Hundreds of University of North Dakota Grads Got Degrees With The Wrong School's Seal On Them

Some University of North Dakota students in didn't get what they bargained for upon receiving their degrees. That is, if what they were bargaining for was a degree with the correct school's seal, which they almost certainly were.

According to Valley News Live, the spring crop of Fighting Hawk graduates walked across the stage in Grand Forks only to see that the very expensive paper they spent 4 (or 5, or — let's face it — 6) years working toward didn't feature the UND seal.

Instead, around 700 graduates received degrees with the seal of rival school, North Dakota State University.

While I hear Fargo is a nice town and the namesake of a phenomenal movie that mostly takes place in Minnesota, that is not what they wanted.

The school did what you're supposed to do in this situation and passed the buck. They blamed the error on a third-party vendor who made the degrees.

Look, any of us could have mixed up UND and NDSU, the difference is we're not in the degree printing business. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The University Of North Dakota School Chalked The Mistake Up To A Third-Party Vendor

Now, it would be easy — if not appropriate — to take a big, fat dump on the vendor for making such a dumb mistake. However, let's not pretend that none of us have made similar mistakes... just not on such a large, expensive scale.

We've all said Michigan State when meant Michigan or mixed-up schools with the same or similar initials like USC and USC. Hell, most of us have fudged it when trying to get our Dakotas straight.

It could happen to any of us, but fortunately, most of us aren't in the degree printing biz.

(Side note: I can't decide if printing degrees sounds like a lucrative line of work. I feel like it could be, but it seems like it'd be very competitive. There's not that much work to go around. Most people only get one unless they're total nerds, but that's if they even get one at all. This will keep me awake tonight...)

Truthfully, I'm surprised anyone caught this because I've never looked that closely at the seal on my very impressive BA in communications. It could have the seal for Arizona State it some other clown college on it and I'd be none the wiser.

UND officials are working to rectify the mistake, and are sending out degrees with the correct seal by mail.

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