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Tuesday, September 12, 2006
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A Squire of Low Degree I'm putting off voting at Garrett Park Elementary School (from which I graduated) because someone forgot to include a crucial piece of technology in the materials for the polling places in Maryland, and everything has to be delayed until later this afternoon. When there'll be a stampede.... So I'm sitting here wondering whether state and local elections are worth UD's effort this time around... To be sure, I have directly in front of me the list Mr. UD prepared of the people I'm to vote for... Mr. UD, unlike UD, has spent hours in earnest candidate study. He has considered each school board candidate's position on extended days and teacher salary, each county council hopeful's take on traffic and development... Me, I've had other things to do. There's today's CEO-with-no-degree story, for instance. Like Richard Grasso, a majorly self-made man who claimed to have graduated from college when he hadn't, David C. Swanson, head of R.H. Donnelley, has for decades been describing himself as a college graduate when he isn't. "[A] Donnelley spokesman acknowledged that Swanson did not have the claimed bachelor of science degree from Minnesota’s St. Cloud State University." Sure, he shouldn't have lied... Yet in each such case, UD feels strong sympathy for the liar. So he didn't go to, or didn't graduate from, college ...If anything, this makes his subsequent success that much more impressive. And it reminds us, in this must-have-a-college-degree job environment, that there are plenty of people who are smart, energetic, competitive, and eager to go to work, without wasting time and money on a degree they don't need. |