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| Education
May 9 2017

Your MD may have a phoney degree

High school journalists in Pittsburg, Kansas, recently uncovered a troubling and at times dangerous trend that's far more prevalent than realized. They garnered national attention for their discovery about the credentials of their school's new principal. 

"We stumbled on some things that most might not consider legitimate credentials," Trina Paul, a senior and an editor of a Pittsburgh High School newspaper, told the Kansas City Star.

Within days of the students publishing their story, principal Amy Robertson had resigned from her $93,000-a-year position. She said she obtained both master's and doctorate degrees from a Corllins University, whose existence the U.S. Department of Education has no evidence of, and reportedly swiped a commencement photo Wake Forest University in North Carolina used for its own marketing.

Robertson is far from alone in touting a pedigree that includes a degree from Corllins, described in multiple news stories as a diploma mill. A recent search of LinkedIn found 745 people, including public-safety workers, lawyers, engineers, educators and federal government employees, holding degrees from Corllins.