Hoping for an Oxford degree

[dieseltaylor]

I thought it would be nice to get some letters after my name : )

http://www.ool.co.uk/

[Affentitten]

Like "A level"?

[dieseltaylor]

Actually its probably part of this type of thing:

University of Illinois professor George Gollin knows all about it because he has an interesting hobby... He collects information and evidence about people committing fraud through the use of fake academic degrees. His website (http://www.hep.uiuc.edu/home/g-gollin/) contains a picture of Williams' diploma: http://www.hep.uiuc.edu/home/g-gollin/pigeons/

As his website explains:

Roy David Williams, 57, was found guilty of 29 separate counts, including wire fraud and false claims regarding contracts with the plant near Amarillo. He appeared in U.S. District Court in Amarillo before Judge Mary Lou Robinson. Federal court records show Williams submitted 28 false or counterfeit billings to the plant from August 2007 to June 2008. During his trial, Williams insisted that he be addressed as "Dr. Williams." His "PhD" in Nuclear Engineering, which apparently played a role in his success at bidding for a Pantex contract, was issued by the "Richmonds University" diploma mill. Williams provided his Richmonds documents to investigators to substantiate his claim of a PhD.

http://ww2.richmondsuniversity.net/

And that comes from a tediously long article that explains how the fake universities will help fool potential employers.

http://www.naturalnews.com/036076_Aajonus_Vonderplanitz_doctorate_nutrition.html

Really quite shocking how inept a system is when fake degrees can be used.

A New Jersey man, Dr. Kenneth Hofbauer, claims to have received a "Doctorate Degree in Chemical Engineering, 2004, PH.D., Magna cum Laude, Richmonds University, London, England." (http://execmktg.com/khofbauer/education.php)

Being quite the academic, he also claims to have a "Masters of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering, 1998, M.S., Magna cum Laude, Richmonds University, London, England."

Remember as you read this that Richmonds University does not exist as a real entity. The entire thing is fabricated. This is an online diploma mill that produces academic credentials which appear to be legitimate and are designed to fool prospective employers, reporters, clients or anyone else inquiring about a person's academic achievements.

See more resumes at Linkedin.com

Search any search engine for "linkedin.com Richmonds University" and see what you get. Or just click the following link for a Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alinkedin.com+"richmonds+univers...

There, you will see "Richmonds University" degrees claimed by law enforcement officers, energy company plant managers, finance capital firms, hotel managers and much more.

http://www.naturalnews.com/036087_diploma_mills_fake_degrees_doctorate.html

[Michael Emrys]

I was dismayed when I became aware back in the early '80s that most young people were desperate to get into college, not out of any love of learning, but so that they could acquire the credentials that would assure them of a shot at a high paying job. This was kind of the flip side of the astonishment on the part of UCLA officials 20 years earlier when I announced that I didn't care whether they gave me a degree or not as long as I would be permitted to study whatever interested me.

Michael

[Affentitten]

Diesel, your original link is not really a case of a fraudelent degree mill. They're not claiming to give degrees at all. They are a private educational college aimed at coaching people through high school qualifications. They use the name Oxford, but really they're not masquerading as a university.

As for what Emrys says, it's quite true. As a university lecturer I know that most of my kids don't care about learning, they just care about passing. With online marking, I can actually see that many of my kids get their essay back, check the grade, and then never open the actual feedback and discussion provided by the marker. Or at the moment I am inundated with emails from kids saying "You haven't handed back my paper and the exam is tomorrow! How will I know what I need to get in the exam if I don't know what I got in the paper?"

What they really mean is "If I got a good mark in the paper then I won't bother to study for the exam because I'm going to pass the semester anyway."

[Stalins Organ]

Which is entirely understandable in an age where there are a llot of demands on time.

Why do you think it is strange?? IMO the vast majority of people have always only been interested in "getting by" at some level or other - it has only ever been a small minority who want to learn for the sake of learning and go on to do something more remarkable than "getting by".

[Boeman]

Which is entirely understandable in an age where there are a llot of demands on time.

Why do you think it is strange?? IMO the vast majority of people have always only been interested in "getting by" at some level or other - it has only ever been a small minority who want to learn for the sake of learning and go on to do something more remarkable than "getting by".

Indeed, it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that students in general see attending higher education as a necessary (and expensive) evil.

Institutions often tell us that in order to succeed in life, you need a degree from which you'll be given employment, garner increased wages, have something to brag about at parties when looking for that significant other, advance through the higher echelons in your chosen career field, and so on.

No high-school counselor ever told me that University would be a wondrous experience with the limitless diversity of thought upon which my mind would feast upon. Rather, they emphasized that if I elected not to obtain a degree, I may as well sell hot dogs in downtown for the rest of my life.

Consequently, undergrads who are being sold the merits of university through fear will naturally view it as simply a means to an end.

[Michael Emrys]

Indeed, it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that students in general see attending higher education as a necessary (and expensive) evil.

Institutions often tell us that in order to succeed in life, you need a degree from which you'll be given employment, garner increased wages, have something to brag about at parties when looking for that significant other, advance through the higher echelons in your chosen career field, and so on.

No high-school counselor ever told me that University would be a wondrous experience with the limitless diversity of thought upon which my mind would feast upon. Rather, they emphasized that if I elected not to obtain a degree, I may as well sell hot dogs in downtown for the rest of my life.

Consequently, undergrads who are being sold the merits of university through fear will naturally view it as simply a means to an end.

I'm sure you must be right. Yet...I hail from an ancient era when a higher education was intended (or at least was said to be intended) to produce well-rounded individuals who could be trusted to fill leadership positions in society. Yes, I will admit it all sounded a bit stuffy to me too at the time. On the other hand, I also had a vibrant interests in a very wide variety of subjects, so I suppose that I was doomed from the first to be a well-rounded individual.

In any event, I think it was the GI Bill that began to change all that. By putting a higher education within the grasp of a huge number of men for whom it would previously have been utterly unobtainable, it also made having a degree a requisite for advancement in fields that previously would have demanded only experience and seniority.

Wed that to the increasing belief over the last 40 years that the supreme value worth pursuing in life is making a buck, and...well, here we are.

Michael

[Stalins Organ]

Yet...I hail from an ancient era when a higher education was intended (or at least was said to be intended) to produce well-rounded individuals who could be trusted to fill leadership positions in society.

BCE doesn't count.

Once upon a time teachers had diplomas, electricians and accountants had certificates, as did most engineers.

Back in those days (somewhat after BCE) - like the 1960's - degrees here were for the academic elite. whether they went on to beome "leaders of society" was another question. Indeed in many cases people were selected to go to university because they were ALREADY leaders of society who were deemed to need a bit more academic background.

and of course soon everyone confused cause and effect.

[Michael Emrys]

BCE doesn't count.

Oh, I quite agree. The British Commonwealth and Empire have become irrelevant. China seems to be the coming thing.

Michael

[Stalins Organ]

Indeed - the King abandoned the title "Emperor of India" in 1948 - as I say - before then doesn't count.

Toodle pip old chap

[sburke]

The term we like to throw around in my industry is Push Here Dummy for all the supposed smart people with degrees who can't figure out how to turn on a light, or adjust the temp in their conference room.

[Erwin]

Other than in medicine and other such professions, there are smart people who can do wonderful jobs without the "license" that a piece of paper called a degree confers. Conversely there are many idiots other there who have real degrees who are lousy at their jobs.

In may day we were told that education was a goal in itself. These days a degree is sold as a way to make more money and that's about it. So the universities have basically become tech colleges.

Then the problem becomes that, other for a very fortunate few who get scholarships, the majority of kids who get to the best universities are children of privilege. Hence a class system emerges and solidifies an unassailable position at the top for the wealthy with the decreased social mobility that we now experience.

This "licensing" of jobs has gotten out of hand - eg: the fight that the cosmetologists made/continue to press to prevent anyone cutting hair or doing make-up professionally without expensive years of training and a diploma.

[Michael Emrys]

Back when I was in college (the 1960s), it was almost a cliche—especially in the technical branches like engineering—that your real education did not begin until you were hired. The standing joke was, "Forget everything you learned in school and pay attention to everything I'm going to show you."

Michael

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

Ok, I´m a pushheredummy (LOL).

"Forget everything you learned in school and pay attention to everything I'm going to show you."

I agree and I disagree in equal measure. I´ve been surprised how things I learned at school or university turned out to be useful although I was sure at the time that they wouldn´t be.

Most tasks, even technically difficult ones can be learned by anyone within a few weeks. Understanding the big picture OTOH is not something that can be grasped easily without an education.

In the end there is no fairness in the education debate or job reality.

If you don´t have a degree people will ignore you because you don´t have one. If you have a degree you will find out that market forces apply and where there are many Phds the degree profit margins shrink often making the time and money investment questionable.

[dieseltaylor]

In the UK the grammar school system creamed off the supposed top 5-10% of pupils at age eleven. They would take O and A levels and if you could master A' you were in the top 5% academically and went to University - for free.

What we have now is the expectation that 50% of the school population will go on to university or equivalent education. And can the country afford the expense, and the ludicrously inflated expectations of the people who go on to further education.

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.alternet.org/story/155864/does_your_doctor_have_a_fake_degree_the_billion-dollar_industry_that_has_sold_over_a_million_fake_diplomas?

• One international diploma mill, with offices in Europe and the Middle East and mailing addresses in the United Kingdom, run by Americans, has sold more than 450,000 degrees—bachelor’s, master’s, doctorates, medicine, and law—to clients worldwide, who did nothing more than write a check. Their revenues exceeded US $450,000,000.

• The number of earned PhD degrees in the United States is 40,000 to 45,000 each year. The number of fake PhDs bought each year from diploma mills exceeds 50,000. In other words, more than half of all people claiming a new PhD have a fake degree.

• Fake medical degrees are an urgent problem. It is easy to buy a medical degree from a fake school, or a counterfeit diploma in the name of a real school. Twenty-five years ago, a Congressional committee calculated that there were over 5,000 fake doctors in the United States, and there are many more now. People have died because of these fakes.

• The Government Accountability Office looked for fake degrees among employees of less than 5 percent of federal agencies and found enough to suggest that more than one hundred thousand federal employees have at least one, many of them paid for by taxpayers not to mention resulting higher pay and increased retirement benefits.

Seems to be a problem.

[Michael Emrys]

Seems to be a problem.

Going for the understatement of the year award?

Michael

[JonS]

• The Government Accountability Office looked for fake degrees among employees of less than 5 percent of federal agencies and found enough to suggest that more than one hundred thousand federal employees have at least one, many of them paid for by taxpayers not to mention resulting higher pay and increased retirement benefits.

This one is interesting, I think. Assuming the person is doing their job to the required standard (and assuming it isn't something that actually requires the specific skillset learnt at varsity, like practising medicine) it shouldn't matter whether the incumbent has a degree, no degree, or a fake degree. It simply shouldn't come into it.

Employers largely have themselves to blame for this mess. They set the standard in which what used to be entry level jobs now require a degree and prior work experience, and now they're reaping the 'benefit' of setting thse rediculous expectations.

We had a case here, recently, where the head(?) of the defence(?) research arm was found to have a fake degree. Que maximum embarassement all round, and he was quickly shown the door and sent back to Canada(?). But the thing is, by all accounts he was doing a really good job.

[dieseltaylor]

Call me old-fashioned but I think if someone is prepared to lie to get a job then they would be prepared to lie about other things. Dishonesty is contagious and one only has to look to Greece to see what happens when dishonesty is ingrained into a culture.

On the practical side I wonder if my chances of a contract, or employment, would be increased if I mentioned to the person concerned I knew he had faked his CV. What would be my chances of success? Better or worse than some innocent but better qualified person?

[JonS]

Call me old-fashioned but I think if someone is prepared to lie to get a job then they would be prepared to lie about other things.

That's about the only valid argument I can think of. And in the case of diploma mills, it isn't even lying. I can, with hand on heart, honestly say that I have fully and completely met all the requirements to be a Doctor of Arts in Literature at Thunderwood College. And just like almost any other degree, that doesn't tell you whether I'd actually be any good at my job.

one only has to look to Greece to see what happens when dishonesty is ingrained into a culture.

Quite possibly the worst example you could have picked.

[Michael Emrys]

Employers largely have themselves to blame for this mess. They set the standard in which what used to be entry level jobs now require a degree and prior work experience, and now they're reaping the 'benefit' of setting thse rediculous expectations.

That much I agree with. I think it's just a more recent example of the mindset that has plagued relations between the managerial and laboring classes down through history going back to master-slave relations. I. e., anyone paying you a wage is entitled to demand whatever he likes of you, no matter how dehumanizing that might be and no matter how counter productive that may prove in the end.

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

Dishonesty is contagious and one only has to look to Greece to see what happens when dishonesty is ingrained into a culture.

Quite possibly the worst example you could have picked.

I feel that others might care for you to expand on this it terms of better and worse examples. I of course thought it was apposite. : )

[JonS]

http://boingboing.net/2012/07/07/credentialism-is-just-as-screw.html

[dieseltaylor]

JonS- you seem to have missed answering my last post to you - or possibly not. I am still curious why Greece was not a good example.

Anyway thanks for the link to the article on boingboing. It was interesting both to see the amount of student debt and also the arguments advanced in the responses.

However a bit more research reveals the astonishing extent of debt:

U.S. student loan debt surpassed credit card debt and auto loans for the first time last year and estimates for the total number of outstanding student loans range from $850 billion to $1 trillion. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York projects that at least 37 million Americans, or 15 percent of the population, are actively paying off student debt. About two-thirds of student loans are held by individuals under the age of 30 but the New York Fed has determined that people age 50 and older are carrying as much as $135 billion in student loan balances.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/student-loan-debt-ticking-time-bomb-deal-bills-143018212.html

However to breakdown the figures in a meaningful way this site is needed.

http://www.asa.org/policy/resources/stats/default.aspx

as a per head basis makes it very much more understandable.

I have a gripe here that students are, a lot of the time, to blame for their debt. For instance a friend's son is no more than an hour from home to his uni but feels he should live "in" London. Whilst one could make arguments that it is about the lifestyle and being with peers thats a load of crock when everybodies life is really about choosing between what money you have and what you can afford to do.

I am afraid arguments like you are "only young once", "everyone does", "enjoy it before you get to the real world" don't cut any ice whatsoever with me for explaining away debt.

However it is true that this is all drastically exacerbated by qualification creep. And really something needs to be done about it as , rather like medicine, this is an increasing spiral of costs for very little useful gain.