George Gollin - Other Public Service

Other Public Service

The University of Illinois is a public university and "land grant school"; as such, Gollin's responsibilities include faculty public service in addition to his teaching and research obligations. Since 2003, Gollin has been documenting the practices of alleged diploma mills, businesses which are believed to sell meaningless academic degrees without providing education or assessment to/of their customers. In this capacity, he has worked with a number of state and federal agencies, including the State of Washington Office of the Attorney General, the U.S. Dept. of Education, the U.S. Secret Service, and the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education. It was reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education that "Alan Contreras, administrator for the Oregon Office of Degree Authorization, called the professor's work 'superb'." He has, for example, assisted with the federal investigation of the operation of an alleged diploma mill, Saint Regis University. This investigation resulted in closing down the large operation and the conviction on federal criminal charges of eight individuals who were involved.

In 2006 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation for a three year term. He was reelected to a second term in 2009. Also in 2009 Gollin was named a Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. George Gollin said of the fellowship, "I will use the term of the Fellowship to write a book about the nine-year trajectory and spectacular immolation of St. Regis, and the resulting increase in international attention to the problem of diploma mills."