Florida Atlantic University Professional PhD in Computer Science $34K

Discussion in 'IT and Computer-Related Degrees' started by Dustin, Dec 13, 2021.

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  1. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    Depending on the field, a school's reputation for being discriminatory or anti-science can hurt your job prospects. Also, out of principle, I won't give my money to certain schools that are actively harming students.
     
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  2. JoshD

    JoshD Well-Known Member

    I know they are out there but I’ve yet to find an anti-science schools.
     
  3. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    According to the list, the easiest professional Doctorate is STD; which is easy to obtain without dissertation oral defense. :D
     
  4. DrSchmoe

    DrSchmoe Member

    I totally agree. There are crackpots at every university. I posted a link somewhere about the Ivy League professor who falsely said blacks seldom graduate high in their class, and that universities were better off admitting white students over people in communities of color. If you're going to boycott every university that has a crackpot professor, there's going to be no universities left to attend.
    Anyway, I think this points to a different problem. Tenureship. ie. You Can Never Get Fired. I mean a tenured professor can probably get fired for stealing pens from the supplies cabinet. But you can publicly make racist marks and the deans can do nothing but sit with their thumbs up their azzes.
     
  5. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    It's a public university, so the employer here is the government of Florida. Absent tenure, Rob Me Santis would have more ways to pressure academics; do you think he'd use it on COVID deniers - or on people trying to disseminate accurate, but inconvenient for his position, information?
     
  6. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Maybe someone here would know why the religious academics were so intent on abbreviating this degree the Latin way: Sacrae Theologiae Doctor, I believe it is. Even in their unworldly occupations, surely they know what else STD stands for?

    Perhaps the English nomenclature, wich would normally be DST, would have sufficed. Or, if insistent on Latin style, SThD (and I've seen that used.)

    It would nip a lot of lame jokes (like the one quoted above) in the bud. And that would be good.

    I'm NOT offended - at all. At my age, my skin's a LOT thicker than that. It's just that this is not an educated thing to do. Why?

    Because STDs aren't funny. All are distressing. Many are painful - some extremely so. Some can lead to cancer and that often means death, e.g. HPV - cervical cancer (but now, thankfully, we have Gardasil), AIDS - Kaposy's sarcoma, etc. AIDS is no longer a death sentence, at least in our part of the world, but it's killed an awful lot of people I'd like to see alive today. It is very widespread in some very populated parts of the world and has left - and still leaves - tragedy in its wake. If I itemized the damage and misery caused by STD's I'd probably never get properly finished. Many cause lasting damage, which remains after the disease itself is cured.

    As I said, they are not funny - and I still wonder. Perhaps religious academics chose this before STD was a common abbreviation. If so, maybe they should now look at keeping the degree and changing the postnominals.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2022
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  7. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    ...and before y'all get on my case, if someone makes STD jokes while teaching people how to protect themselves and others - I'm good with that. YAY for them! Whatever it takes to get the message across. The end truly does justify the means, quite often.
     
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  8. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I'm pretty sure the degree title predates the other meaning by several centuries.
     
  9. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    It does indeed. I just looked it up. That was THEN. This is NOW. Tempus fugit and all that. Doesn't make STD jokes funny... just facilitates 'em. Empowers ignorance, which already does incredibly well under its own power anyway. I'd be fine with the SThD - and that's been around for centuries too.

    I have to stand on this. I believe STD jokes are not an educated thing to do. Especially not for folks with degrees. And facilitating them is not really what I'd call a productive strategy.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2022
  10. DrSchmoe

    DrSchmoe Member

    What happened to this room? It started off nice with a discussion about a new distance Ph.D. program. Then the conspiracists moved in alarming us about the propaganda machine at FAU. Finally, a request that all STD jokes must be accompanied by safer sex public announcements.

    This sounds like a great potential Netflix series.

    S1E1: Unsuspecting students start at FAU. Scenes of blissfully-ignorant freshman students playing pranks on each other (Final Destination-esque), oblivious of the evil that lies ahead of them. Birds chirping in the background. Highly saturated color images of the floral gardens around campus.
    S1E2: High contrast, de-saturated visual effects are applied from here on in. Sinisterness creeping in. A command and control center (C&C) is revealed; constructed 15 stories below the campus surface. Trump is there, inspecting new Make FAU Great Again caps. Opens his small hands, "This is fantastic. It really is".
    S1E3: Students act like mindless zombies reciting anti-vax stuff.
    S1E4. A visitor is heard making an STD joke. Next scene, someone staples a missing person's notice (of him) on a telephone pole.
    S1E5: The DI-AVB task force (DegreeInfo-Antivax Busters) deployed to the campus. DI-AVB in full SWAT gear, but with tin foil hats instead of helmets, shows up on campus to stop the business professor from continued brainwashing.
    S1E6: New plot. The business professor plot is not mentioned at all. Because that's what Netflix does to us. DI-AVB reports a sighting of Elvis on campus.
    S1E7: Random dialogue at the C&C. Missing STD smart-alec is seen in the background in a carbonite case.
    S2E1: DI-AVB reports sighting of Elvis sipping tea with an alien wearing a screen t-shirt, "Property of Area 51".
    S2E2-E7: TBD.
     
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  11. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Touché! Now that's funny! Kudos! I wish you continued success in your career at Netflix! :) ...Be safe!
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2022
  12. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    Your choice of school for your doctorate can have a huge impact on the rest of your career.

    People discuss the impact of Falwell et. al on the value of Liberty degrees and it's not inappropriate to discuss the effect that a loud anti-vaxxer being promoted by the university over their actual experts on the subject has on that university's reputation.

    This isn't just one person, it's one person whose efforts are being amplified by the rest of the school.
     
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  13. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Absolutely, Dustin. Sorry - Dr Schmoe dazzled me with his spectacular script-writing skills and took my eye off the prize, here. Your comment is very important.
     
  14. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    What does the existence of Jordan Peterson tells us about University of Toronto?

    We are talking about, again, a major, public, research, doctorate- and MD-granting university. And one guy at their Finance department who made one sufficiently vague media appearance some underpaid person at FAU media office placed in the feed. How in this galaxy is this akin to being Falwell's Liberty U?

    For reference, this is their news desk:
    FAU | News Desk
    Is it fair to say that the article in question is in any way prominent?
     
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  15. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    These are good points. I will say in their defense that they have many more articles in line with the scientific thinking than the one under discussion.

    It looks like the author of the original FAU press release is someone whose job it is specifically to work with the business professors which explains why he covered it at all.

    I'm still uncomfortable with a lot about Florida and so FAU may not be the school for me anyway, but it's been good to be able to evaluate them fully.
     

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