Crazy or Crazy Credentials?

The guy appears to be a distance education junkie, probably a lurker on this forum. Only WGU and UMUC degrees properly duplicate, btw. So I'd say, excessive, but not insane. Then again, I'm in process of getting a Bachelor's and a Master's degree on top of a PhD, so look who's talking.

His certifications are legitimate. However, he doesn't have top ones (that would be CISSP and/or technical designations from SANS). Multiple certs are not in any way unusual in the field, but I wonder what his real skills are.

 

If he is looking for a job in industry, he should eliminate some extraneous degrees from his resume and let the certs and work experience speak for themselves. He simply has too much for many positions. It makes him appear overqualified or alternatively just unfocused, not sure what he wants to do, a professional student.

Tek, I would not recommend it unless you actually would plan to use it. There are various articles online about dangers of getting too many degrees and how that actually makes you look to prospective employees. I won't regurgitate them, as it would just cause countless posts trying to break it down.

For the individual with the numerous doctorate degrees. It is an interesting hobby I am sure, but if you look at his Google Scholar record, there seems to be a fair amount of repetition there and no one article cited very heavily. I think the most was a couple cited 200 times, which is good, but most are cited much less. But with that kind of energy and work ethic, if he had put more effort into scholarly productivity, I think he would have had more impressive publications that may have had a more far reaching impact. There are articles out there about getting multiple doctorates, and I won't rehash them, but you really should have a good reason to do so. There is no legitimate reason for 13. But if someone has the time and money, then good for them. He does have a good publication record, no criticism there, but it is not amazing. With those years of effort redirected, perhaps it could have been.

 

The undergrad work really gets me...

• Gannon University
  • 1969 BA, Social science
• Excelsior College
  • 1976 BS, Economics
• Excelsior College
  • 1983 BS, Business
• Thomas Edison State College
  • 1983 BSBA, Accounting

Both the Gannon and (one of) the Exelsior degrees were earned before his JD. He also earned his MST before his law degree and, somehow, in the same year as the aforementioned Excelsior degree.
Interestingly, his degrees pre-date the school being called Excelsior and even predate it when it was known as Regent's College. It was still Regents External Degree program. So those two degrees wouldn't even bear a school name. They were just awarded by the Board of Regents something that I believe they only do with their MD program these days.

1993 must have been an interesting year as he earned four of his doctorates that same year in Accounting, Finance, International Economics and Economics, Law and Political Philosophy (all one degree).

Honestly, I'm not wowed by his academic achievements but am in awe of how much money he must have spent on amassing this sort of education to say nothing of the time spent. I wonder if one or more of these PhDs may have been granted for published work. I cannot imagine someone contributing to multiple fields in a single year without it being based on prior published work. I'd be curious, too, if the schools awarding these degrees were aware that they were awarding a student second doctorates. In the case of his PhD in Accounting, he received one from the University of Warwick and from Union in the same year, for example.

Damn. Just damn.

 

Those are the types of observations I would expect, had I looked closer. It becomes degree hoarding/collecting, and at some point it is just a matter of how much time and money you put into it. Usually if you earn one degree in a particular field from one school, e.g. one Master's in Folklore from Random U, that should preclude you from getting another Master's in Folklore from another school, e.g. Random College. Many reputable colleges have that policy in place formally or informally. If he is getting a doctorate in Accounting from two colleges at the same year, if what you say is correct, that is very concerning. It effectively means he has one doctorate, and one of the schools likely would not have awarded a second degree in the same subject matter, had they known he was pursuing a degree in the same area at the same time at another school. The only thing I can think of is some of these degrees go back many years, and so they may have had more lax rules in place. Usually you need to provide transcripts for all places you went to school at, but it is possible they did not require it. Or if he enrolled in both at the same time, he may have done just that. So that is not to suggest he did anything wrong, as he likely was just very careful about how he presented information and when he did things like send transcripts in. Today, that would likely be frowned upon at most schools. There really is no value or purpose to get two doctorates in the same area, especially in the same year, unless for personal vanity or degree hoarding. Some of your other comments raises questions as well.

This is not to criticize him in anyway. He appears to likely be an intelligent, competent scholar. This likely was simply a side hobby for him.

 

The instincts of posters here are right, I think most all of the PhDs were earned by published work. The guy publishes more than anyone I've ever known. It's like he's kicking out a new acaddmic article every few weeks. Literally. I think he packaged several of these and got most of the doctorates by publication.

 

Just to be clear...

If you showed me this individual's credentials in a vacuum, as in the credentials displayed at the start of this thread, I may have made some less optimistic assumptions. Two dissertations during a single year in the same field, for example, would suggest the possibility of self-plagiarism, for example.

But, this isn't just some weirdo who collects degrees. This is an actual academic who, apparently, collects degrees. That some of his doctorates happen to be from schools we know well to offer PhD by Publication reinforces the notion. I just wanted to clarify because I, in no way, wish to accuse this person of any sort of academic misconduct. I'd probably be more suspicious of some hypothetical person. Though I would also write off this CV as unrealistic if explored in the hypothetical.

My response to this is really one of awe because he appears to be a legitimate academic.

I haven't see that many degrees claimed by a single person since Leland Milton Goldblatt. To see someone actually pull off that achievement, and be a real person as well, is quite the feat.

 

Dr. McGee's doctoral degrees are redundant; I don't even know why those schools agreed to award them. It's like the guy who earned a bunch of associate's degrees in criminal justice and business administration; McGee just did it at a higher level. Then, there's that guy with 30+ master's degrees, and most of them are in education.

 

Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Robert McGee -

I only met him once, at a conference in Miami Beach. He is kind of surreal to be around. I mean, he's not exactly a back-slapping blowhard of a guy, he's a quiet fellow. But he does seem quite intense--I guess that's stating the obvious. Has this intense stare, a guy who looks mild-mannered enough, but something there is just different. He evidently collects languages also, speaks several fluently and is heavily into the martial arts, which he took up late in life and has evidently done pretty well for himself, getting some age division world championships. He almost seems like an impossible person, but I think he's just one of these fellows who gets obsessed with something and takes it to an unusual level. There's always an outlier. How much grade A+ music did Mozart compose? Didn't he start composing at pre-school age or something? Wasn't J.S. Mill already setting the world back on its heels with his brilliance at an early age? What about Edison? While McGee hasn't set the world on edge like those guys, he is still something of a late-blooming version of them. Some people are way out there, some people are just born with 180 IQs and this boundless, ridiculous energy and determination. . As for self-plagiarism, I'm not sure, but it's true that once you get going down a certain track, you can explore slight variants on it, use the knowledge you already have gained in the field, and boom, out pops another article, a slightly different permutation of the first. My father-in-law is a retired academic and like McGee, collects languages; he's even better that McGee at that. He used a unusually gifted language brain and remarkably extensive world travels to master many languages; he's pretty much fluent in about a half dozen, speaks several others well enough to converse quite well with natives, and is pretty good at Chinese and Japanese, both of which he learned after the age of 50. One in 100,000 abilities, maybe, but someone has to be that person.

It's also true, Sanatone, that several of McG's degrees are very redundant. No doubt. But still, what a beast!

 

This guy seems like someone I will like very much.

 

My guess degrees are like trophies. For Dr McGree, education may be his sport.

 

Then, why won't he challenge himself and learn something different? I can't believe these schools keep awarding him degrees in accounting, finance, law, and economics.

TESU won't let you get a second degree if it's related to one you already have. For example, they won't let you get a degree in criminal justice if you already have one in sociology. Yes, they are that strict.