Key EDS Witness Bought Internet Degree 258
An anonymous reader writes "EDS's key witness during the firm's court case against BSkyB was shown to have bought his degree online – but still managed to get a worse mark than a dog. Joe Galloway said he had a degree from Concordia College in the US Virgin Islands and gave detailed evidence on how he took plane journeys between the islands and attended a college there. But while questioning Galloway in court, Mark Howard QC managed to obtain exactly the same degree as Galloway from Concordia College for his dog 'Lulu' with one key difference – the dog got a higher mark."
Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degrees (Score:1, Insightful)
College degrees are way overrated. This is coming from someone with multiple degrees from MIT, Harvard, and Oxford.
College degrees have always been worthless the moment you joined the workforce and got your first day of actual working experience. It's always been worthless because the assclown with family connections will get the job over any random summa cum laude. The worthlessness is even worse since anything worth knowing is learned on the job and not in the classroom.
Consider this. Right now we are in a terrible recession. Many people are going back to school because they can't find a paying job. That means that in 3 year's time we will have a huge glut of people with advanced degrees fighting over the same pool of jobs. It's the same as always, only the requirements to play require a higher standard of education.
Or does it? Since experience and personal contacts mean much more than degrees, the earlier you can get a job, the better. Wasting your time in actual school taking actual classes is a net loser compared to getting a cheap diploma from a diploma mill and getting a paying job today.
I spent a lot of time to get my advanced degrees, but I have no illusions about their actual value. My real value comes from my work experience and successes in my field. Degrees aren't worth the paper they are printed on. If you want one, you should do it for yourself, not for a job.
Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fake-degree guy got fired from his job not for performing badly but for having a fake degree. What does this say about people who have a real degree that they didn't notice a difference in performance or at the very least that it took so long to find out?
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
He could have manipulated someone else into doing the work for him or cut corners to obtain the result that was sought in perhaps undesirable or illegal ways.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as "useless" goes, okay, I probably use at most about 5% of what I learned at university. So it has actually been useful - just not as useful as one might expect. Of course, even most of that 5% I could have learned from textbooks, but the course structure gave me a little context. It told me what there was to know. I have no idea whether I'd have learned about functional programming languages or Hough transforms without university guidance. I wouldn't have known they exist even to look for them. Granted, neither of those two examples have actually come up in the working environment, but I imagine there are some that have
If you want one, you should do it for yourself, not for a job.
Having said what I said, I still 100% agree with this statement.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:4, Insightful)
College degrees are way overrated.
Not really. It's Human Resource people who make the hiring decisions who are over-rated. They look for degrees, good references and personality to make their decisions, instead of looking at a person's ability. Like the article said;
He gave his evidence [on going to the college] in the same confident, secure manner as he gave his evidence about the EDS representations.
Smart people usually aren't confident because they know how ignorant they are. HR people look for confidence in a person when hiring. Confident people also get promoted. It's all about sales, not ability. I'd rather hire an insecure person who wasn't confident in his abilities to do differential equations than hire somebody who confidently lies about his ability because he thinks (and knows) people are stupid enough to judge him based on how he presents himself.
Presentation is everything, that's why PowerPoint is so popular with business and sales people. It's quite useless, but it's pretty and it looks smart.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:5, Insightful)
I spent a lot of time to get my advanced degrees, but I have no illusions about their actual value. My real value comes from my work experience and successes in my field.
Just to take the devil's advocate position here: you essentially are implying that you learned nothing in school and could have had the same successes without taking the courses you took?
I (owner of a piece of paper that says I am a medical doctor) agree that at the end of the day a degree is just a piece of paper. The real value is what you yourself put into the course, it's not "granted" to you by some outside force. I know people with exactly the same degree I have who, frankly, I would never let near my children. I myself used my training as an excuse to spend as much time as possible with patients, including weekends and holidays when I really didn't have to be there. So in essence I agree with you, it's not "the degree" that has given me a far more profound understanding of medicine than most of my classmates (who did the bare minimum). Rather it's my attitude towards learning, problem solving, and work that let me get ahead in my field.
However there has to be some objective method of classifying a potential employee, and the degree (and where it came from) is a very simple test. Yes there are bound to be highly efficient individuals who lack university degrees (my grandfather made millions - far more than I could ever hope to earn - and never had more than 3rd grade). And there are bound to be slackers who despite having prestigious degrees are absolutely useless. That's why hiring isn't (or shouldn't be) done on solely a candidate's degree. It's just another tool when sifting through the work-force to help identify the individual you think will be of greatest use to you.
However, all else being equal, I would be more inclined to trust someone with a Harvard degree than a degree from "Concordia Online College"...
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow I really, really doubt you went to MIT, Harvard and Oxford. If you went to any of those institutions, you'd know the connections you make during school at those types of institutes are invaluable for networking later in life.
Re:Bad for Internet PR (Score:5, Insightful)
"reliable and accurate information on Internet"
Best. Oxymoron. Ever.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:2, Insightful)
College degrees are way overrated. This is coming from someone with multiple degrees from MIT, Harvard, and Oxford.
Maybe you did something wrong. Personally, I learned a lot in school, and when studying. Including a ton of stuff I would not have learned if I had spent the same amount of time working, but which turned out to be a tremendous help when doing actual work (stuff that immediately comes to mind would be how to write an application in assembly and C, and how to write an operating system, which makes it easier to figure out what's going on when you're programming in a higher-level language; also, how to write a compiler, which includes useful things like writing parsers and state machines, which helps me write proper solutions to problems that I would otherwise have tried to implement using a bunch of regexes).
There's also the point that nothing stops you from working while you're studying, especially if you're studying something like comp sci. Lots of great companies came out of a student's side project.
Unfortunately, incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
I've only been to one university - though I have plenty of vocational qualifications. Although what I learned at Cambridge was rapidly obsoleted as knowledge - and I work in a field which did not even really exist when I was there - what I did there benefits me almost every single day of my life. I learned the things you mostly do not learn at work.
Specifically I learnt the critical attitude - to take nothing at face value. At a University famous for its experimentalism, I learnt how to design experiments and test the results. I learnt how to use statistical and probabilitistic analysis to eliminate false results. I learnt to distrust the wisdom of crowds. And I learnt how to learn.
Ever since then I have discovered that many people simply do not think but accept what is perceived as the norm in their industry or group. That is why you get everything from religious cults to stock market bubbles. Anyone who learnt experimental technique as I did could never be fooled by the early-80s boom. Anyone who learnt those techniques (as I did) would be able to go away, analyse the quality records of their company and suddenly realise that what "everybody believed" about a major industrial process of the company was quite wrong - and, after nearly getting fired for whistleblowing, convince the CEO (a Cambridge PhD) and end up as CTO.
When I had to learn some metallurgy and electrochemistry in a hurry - I knew where to go and how to do it. When I suddenly needed a working knowledge of technical German and French - I knew how to do it.
Vocational courses are great when you have a vocation. But a good University is not a vocational school. It expands your mental horizons and it shows you how to both access knowledge and bend it to your purpose.
It has been estimated roughly that an engineering, science or maths degree from Oxford or Cambridge has a net worth of over $300000 - that is the increase in annual income over life, minus the three years out of the workforce and the costs of doing the degree. This benefit is leveraged by vocational courses - I have obtained distinctions on every one of mine by applying proper habits of study.
Unless you sleepwalked through those universities and did not take full advantage of what they offered, I suspect that you've never really been there.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:5, Insightful)
ROFL multiple degrees from MIT Harvard and Oxford, really. Not one from each place but multiple.
I think you should reconsider the value of a good education. For example, if you had a good education, even at a half decent state school, you would know how to lie more convincingly.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow I really, really doubt you went to MIT, Harvard and Oxford. If you went to any of those institutions, you'd know the connections you make during school at those types of institutes are invaluable for networking later in life.
Maybe he didn't go to school to socialize. Though we all know how much more important socializing and networking is than actual ability.
How do you know? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure why the parent was marked "insightful".
The crux of the parent post is: "smart" people lack confidence, therefore confident people are not smart.
It's hardly stupid that HR people look for degrees (an indication that the applicant has completed a course of study), good references (an indication that the applicant has performed favourably at their previous job) and personality (because, believe it or not, personality counts and in itself is not a negative trait).
Here's the news: Most jobs require a combination of different abilities, especially interpersonal skills. In many cases it doesn't matter if you are a genius if you are unable to communicate with your colleagues and work well in a team.
Re:Bad for Internet PR (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't be so harsh, there surely is some reliable information out there. Of course, there still remains the problem of finding it, a process which, even with aid of a search engine, most closely resembles searching for diamonds in a septic tank with a single pair of rubber gloves and a ladle...
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:5, Insightful)
College degrees are way overrated. This is coming from someone with multiple degrees from MIT, Harvard, and Oxford.
College mostly is what you make it. Yes, you can go through MIT, Harvard, and Oxford, learn little, and still get a degree. But if you do that, that's your own fault. Many people do get useful skills out of those institutions.
Or does it? Since experience and personal contacts mean much more than degrees, the earlier you can get a job, the better.
Except, of course, that college is an excellent place for getting to know people that you can later network with. You may have missed this opportunity when you were in college and grad school, but other people take advantage of it and it helps them a lot.
I spent a lot of time to get my advanced degrees, but I have no illusions about their actual value.
Value in what sense? If your goal is to maximize your wealth, then it's no secret that you shouldn't get advanced degrees; it's something many graduate schools tell you explicitly (college, however, does pay off).
But not everybody lives in this world to maximize their wealth anyway. People who get advanced degrees don't do it to do well in the workforce, they do it because they are interested in the subject.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:5, Insightful)
Or does it? Since experience and personal contacts mean much more than degrees, the earlier you can get a job, the better. Wasting your time in actual school taking actual classes is a net loser compared to getting a cheap diploma from a diploma mill and getting a paying job today.
Yeah, except for all those fields where you actually require certification that you have the knowledge you're supposed to have such as medicine, law, education, engineering, etc.
What, do you think that if you had connections they would let you be the lead architect on a building project? Do you think they'd just let you have a go at brain surgery or teaching a group of third graders for a week? "Hell, this guy knows the mayor, let's let him be a cop for a day!" A degree is more than a "piece of paper" that is superseded by connections. Connections aren't going to magically give you the knowledge it takes to do certain jobs you daft waste of oxygen.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's suppose you're not full of shit. Still, the very fact that you believe mentioning your degrees increases the credibility of your post points towards degrees in general having value, and refutes the rest of your post.
Posts here regularly run counter to ivory-tower elite liberal lies like history, thermodynamics, and economics. But it's still relatively rare to find a single post that disagrees with itself.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if you never had to program in a functional language later, the very fact that you have learned one has affected your thinking (in ways not necessarily obvious), and very likely has made you a better programmer even in traditional imperative and object oriented languages.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:3, Insightful)
You're making the standard mistake when assessing the value of education. Your criticisms would be valid if all education was supposed to do was provide utility to companies.
Regardless of what education is "supposed to do", the fact is that the incentive for most people to pursue one is very much to demonstrate their utility to employers. Again, as you point out yourself, your employer didn't hire you for what you learned in school, he hired you because it "proved you could think".
The point here is that your employer used your education as a proxy for an aptitude test, he didn't hire you because you actually knew anything useful to him. The employer could just as easily have given aptitude or IQ tests himself, but unfortunately those leave them open to charges of "discrimination" if the subject matter isn't directly related to the job qualifications. Bryan Caplan [cato-unbound.org] and Charles Murray [worldmag.com] have both written some very good articles on the relationship between education and job qualification.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the day, the value of having a degree depends very much on which area of employment you are in.
I have a degree in Electronics Engineering and yet I work as a Software Engineer. In practical terms my degree only really helps me in two ways:
- The one major thing I learned from University was how to learn things fast. This can be used with anything - just recently I managed to learn ski from total newbie to intermediate/advanced level in 1 week - since the observational and analytical skills to do this are generic.
- It gives me a large pool of background knowledge which can help me deduce things faster in other areas: many patterns of "the way people make things" are applicable to all areas of human engineering.
However, 95% of the information I learned for my degree is worthless for what I do now (with the notable exception of CPU design, things like Queue theory and some areas of Mathematics like statistics and numerical analysis).
The diploma itself was only usefull in getting me my first job: from then onwards my CV and the knowledge I display in interviews have been the things that matter.
The reason for this is that I work in IT. This area is still very much an Artisanship - it's practice is missing the predictability and repeatability which are the essential fundations for robust Engineering practices - and as such (outside Academia) proven hands-on experience is vastly more important than scholastic knowledge.
That said for many areas a degree is very important: how many of us would knowingly put the health of their children or the safety of their bridges to people that do not have a degree in the appropriate area?
Re:You can't cheat on homework (Score:4, Insightful)
I could name at least 7 people who have degrees at "real" universities because I did _all_ their course work. They were not able to understand what the assignment was in some cases, and in others barely able to write English. Coursework assessment is a great idea, but it should not count towards the degree!
In Cambridge (England) Your final exam is a "tripos" - you sit on a three legged stool in the centre of the Quadrangle, and ANYONE can ask you questions! No cheating there!
A distance learnign exam is not worth the cost of the e-mailed accreditation pdf. HR people are there to cover their arses. Do you think they would be in HR if they could do a real job? They are their cos they knew someone who owed them a favour.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:3, Insightful)
This happened at three or four companies when I went to a careers fair that wasn't organised by my university:
[Bored IT company rep]: "Yeah, we use Java and you get free coffee, etc, blah, bored blah. Do you study IT or computer science?"
[Me]: "Computer science, at Imperial College [London]"
[IT rep]: "Ooh, OK, here, take my card. Email me your CV, you don't need to do the online application thing"
Another example: when Google came to the CS department to do a presentation they said noone needed to do a phone interview, as they were sure we'd all pass. (Other companies did this too, but they were either small or I don't remember the names).
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually use 80% of my EE degree. It puts me way above the other programmers because I actually understand how the computer works and the other hardware works.
It's all how relative your career path and degree part are, Programming and electronics are hand in hand. Now my Chemistry degree, that's not so useful... Unless I become a programmer at a chemical plant.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a degree in Electronics Engineering ... just recently I managed to learn ski from total newbie to intermediate/advanced level in 1 week
You are confusing #2 as being the result of #1, when in reality both are the result of already being intelligent.
The diploma itself was only usefull in getting me my first job: from then onwards my CV and the knowledge I display in interviews have been the things that matter.
Blatantly false. Trust me, when you have a stack of resumes, the first thing you do is toss out the simple demographic ones like no degree. Because of HR, there is literally no way Linus could possible be hired as a Linux sysadmin or Linux developer at 99% of companies in the US, unless he has a degree (which luckily for him, he does). Doesn't matter what you write in the experience section, if they toss the resume out because of the education section first. I know I went from unemployable to easy street when I finally got my degree...
Re:Bad for Internet PR (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Does it matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fake-degree guy got fired from his job not for performing badly but for having a fake degree. What does this say about people who have a real degree that they didn't notice a difference in performance or at the very least that it took so long to find out?
Far too often I run into people who have degrees, who know absolutely nothing. Far too often having a degree is simply used as a socially acceptable means to discriminate against those who do not. I've spoken with many who said I shouldn't look at it that way. Think of it as a character test to show who can follow through and who have proved they want something bad enough. When I ask, what about those who were excluded and are now actively punished because they had a broken home, a sick parent, minor legal issues, so on and so on, they should be punished for the rest of their life? In some of these cases, they actually proved more character than any degree can reflect. People generally change the subject after that.
The simple fact is, I've know far too many people without a degree who mop the floor with those who do have a degree, but it doesn't stop the discrimination. I'm not talking about doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. A medical equipment salesmen needs a degree? So how's that art history degree helping with that? It doesn't. And BTW, I really met this guy and he absolutely agrees his degree is of no use for his job. His degree simply opened the door for him. Okay, so maybe they have that barrier to ensure the salesmen is an effective communicator? A degree doesn't indicate that in the least and wouldn't you figure that out during an interview?
Hell, if you ever watch various shows were they do simple interviews on the street, they interview teachers, college students, lawyers, brokers, etc. (different cities and different shows, different people), and the vast majority of the time they can't answer the most basic of questions. For the majority of people, a degree is something they have to complete and put behind them, not something they need to retain and carry with them. And the sad thing, its not that they only pick the people with the stupid answers. They just pick the people who provide the most entertaining of answers. The vast majority of people incorrectly answer the questions.
Far too often I see people with completely unrelated degrees get a pass simply because they have a degree. Simple fact is, the rule of the day is its a socially acceptable excuse to discriminate in non-specialized, non-technical fields. So if you have a degree, any degree, you'll get a pass. And since discrimination is everywhere and most don't even use their degree, you can certainly understand why some may be willing to look the other way to obtain a fake degree. After all, its simply breaking down an artificial barrier. At the end of the day, did he perform the work to acceptable standards? If the answer is yes, it highlights the fact that a degree is simply not required for the job; no matter how important some people wish to make themselves appear.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't have a degree.
I don't include the education section.
No one asks why I didn't.
I have no problem getting hired at large companies and government organizations in the US.
If you don't show them certain things they don't think about them, as we've established, HR isn't the brightest bunch. If you aren't smart enough to get by them, its probably in the companies best interests that you don't.
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Diploma mills prove the worthlessness of degree (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually you need learn some reading comprehension. And you need to be careful about calling people much smarter than you "idiot", because that only makes you look like an idiot.
So here is a quick lesson in advanced reading comprehension. It will probably be way over your head, but hey lets give it a try.
Human language is usually structured as to convey information efficiently. Thus, proper use of language usually avoids providing redundant information. Thus, if a properly formed sentence has multiple meanings and one of them would result in it having redundant information, and one would result in it not having redundant information, then the meaning without redundant information is usually correct. If the OP meant that he had a single degree from MIT, Harvard and Oxford each, then the word "multiple" would be completely redundant. Therefore that interpretation is incorrect. The correct interpretation is that he had multiple degrees from each school.
Of course he could have worded the sentence incorrectly, but he would not have done that if he had any degree from Oxford. They are very pedantic about their English there.