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Key EDS Witness Bought Internet Degree
An anonymous reader writes "EDS's key witness during the firm's court case against BSkyB was shown to have bought his degree online – but still managed to get a worse mark than a dog. Joe Galloway said he had a degree from Concordia College in the US Virgin Islands and gave detailed evidence on how he took plane journeys between the islands and attended a college there. But while questioning Galloway in court, Mark Howard QC managed to obtain exactly the same degree as Galloway from Concordia College for his dog 'Lulu' with one key difference – the dog got a higher mark."
My dog is smarter than your dog.
The fake-degree guy got fired from his job not for performing badly but for having a fake degree. What does this say about people who have a real degree that they didn't notice a difference in performance or at the very least that it took so long to find out?
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College degrees are way overrated.
Not really. It's Human Resource people who make the hiring decisions who are over-rated. They look for degrees, good references and personality to make their decisions, instead of looking at a person's ability. Like the article said;
He gave his evidence [on going to the college] in the same confident, secure manner as he gave his evidence about the EDS representations.
Smart people usually aren't confident because they know how ignorant they are. HR people look for confidence in a person when hiring. Confident people also get promoted. It's all about sales, not ability. I'd rather hire an insecure person who wasn't confident in his abilities to do differential equations than hire somebody who confidently lies about his ability because he thinks (and knows) people are stupid enough to judge him based on how he presents himself.
Presentation is everything, that's why PowerPoint is so popular with business and sales people. It's quite useless, but it's pretty and it looks smart.
I spent a lot of time to get my advanced degrees, but I have no illusions about their actual value. My real value comes from my work experience and successes in my field.
Just to take the devil's advocate position here: you essentially are implying that you learned nothing in school and could have had the same successes without taking the courses you took?
I (owner of a piece of paper that says I am a medical doctor) agree that at the end of the day a degree is just a piece of paper. The real value is what you yourself put into the course, it's not "granted" to you by some outside force. I know people with exactly the same degree I have who, frankly, I would never let near my children. I myself used my training as an excuse to spend as much time as possible with patients, including weekends and holidays when I really didn't have to be there. So in essence I agree with you, it's not "the degree" that has given me a far more profound understanding of medicine than most of my classmates (who did the bare minimum). Rather it's my attitude towards learning, problem solving, and work that let me get ahead in my field.
However there has to be some objective method of classifying a potential employee, and the degree (and where it came from) is a very simple test. Yes there are bound to be highly efficient individuals who lack university degrees (my grandfather made millions - far more than I could ever hope to earn - and never had more than 3rd grade). And there are bound to be slackers who despite having prestigious degrees are absolutely useless. That's why hiring isn't (or shouldn't be) done on solely a candidate's degree. It's just another tool when sifting through the work-force to help identify the individual you think will be of greatest use to you.
However, all else being equal, I would be more inclined to trust someone with a Harvard degree than a degree from "Concordia Online College"...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Somehow I really, really doubt you went to MIT, Harvard and Oxford. If you went to any of those institutions, you'd know the connections you make during school at those types of institutes are invaluable for networking later in life.
"reliable and accurate information on Internet"
Best. Oxymoron. Ever.
I hate printers.
...it really grokked Tail Recursion.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've only been to one university - though I have plenty of vocational qualifications. Although what I learned at Cambridge was rapidly obsoleted as knowledge - and I work in a field which did not even really exist when I was there - what I did there benefits me almost every single day of my life. I learned the things you mostly do not learn at work.
Specifically I learnt the critical attitude - to take nothing at face value. At a University famous for its experimentalism, I learnt how to design experiments and test the results. I learnt how to use statistical and probabilitistic analysis to eliminate false results. I learnt to distrust the wisdom of crowds. And I learnt how to learn.
Ever since then I have discovered that many people simply do not think but accept what is perceived as the norm in their industry or group. That is why you get everything from religious cults to stock market bubbles. Anyone who learnt experimental technique as I did could never be fooled by the early-80s boom. Anyone who learnt those techniques (as I did) would be able to go away, analyse the quality records of their company and suddenly realise that what "everybody believed" about a major industrial process of the company was quite wrong - and, after nearly getting fired for whistleblowing, convince the CEO (a Cambridge PhD) and end up as CTO.
When I had to learn some metallurgy and electrochemistry in a hurry - I knew where to go and how to do it. When I suddenly needed a working knowledge of technical German and French - I knew how to do it.
Vocational courses are great when you have a vocation. But a good University is not a vocational school. It expands your mental horizons and it shows you how to both access knowledge and bend it to your purpose.
It has been estimated roughly that an engineering, science or maths degree from Oxford or Cambridge has a net worth of over $300000 - that is the increase in annual income over life, minus the three years out of the workforce and the costs of doing the degree. This benefit is leveraged by vocational courses - I have obtained distinctions on every one of mine by applying proper habits of study.
Unless you sleepwalked through those universities and did not take full advantage of what they offered, I suspect that you've never really been there.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
He didn't say college was overrated; he said college degrees were overrated. Although you learned and studied a lot, there were probably others who graduated with the exact same degree from the same institution as you, who bludged their way through the course, and are useless at actually doing the thing their degree describes. That's why he was saying a degree is useless. It doesn't actually provide what it says it does - that is, a certification that the person who has it knows their stuff.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
ROFL multiple degrees from MIT Harvard and Oxford, really. Not one from each place but multiple.
I think you should reconsider the value of a good education. For example, if you had a good education, even at a half decent state school, you would know how to lie more convincingly.
There is no British High Court: Scotland has a separate system of justice and it is the High Court of England and Wales. BSkyB is ultimately owned by News International, the multinational creation of Rupert Murdoch, born Australian but now a US citizen of convenience, and is British only in appearance. EDS is a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard, a US multinational. I will forgive you collage, because calling it a college would clearly be exaggeration.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
College degrees are way overrated. This is coming from someone with multiple degrees from MIT, Harvard, and Oxford.
Are those colleges doing a bulk deal if you buy all of them at once?
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
He single handedly lost the case according to the article. He knowingly gave false estimates to BSkyB the only point on which the court upheld BSB's complaints and as a result EDS lost the case. It appears the court decided this largely on the basis of his dishonest account of obtaining a degree (given in court under oath). So to say he lost his job just because he had a fake degree is misleading. He lied to his employer in order to obtain his post. He was sacked, I have no doubt, for dishonesty.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
College degrees are way overrated. This is coming from someone with multiple degrees from MIT, Harvard, and Oxford.
College mostly is what you make it. Yes, you can go through MIT, Harvard, and Oxford, learn little, and still get a degree. But if you do that, that's your own fault. Many people do get useful skills out of those institutions.
Or does it? Since experience and personal contacts mean much more than degrees, the earlier you can get a job, the better.
Except, of course, that college is an excellent place for getting to know people that you can later network with. You may have missed this opportunity when you were in college and grad school, but other people take advantage of it and it helps them a lot.
I spent a lot of time to get my advanced degrees, but I have no illusions about their actual value.
Value in what sense? If your goal is to maximize your wealth, then it's no secret that you shouldn't get advanced degrees; it's something many graduate schools tell you explicitly (college, however, does pay off).
But not everybody lives in this world to maximize their wealth anyway. People who get advanced degrees don't do it to do well in the workforce, they do it because they are interested in the subject.
In my RSS feed for this Slashdot article there was an advert saying "Online Master Degrees, learn more now". Strangely relevant and yet embarrassing at the same time...
Or does it? Since experience and personal contacts mean much more than degrees, the earlier you can get a job, the better. Wasting your time in actual school taking actual classes is a net loser compared to getting a cheap diploma from a diploma mill and getting a paying job today.
Yeah, except for all those fields where you actually require certification that you have the knowledge you're supposed to have such as medicine, law, education, engineering, etc.
What, do you think that if you had connections they would let you be the lead architect on a building project? Do you think they'd just let you have a go at brain surgery or teaching a group of third graders for a week? "Hell, this guy knows the mayor, let's let him be a cop for a day!" A degree is more than a "piece of paper" that is superseded by connections. Connections aren't going to magically give you the knowledge it takes to do certain jobs you daft waste of oxygen.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Let's suppose you're not full of shit. Still, the very fact that you believe mentioning your degrees increases the credibility of your post points towards degrees in general having value, and refutes the rest of your post.
Posts here regularly run counter to ivory-tower elite liberal lies like history, thermodynamics, and economics. But it's still relatively rare to find a single post that disagrees with itself.
At the end of the day, the value of having a degree depends very much on which area of employment you are in.
I have a degree in Electronics Engineering and yet I work as a Software Engineer. In practical terms my degree only really helps me in two ways:
- The one major thing I learned from University was how to learn things fast. This can be used with anything - just recently I managed to learn ski from total newbie to intermediate/advanced level in 1 week - since the observational and analytical skills to do this are generic.
- It gives me a large pool of background knowledge which can help me deduce things faster in other areas: many patterns of "the way people make things" are applicable to all areas of human engineering.
However, 95% of the information I learned for my degree is worthless for what I do now (with the notable exception of CPU design, things like Queue theory and some areas of Mathematics like statistics and numerical analysis).
The diploma itself was only usefull in getting me my first job: from then onwards my CV and the knowledge I display in interviews have been the things that matter.
The reason for this is that I work in IT. This area is still very much an Artisanship - it's practice is missing the predictability and repeatability which are the essential fundations for robust Engineering practices - and as such (outside Academia) proven hands-on experience is vastly more important than scholastic knowledge.
That said for many areas a degree is very important: how many of us would knowingly put the health of their children or the safety of their bridges to people that do not have a degree in the appropriate area?
Here you go: http://thunderwoodcollege.com/
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
I actually use 80% of my EE degree. It puts me way above the other programmers because I actually understand how the computer works and the other hardware works.
It's all how relative your career path and degree part are, Programming and electronics are hand in hand. Now my Chemistry degree, that's not so useful... Unless I become a programmer at a chemical plant.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I have a degree in Electronics Engineering ... just recently I managed to learn ski from total newbie to intermediate/advanced level in 1 week
You are confusing #2 as being the result of #1, when in reality both are the result of already being intelligent.
The diploma itself was only usefull in getting me my first job: from then onwards my CV and the knowledge I display in interviews have been the things that matter.
Blatantly false. Trust me, when you have a stack of resumes, the first thing you do is toss out the simple demographic ones like no degree. Because of HR, there is literally no way Linus could possible be hired as a Linux sysadmin or Linux developer at 99% of companies in the US, unless he has a degree (which luckily for him, he does). Doesn't matter what you write in the experience section, if they toss the resume out because of the education section first. I know I went from unemployable to easy street when I finally got my degree...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yes, a degree is ultimately a bit of paper.
But, a human is ultimately a bit of meat that hasn't spoiled yet. So, that little bit of paper is what tells me that the bit of meat sitting in front of me will do some good work before it spoils.
Or, something like that.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!