University Response to Profs with Bogus Degrees

My "police" role is justified by my "taxpayer" role. In Canada, almost all universities are public, and heavily subsidized on the backs of taxpayers.

It seems to me you have the arrogance of assuming USA laws and customs should apply in Canada. This is a sovereign country. California "approval" means nothing. Only RA/GAAP/CHEA accreditation of USA schools carries any weight in Canada.

Regarding your tears for the "falsely accused": you ought to shed a few for the candidates with legitimate, accredited degrees who lost jobs to these phonies with bogus degrees.

 

Hi Kalos:

This discussion is rather interesting. I personally believe the best education is the traditional way, whether the person is competent or not.

Since I am on this forum, I just wanted to say that, it is always good to get the facts clear.

Here is my position on this.

1. I would not think a California approved school degree is bogus. thats extreme to say that.

2. Lets assume these guys have bogus doctorate. If they earn and pretend that it was real work then totally wrong.

3. Is the requirement for the position based on the masters? if so then maybe the PhD is not relevant here.

I do support some work based degree approach but more along the commonwealth model whereby you need to prove to a qualified group that you are competent to get a degree. This could be using exams, thesis etc.

I am not sure what Bradford University is but if they have no real programme to prove competence then the degree is worthless.
What if those professors are really good and getting the job done? what would you do then?

 

If someone is really good at getting the job done, then the primary concern is met. Having a terminal degree neither makes one a good scholar nor a good teacher; the lack of a terminal degree does not make you a bad scholar or teacher.

But hanging a phony "PhD" on the wall is in my opinion ipso factor proof that the person isn't good at "getting the job done", because part of the job is doing it with integrity--how else are you going to teach students the academic policies on cheating and plagiarism with a straight face? And even if you can manage that, why should they believe you?

 

Yes, I am the arrogant assuming person-

 

Profs with misleading degrees

I am also living in Canada and a Canadian.
Yes, I do not generally agree on certain subjects ( engineering education ) with Kalos but on this subject I heartfully approve his actions .

Kalos should be commended for taking time and doing this : he is doing a favor to Canadian taxpayers and also to current students at these universities as well as to other applicants for these positions who lost to people who misrepresent themselves as holders of certain standard degrees TO TEACH.

I , personally, do not see any damage to use Columbia and Pacific for the BUSINESS world but when it comes to academia I believe it is misrepresentation.

Kalos, do research this well and then contact the University and College presidents ; if they do not act , contact the Cabinet Minister in the particular province where this College or University is located . If the Cabinet Minister does not act contact the following Newpapers Education editors : Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun, the National Post.

Congrats, Kalos. I am on your side this time.

 

Profs with misleading degrees

I am also living in Canada and a Canadian.
Yes, I do not generally agree on certain subjects ( engineering education ) with Kalos but on this subject I heartfully approve his actions .

Kalos should be commended for taking time and doing this : he is doing a favor to Canadian taxpayers and also to current students at these universities as well as to other applicants for these positions who lost to people who misrepresent themselves as holders of certain standard degrees TO TEACH.

I , personally, do not see any damage to use Columbia and Pacific for the BUSINESS world but when it comes to academia I believe it is misrepresentation.

Kalos, do research this well and then contact the University and College presidents ; if they do not act , contact the Cabinet Minister in the particular province where this College or University is located . If the Cabinet Minister does not act contact the following Newpapers Education editors : Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun, the National Post.

Congrats, Kalos. I am on your side this time.

 

This discussion is rather interesting. I personally believe the best education is the traditional way, whether the person is competent or not. Here is my position on this:
1. I would not think a California approved school degree is bogus. thats extreme to say that.

Fair enough. But I disagree, and I don't think its extreme to exclude "California Approved" schools. You have to draw the line somewhere. RA is a reasonable minimum. (and no - I don't want to be drawn into a tedious discussion on the wonderful schools who "choose" to be "Approved" rather than "Accredited").


3. Is the requirement for the position based on the masters? if so then maybe the PhD is not relevant here.

What is "relevance" ? What is "competence" ? Integrity is "relevant" and is an element of competence. Someone who has a flat-out "bought" degree or even a semi-perfunctory "quickie" degree from an non-accredited school is not someone I want to have teaching in any university I attend or support with tax dollars. I don't care how entertaining a teacher they are. There's also the equity issue of whether someone with bogus or semi-bogus degrees has elbowed aside someone else who is equally or more "competent" but who doesn't claim bogus or semi-bogus degrees.


I am not sure what Bradford University is but if they have no real programme to prove competence then the degree is worthless.

"Bradford University" is a straightforward diploma mill according to Bear. "University of Bradford" is a legitimate school with minimal residency requirements (apparently two weeks min per year for PhD studies). Here's where we get into a grey area: A University of Bradford PhD might be legal and legitimate, but I do not consider such a graduate in the same league with someone who has earned a doctorate by full-time study for 3-4 years in a community of scholars. It's that "transformational" thing again: There's really no substitute for spending several years in a reputable B&M school - mingling with profs and post-grads on a day to day basis if the intent is a PhD. Just my view of things...


What if those professors are really good and getting the job done? what would you do then?

Fire them if they got their positions by virtue of claiming degrees they don't earn legitimately. It could be they were up-front about the non-accredited nature of their degrees. In that case, they should be kept, on a lower salary befitting their highest real degree. Mention of non-accredited degrees should be erased from their CV profiles. Their Department Heads should be fired.

 

I think this story is apocryphal. Wikipedia says: "He obtained his doctorate after submitting his thesis "A new determination of molecular dimensions" ("Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen") in 1905." Yes, this paper was rather short and published, but it has gone through the usual review process and, anyway, he followed the "traditional route" as it was then in Austria. Besides, he was almost a complete unknown then: AFAIK "molecular dimensions" was his first and the least risky paper of 1905 ("Annus Mirabilis").

 

Wikipedia is pretty notorious, you know.

Perhaps even less reliable than me--if such can be believed. Einstein was working as a patent clerk and was not prancing around the halls of academia. He was a dabbler, writing papers on physics in his spare time. He was, of course, not a formal academic. I don't know what they thought of him--if anything--at the universities. This strange hobbyist submitted one of his papers to the University of Zurich and they were so impressed they awarded him a PhD--the guy just about came out of nowhere. Eventually, he was appointed professor.

This was more commonplace than today, but it was not the "traditional route" even a century ago.

 

I dunno. The impression I get is that a century ago, at least in Europe, doctorates were awarded pretty much based upon a piece of original research that was published and defended.

Typically no underlying classwork was involved in the doctoral process.

Do I have that wrong?

Regards,
GME

 

In principle, I am supportive of Kalos' efforts. In practice, though, I am concerned because I suspect that he hasn't done his homework. Accreditation in the US is complex, and there can be legitimate exceptions to blanket statements like the one above.

We saw this previously in a thread on engineering programs. Kalos argued that only ABET-accredited programs were legitimate. This is largely true, but not entirely: many highly regarded schools (e.g. MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Columbia) offer legitimate non-ABET engineering degrees in certain engineering disciplines that are not subject to state licensing laws (e.g. biomedical, materials, aerospace).

Now let's look at another example. Consider this University of Toronto professor. His PhD is from Rockefeller University, in New York -- which is not an RA institution. There is no question that his PhD degree falls below the "reasonable minimum" line that Kalos has drawn above.

Yet Rockefeller is one of the most highly regarded biomedical research institutions in the world; the professor in question worked under a Nobel Laureate there. In fact, Rockefeller University is one of several prominent research institutes in the State of New York that are not regionally accredited; instead, they hold accreditation from the New York State Board of Regents, which is a recognized national accrediting agency. Other NA schools in this category include the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and the North Shore – LIJ Graduate School of Molecular Medicine.

So RA is not necessarily a "reasonable minimum." If Kalos reports this professor to UT for advertising a non-RA PhD degree, they will only laugh at him.

 

Perhaps so, perhaps not, I'm not the consummate expert on early 20th century European doctoral programs. Of course, I doubt anyone here qualifies for that distinction either.

Of course, the European schools to this day are more likely to recognize accomplishment based on publications. But it's still not the traditional route, it's more common--and has, I suspect, been so for some time--to do at least some coursework leading up to dissertation and PhD. And even awarding a PhD by publications was typically something quite different from handing one out to a rank outsider and academic nonentity. They are usually reserved for professors who have already received the Masters or have done significant graduate work, and then their institution awards them a PhD based on very substantial scholarship. Correct me if I'm wrong. This is why many who ask on DL fora about PhDs by publication are barking up the wrong tree. They are about as likely to receive one as an outsider as they are to sprout wings and fly. In other words, unless they as an outsider happen to be an Austrian clerk with the acumen to change the world of physics forever, it likely ain't happening.

And in any event, it was certainly not convention for prestigious universities like Zurich to award PhDs--sans traditional coursework--to patent clerk hobbyists who made a rare trip to the campus to drop off a paper.

Einstein was an unusual case, he failed to meet the standards of traditional academia in many respects, he struggled through traditonal schooling, he couldn't even pass a simple test to become an engineer (confession: I only read about this anectdote today while researching to see if somehow I'd remembered things wrong when Stanislav questioned my veracity), but yet he set the academic world on its head.

And I stand by my original statement, as I read it, and as many would agree, Einstein's doctorate was "at the very least pretty much a PhD by recognition of publications". I think that's an accurate statement.

 

On the basis of ethics and integrity, I do support investigating such.

I think there is always need for judegement even if the school is unaccredited. If it was an easy binary decision then many discussions would be a wasted of time.

There if someone makes a false claim then you have my support. However, if someone is qualified for the job with a reasonable verified masters but they went to ULC online get a PhD in Theology etc, but is honest about its hard to waste time exposing them. Howeverm, if they represent the ULC degree to imply it may have been in Engineering or whatever field then of course thats unethical.

A degree given and represented in an honest way cannot be considered illegal as long as its given legally. Of course should a school accept a PhD from Belford where a PhD is required for the job, I would say no.

 

UK master's and doctoral degrees are, for the most part, dissertation-only and thesis-only. The PhD by publication is usually reserved for those who already have some affiliation with the university beforehand.

 

I agree with the second part of that totally. As for the first, I thought that most UK programs have research methodologies coursework or papers that must be written prior to the final thesis/dissertation. I think we're in agreement that the thrust of the UK programs are far more pure research oriented than classwork.

 

Recently, some UK schools have gone over to the New Route PhD, which means a methodology course plus the thesis, but I was of the impression that most had retained the old-style thesis-only doctorate.

 

I think I'm right, I've looked into a handful of programs: Manchetser, Aston, and a couple others, and they seem to fit what I'm saying, at least for their DL DBAs. But that is by no means a large enough sample to make any firm conclusions about UK doctorates in general. I don't know enough to know one way or the other.

 

DBAs are coursework plus thesis, whereas PhDs are thesis only. BTW - From the Manchester website, it seems that the UK also preserves the US' practical vs. theoretical distinction for DBAs vs. PhDs.

 

Caldog:
You must stay up nights trying to find extremely unusual exceptions. This is a measure of the weakness of your opinions on the value of accreditation. All I can say is that if you don't think RA is a "reasonable minimum" and ABET accreditation is the Gold Standard for Engineering programs, for assessing USA universities, you're going to be dismissed by most academic observers as a quarrelsome crank more interested in finding loopholes than in advancing the debate on what constitutes legitimacy.

 

It's clear a major motivation for getting a bogus PhD is to get the coveted "Doctor" title. In an academic environment, this courtesy title normally signifies a contribution to the state of the art earned by extended effort. When there is not such a contribution, such as by getting a quickie unaccredited PhD or a doctorate in an unrelated and dodgy field, use of the "doctor" title is essentially bogus - even if it is gained "legally". For this reason, it is safe to call the use of such unearned and irrelevant doctorates fraudulent even if the teaching position was won legitimately with an earned Master's.

(Here Caldog - missing the point, as usual - will pipe up that not all doctorates imply original research - giving the example maybe of Doctors of Podiatry in Bangladesh. At which observation I just chuckle and shake my head slowly).

See http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i42/42a00901.htm