King County deputy questioned about 'bogus' diploma

In today's Seattle Times (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002466094_diploma02.html), there is an article about a local KCSO deputy being investigated for submitting a diploma from Kingsfield University to qualify for a payraise.

Interestingly enough, the deputy in question is running for sheriff, and a complaint about the degree was filed by a friend of another candidate for sheriff.

You will note that the deputy claims he thought that earning a degree based on life experience was a valid approach, and all the usual comments.

I would imagine this will not be helping his campaign.

 

I should hope not.

marilynd

 

That doesn't make the complaint any less valid. It only means that if he weren't running for sheriff, it might never have been discovered. When people ferret-out something bad about candidates for public office, it's common for the candidate to complain that the ferreting was only done because s/he was running... as if the wrong that was ferreted would be any less wrong if s/he weren't.

And if he said that to me, I'd say: "It is! But you can't just go out and get it any ol' place! You have to do it through a legitimate, accredited school... which will, no doubt, only give you some credit for life experience, not an entire degree."

With any luck.

 

This type of behavior is especially problematic in those who are expected to uphold the public trust. I think there may have been some other examples of police educational shenanigans when the Quinn Bill was first legislated in Massachusetts. Bruce can you give me some help on this please?

 

Re: Re: King County deputy questioned about 'bogus' diploma

Yes, indeed.

After the Quinn Bill was passed, Northeastern University established an off-campus site in Dedham, which quickly became known as "cop college". The academic standards were so poor that it eventually attracted the attention of a local investigative reporter, who posed as a police officer and enrolled in the program.

The videotape from the stealth cameras was devastating. Most, if not all, classes began with the "teacher" standing at the front of the class. It went something like this;

"Is everyone here?"

"Yeah? See you next week!!!!"

And that was the end of the class.

IIRC, Northeastern got into hot water with the New England Association, and nearly lost their accreditation. "Cop college" was quickly closed.

The standards for the Quinn Bill have been tightened over the years to the point that many schools dropped out of the program, because they couldn't meet the standards set by the MA Board of Higher Education. For example, they now require that 75% of the courses at the Bachelor's or Master's level must be taught by a full-time faculty member of the school, that also holds a doctoral degree. I can understand that for a graduate program, but it's just window dressing at the Bachelor's level, IMO.

 

In today's Seattle Times (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002468672_diploma03m.html) there is a followup article on diploma mills citing some of our favorite experts: Allen Ezell, Alan Contreras and George Gollin. Of note, Mr. Contreras points out that phony degrees are a particular problem in law enforcement, as also noted by Bruce and John in this thread.

 

I recall something in the Chronicle recently that may have said a former deputy sheriff was the president of the Berkley College Degree Mill in PA.

 

Re: Re: Re: King County deputy questioned about 'bogus' diploma

Interesting. I was recently looking at a chief's job in your fair state and was amazed to learn how many new restrictions were in effect. You're absolutely right, the number of colleges has diminished. Northeastern was still on the list and surprisingly so was University of New Haven up my way! I did not see any distance schools on the list. Are they even allowed?

 

Re: Re: Re: King County deputy questioned about 'bogus' diploma

Bruce, I am looking pretty closely at the Northeastern doc program. Have you heard any skinny on it? What do you think of Peter Manning's work?

 

I was actually told by a area Officer (not my dept) about how he and a few others used a "life experience" degree in promotion boards and to get the educational incentive pay.

So far nobody has been called on it, and this is a very very large city Dept.

 

more and more interesting

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/239247_fuda03.html

Now the candidate/deputy is being investigated by the incumbent sheriff (actually the King County sheriff is asking the City of Seattle police to do the investigation) for submitting bogus educational credentials for the purpose of obtaining a pay raise. But the County personnel department approved his request.

These two are set to face eachother in the upcoming election. This is a juicy story that will not go away for a while. Talk about time bombs.

And I thought this was going to be a quiet off-year election. . .

 

Some observations;

1) This is not at all helpful to the reputation of online education.

2) Sgt. Fuda will lose the election.

3) Sgt. Fuda will soon find himself unemployed, after the election. He should get familiar with the phrase, "At the pleasure of the sheriff".

4) Sgt. Fuda will blame everyone, except himself, for his poor decision to go with a diploma mill.

 

Bruce, I lived in King County for many, many years before moving just north to Snohomish County. The KCSO has quite the robust union and civil service protections. They seem to have some difficulty imposing employment discipline on even the 'bad apples'. There was a recent series in the paper about a vice cop who went bad, and walked away from his job with a six-figure settlement and his pension in lieu of litigation.

So at the most, I suspect Sgt. Fuda may have to give back his raise, but presuming he loses the election, he will no doubt keep his job. Using the 'bogus' diploma is apparently not grounds for termination, and any sheriff in Washington has to move heaven and earth to be able to terminate someone for cause. I suspect the KCSO is much like other urban departments in this regard.

 

Hi IFF

I bet that the propensity is to have this type of thing actually occur in larger departments more often because of their sheer size and the lessened amount of administrative oversight. The thing that I am often incredulous about is the dearth of knowledge about college accreditation that municipal governments have and their inherent distrust of distance programs in general. How large if the department that you are speaking about?

 

Well said Bruce

 

"The thing that I am often incredulous about is the dearth of knowledge about college accreditation that municipal governments have and their inherent distrust of distance programs in general. "

John, I am compelled to comment on your last statement. I am a manager in municipal government here in central PA. We employ about 2,000 staff. We recently did several interviews for hiring professional staff. My collegues are of the opinion that all distance learning degrees are bogus degrees. Accreditation actually means nothing. At the interview, they made it a point to ask each candidate if their degree was obtained by internet. If they were, the candidate was dismissed. The process made me ill.

This is not an isolated case. Other municipalities operate in a similar manner. As you well note, until government managers obtain and understand accreditation, these issues will repeat. Since my background is law enforcement, good candidates with legimate degrees were passed over. You might ask if I attempted to instruct my colleagues on accreditation. Well I did but to no avail. It seems as though the media coverage of bogus degrees has caused (at least in my area) political suicide. When in doubt, accept none.

It seems lately that all press is negative when discussing distance education.

 

"How large if the department that you are speaking about?"

The Dept. is about 3000 sworn.

As for Departments and Municipalities not accepting DL degrees...they are really only hurting themselves in the long run. I know how difficult it is for us to get qualified people...

In the area I am in right now...it's pretty tight. I get discouraged almost every time I do an interview. Your Municipality must just be inundated with applicants.

 

As a great fan and supporter of DL, I certainly wouldn't mind if things headed in that general direction as quickly as you're saying. But I think a claim like that by whomever wrote what you read is overly-optimistic and also quite unrealistic...

...in much the same way that some claim traditional, physical newspapers, printed on paper -- like what the newspaper carrier tosses into your bushes every morning -- or books, will soon be a thing of the past.

Books and newspapers will not, I believe, soon be replaced by tablet-PC-like reading devices (though such devices are clearly present with better ones coming). It will take several generations, I believe, before everyone who loves the feel of a book or newspaper in the hand has died-off.

And there will still be, for many generations to come, I predict, those who believe that the only way to get an education is in a physical classroom. In my opinion, DL hasn't a chance in hell of unraveling that any time soon.

 

Hi Gregg:

I wish I can remember where I read it. It was sometime over the last several months. Have you read Sloan C's report "Entering the Mainstream"? It's available on their site and I bet you'd love it if you haven't already seen it.

You are undoubtedly correct in questioning the optimism of the statement that I read. Although I believe DL will continue to grow quickly, the story reminds me of when IBM tried to sell the paperless office concept to the Great Northern Paper Company. I guess it's all a matter of perspective!

Here are some figures I dug up from an article called Student Self Efficacy and the Distance Learning Experience that I wrote a while ago. They're a bit dated but sure show the direction.

"The United States Department of Education (2002) reports that in 2000-2001 there were 2,810 regionally accredited institutions in the country that were offering purely distance degree programs to their students. Out of that number there were 1,570 (56%) undergraduate programs and 1,240 (44%) graduate programs. These numbers reflect actual degree offerings and do not take into consideration the literally thousands of credit courses being offered on-line by public and private, two and four year colleges and universities. Although Distance learning can take advantage of several forms of media the one that has experienced the most remarkable growth in the past several years has been the area of on-line, computer based delivery. In Connecticut alone, the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium (2003) posted an increase of almost 400 distance courses offered by its 37 member colleges between 1998 and 2003

During that same time period students in classes offered by the consortium increased by almost 7,000, giving a ratio of around seventeen students to each class where none existed five years ago (See figure 2). To say that distance, and especially, on-line class offerings have become popular would perhaps be an understatement."