shrug:

Just my two cents.



Laura

[politicat]

21. For a couple of years, ASU refused to acknowledge my degree....

I had an outstanding loan that was in payment, but not paid off, and their policy at the time was to deny knowledge of anyone who was not paid in full. (Since I was making the princely sum of $14,000 a year, pay-off was going slowly.)

I explained it to HR managers, who usually smiled, sighed, and told me about THEIR student loans and gave me a quarter more an hour. (Bringing my annual wages up to $14,500 a year. Enough to retire to Bora Bora.)

The joys of working in the public sector and working in public mental health. Once the loan was paid off, nothing really changed, except that I was able to move to a state that paid their public health workers a little better.

[BikeWriter]

22. You see how far * has gone. He was given his!

[HEyHEY]

24. I sort of have lied

I have all my credits to graduate my program, but because I transfered schools and someone in the admin fucked up, I don't have my actual piece of paper.

[Strong Atheist]

25. I hear stories like that every few years around here... nt.

[Misunderestimator]

26. Stories like what? A DUer faking a degree? That would be WEIRD.

Links?

[Strong Atheist]

27. No, no, no ,no ,no, no. Not D.U. Here, where I live, near

D.C. Usually some big shot ...


Hi, BTW!:hi:

See you have me off your "ignore" list again!

That way you could stay off people's ignore lists. Meh... carry on... I won't be able to see them any longer anyway.

[Misunderestimator]

28. Ah... I see. And yes, I leave people on ignore for short periods of time.

Then I give them another chance, being the liberal that I am. Since you haven't posted greater than 20 threads in the lounge in the space of an hour lately.... I left you off it for now. :hi:

[Strong Atheist]

29. Lol! Well, to date, I have ignored no one, though I was tempted

twice in another forum on this board....


Edited to add: To the best of my knowledge you are the first and so far only one to have ignored me yet... an honor, of sorts...:toast:

[dryan]

34. Jerry Archer story, etc.

Archer's story sounds like "The Rake's Progress".

I have never faked a degree but I have a dilemma. When I was in junior college, I was almost finished with my program (along with a lot of other people) when the American Medical Association and the National Association of Clinical Pathologists changed the requirements for my program. I would essentially have to take another 100 hours!! And this was in junior college. I couldn't afford nor did I want to spend another 2 years in junior college. A lot of other students in my program didn't either. We went to the Dean of Students. We were allowed to graduate but on our transcrip it says "completed program". Whether another institution accepts it or not, or a business is entirely up to them. No one has ever questioned it.

[DS1]

42. I'm not that forgiving

and it looks like you're talking to yourself again

[Strong Atheist]

43. Oh, fine. BE that way!

:hug:

[NoPasaran]

31. Lena Guerrero went as far as the Texas Railroad Commission

Then bad things happened:wow:

[dryan]

35. Okay, I'm game..what happened?

[NoPasaran]

38. She has been a rising star in the Texas Democratic Party

She was only the second hispanic woman elected to the legislature; governor Ann Richards appointed her to an open seat on the Railroad Commission (which sounds like a quaint institution but which regulates oil and natural gas as well as the railroads.) In 1992 she was running to retain her seat. After the primary, which she won, ay a decisive moment in the campaign a then little known Repug strategist named Karl Rove released her college transcript, which showed that she in fact had never graduated from college and that her claims to have earned a Phi Beta Kappa key were false. Guerrero resigned her seat and that was the end of her political career.

[Blue_Tires]

40. the sad part is that it's been mentioned here and elsewhere

that Rove never finished college as well

[Nikia]

36. I think that if you plan on staying w/ a company, your whole career

Getting a first position in a large company may be more difficult. Once you are in though, you are judged more by your performance in your position and then recommendations of other employees when it comes to being promoted. If a degree is required for a particuliar position, they would assume the degree you claimed to have was authenic.
At some companies with tuition reimbursement, a problem might arise if they want you to take classwork for an advanced degree. Colleges would definitely check your previous college records and probably want transcripts.

[LaraMN]

37. If the "diploma" reads: "Bachelor of Arts Degree in FUCKING RULING!"

Perhaps not very far, and you may need to scale back your lies, a bit.

[Orangepeel]

39. some people will get far, most will get caught

if it is a job in the public sector or a large company, there is a good chance that they will ask for a transcript for your file after the job has been offered and accepted.

[trackfan]

41. My real degree hasn't gotten me too far. Maybe I should try a fake

[Initech]

44. You could get a job in the White House Press Corps!

Just ask Jeff Gannon!