The parties are thinning out, there are more and more people in the libraries and groans about excessive workloads are being tossed around right and left. As those first few heady days of back-to-school parties fade into the recesses of minds stuffed with more important factoids and due dates, the fall semester has hit with full force.

But believe it or not, there is an alternative, or so I was told by an e-mail I received promising me a bachelor’s or master’s degree, or even a doctorate, through distance learning.

Institutions such as Glencullen University and the University of Wexford in Ireland offer an extensive list of distance learning programs that can be taken while in the working world.

No more long hours of class. No more last-minute all-nighters. Just you, a job in the professional world and distance learning from these two fine higher-learning establishments.

Sound interesting? I thought it was worth a look. I clicked on the link in the e-mail to Glencullen’s Web site.

It looks real enough. Friendly faces of students working together on a class project serve as a centerpiece for a menu with options leading to the pages for student life, career services, and admission requirements.

Deeper inside the site, they list student organizations and athletic teams, which includes perfectly legitimate sounding clubs such as the snooker and trampolining clubs.

They also list an extensive cadre of degree programs such as psychology, cardiopulmonary sciences and legal studies. The University of Wexford’s site looks much the same.

It all has the veneer of your average university Web site, except there was something strange about those eager faces. There were several things missing from the site. Aside from the fact that the domain name is http://henryheston.com, there were no maps to the university, no department pages, no applications and no other way to get in contact with anyone except for a lone phone number.

So I decided to give them both a call. I dialed Glencullen first. A simple recorded response asked me to leave a message and a representative would get back to me. There was no indication on the voice mail of who or what I was calling.

I hung up and dialed Wexford’s number. The very same bored receptionist entreated me to leave a message. So doesn’t the same answering machine for two different universities in Ireland sound a little fishy?

Well, according to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, these two colleges are just two of a long list of aliases for a company that peddle degrees to people who have worked in a professional work environment for several years without a degree from an accredited institution.

Their services are catching on. A quick Google search finds resumes of people from all walks of life – an Occidental University staff member, a rabbi and a political candidate – who list Glencullen as their alma mater.

If a degree from Glencullen helped them, surely it could do the same for me. This time I called up Harrington University, another London-based school in their university system, left a message and eventually a representative called me back.

“Hello, is Jeremy there?” said the receptionist in a flat monotone. (Incidentally, the call came from a DFW area code.)

“This is Jeremy.”

“I’m calling from the university,” she said allowing a dead silence to fall across the line.

“Oh, yeah! Well, let’s see, I’ve spent the last several years nursing my mom who has severe heart disease. I’ve been to all of her doctor’s appointments and talked to a lot of the patients that have shared her room in the hospital,” I lied. “I’m really interested in working toward a degree in something in the cardiopulmonary field.”

“Have you worked in the field at all?”

“No,” I hesitated, “not really.”

“What do you mean by not really?”

“Well, I haven’t held a job in the field, but I’ve been nursing my mom over the past several years. I’m interested in doing some distance learning to expand my knowledge. Don’t you offer distance learning programs?”

“No,” she said. “We offer degrees based upon life experience. If you haven’t had a cardiopulmonary job we probably can’t do anything there, but we might be able to find you something in health services if you wouldn’t mind sending your resume.”

“Well, how long would I have to work in the field to, say, get a bachelor’s degree.”

“Probably about three to four years.”

“Oh, well, I really don’t have any work experience in any of these fields. Is there anyway I can get a degree?”

“Sir, this is not some quick way to fame and fortune,” she said. “We’re here for people who have years of experience. I have people who have 25 years of experience in the field who can’t get an interview without an advanced degree.”

Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take advantage of a system set up to help poor, victimized non-degreed members of the work force dupe their potential employers. OK, I didn’t really say that.

But after hanging up with dashed hopes and dreams, I resigned myself to facing the rest of my four-year degree plan with the best face forward. Is there no rest for the lazy?