There’s a guy working for our institution whom I’ll refer to as “Fred Jones.” He’s 55 years old and has worked here for about 7 years. Fred doesn’t actually work at our primary location; he works in a small satellite office adjacent to a large Air Force base.
We do a lot of contract work for the Air Force (primarily R&D), and Fred’s job is basically marketing. He’s supposed to contact potential government customers to gather & present information and (hopefully) win us some contracts.
Fred is pretty much worthless. He has no technical expertise in anything (he’s not even an engineer) and he’s made little (if any) valuable contacts. He’s also paid a very large salary and racks up huge dinner, travel, and hotel bills. I’ve met him on 4 or 5 occasions, and he appears to be a shyster.
Fred should be fired. But our institution has an overly-compassionate culture, and it’s an ultra-rare occurrence for anyone to get terminated for anything.
Anyway, Fred has “PhD” and his business card says “Dr. Fred Jones” on it, as does the sign on his office door. At conferences his nametag says “Dr. Fred Jones.” And as with any other company, our salaries are commensurate with experience and degree level.
On a business trip last year I paid a visit to Dr. Jones. While in his office I glanced at the degrees on his wall. He apparently got his PhD in Business from California Coast University. Hmmm, never heard of that school. So I did some checking… CCU is what’s known as a “degree mill,” and is not accredited by any organization recognized by the U.S. Education Department. A google search turned up lots of interesting stuff, including a charge that this “university” only employees four full-time people. Here’s one story from many.
This pisses me off to no end. I don’t have a PhD, but I work with some who do, and each had to work their ass off for it. Worse yet, I found out our institution paid the tuition! Didn’t someone check to see if this mail-order outfit was, um, accredited?!
Besides me, there’s only one other person who knows about this (that is, other than “Dr.” Jones.)
Grrr… :mad:
