How Much is Your Harvard Degree Worth?

Officially, your Harvard degree costs about $200,000. In Russia, you could get one for 20 percent of the price… or maybe less.

RIA Novasti, a Russian state-run news agency, reported that a Russian criminal group was just arrested for selling forged degrees from Harvard and other colleges. The going rate for a fake Harvard diploma ($40,000) was just a little less than the the official cost of one year's tuition, room, and board ($48,868 for 2009-10, according to FAS). But Alexander Khazin, deputy chief of a Russian Interior Ministry investigative department, told RIA Novasti that “a large group of fraudsters are involved in the [diploma forgery] business, and much time is required to discover them.” So basically, if you really want a fake Harvard degree, you can probably still find some Russian gangsters to help you out.

But why bother, really? You can get your own forged diploma online. No promises it’ll pass as a real degree from the College (it looks more like a version of some graduate school degree, actually), but hey, it is free.