Fraudulent clone of Contreras

Hard to believe.

An official Oregon Government Secretary that enjoys and gets pleasure from the suffering of a Legitimate and Rightful American Degree Holder.

Continue Talking Alan; Keep Talking.

 

DLJ

I see nothing in that sentence to suggest Alan enjoyed the lady's torment. He does seem to be indicating her victory was rather hollow and that even the Judge thought her case while technically correct caused her no compensatable damage. I am always amazed how people from "Jamestown" always seem willing to think the worst of people.

 

No Doubt, a AC Carbon Copy.

 

The oft-cited $25,000 fine etc. was never an ODA rule at all, it was from the Attorney General's financial fraud law, and ODA does not enforce this law. The degree-user could have been pursued by the AG for using what was then considered an illegal degree, in which case the fine could have been sought by the AG, not by ODA. The fact that this has never happened gives you an idea of how likely it was.

This is an example of how a "fact" develops a folk meaning that it never had in real life. Any of you who have been involved in litigation know what happens to words and concepts once lawyers start yanking on them. ODA has never had fine authority beyond $1,000 and has never used that authority.

ODA is an enforcement agency, and as such we cannot concern ourselves to excess with the transient happiness of the people against whom it is our legal duty to enforce the law. We do our work in a professional way, but we by definition cause unhappiness. This is unfortunate but unavoidable.

One of the ironies of that case from 2000 (Benton v. Svejcar, for any who are really bored) is that the case was originally about whether ODA had the authority to require a Bob Jones degree-user to put the word "unaccredited" after her degree. Owing to a variety of factors and court decisions, that approach is, today, exactly the settlement agreed to by Kennedy-Western, and which the Oregon Department of Justice will defend. Such is the williwaw of the law.

 

See what happens when you say "Welcome back, Russ." You get what you asked for. There is another phrase that comes to mind that goes something like "Be careful what you ask for, ..."

 

I am not sure having to pay $500,000 to defend her education is considered "transient happiness" to her. If that is truly what she paid in legal fees to win her case against you I would assume (since I do not know her financial situation) that you have permanently damaged her ability to retire in comfort which could affect her life for thirty or more years. Let's not be so callous about this.

Since I have been hard on you on this thread, let me point out something you said which I agree with and was not picked up on. You mentioned that there are many occupations/jobs that do not require a degree to be competent but where the employer is requiring a degree anyway. Possibly this is to act as a first filter to lower the amount of applicants but has no real bearing on the skills necessary for the job. Someone else mentioned a book about "rampant credentialism" and its deleterious effect on working society. Do you believe that employers should not require a degree where one is not necessary and, if so, should it be mandated or voluntary?

 

Legal fees: as far as I know, plaintiffs did not pay those fees. We could never find out who was paying but we surmise that it was Bob Jones U, since they brought in a high-end Atlanta law firm. The judge in the case said in the final opinion that the case was significantly overlitigated by plaintiffs. We can't help the fact that they misjudged the value of their own case.

Use of degrees: I have argued in many venues that we require far too many degrees for too many jobs. Just say no. See my essay in the Chronicle Review (online) Nov. 26.

Of note: The head of Columbia U Teachers College issued a report yesterday that calls for getting rid of the EdD degree for school administrators and essentially melting down most school of education programs for administrators. He said "there is absolutely no reason why a school leader needs a doctorate." and that schools of education range from "inadequate to appalling." I say "Preach it, brother."

 

Illega use of Mr contreras Name

I and I think everybody totally condamn this unlwful action.

May we know on which other forum it happened? Just to check like, my colleagues do, the reality of this affirmation.

I think it is not correct.! This action t is not excused by the fact that Mr. Contreras sometimes goes to far and use insulting words like "rogue" "diploma Mill"'scaty""scaly" that he regrets later.

Mr. Alan Contreras supressed his own thread two weeks ago before responding to my questions as it was so was so inflamatory that the owner of the site and/or Mr.Contreras were afraid of the consequences.

"Qui sème le vent récolte la tempête" for my friend the "prêtre fou "we say on my Lake but in that case I am totally on the side of Mr. Contreras.

Sincerely people should not do that .

 

I found the essay on the Chronicle Review site but it requires a subscription to read. I assume you have the copyright for the article/essay and can post it here if you desire. Since you have referred to it in several posts, it would be helpful to have access to it. Thanks.

 

Chronicle Review essay on degrees

POINT OF VIEW (as requested by Russ)

A Question of Degrees
By ALAN CONTRERAS

Each week I hear of another person who has used a degree from a diploma mill to qualify for a job. In most states it is perfectly legal to present as a credential a degree that is purchased for a few hundred dollars online or through the mail, and that involves little or no real academic work. Some employers reject such meaningless paper, but many don't check job seekers' credentials, and some don't care if a prospective employee got a legitimate education. Even the U.S. government until recently failed to check where so-called degrees were from.

In many cases the person presenting the overnight credential already has the skills necessary to do a job but can't get hired or promoted until the magic piece of paper is obtained. One of the main reasons that diploma mills like Saint Regis University are so successful in peddling mail-order degrees is that society has come to place a curious reliance on paper credentials, especially in the past 60 years or so. John Keats's 1965 book, The Sheepskin Psychosis, was one of the first to point out the phenomenon. In many fields -- teaching, for example -- it is not possible to advance or get more pay without constantly collecting graduate degrees.

What for? Artificial reliance on degrees does not serve a public interest, and society should stop supporting it. There is a difference between a degree and a skill set, a degree and experience, a degree and good judgment, a degree and a knowledge base. A degree can serve as a proxy for some portion of those desirable characteristics, but it remains no more than a proxy.

The widely held belief that everyone who is worth anything should go to college is simply wrong. The result of that peculiar notion is that we are awash in degrees that mean less and less, and degree programs that get longer and longer and produce more layers of paper credentials. Neither Adrienne Rich nor W.S. Merwin required an M.F.A. degree to become a fine poet -- why do thousands of people today think they need one?

Clifford Adelman, a senior research analyst in the Education Department, and others have correctly noted that there is at least one countervailing trend: professional certification in high-tech fields. In many such fields, having Microsoft-Certified Systems Engineer glued to your forehead outweighs a clutch of degrees. In effect, the technology sector today resembles manufacturing a hundred years ago: Well-paid jobs exist for people with skills, whether or not they have degrees.

College and government leaders concerned with the future of higher education should think very carefully about the purpose of each degree program. If society needs people to learn certain things to do certain jobs, we should provide training for those jobs -- but we should not call that training a degree program unless we have a real reason to do so. Having more degrees does not always make a person more qualified.

Academic administrators and policy makers ought to be questioning the nature and value of degrees, instead of simply assuming that more degrees mean a better society. Some of the most basic and important questions are:

Does society need more degrees? If so, why?

What is it about a degree that improves the person who earns it, and society as a whole?

What does a college need to include in a degree program for it to be meaningful?

What do colleges often include now that is not necessary?
Assume for the sake of argument that undergraduate degree programs primarily benefit the individual rather than society, which is my point of view. The programs allow people to learn enough about their society and culture, and about history and possible futures, to understand and appreciate their world, and to make good decisions in their personal lives and as citizens. That should be the core value of a degree program.

But that is not what most students experience in college today. We have made Wal-Mart our model for higher education, with 30,000 students swirling about in the educational equivalent of a Big Box store, without sufficient structure. Almost any student can get into a Big Box or at least a Wanna-be Big Box, hunker down for a few years, and emerge with something called a degree and at least nominal skills for some parts of the job market. But just what does that degree represent? The keys to freedom? The money spigot?

As Hugh Mercer Curtler said in Recalling Education (ISI Books, 2001), "A person is not free ... simply because he sees before himself a bewildering variety of goods and has money in his pocket; that person is truly free only if he can order that variety and make it less bewildering." It is that greater freedom to understand complexity -- the freedom of the truly educated person -- that a degree ought to provide.

A colleague in another state called me last year to ask whether Oregon would permit a college to include the name of a corporation in an actual degree title, like an Associate of Applied Science in Microsoft Windows. Oregon does not allow that, although some states do. But why not simply call such training sequences what they are -- product-line training that leads to a professional certification -- and offer a certificate instead of a degree, or have the corporation do the training?

The answer is simple: money. If a corporation persuades a college to embed product-line training in a program eligible for Title IV financial aid, the college gets a paying student, the student does not have to pay for the training (until loans come due), and the corporation does not have to do the work, spend the money, or repay the loans. What a deal!

Financial aid, however, is also available for all manner of trade schools and certificate programs, where students can learn the skills they need. They don't need degrees.

Is all job-training learning? Certainly. Should all learning be part of a degree program? Of course not. It is time for colleges and policy makers to take a serious look at what we call degrees, and limit them to learning that is truly worthy of a degree.

It is not elitist to suggest that society assign different, appropriate labels to its various educational programs. We do not consider it snobbery to label a physician by calling her an M.D., to identify a lawyer by saying that he has passed the bar exam, or to expect the people who fix our computer networks to be certified to do so. It is no more elitist to suggest that a degree ought to be given only for certain kinds of learning, structured in specific ways to meet a given set of goals.

Am I arguing for fewer degrees? Yes. The term "degree" has been stretched about as far as even the most credulous mind can be expected to grasp. When society stops caring whether degrees are real -- 46 states have no law prohibiting the use of diploma-mill degrees as credentials -- it's time to re-examine whether people really need them. Let's evaluate the labels we give our academic and training credentials and create a meaningful system, rather than simply sending everyone to get degrees, genuine or bogus.


The Chronicle Review
Volume 51, Issue 14, Page B24

 

There is a corollary: the emptier the degree, the more arrogant the holder.

 

What a great and original quote, Uncle!

Thanks for that.

 

Ain't it the truth.

 

Re: Chronicle Review essay on degrees

Alan,

Thank you for providing your article on this site. I did read it and I agree with everything you said. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone is going to listen.

For a time you were right that the MCSE certification (and other IT certifications) meant more to employers than a degree. Now, with a slowdown in IT and employers becoming more selective, they want the MCSE and a degree. Why it is that at one time only the MCSE was required to be competent and now you also need a degree with it to have the same competency is beyond me.

Employers will always try to get the best person for the salary that they are paying and they will place more value on a prospective employee with a degree than one without. This perception may change if there are too many bogus degrees out there but it is also a perception that should change. Even more important is your desire to eliminate the barriers of entry for many jobs that indicate "degree required" when one is truly not necessary. This would reduce pressure on those without degrees to have to meet that standard simply to get an interview.

Thanks again for posting the article. It is nice to know we can agree on something.