11-28-2014, 11:44 AM
An alleged university where alleged rapist Bill Cosby allegedly "earned" masters and doctorate degrees now is having second thoughts.
Life experience degrees and "flexible" courses??? Sounds like high school dropout Cosby was the recipient of some regionally accredited gold standard largesse. Do we dare use the M word????
People have been calling BS on Cosby's "education" since at least 1985--nearly as long as people have been calling him a rapist.
Now the dominoes are starting to fall, who else will be taking back their degrees? Here's the list of alleged honorary degrees bestowed by alleged gold standard institutions on the alleged rapist:
Quote:Another college moves to erase ties with Bill Cosby
By Associated Press
November 27, 2014 | 4:26pm
Bill Cosby Photo: Storms Media Group
BOSTON — The University of Massachusetts-Amherst has cut ties with alumnus Bill Cosby amid allegations by women accusing him of sexual assault.
A university spokesman told the Boston Globe on Wednesday university officials had asked Cosby to step down as an honorary co-chairman of their $300 million fundraising campaign and Cosby agreed.
Cosby received a master’s degree and a doctorate in education from the university. He and his wife donated several hundred thousand dollars to the university.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley sent a letter to the university urging it to cut ties with Cosby.
Coakley says while Cosby hadn’t been criminally charged his association sends the wrong message when the state is focused on the prevention of campus sexual assault.
Cosby’s lawyer has called the allegations “unsubstantiated” and “discredited.”
Life experience degrees and "flexible" courses??? Sounds like high school dropout Cosby was the recipient of some regionally accredited gold standard largesse. Do we dare use the M word????
Quote:From Dropout to Doctorate: A Bill Cosby Educational Timeline
Quote:"My father said, 'Junior, it takes a man to play football, but any fool can get up on the stage and make an ass of himself.'"That's Bill Cosby, talking about college, comedy and football in a terrific interview with George Vecsey.
I knew Bill Cosby had a Ph.D. in Education (or an Ed.D., as it's called), but I didn't know that before that he had been a high school dropout. He quit high school and "wound up in the Navy, earning an equivalency diploma, tending to the wounded in a military hospital," says Vecsey.
Then Cosby went to Temple University, at age 24. Two years later he quit football and then quit college, too, but wore "a cherry-red Temple sweatshirt while working clubs in Philadelphia and New York." Cosby then was "awarded his bachelor's degree by Temple in 1971," according to the Encyclopedia of African American History. (The same source says he joined the Navy after failing the 10th grade.)
So let's break this all down into a Bill Cosby educational timeline:
1937: Bill Cosby born
1956: Bill Cosby fails 10th grade at Germantown High School in Philadelphia
1956: Joins the U.S. Navy; earns his high school equivalency degree
1960: Honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy
1961: Enters Temple University (also in Philadelphia) on an athletic scholarship
1961: Letters as a fullback on the Temple football team and runs track
1963: Quits Temple to do comedy full-time
1963: Does his first guest spot on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
1964: Releases his first comedy album: Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow... Right!
1965: Begins starring on TV show I Spy
1971: Is awarded a bachelor's degree by Temple University
1971: Joins the cast of the educational TV show The Electric Company (through 1973)
1972: Master's degree in Education from the University of Massachusetts
1976: Submits doctoral thesis
1976: Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts
Bill Cosby's doctoral thesis was titled "An Integration of the Visual Media via Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning." It's 142 pages long, with another 100 pages of bibliography and appendices.
Many sources (including the usually reliable Museum of Broadcast Communications) claim that Cosby earned his doctorate from UMass in 1977. However, 1976 is the correct year. His typed doctoral thesis is dated September 1976, and on its website the university repeatedly says he earned the degree in 1976, calling him "Dr. Bill Cosby (Ed.D. 1976)."
It doesn't sound like Cosby went to school full-time (or even part-time) to get his degrees. His bachelor's from Temple came in 1971, years after he left school. Temple awarded him the degree on the basis of life experience, and who can blame them? All Cosby had done after leaving school was become an international comedy star, earn three Emmy Awards for acting in I Spy, etc, etc. Naturally they wanted to recognize that and claim him as their own.
His grad degrees were also legitimately given, not honorary, but the details of how and when exactly he squeezed in classes are a bit elusive. On the first page of his doctoral thesis, Cosby thanks his advisor Dr. Norma Jean Anderson, saying "I am especially indebted for her faith in my doing graduate work, to the extent that she travelled to New York to personally recruit me into the graduate program."
I wonder if it's too much to assume from that phrase that Dr. Anderson saw an opportunity to boost the profile of UMass by recruiting an education-minded celebrity, and did so with a promise that the school would be flexible with courses and work around his schedule?
Here were some of the items on Cosby's work schedule from 1971-76:
So it's clear Cosby wasn't hanging out on campus too much. None of which is to say Bill Cosby didn't earn his degrees or doesn't deserve them. Even if Cosby got an occasional free pass here and there on the way to his degrees, how rare is that? (He certainly wouldn't be the first football player in college history to get a degree without completing every last course.) Also, he donated $23 million to Spellman College in 1993, and he deserves a Ph.D. for that alone.
- Appeared regularly on The Electric Company and Sesame Street (starting 1971)
- Created and starred in Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, the iconic Saturday morning show (starting 1972)
- Created and starred in the short-lived primetime series The New Bill Cosby Show (1972)
- Created and starred in the short-lived primetime variety series Cos (1976)
- Starred in the feature films Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Let's Do It Again (1975) and Mother, Jugs and Speed (1976)
But others have gotten tetchy about Cosby's degrees, it turns out. Author and academic Michael Eric Dyson presented the story this way in his 2006 book Is Bill Cosby Right?:
Quote:[Cosby] dropped out of high school after he flunked the tenth grade three times. He enlisted in the navy, where he got his GED, and then enrolled at Temple University, where he dropped out to pursue a show business career. His unfinished bachelor's degree from Temple was eventually bestowed on him because of "life experience." Cosby enrolled as a part-time doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which awarded him the Ed.D. degree in 1977 for a dissertation on Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.Dyson then backtracks a little, saying that Damerell's conclusion is "harsh and unfair," but that doesn't stop Dyson from putting those skeptical quote marks around "life experience." He also notes the "ironic route Cosby has traveled to become nearly as acclaimed for his educational pedigree as for his comedic genius."
But not even that degree was unsullied by controversy: A professor who served on Cosby's dissertation committee, Reginald Damerell, said that Cosby hardly took a class -- and that he got course credit for appearing on Sesame Street and The Electric Company, "and wrote a dissertation that analyzed the impact of his show." Damerell concluded that degrees like Cosby's "do not attest to genuine academic achievement. They are empty credentials."
Dyson's book attacks Cosby for blaming black parents and kids for their failures -- "It's a good thing Cosby didn't have Bill Cosby around to discourage him from achieving his goals," he says -- so his comments on Cosby's education might be taken with a grain of salt.
His statement that Cosby flunked tenth grade three times, though, accounts for why Cosby was 18 or 19 when he joined the Navy in 1956.
The other thing that stands out in that educational timeline is how rapidly Cosby rose in comedy. He gets out of the Navy in 1960, starts school in 1961, and two years later he's doing standup for Johnny Carson. The next year he has a hit comedy album, and the year after that he's starring in I Spy and winning Emmy Awards. That's impressive.
As a final side note, Cosby's wife Camille earned her own doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts in 1992. So there are two Doctor Cosbys in the house.
People have been calling BS on Cosby's "education" since at least 1985--nearly as long as people have been calling him a rapist.
Quote:November 18, 1985 Vol. 24 No. 21
A New Book Says Doctorates in Education—Including Actor Bill Cosby's—Are a Joke
By Brenda Eady
When comedian Bill Cosby received his Doctor of Education degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on a fine May day in 1977, he was the star of the commencement. The press took photos as Cosby, wearing his academic robes and later smoking a congratulatory cigar, received his diploma from the chancellor of the university. Now a disgruntled former professor at the university is calling for a second ceremony. "I think it would be wonderful if Cosby staged a media event similar to the one that took place when he earned his doctorate," says Reginald G. Damerell. "Only this time he would give back the degree to show that he finally realizes it stands for nothing. I hope that Bill Cosby would raise consciousness about how lousy schools of education are."
In his new book, Education's Smoking Gun (Freundlich Books, $17.95), Damerell, 64, claims that Cosby's Ed.D.—like many an advanced education doctorate—is a sham. "Everybody knows Cosby," says Damerell, a U. Mass. associate professor for 12 years before he left in 1982. "He just happens to illustrate the point. He earned his degree much as a lot of other people do. It was a ridiculous situation."
Damerell says that Cosby, who had dropped out of Temple University before completing his undergraduate degree in phys ed, was recruited personally by the assistant dean of the U. Mass. education school. He entered a program designed to award advanced education degrees to "mature students," some of whom hadn't attended or completed college. According to Damerell, Cosby did not take semester-length courses. Instead he attended "at least one" weekend-long seminar and received credits for appearances on TV shows like Sesame Street and The Electric Company. Cosby's 242-page doctoral dissertation discussed ways that teachers could use his Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids animated TV shows as educational tools. "Cosby could have given up show business and spent six years at the school and not know any more than he did anyhow," Damerell says. "Unlike chemistry, education has no body of knowledge, so it doesn't matter how long you spend on it."
A member of Cosby's doctoral committee for five months, Damerell claims that in that time the only full board meeting on Cosby's dissertation took place during a sumptuous meal at the entertainer's Massachusetts home. Damerell says Cosby took the group on a tour of his 16-room, 135-year-old restored farmhouse, including an admiring visit to a closet filled with fur coats belonging to his wife, Ca-mille, and drawer after drawer of Cosby's shirts. "It was a scene right out of The Great Gatsby," notes Damerell. "We did not discuss education," Damerell says, but that wasn't unusual. "All the time I was at the school we never discussed anything basic about education with anybody."
A longtime advertising copywriter whose 1968 book about integration, Triumph in a White Suburb, led to his U. Mass. faculty appointment, Damerell claims that Cosby's degree typifies the empty schooling given many education majors. He says that thousands of badly educated teachers are undermining elementary and high school instruction across the country. Holding a copy of Cosby's dissertation, Damerell says, "A dissertation is supposed to be a contribution to human knowledge. This isn't. And I would say that 99 percent of [education] dissertations aren't either."
Cosby, who has won acclaim for his ability to reach young people through TV, has no comment on the charges. But Louis Fischer, acting dean of the University of Massachusetts School of Education when Cosby received his doctorate, defends the entertainer's effort. Cosby's dissertation, Fischer says, was "a very respectable piece of work." Fischer adds that U. Mass. at the time was trying "to get away from the historic rigidities of schools of education" and that there were "at least 50 other students at that time who also received Ed.D. degrees through such nontraditional methods."
That's partly what makes Damerell so angry. His wife, Edna, has worked in a real estate office to support them since his disgusted departure from the school. He has no plans to return to education or to moderate his outspoken views. "You can see I have paid a price," says Damerell, who now lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Bronxville, N.Y. "But I recommend that education schools be abolished. There's no way to save them."
Now the dominoes are starting to fall, who else will be taking back their degrees? Here's the list of alleged honorary degrees bestowed by alleged gold standard institutions on the alleged rapist:
Quote:Honorary degrees
Cosby has received honorary degrees from more than a dozen colleges and universities:
- Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Boston University, May 18, 2014
- Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Marquette University, May 19, 2013.
- Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, December 5, 2008.
- Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Carnegie Mellon University, May 20, 2007; he was also the keynote speaker for the commencement ceremony.
- Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music, May 8, 2004. Cosby was also the host of the school's 60th Anniversary Concert in January 2006.
- Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Baylor University, September 4, 2003, at the "Spirit Rally" for the Baylor and Central Texas communities.
- Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Yale University, May 26, 2003.
- Honorary Degree in 2003 presented by President William Harjo LoneFight from the Sisseton Wahpeton College on the Lake Traverse Reservation for his contributions to minority education.
- Honorary Doctorate from West Chester University of Pennsylvania during the 2003 graduation ceremony.
- Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Haverford College, May 2002.
- Honorary Degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Cincinnati in 2001.
- Honorary Doctorate from Amherst College, May 1999. (Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa)
- Honorary Doctorate from Colgate University, May 22, 1999; he was also the keynote speaker for the commencement ceremony.
- Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Southern California, May 8, 1998.
- Cosby served as the commencement speaker and received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut, May 18, 1996.
- Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Swarthmore College, 1995.
- Honorary LL.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, 1990. He also served as the commencement speaker in May 1997.