College President's Time Bomb goes off!

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/14/education/14STUD.html

 

This was discussed here:

http://www.degreeinfo.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8453

The NYT should consider giving Joel Elliott the job that was recently vacated by Jayson Blair.

 

That would be the Stephen Glass Chair of Ethics?

 

John,

Stephen Glass - Went to great lengths to fabricate articles.

Jayson Blair - Claimed to have interviewed people whom he did not, fabricated articles, and blatently plagiarized from other articles.

Donald Young - Appears to have misrepresented his credentials. "Mr. Elliott interviewed the chairman of Toccoa's trustees, who said that the mistake was anything but common knowledge, and that Mr. Young would not have made the first cut as a candidate for the presidency if the board had known he did not have a graduate degree."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/14/education/14STUD.html


Joel Elliott- Reported Donald Young had apparently misrepresented his credentials. He was truthful, (I think) fair, but he did not avoid the resulting injury that he surely must have predicted.

Ethically, do you think Elliott should have taken a different course of action?

 

It is rarely a simple matter, Charles . . . which is one of the things that keeps ethicists in business.

As it happens, my wife, Marina (her PhD is in ethics from Vanderbilt) was hired as an ethicist in a comparable situation. Well-liked and undeniably competent teacher a few years from retirement. Principal's job unexpectedly becomes available. School board tells her she can have the job, if only she had a Master's. She buys an on-line, by return mail, Master's from Trinity College and University, and gets the job. The person (with a real Master's) who was next in line for the principal job sues. The lawyer for the plaintiff is uncomfortable, in that the woman with the fake Master's seems to be competent, and is claiming she didn't know Trinity was fake.

Marina's report (with specifics removed) appears on my publisher site,
http://www.degree.net/news/ethics.html

I find the two matters comparable, in that a senior professional has certain responsibilities and expectations, and can be cut less slack in the "I didn't know" direction.

 

John,

Thank you. I will read Marina's report.

 

John Bear wrote:

> She buys an on-line, by return mail, Master's from Trinity
> College and University,

Are you sure it was Trinity? Marina's quote, "a proprietary method of awarding equivalencies of work experience as substitutions for formal education requirements", seems to be from http://www.universitynetwork.nl/english1.html .

 

Mark,

The website www.universitynetwork.nl/english1.html is very very similar to the website maintained by Trinity College and University from 1998 to 2002, www.degreeconsultants.com. It can be viewed at by utilizing the Wayback Machine at www.archive.org.

 

For the woman to claim a phoney degree in order to get a better job is ethically wrong, but does this erase all the good things done throughout her career? I don't believe it does. Maybe it's more relevant to ask if the requirement for a Masters Degree was valid in the first place. If she had the skills and ability to do the work her present credentials should have been adequate. People are often pushed into desperate situations by needless pieces of paper. Measure people by their abilities and not by the paper on the wall. I would give her a second chance to get a legitimate if not wonderful Masters. Sometimes we all need a do over.
James C.