Glencullen PhD professor at RA university, continued

Continuing from http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12039

Compare Google's cache of http://www.cs.southwesternadventist.edu/profs.php with the page itself. "Dr. Alan Williams" has become plain "Alan Williams". I wonder why.

 

Another notch in your gun.

 

I got successive calls this Tuesday afternoon from Mr. Williams chairman at SAU, and from a reporter on the Fort Worth newspaper.

Both made reference to "Mr. Israel's letter."

The chairman said he was very surprised to learn that there were such things as fake universities; that the degree had been disclosed; and that the job did not require a doctoral degree. I think we can call this the Full Callahan. And he said that Mr. Williams assured him that he, Williams, had done a great deal of work to earn this degree. I explained that Glencullen was not a university, not even in the slightest, and there was no possibility that work could be required. The chairman thanked me kindly for my opinion.

The reporter asked all the right questions, and I suspect we will see a story.

 

Seems to be an all too common lie told by academic frauds.

 

And fairly easily quashed: "Dr. Flummery, would you mind dropping off a copy of your diss? Oh, and your Doktorvater's e-mail address and phone number would be a help, too. Thanks, sug."

 

This story is really fascinating. What amazes me is how this played out. Here we have a guy who got a "fake" (or at the very least, unacredited) degree and convinced the university he was at that it was real. How did he get caught? Not by his department, the university, or any internal auditing practice in place.

Instead, some guy on the internet, who probably has no affiliation with his school, probably doesn't even live in the same state, happened to find out and told his boss. Now his peers and superiors know, and the local paper may even be writing a story about him. No matter what the university wrote back, I am pretty sure that this guy's life has probably been turned upside down because of this. I wonder how his peers are treating him now. The funny thing is, the probably hold him in LESS regard now, with the "fake" PhD, than had he only listed his master's.

I guess this is the double edged sword as far as the internet and diploma mills are concerned. On one hand it is much easier to find a school that will give you a fake degree. On the other hand, thanks to the plethora of information avalible and the development of online communities, such as degreeinfo.com, you are MUCH MUCH more likely to get caught.

Jon

 

decimon wrote:

> Another notch in your gun.

Thanks.

mcjon77 wrote:

> Instead, some guy on the internet, who probably has no
> affiliation with his school, probably doesn't even live in the
> same state,

Yup.

> happened to find out

Well, when I searched for instances of "Glencullen University" in the .edu domain, I did intend to find some such fraud.

> and told his boss.

I didn't. The reporter must have contacted his boss.

> On the other hand, thanks to the plethora of information
> avalible and the development of online communities, such as
> degreeinfo.com, you are MUCH MUCH more likely to get caught.

I'm not so optimistic.

First of all, since this wasn't a SRU story, DegreeInfo didn't take much interest. You'll recall that the original thread was hijacked by two people bickering, and then closed by a moderator. I think that if I hadn't taken further action, Mr Williams would be sporting his Glencullen Ph.D. today.

Secondly, mills (including the same mill that supplied the Glencullen diploma; see http://www.degree.net/news.htm) also forge the diplomas of real universities. If Mr Williams had got a fake diploma with the name of a real university, I would have had no way to detect it.

 

RE: searching google with a degree mill name in the .edu domain.

Funny you should mention that . After my first post, I had the same idea and tried it out with a few of the unacredited institutions whose names I remembered. Got some interesting results . Pretty entertaining if you are feeling a little bored .

Jon

P.S. I am assuming that you have done this for other mills. Have you noticed that, many times, the faculty member is question has RA bachlelors and Masters degrees?

 

Nice, post, Jon. I would like to add....

The proximate cause here wasn't that someone saw this guy's fake doctorate and questioned it. The proximate cause is that the guy decided to buy and use the fake doctorate in a public manner in a profession where such fakery is relevant.

 

How did the reporter get involved in this?

While I am not comfortable with university faculty with fake degrees, I'm not comfortable with destroying people's careers either. I would much prefer that these things be dealt with quietly, with some compassion for the individuals involved, not by a media auto-da-fe.

 

The person in question is still employed, so other than some much deserved embarrassment, I don't think his career is really harmed.

Want to bet that if someone contacted Mr. Williams quietly and suggested he remove the Glencullen degree, he would have responded with indignation and a vehement defense of his "degree"? What then?

 

Reporters and Stories

That is an easy one. Degree mills are a hot topic right now and aspiring journalists are rushing to jump on the band wagon. They go to Google for leads and are led here. I have received 2 PM's from reporters on some issue or the other since I have been on this board. I give them a polite response indicating I cannot help them.

 

I probably would have written his department chairman or school dean. I would explain that I had an interest in the utility of Glencullen doctoral degrees because of A.B and C, including reasons why I thought the thing was a mill. I would explain that a Google search revealed that Williams was teaching with a Glencullen degree. Then I would ask whether he was hired competitively on the basis of the degree, whether he was hired on the basis of a masters degree and only added the Glencullen degree subsequently and whether the university had an institutional policy on accreditation concerning faculty qualifications.

I would not approach the press until I had received some clarification of the situation. If this was just a case of a professor's vanity and doctoral-lust that had nothing to do with his teaching qualifications, I would probably let it drop at that point, having alerted his superiors.

If it turned out that the professor was actually hired on the basis of his Glencullen "qualification", and if the university could provide no explanation of why that happened and showed no concern, then there would clearly be a more serious problem. That's when I might consider alerting the press.

 

I respect your opinion, Bill, but I think just having the fake degree removed from the school's webpage is a pretty light punishment for being an academic fraud in a position (university assistant professor) where academic integrity should be paramount.

If the press does run a story on this (and I hope they do), I predict Mr. Williams will keep his job, and suffer little else than some uncomfortable moments. Hopefully, the publicity will dissuade someone else from trying the same thing.

 

Bill,
That sounds like a reasonable approach.

My view is that the bottom line is that the guy is an academic fraud. That doesn't mean that I want to see his life destroyed. What it does mean is that if anything "unpleasant" happened to him because of his academic fraud it would primarily be his fault, not anyone else's.

As a side note, Glencullen University is one of those degree mills that are clearly a degree mill in almost anyone's book where he has to know that he's claiming false credentials especially if he has a bona fide Master's.

 

Just to clarify...Are you implying that someone here did contact the press?

 

The reason that I'm personally more interested in SRU stories is that SRU is a degree mill that apparently sells degrees for no work, yet, they aggressively market their mill as a legitimate university. To make matters more amusing they've come into this forum and presented the fact that just because some SRU degrees have slipped through the cracks that it somehow proves the high regard that SRU is held within the academic and business communities.

 

Mark said that he contacted the press.

 

I'm Just wondering, where would you guys draw the line as far as turining someone in, if you saw that they had an unacredited degeree? At one end of the spectrum we have mills that just sell degrees for no work, at the other end we have schools that require a significant amount of workl, but ar not RA. For instance, what if you saw someone list a PhD from Kennedy-Western? If you can't dully articulate were you would draw the line, could you give examples of situations/schools in which you would or would not report the faculty member?

Just wondering,

Jon

 

Is "dully articulate" a typo, or were you talking about me?