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More than half of the phds in the USA are fake I can’t believe it if that is true of course but I came across this it’s in a book that was published in 2012 it’s called the gree Mills the billion dollar industry that has sold over a million fake diplomas it’s this
Bit that really caught my eye that the number of earned PhD degrees in the United States is between 40 and 45,000 each year but the number of fake phds bought each year from diploma Mills exceeds 50,000 that means more than half a fake why why do people want fake phds
Do they want to become this this is Peak PhD there’s obviously reasons well first of all I think it’s about standing out right so I went here and I had a look to see in these countries how many people have phds because you know these people
Want to become the top 1% or certain percentage of a certain country it’s an easy way to stand out so here we are in Australia where I’m based at the moment you can see that the average share of doctor holders in the population is 1.3 and I
Think that’s percent so 1.3% of people have a PhD in the states 1.8% have a PhD and apparently half of those are fake and uh that’s about average for everyone 1.3 so it’s somewhere between 1 and 2% of people have a PhD and they’re obviously just getting them from fake places but what
Really is a diploma Mill why do they exist well a diploma Mill actually has a legal definition something I didn’t know before and a diploma Mill is somewhere that offers for a fee degrees diplomas or certificates that may be used to represent to the general public that the individual possessing such a degree
Diploma or certificate has completed a program of postsecondary Education or training but in fact it requires the individual to complete little or no educational coursework to obtain such a degree it is a legal definition but it means that this is being taken seriously in my investigations I came across this
Dude on Twitter or now X fake PHD investigator he’s been around since 2020 but essentially he looks for different phds uh fraud from very high profile kind of people so for example here conman and chameleon a fake PHD holder attempts to infiltrate German politics Academia holds PhD dissertations in high
Regard and there are careful well funding and overlapping efforts to catalog and preserve these dissertations that makes PhD degrees inherently one of the most verifiable items about a person but people are still faking them there are more things doxing the billionaires Chief technology officer with a fake PHD
This goes deep and I was like thinking to myself why do people fake phds this is much bigger of an issue that I ever thought about sure there’s going to be some charlatans in there that you know just lie but if the statistic of over half is to be believed clearly there’s
Something deeper going on the first reason I think people are doing it is because it’s easy it’s easy to join the 1% not many people are going to make it into the 1% with finances money Prestige all of that stuff but if you can make it
Into a certain 1% just by paying money that’s great in it so I found this you go on here buy fake phds and you get all of these different results buy a fake PHD fake PHD fake Doctorate Degrees novelty yeah novelty and then here you click on them you can choose your PhD
You can choose your fake doctorate and here discover our PhD diploma and transcript combo the interesting thing thing to me is that you can put in any name of college or university you got the location you got student name and all of the details and then down here
The one thing I love about it is like when do you want it just ship it I’m in a hurry I.E I’ve lied to my employer and I need it as soon as possible they’re asking for my PhD certificate and I don’t have it help so clearly they know
People could be panick buying these and they’ put it as an option that to me is very funny there’s no doubt that having a PhD opens up doors for people I know that there are certain circumstances where people just like need to put you in a box when you first meet someone in
A professional situation they need to know where you are in the hierarchy and if you introduce yourself and go hi I’m Dr Stapleton sometimes I felt like it just makes things so much easier like to progress they great you’re in like this box in my mind and having a PhD is a
Little bit of a shortcut to kind of like busting through those barriers with some people especially if you’re in a really technical environment if people know you’ve got a PhD then all of a sudden you’re kind of like elevated in their mind check out this person on Reddit
They’re saying like what would happen if someone claimed to have a PhD and markets themselves as having such but doesn’t could they get in trouble for this what could happen absolutely you can get in trouble for that there are loads of instances across the kind of uh
The years of people finding out people don’t have degrees they lose their jobs they lose their credibility and it’s really really damaging to any they do afterwards but why do people do it and I think part of it is like that Stolen Valor thing you know those soldiers that
Pretend to have fought in wars and wear all their uniform this is kind of like that but for a PhD because if you just say I’ve got a PhD you kind of get respect from certain types of people in certain types of situations and to be honest with you sometimes that feels
Good I did like it early on in my sort of like graduation just after where I was just like I’m Dr Stapleton and I would use it all the time in fact once my mom called me and said Andrew and I was like Dr steton thank you because I’m
That sort of a person but ultimately you can get a little bit of a satisfaction from being a PhD holder in certain environments so if it’s so easily verifiable why don’t people check I’ve actually got my own very story where if you go check out this video where I talk
About how I submitted a fake PHD you’ll notice that people just don’t really check properly at least in that HR department at University sometimes there’s just processes they took a box and move on they’re not expecting people to lie like I did which was wrong but I
Did it because I didn’t like my job and I think I wanted to be fired anyway that’s in that video go check out that one but there is a way that you can check to see if someone actually has a PHD what you do is you sit them down
With a nice cup of tea you look deep into their eyes and you say tell me about your PhD and if you don’t see a swelling of sadness just behind the eyes and this kind of like trembling bottom lip or this kind of like five M stare where they’re just
Replaying the meetings with their supervisors and the rejections from the reviewers they don’t have a PhD that’s an easy check isn’t it it’s so easy to fify in fact that all you need to do in a lot of cases is reach out to a university and say Hey I want to check
In your archives for a certain PhD thesis you can then often get just get copies of that thesis and check it the second thing you can do is just actually ask who their supervisors were and reach out and ask them is this person a PhD graduate I think having the actual
Thesis which is very hard to uh well it’s getting easier I guess with chat GPT and stuff like that but it was very hard to produce a thesis but people are still lying about it because clearly it’s easy enough to lie about it interesting if you like this video
Remember to go check out this one where I talk about the unethical use of AI that has been found in the peer-reviewed literature crazy go check it out so there we have it there’s everything you need to know about the fake PHD crisis I guess I can call it that over half in
The US apparently are fake from diploma Mills I don’t believe it but let me know in the comments if you know someone with a fake PHD or you’re suspicious of someone who’s got a fake PHD that would be interesting and also remember there are more ways that you can engage with
Me the first way is to sign up to my newsletter head over to andrew.com / newsletter the link is in the description and when you sign up you’ll get five emails over about two weeks everything from the tools I’ve used the podcasts I’ve been on how to write the
Perfect abstract the perfect daily schedule and more it’s exclusive content available for free so go sign up now and also remember to go check out Academia insider.com that’s my project where I’ve got ebooks I’ve got resource packs I’ve got courses coming can you believe it
I’ve also got a Blog and a forum and everything is over there to make sure the Academia works for you all right then I’ll see you in the next video
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