… hasn’t had the “renovating the Hamburg mansion” problem? What I’m saying is, judge not the German professor who last year sold sixty doctorates from Hannover University, lest ye be judged for your own mansion renovation needs.
He’s in jail now, this guy, but at his trial he explained that he worked with a local diploma mill, collecting hundreds of thousands of euros in bribes in exchange for arranging bogus degrees, because “he needed the money to renovate his Hamburg mansion.”
Turned out the Hannover guy was the tip of a need iceberg. Police began investigating the diploma mill, and today they announced that “100 professors across the country [are suspected of having taken] bribes to help students get their doctoral degrees.”
… [S]tudents paid between euro4,000 to euro20,000 ($5,700 to $28,500) to the company, which promised to help them get their doctorate degrees through its extensive contacts within university faculties.
The Neue Westfaelische newspaper reported that “hundreds” of students were involved, and that the company paid professors between euro2,000 to euro5,000 when their clients had successfully received their Ph.D.’s. …
September 1st, 2009 at 9:55AM
The nefarious thing about this scandal is that the degrees were conferred by real universities, not diploma mills. Some even defended the professors saying that the diploma mill merely arranged for the prospective students to meet with professors (in Germany you can embark on a PhD as long as you find any professor who’s willing to become your adviser, but this is hard for people who have fallen out of touch with academia). If they really held the paying students to the same standards as the nonpaying ones, is something for the prosecution to determine.
Very small nitpick: at least the Brits write the German city of Hannover with one n ;), well it’s their Royal House of Hanover too….
Also I guess the guy was probably commuting from Hamburg to Hanover, or maybe just had an apartment in Hanover, because Hamburg is a much bigger city (and much more expensive too).