Investigation: 28 top federal workers have bogus college degrees

http://www.kpho.com/Global/story.asp?S=1857575

Capitol Hill-AP -- A congressional investigation has found at least 28 senior-level federal employees in eight agencies have bogus college degrees.

Some of those degrees were even paid for with taxpayer dollars.The findings by the General Accounting Office are being presented to Congress today.The G-A-O reports that among those with bogus degrees are three managers with security clearances who work at the National Nuclear Security Administration.

...more...

Wish this article would name some names.

NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.:nuke:

Shrub, Dubya, *, The Presidunce.

They named some names, but I didn't jot any down. Some higher-ups in the Pentagon (not military personnel, civilians), so I naturally assumed they were rethugs.

Is my prejudice showing?

2. Falsifying your resume to get a Govt job - isn't that illegal?

3. Isn't there some sort of background check that's supposed to happen?

Dunno about government jobs, especially ones to deal with nuclear safety.

There's an army of Homer Simpons out there. Sigh.

28 out of hundreds of thousands? So what. Be careful, this smells like a trap. Could this be a way demonize government workers even more and say, "See, we need to privatize even more government functions to stop this abuse." Just like so-called tort reform - find a couple of anecdotal examples of frivolous lawsuits and use them to push your agenda.

The question is: Are they able to do the job? That's a supervision question. The degree may get you the job but doesn't really mean much once you are doing it.

This is just another put down of gov workers.

bush* could find....rove...not even the discipline motivation and focus to finish an undergraduate degreee....

bush* has rove as his main assistant ONLY because rove is a BIG BULLY, nasty vicious bully....only finished high school, dodged the draft for Vietnam....but rove knows how to bully honest and ethical Americans....

that is why bush* hired rove....

Only having a HS diploma does not mean you are any less/more intelligent than anyone else, and frankly i'm tired of this type of insinuation. Of all the things i learned in college, it was that there are just as many dumbasses there as there are on the average construction site.

AND a guy like rove, with only a high school diploma, would NEVER get even a low-level Federal job under OPM competitive application procedures....

there is no "equating intelligence with education" here....

but, as my father told me.....


college degree = intelligence + <(effort) squared>


clearly, your effort is much more important that your intelligence....rove is just a big bad bully and that's how he rose to the highest level in bush* administration....rove is bush*'s uneducated hit-man....

And some people don't have much of either.

Having spent my entire adult life in higher ed, as a student and as an instructor, I can assure you there there are many, many jackasses running around with advanced degrees from prestigious universities.

In fact, I can think of one real sad case who has degrees from both Yale and Harvard Business.

the post that you responded to said nothing about hs diplomas and lack of intelligence. it DID say something about DISCIPLINE, MOTIVATION, AND FOCUS tho.

btw, i agree that lack of a college degree means that one is a dummy nor does a degree confer intelligence. chimpy is a great example!

When the term "bogus" is used as in this article, is that meant as any kind of higher education that's not from an accredited institution?

Is there any kind of non-accredited curriculum that is not considered bogus?

As a Senate committee prepares to hold hearings on whether federal employees have used taxpayer dollars to purchase bogus college degrees, a key House chairman is raising the sticky question of how to define "diploma mill."



"I am most concerned that federal employees may not have access to information that would allow them to determine whether a degree represents legitimate educational achievement," Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said in a recent letter to the Office of Personnel Management.

~snip~

From outward appearances, diploma mills might look like a college or institution of higher learning, but the degrees often are awarded for cash rather than academic achievement.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and Davis have sponsored a months-long investigation by the General Accounting Office to determine whether federal employees use bogus degrees to get jobs and promotions and whether any high-level federal officials have used such degrees to obtain security clearances.

~snip~
more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12979-2004May9.html
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~snip~
Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Abell has a master's from Columbus University, a diploma mill Louisiana shut down. Deputy Assistant Secretary Patricia Walker lists among her degrees, a bachelor's from Pacific Western, a diploma mill banned in Oregon and under investigation in Hawaii.

CBS News requested interviews with both officials. The Pentagon turned us down, saying, "We don't consider it an issue."

~snip~

You don't want somebody with a fake degree working in Homeland Security," says Contreras. "You don't want somebody with a fake degree teaching your children or designing your bridges."

But we found employees with diploma mill degrees at the new Transportation Security Administration, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Departments of Treasury and Education, where Rene Drouin sits on an advisory committee. He has degrees from two diploma mills including Kensington University.

~snip~

more:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/10/eveningnews/main616664.shtml

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What I got from that is if a degree is purchased in the absence of any kind of academic achievement, it's then considered a diploma mill. That makes sense.

There does appear to be some gray areas. What accredited higher education school offers degrees for only academic achievement and no cash? And what of those institutions who grant "credit" for "work experience" and related achievements?

For example: A person writes 3 full-length novels without a creative writing degree, and the novels receive positive reviews. In order to write these 3 novels, the author spent years studying books about how to write a novel, about characters and dialog, etc. Are those 3 novels then considered valid "work experience" for granting of X number of credits towards a degree in creative writing?

WTF? It is not an issue that people collecting a taxpayer funded check have fake degrees? Why hasn't someone in the media asked Rummy about this? Isn't he in charge of the Pentagon? The buck stops with him, right?

what's walking around out there with REAL degrees, I can't get too upset about this.

in other words...we get ripped off twice. :) Or three times if you consider they might just need a degree in order to do their job effectively. :shrug:

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;) Enjoy your stay.

Yale.

since the jobs can clearly be performed satisfactorily by people without real degrees?

simply to be selective in hiring. In other words, to legalize discrimination. If a minority had the experience, they he or she would be told they didn't have the education. If they had the education, then they would be told they didn't have enough 'experience.' If they had both, then they would be told that the job was filled or the position was not being filled.