Glencullen PhD professor at RA university, continued

Actually I was talking about you . Just kidding.

What I meant to say was "completely articulate". How "dully" got there, I have no idea.

Jon

 

First off, I've never "turned anyone in", unless you count posting people's dubious credentials on this website.

That said, I probably wouldn't think much about a teacher at a RA school that had a Ph.D. from, say, California Coast or Columbia Pacific (before they imploded). As a matter of fact, I saw those two examples in the catalog of Springfield College (RA) a few years ago.

OTOH, if I saw someone with an outright mill degree such as Columbia State, San Moritz, Palmers Green, etc., then I might think about making some noise about it.

 

That makes sense.

 

mcjon: I'm Just wondering, where would you guys draw the line as far as turining someone in...

John: "Drawing a line" seems exactly the write and literal image. There is a continuum out there, from the beyond-any-doubt phonies (like Glencullen) to the schools in rubber-stamp countries or states to those in states that have some actual validation process to (perhaps; this is subjective) some of the Caribbean accreditations and onward. Each decision-maker (registrar, HR person, potential student, etc.) must decide where to draw his or her line.

This is the approach we have taken in the forthcoming Degree Mills book. We offer an annotated database of more than 1,400 degree-granting institutions that do not have generally accepted accreditation, and provide enough information so that a reader can either make, or get started on the path to making, a decision of where to draw that line.

 

Bill Dayson wrote:

> While I am not comfortable with university faculty with fake
> degrees, I'm not comfortable with destroying people's careers
> either.

Even if the careers consist in making other people do work to earn their degrees?

> I would much prefer that these things be dealt with quietly,
> with some compassion for the individuals involved, not by a
> media auto-da-fe.

Do you think that the media, academia, and the general public are paying sufficient attention to the problem of diploma mills? If not, how would you suggest getting them to pay more attention?

> I probably would have written his department chairman or
> school dean. I would explain that I had an interest in the utility
> of Glencullen doctoral degrees because of A.B and C, including
> reasons why I thought the thing was a mill. I would explain
> that a Google search revealed that Williams was teaching with
> a Glencullen degree. Then I would ask whether he was hired
> competitively on the basis of the degree, whether he was hired
> on the basis of a masters degree and only added the
> Glencullen degree subsequently and whether the university
> had an institutional policy on accreditation concerning faculty
> qualifications.

Gosh! That sounds like a lot of work -- certainly more time than it took the mill to print the diploma, or the professor to order it. After I first mentioned the case here, more than a week elapsed before I realized that nothing was going to be done unless I did it. During that week, did you do any of what you suggest?

> I would not approach the press until I had received
> some clarification of the situation.

I think that in the 21st century, the concept of "the press" as "somebody else" is breaking down. We here at DegreeInfo.com we may not be professional journalists, but nonetheless we are media. Alerting somebody elsewhere in the media to info that might be of interest to him is not a drastic step.

> If this was just a case of a professor's vanity and
> doctoral-lust that had nothing to do with his teaching
> qualifications,

Do you consider integrity to be a teaching qualification? If not in general, then perhaps at a Christian college?

 

John Bear wrote:

> The chairman said he was very surprised to learn that there
> were such things as fake universities;

This is a Computer Science chairman. The average computer science person has had an e-mail address for many more years than the average person, and is on correspondingly more spam e-mail lists. Are we supposed to believe that the chairman never saw the "prestigious non-accredited universities ... No one is turned down!" spam?

 

Here is the story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/states/texas/arlington/7945731.htm

 

Speaking as a resident of a computer science department, I would say that he doesn't see it.

A. Any decent CS department has a very tight procmail filter. I get maybe three pieces of spam a week to my departmental address.

B. Even assuming they don't have a procmail filter, I've never yet met a HoD who doesn't have his mail screened by his secretary. Unless you're from an address within his university, or even on an even more restricted passthrough list, your correspondence, both snail and email, will be read by the secretary, and any spam will hit the bit bucket right there.

Most importantly, it's not just the HoD at fault. It's also the university personnel department and everybody in the hiring process.

Angela

 

Agilham wrote:

> A. Any decent CS department has a very tight procmail filter.
> I get maybe three pieces of spam a week to my departmental
> address.

Spam has been around a bit longer than spam filters have, and the Romanian mill has been spamming for a while. Are you saying that you've never seen spam offering you a "degree"?

> Unless you're from an address within his university, or even
> on an even more restricted passthrough list, your
> correspondence, both snail and email, will be read by the
> secretary, and any spam will hit the bit bucket right there.

This particular chairman personally creates a computer account for each student! See http://david.sowder.com/faq/, where students are invited to e-mail him, phone him, or go to his office to get an account. (If they don't have the account yet, they can hardly e-mail him "from an address within his university", can they?)

This is because SWAU is really small; but at the University of Ottawa, where I did my Master's in CompSci, the chairman handled his own e-mail as well.

> Most importantly, it's not just the HoD at fault. It's also the
> university personnel department and everybody in the hiring
> process.

Agreed.

 

"Relatively decent" doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement. But "besmirched" doesn't sound as if he asked to see a copy of the dissertation.

 

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