Identifying the issue concerning bogus degrees
There have been some notorious cases of people claiming to have professional degrees from accredited programs who have been discovered not to have graduated from those programs. Usually, although not always, such people have lost their job and the professional career they sought. One could argue that people who have a degree from a degree mill are less guilty, because they do have the ‘degree’ from the degree mill, so what they say is true. However, I think the intent is the same, namely to obtain entry into a profession for which they are not qualified. (Their statement does count as a lie by Sissela Bok’s definition of a lie: a statement intended to deceive, because their use of the term “degree”, (or their representation on their resumé) is intended to deceive others into thinking they have qualifications they do not have.
The answer to what can be done about it probably depends on what agent is being discussed. An employer has at least a prima facie responsibility to check a recruit’s credentials before allowing that recruit to work at a job that materially affects the public welfare. Of course whether they will do it may depend on how difficult it is to do it. It would be easier if there were an on-line list of accredited programs. However, standards for, and even kinds of, engineering programs differ between countries. ABET, the body that accredits engineering programs in the U.S.. does have a searchable on-line list of accredited U.S. Programs—See http://www.abet.org/accrediteac.asp. Some uniformity of accreditation standards can be expected among the countries that signed the so-called “Washington Accord." They have requirements similar to ABET’s. Does anyone know of a list of all such accredited programs?
The matter is less clear if the person has a degree from an institution that has an engineering program that has, at some time in the past been accredited and perhaps even is now, but was not accredited when the person graduated or maybe the whole time s/he was enrolled as a student. I think listing the degree is not deceptive if the person has the degree. Is there someone who ought to either disclose or discover whether the degree from the sometime-accredited institution was in an accredited program when the person obtained the degree?