In excess of 30 bogus universities in the UK were shut down in the last year.
Since 2011, a total of 220 fake universities operating in Britain have been identified, 80% of which are no longer active.
The university watchdog, the Higher Education Degree Datacheck (Hedd), monitors counterfeit degrees.
In the past year alone, it found 62 institutions awarding fraudulent degrees. Law enforcement and trading standards agencies have managed to close 32 of them, with the remaining 30 under investigation.
“The completely fake sites talk of student campuses when there’s literally nothing there at all,” according to Jayne Rowley, director of Hedd.
She cited one example involving a university whose address, listed on its website, is actually “an empty shop front in Hyde in Cheshire”.
A lot of fraud goes undetected, she said, because employers often fail to verify a job candidate’s education certificates.
The field for sham degrees could easily widen with the expansion of internet and distance learning.
“With the onset of the internet and distance learning, degree fraud is a borderless crime and we must collaborate with agencies around the world to deal with it. The fact that so much can be delivered online means it’s very, very easy, you don’t even have to have a building any more to run a supposed [higher education] institution,” Rowley warned.
The British government, she said, plans to open education further by allowing new private providers to grant degrees. This involves universities, both start-up and existing, being able to award degrees.
“I think there’s a very big risk this will become a more serious problem,” she said. “I think the proposals to expand provision in the HE bill can lead to people abusing the new degree-awarding powers. If the number [of universities] swells by several hundred it’s going to be easier for ... bogus operators to get in under the radar.”
