A reader sends UD a 1975 Time magazine article which describes the diploma mill the University of Massachusetts education school was in those years.
This is the school from which, during that decade, Bambi Cardenas (background here) earned her Ph.D. The School of Education, noted Time, had “earned a reputation as a diploma mill. In the past three years it granted more than 387 doctoral degrees. Some doctorates were awarded to students who had no undergraduate degrees. The writing in many doctoral theses was barely at high school level.”
No wonder Bambi – president of the University of Texas at Pan American – is now being investigated for having plagiarized her U Mass dissertation in educational leadership.
And… I dunno… Sad, isn’t it? That so many ed schools remain, as the New York Times recently wrote, “little more than diploma mills.”
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The other hoax? The journal Quadrant. Australia.
Keith Windschuttle, its editor, published a science piece that agreed with his global warming skepticism, but he did no checking on its author or its sometimes absurd claims.
… Windschuttle admitted the article was unsolicited and from an unknown author, and that he had failed to even Google the author’s name or check easily validated facts, such as the claim that the paper was first presented at the 19th International Conference on Genome Informatics in Brisbane last year.
A check of the program on the internet by The Australian yesterday revealed there was no such paper or author listed.
Windschuttle said his practices were the same as any editor of a publication and that checking every fact and quotation in an article was impractical.
“I guess I could have done more to investigate the author but the content was something I did investigate because I was interested in some of the sources,” he said.
The latest entry on the hoax blog says: “So neatly did my essay conform with reactionary ideology that Quadrant, it seems, didn’t even check the putative author’s credentials”.
“Nor it seems did they get the piece peer-reviewed. Nor did they check the facts; nor the footnotes. Nor were they alerted by the clues. I’m almost embarrassed for you, Windschuttle. Just look at you above, a pea in a pod alongside those other culture warriors.”
The hoaxer wanted to expose the absurdity of the journal’s views on the environment by writing patently extreme nonsense and watching him print it. A hoax very much like the Sokal hoax.
January 11th, 2009 at 8:20PM
> Sad, isn’t it? That so many ed schools remain, as the New York Times recently wrote, “little more than diploma mills.”
I was doing a bit of research a few months ago on the institutional history of "Student Affairs" as an administrative unit, and came across this very good book, which I recommend: The Trouble with Ed Schools by David Labaree.
There are many issues of interest, but I’ll note just one: a good chunk of the thinking that led to the creation of schools of education in the early 20th century (and subsequently to Student Affairs divisions) was openly and explicitly anti-liberal-education.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:53PM
Another famous alummna (Doctoral degree in 1994) is Doctress Neutopia: This is her legal name (before that she was known as Libby Hubbard).
She got quite famous on the Usenet (had even a group named after her).She came off as a kook – even by usenet standards.
Her thesis was titled "Gaia, the planetary religion : the sacred marriage of art and science". Some versions of her scholarly work can be found on her website, http://www.lovolution.net
If you have some spare time, check out her work for yourself: It is hard to summarize, since the whole logic (or lack thereof) makes it hard to understand for me..
January 11th, 2009 at 11:29PM
From http://thecos.billcosby.com/ : "Did you know that Bill Cosby received his Doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts in 1976?"
January 12th, 2009 at 11:18AM
ttbdan: Dr. Cosby’s dissertation: "AN INTEGRATION OF THE VISUAL MEDIA VIA "FAT ALBERT AND THE COSBY KIDS" INTO THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM AS A TEACHING AID AND VEHICLE TO ACHIEVE INCREASED LEARNING."
I don’t suppose anyone has read it?
January 13th, 2009 at 9:59AM
I think Cracker Jack should be allowed to give out many of the degrees Universities currently see fit to grant.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:29PM
jguenter: Nah, nah, nah, gonna have a good time! Hey, hey, hey!