02-01-2008, 07:49 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2008, 08:25 AM by Phineas Fogg.)
The character Rich Douglas, who has become a public figure shamelessly promoting his expertise in education based on his own questionable education and sketchy background, gets my nomination for the hall of shame. This guy is an educational obsessive who skated through his various college degrees with a minimum of class time and effort who gleefully points to others declaring their substandardness. His own statements in the past have indicated that he practically stole his degrees by simply taking a single test to gain course credit. Then later he graduates from a Union Institute design-it-yourself program after what appears to be minimal time spent. With the help of a personal friend on his doctoral committee (John Bear) he is awarded a Ph.D on the basis of a simplistic questionnaire and a few interviews. He seems to have been in charge of all known air space with immeasurable authority and responsibility as a low-level AF officer and then as a civilian has flitted from one little job after another (some teaching or assisting unaccredited schools). He is an incessant poster who has been tossed from a number of forums for his obnoxiousness. He believes he is an expert in post-secondary education and continually harps on the futility of state approved education or accreditation other than RA. He slavishly follows the changing concepts of his buddy Bear (aka Klempner) who has spent much of his mid-life and later years starting unaccredited schools, then trashing those same schools in various books and media interviews, for whatever notoriety, sensationalism, and profit he could gain. Hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Douglas' one piece of aging research appears to be his dissertation which amounted to an institutional name recognition exercise. One of his findings indicated that State Approved schools were very acceptable to an overwhelming number of employers until (not surprisingly) he introduced his spin during interviews to bias the findings and lo and behold acceptability dropped. What truly amazing science!!! On that bit of Nobel-qualifying work, he (in his mind) is now an authority on education. ...Gasp....
May we all be spared this "expertise".
Douglas' one piece of aging research appears to be his dissertation which amounted to an institutional name recognition exercise. One of his findings indicated that State Approved schools were very acceptable to an overwhelming number of employers until (not surprisingly) he introduced his spin during interviews to bias the findings and lo and behold acceptability dropped. What truly amazing science!!! On that bit of Nobel-qualifying work, he (in his mind) is now an authority on education. ...Gasp....
May we all be spared this "expertise".