Slashdot Mirror
How Prevalent are Bogus Degrees?
Paul Townend asks: "The BBC are reporting that a US government investigation has found that 28 top federal employees possess bogus college degrees (usually based on 'life experience'), and the phenomenon may be much bigger. Have Slashdot readers come across or worked with people with such degrees? Does it give them an advantage? What happens when they're discovered?"
If they were qualified without the "fake" degree why didn't they apply that way?
Because a lot of jobs require degrees for no reason.
I don't see how you can call it "overcompensation".
If they weren't doing the job they were hired to do, then they should have been fired for poor performance.
If they were doing the job well enough to command their compensation without getting fired, then that proves the degree is bullshit, by your own argument.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Of course, forget about those 'honorary' degrees, or non-accredited but soon-to-be universities such as the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.
This story runs into a pet peeve of mine. When people are caught with fake degrees, their employers usually say "Oh, it's okay, we didn't hire him for his education anyway. Just his experience and background." My reply is, did you hire him for his integrity and honesty? Cause you sure didn't get what you paid for. And it's not the foreigners doing it. It's American citizens.
Conesus
Don't eat your soul to fill your belly.
conesus.com
"Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Abell has a master's from Columbus University, a diploma mill Louisiana shut down. Deputy Assistant Secretary Patricia Walker lists among her degrees, a bachelor's from Pacific Western, a diploma mill banned in Oregon and under investigation in Hawaii"
These two, at least, are indeed just below cabinet level
I don't want a doctor that only knows how to expand his mental horizons and creatively problem solve. I want a doctor that can tell me what is wrong and if he determines that there is nothing wrong with me won't just give me drugs to make me happy and go away (otherwise known as creative problem solving.)
I don't want emergency personnel that have to look up things in the big book what is wrong with me and how to treat it. It may take them 10-15 min. to look it up, but I want them acting on me to save my life in that 10-15 mins not looking up information that they should know!
There is a signficant school of thought that believes that degrees (or any certification for that matter) is a signal to potential employeers that you have the determination to achive something difficult and the training invested in you will not go to waste. The hypothsis is also used to explain why bank signs and facades are quite expensive to produce. Since a sign is emblazened with a company's name it will not carry much use if the bank were to go under. Since the management team was willing to spend so much on a sign, they are capitalized well enough to be around for a while and not go under with your deposits (this was pre FDIC insurance). I think this is the vast majority of the extra value of an prestigous degree (let's face it if you try you can learn plenty from any undergraduate institution). Almost anyone can be trained to do most jobs (engineering, medical, and a few other no mistake jobs excluded) competently. The important part is the expense undertaken by the employeer to train someone. The degree shows that you are willing to endure some discomfort and effort to achive a long term goal. As such they are very, very costly signals, but no one has found a better method of sorting people.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Among the projects were memorial things like sticking colored beads to styrofoam spheres with pins (very attractive), drawing, and other things that struck me more as being "arts and craft" than math.
About two years after I was out of junior high, she was arrested on the basis that her teaching degrees were completely fictious. She was sent to jail for a few years.
The irony was, that after she got out of jail the city hired her as an accountant. Go figure. And I suck at math and blame it on her (but you should see my beaded styrofoam sphere collection :).
Don't know what your experience is, but life showed me that you can't quantify people.
I've seen folks with a BS or even an MS from great schools who couldn't code their way out of a box. I've seen bright folks who had such obnoxious personalities that nobody wants to work with them. I've seen folks with a PhD in random off-the-wall fields with no "useful" degrees who can both code well and manage people. I've seen grads from great schools with no common sense. I've seen folks who didn't graduate and got a plum job and then had problem years down the road when they were trying to find a new job and the market wasn't the same as before so they couldn't. I've torn apart folks in an interview because they didn't know anything about the words they stuffed in their resume. I've seen excellent artists getting in trouble in art schools because they didn't stretch their own canvas or used computers or such things.
There could be a variety of reasons why your brothers are doing better than you are other than education.
Gentoo Sucks