On-Line PhD (Business) from Purdue/Cornell?

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Dr Rene, Jun 19, 2017.

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  1. Dr Rene

    Dr Rene Member

  2. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!


    I don't think such as thing between Cornell and Purdue would partner up for Online Ph.D in Business Administration.
     
  3. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Figment of Dix's imagination, an honest mistake by the author of that article, or a flat out lie. Pick one. Wish it did exist, but if it did, it'd go for $200K.
     
  4. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    More investigation:

    The person who's the subject of that article is Jim Shreve, a career body shop manager currently at an Akron car dealership. Apparently just your average blue collar guy with a high school diploma who put his nose to the grindstone and worked his way up to manager. No knock on that, perfectly honorable line of work. To that point, a pretty normal story of modest success.

    But suddenly in 2012 Mr. Shreve, with nothing but experience in car parts and no higher education (at least none listed on his Linkedin page), managed to get accepted into a Cornell-Purdue dual PhD in management distance program (which, notwithstanding newspaper editor Dix's assertions to the contrary, appears to exist nowhere on the internet). While working full time in auto parts management, Mr. Shreve managed to complete not one but two PhDs through this program in three years! Even more remarkably, in his final year of the dual program, working on one (perhaps two) dissertations, he finally got around to getting that bachelor's degree, in applied science, from Villanova, which, according to his Linkedin page, he completed in one year (like the apparently phantom PhD, Villanova appears not to offer a bachelor's in applied science). He claims to have a 4.0 in all three programs. A 4.0 is meaningful in a bachelor's program, lesser so in a masters, but for someone to put down their GPA in a PhD program is odd indeed and frankly indicative of one who has no experience in or knowledge of doctoral programs.

    In 12 months this guy claims to have finished a 120+ credit hour bachelor's while finishing up two PhDs, his oral defenses, the whole nine yards! Another odd twist, after a relatively stable career, typically working jobs for years at a time, he has worked for three different car dealerships since the fall of 2016 (though all could be part of the same auto network).

    Perhaps I'm missing something, perhaps he got sloppy in his Linkedin, or perhaps he is a complete charlatan. But either way, there is something seriously amiss.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 20, 2017
  5. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Correction: Apparently he also has a bachelors and masters degree from the University of Akron, which, standing alone, would make admissions to a PhD program plausible--except that such a program as claimed in the article and his Linkedin site doesn't exist and even if it did, the odds of someone around 60 gaining admission to a US PhD program at an elite university are somewhat less than .0001%, about the same odds as Purdue and Cornell collaborating to offer an online PhD in management, which are in turn about the same odds as an auto body man (or, frankly, Albert Einstein) obtaining a bachelor's and two PhDs in three years.
     
  6. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    You appear to be harboring some doubt about this fellow.

    And you're rather convincing. ;-)
     
  7. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Am just bored and on a rant. Summer Term A classes ended last week and my penny pinching dean jobbed me (and several others in the department) out of a term B class this summer so suddenly I have nothing immediately pressing to do until the second week of August. I also apparently have this psychological dysfunction where I get locked into irrelevant grooves and can't break out; why I should be wasting time looking into the background of an auto body manager in Akron is beyond me. If he apparently gets pleasure out of faking up prestigious degrees and getting a little local press out of it, why should I begrudge him this bit of light in his life? Need to get back to finishing up some research, have a colleague who certainly wants me to finish my end of this article we're working on and have a department chair who just torched my annual review because I'm not getting together a good research agenda for this year. So what am I doing here? No clue. ; )
     
  8. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Everyone needs a hobby . . .
     
  9. Steve Levicoff

    Steve Levicoff Well-Known Member

    Obviously, the whole story is bullshit, written by a mickey-mouse reporter who doesn't have a clue about higher education, for what appears to be a weekly newspaper.

    On the other hand, while I think this story comes under the heading of "fake news," the guy's wife (if, in fact, she is his wife) does check out as the provost of Stark State College. FWIW, in Ohio "state college" means community college - they only do associate's degrees. Stark State is on the same campus of Kent State University Stark (named after the county in which their North Canton facility is located). (BTW, KSU Stark has a great theatre department - I've been there many times.)

    Besides, I know of someone who pulled off a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., all of which are RA, in just under six years. He then spent eight years teaching at RA graduate schools, wrote five books, then chucked it all to become an over-the-road trucker, which he has been happily doing for 20 years now. He started out yesterday in Kansas City (KS), is writing this from Effingham (IL), and touches down in Columbus (OH) tonight before heading off to Rochester (NY) tomorrow. So you never know...
    :drive:
     
  10. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member



    A term describing most of the '60s bands and the most ardent specialty forums.
     
  11. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I spend a little time at Cornell as I frequently recruit there. There are a few things that people tend not to understand about Cornell...

    1. You cannot just get a degree from "Cornell University." Yes, all diplomas say that at the top. But underneath a college or school is specified. So you can have a B.S. from Cornell University - School of Industrial and Labor Relations or Cornell University - College of Arts and Sciences, etc.

    This isn't quibbling over a trivial fact. It's integral to understanding how degrees are awarded there. You don't apply to Cornell. You apply to the individual school or college.

    2. Most graduate degrees at Cornell are actually awarded by the Graduate School of Cornell University. That isn't just a way to label the website. The graduate school is, indeed, a multi-disciplinary "school." Absent from the list of their degree offerings? Business Administration.

    You can get a degree in Hotel Administration (with your coursework taken at the School of Hotel Administration, an AACSB accredited business school). You can get a PhD in Management (likely with faculty from Hotel Administration, the Dyson School of Management and the Johnson Graduate School of Management). You can even get one in Applied Economics (courses and faculty from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences under which the Dyson School of Management is found).

    If you are insistent on a graduate degree in "Business Administration" then your journey ends with an MBA from the Johnson Graduate School of Management.

    There is no online PhD (though I was recently informed of an online M.Eng. Cornell now offers: M.Eng Distance Learning - Systems Engineering @ Cornell University). Nor does Cornell appear to have a dual degree program with Purdue.

    Kind of surprised an actual academic would want to be associated with her husband's lies like this unless, of course, she doesn't know they are lies.

    EDIT: With the creation of the Johnson College of Business some of this may change. But at present whenever we get someone with a business degree from Cornell it means that it came from one of three schools at Cornell (a B.S. from Hotel, a B.S. from Dyson or an MBA from Johnson).
     
  12. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    That guy is a beast, though, I know that guy, have corresponded with him on an online forum before. LOL. That's the guy who just decided to chuck all the diplomas and academia and go on an extended Jack London sort of adventure.
     
  13. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    Cornell is the Ivy League, land-grant, somewhat-SUNY school with the greater than 5 billion dollar endowment.

    This is New York, you're not supposed to understand it.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 21, 2017
  14. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    His wife is the real deal. Idk about him. I would think this was insane claim to make, even do a story about? His wife may have had a connection that let him do some distance work? I hope this dude is not lying.
     
  15. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    If so his wife must have some amazing connections. To set up a scenario where Villanova establishes a degree program that apparently doesn't exist in their catalog and then to provide for her husband to somehow complete it in one year and then to top it all off by arranging for a distance consortium between an Ivy League university and one that is well nigh close to Ivy League to offer him a three year double online PhD in management? That's the sort of thing the Clintons would have trouble arranging, much less for an administrator at a community college in Akron to pull off.

    A lot of people lie, it's everywhere, and some people just don't give two rips that they're lying so long as it provides them some benefit. I've heard lie after lie from politicians (such as the aforementioned politician as well as her opponent), from students, from university administrators, from corporate execs, and of course from the pulpit, lies that would make a hardened convict blush.
     
  16. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    The program could legit, I am about to graduate my Ph.D in Business Administration, a joint program through Harvard Business School (HBS) of Harvard University and Columbia Southern University via distance learning. :slaphappy:
     
  17. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 23, 2017
  18. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    "...with curriculum prepapred jointly by Purdue and Cornell Universities."

    Some typos are better than others.
     
  19. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Kaplan offers neither a PhD nor a DBA in Management; according to their website, they don't offer a PhD in any subject, they offer a Doctor of Nursing Practice, their only doctorate.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 23, 2017
  20. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    What the heck...could they have had one in the past? Is the reporter really this bad at his job?
     

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