Say it ain't so, Joe.

New version.

http://chat.degree.com/

Way bigger site that degreediscussion. I guess it's too bad Robert has a job and a dick. Not much of that going around at DD.

How often have you read some snide comment about how anti-Christian bigot George Gollin (George D. Gollin, George Dana Gollin) envies his wife because she has a better job than he does?

Well--it's true, she does have a better job than he does!

According to the University of Illinois Salary List 2008-2009, dated August 27, 2008, Gollin's wife, U of Illinois "Conflict of Interest Officer" Melanie Loots, has a present salary of $160,425.00, with a proposed salary of $166,842.00.

Self-promoting cyberstalker George Gollin makes "only" $100,000.04 in present salary and $101,900.04 as a proposed salary.

Quote:                         Present Salary     Proposed Salary
Gollin, George     $100,000.04       $101,900.04

Quote:                          Present Salary    Proposed Salary
Loots, Melanie J. $160,425.00        $166,842.00

Quote:Women who earn more money than their partners are more likely to divorce, according to a well-known marriage researcher, Steven Nock, of the U. of Virginia, Dept. of Sociology. The chances of divorce increases since women know they can now take care of themselves economically.

Quote:Believe it or not, recent research shows that a man actually can become psychologically damaged when his wife earns a larger percentage of the household income than he does. He can get migraines, feel less satisfied with his overall life, and even get clinically depressed.

Researchers say that it's worse if the wife brags about her larger salary and tries to make a power play by getting more of the decision-making in the household or trying to get the husband to do more of the household duties. When she rubs it in, the husband just can't take it. He becomes even more depressed and sometimes sick.

Quote:"Society says the male is supposed to be the breadwinner. Men define masculinity by how much broad they can bring home. Men feel more pressure to bring home more money because this is central to his identity and the masculine role," he says. ...

The worst part about a man who feels insecure about his wife's higher salary, notes Dr. Carter, is that he could begin to feel inadequate, which could lead to marital conflict.

"A man earning less than his mate will feel that it is not fair and become resentful. He may begin to question himself and develop self-doubt and then may resort to verbal, psychological or even physical attack of his mate to feel better," he added.

Quote:There's this societal belief that whoever has the money in a relationship has the power, and if she makes more money than he does, she's somehow going to take over," Hayden says. "He's going to be this poor, pathetic person without any say.

Association of Public and Land-grant Universities Report Shows Strong Faculty Engagement in Online Learning

Quote:Unprecedented Study Offers Institutions Guidance for Continued Growth of Online Learning

August 31, 2009 – More than one-third of public university faculty have taught an online course while more than one-half have recommended an online course to students, according to an unprecedented study of administrative and faculty views toward online learning released today by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities-Sloan National Commission on Online Learning.

In addition, nearly 64 percent of faculty said it takes “somewhat more” or “a lot more” effort to teach online compared to a face-to-face course. However, a large majority of faculty cited student needs as a primary motivator for teaching online, most commonly citing “meet student needs for flexible access” or the “best way to reach particular students” as the reason they choose to teach online courses.

The two-volume report, Online Learning as a Strategic Asset, contains the results of 231 interviews conducted with administrators, faculty, and students at 45 public institutions across the country and more than 10,700 responses from faculty across the spectrum of teaching positions – tenure/non-tenure track; full- and part-time; and both those who have and those who have not taught online.  The report was underwritten by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

While faculty engagement in online learning is solid, faculty expressed dissatisfaction with the support services provided and the incentives offered by public universities. Faculty ranked seven of eight support dimensions as “below average,” including support for online course development, course delivery, and students; policies on intellectual property; recognition in tenure and promotion; and incentives for developing and delivering online courses. Only technology infrastructure was rated average.  Faculty gave the lowest ranking to their institution’s incentives for developing and for delivering online courses.

“During the past decade, online learning has begun to weave into the fabric of higher education and has become the fastest growing segment,” said Peter McPherson, president of Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (A۰P۰L۰U).  “All indications are that this growth will continue.  The work of the A۰P۰L۰U-Sloan Commission—through this in-depth study—will help inform higher education leaders trying to meet current demand for online learning while preparing for future growth.”

Online enrollment has more than doubled from an estimated 1.6 million students in fall 2002 to 3.94 million students in fall 2007 and grew by 12.9 percent from fall 2006 to fall 2007, according to the annual Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) survey of online learning.  The Commission believes the leadership of presidents and provosts is one of the key elements to successfully integrating online learning into every campus.

. . .

The two-volume report, Online Learning as a Strategic Asset, can be downloaded as pdf files below:  
Volume I: A Resource for Campus Leaders
Volume II: The Paradox of Faculty Voices: Views and Experiences with Online Learning

Quote:Thursday, August 27, 2009
Online Learning... for free - Monday Morning

They don’t offer degrees but then they don’t charge tuition either. Colleges and universities across the United States are offering free courses online on virtually every subject imaginable, including videotaped lectures by some of their most distinguished professors. Video-sharing site YouTube recently created a hub called YouTube EDU at http://youtube.com/edu for the more than 100 US colleges and universities offering free online learning. Among the institutions of higher education posting videos to YouTube include MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. The courses offered on YouTube EDU are free and not for credit, but the number of schools offering online classes which count towards a degree is booming.

We haven't heard from this clown in a while. Damon Rambo tried to stir some shit at d-board and degreedisgusted but disappeared as suddenly as he arrived. Was he for real or was he as full of shit as Gollin and Levicoff?

I hoped that he would show up here so we could set him straight. His degree program at SATS is okay, it is middle of the road but not something that would cause me to talk a lotta shit about.

Think about it. In the mid to late 70's John Bear was running a number of illegal diploma mills, the kind which sold degrees and required no work what-so-ever in addition to the kind which required a minimum amount of work.

Then, according to Bear, he became a "consultant" for the FBI in 1980. I'll take this to mean that they came knocking at his door and rather than facing charges and prison time Bear negotiated a deal to become an "informant" and proceeded to rat out all of his friends.

Quote:August 24, 2009, 11:59 pm [N.Y. Times]

Is It O.K. to Blog About This Woman Anonymously?
By Randy Cohen
The Issue
Marc Hermann/NY Daily News Liskula Cohen
Last week Judge Joan Madden ordered Google to identify the anonymous blogger whose site, "Skanks in NYC," hosted by a Google subsidiary and now removed, slammed the fashion model Liskula Cohen. Madden found the blogger's writing, including the assertion that Cohen is a "psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank," to be "reasonably susceptible to a defamatory connotation." That is, Cohen has the basis for a lawsuit and is entitled to know the identity of the blogger in order to seek legal redress. Google complied, identifying the blogger to Cohen's lawyer. Has anonymous posting, though generally protected by law, become so toxic that it should be discouraged?

The Argument
It has. To promote the social good of lively conversation and the exchange of ideas, transparency should be the default mode. And that goes both for lofty political discourse and casual comments on Amazon. "Says who?" is not a trivial question. It deepens the reader's understanding to know who is speaking, from what perspective, with what (nutty?) history, and with what personal stake in the matter. It encourages civility and integrity in the writer to stand behind her words. There are times when anonymous posting is necessary, when disclosure is apt to bring harsh retribution -- l'll come to that -- but more often, anonymous posting sustains a culture, or at least a hideous subculture, of calumny and malice so caustic as to inhibit the very discourse the Web can so admirably enable. Writers should not do it, and Web site hosts should not allow it.

As the writer Katha Pollitt (who is also my ex-wife) puts it: "I get a ton of hostile, misogynous, idiotic comments from anonymous trolls when I blog at The Nation. Sometimes I feel like I am dancing on the table for an audience of drunks. Not only is it dispiriting -- and let's not forget that women writers on the Internet receive vastly more hateful comments than male writers -- it has nothing to do with the brisk and vigorous exchange of ideas often said to be the reason for anonymity. Because there are no ideas and no exchange."

My own experience has been marked by greater cordiality, but then again, I have a virtual bodyguard. The Times employs moderated comments, declining, according to its policy, to post those that include "personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence and SHOUTING." But the very necessity of filtering such vitriol points up the consequences of anonymous posting.

Were it merely a matter of taste or tone or social style -- etiquette -- the anonymously obnoxious would be unimportant: we could all just lament the rising tide of coarseness and get on with it. But those who offer not argument but invective discourage others from speaking. People who might be inclined to express an opinion grow reluctant when doing so means having some stranger call you a ... well, judging by some of the unsigned e-mail I receive in response to "The Ethicist," my column in the Times Magazine, there is no limit to what epithets will be flung. (Still, I should note, most responses are courteous. But I did have to toughen up.) It is the conversational version of Gresham's law: bad discourse drives out good.

There are times when anonymity is legitimately practiced — by political dissidents in repressive regimes, for example. Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told me: "We've defended the right to anonymous speech successfully on some occasions," including "Iranian students in masked protest at the time of the shah." Journalists reasonably use anonymous sources when doing so is the only way to obtain significant information. Rate My Professors and the like, though not without their faults, are useful enterprises that rely on the shield of anonymity. Without it, what student, mindful of the wrath of a teacher scorned, would post? (But with anonymity comes diminished credibility. It's tough to distinguish the astute from the vengeful.) Even in more casual online settings, students are vulnerable. Lieberman noted that "lots of school districts have discipline codes (to which we object) that punish out-of-school Internet speech by high school students." She also said there are situations when it is important to identify an incognito poster — for instance, to thwart harassment or bullying. So how are we to determine when anonymous posting is proper?

Here is a guideline. The effects of anonymous posting have become so baleful that it should be forsworn unless there is a reasonable fear of retribution. By posting openly, we support the conditions in which honest conversation can flourish.

To take this approach is to break from the past. We are a nation founded on anonymous postings, or their 18th-century equivalent, pseudononymous pamphlets. The authors of the Federalist Papers, including Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, published under the name Publius. Among Benjamin Franklin's many pen names are Silence Dogood, Harry Meanwell, Alice Addertongue and, most famously, Richard Saunders, better known as Poor Richard. Justice Clarence Thomas, concurring with the majority in a 1995 case, wrote a celebration of anonymous publication in 18th-century America.

But conditions change, and what was benign in one setting can be malignant in another; that's why we no longer allow people to wander the streets of our cities carrying guns. (O.K., we do allow that. But we have a good reason: to protect ourselves from marauding dinosaurs.) What has not altered is the importance of the free exchange of ideas. Ethics urges us to act in ways that promote this social good which, except when facing a genuine threat, means writing with civility and signing your name. This is not a panacea -- mechanisms must be put in place to conveniently allow honestly signed comments, and even those can be vituperative -- but it's a start.

Incidentally, Liskula Cohen has filed a $3 million defamation suit against the no-longer anonymous Rosemary Port, who turns out to be an acquaintance of Cohen's, but her lawyers now say that she intends to drop the suit. Port, on the other hand, may sue Google for violating her privacy.

CHEA director George Gollin has attacked another Christian university.

According to anti-Christian bigot George Gollin (George D. Gollin, George Dana Gollin), St. Thomas-a-Becket College & University has the "world's gaudiest...web pages."

World's gaudiest unaccredited C&U web pages...

Clearly what offends Gollum is not their "gaudiness" but rather the "God-liness"? of their program:

Quote:We train established ministers around the world to take the Word of the Lord to all people, With the help of the members of the Wesley Synod there is no reason for a minister in any country not to have the training that they need to help other Christians. Over the years we have trained Evangelist, Lay Preachers, Pastors, Reverends and Bishops. All have found that a module from our Institute has helped them to go forward in the Name of the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. If you are just starting as a minister, with your Church, we can and will supply a Ministers training Course Module that will give you insight into the work you are about to undertake. All ministers in any third world country so long as they can write and read English can take a course with us. Below are some of the course Modules we supply for all ministers within the Christian Faith. We have been established since 1994.

This is the sort of thing you would expect in some third world country--or at the University of Illinois.

Wasn't the Gollum brat in Germany last year? Connect the dots! The scent you smell could be more than just an explosion in a sauerkraut factory.

Germany: 100 professors suspected of Ph.D. bribes

Quote:By DAVID RISING (AP) -- 2 days ago

BERLIN -- German prosecutors are investigating about 100 professors across the country on suspicion they took bribes to help students get their doctoral degrees, authorities said Saturday.

The investigation is focused on the Institute for Scientific Consulting, based in Bergisch Gladbach, just east of Cologne, which allegedly acted as the intermediary between students and the professors, said Cologne prosecutor's spokesman Guenther Feld.

Feld confirmed reports of the investigation in both Focus magazine and the Neue Westfaelische newspaper, but would not give further details.

The Institute for Scientific Consulting did not answer its phone Saturday.

According to the two publications, students paid between euro4,000 to euro20,000 ($5,700 to $28,500) to the company, which promised to help them get their doctorate degrees through its extensive contacts within university faculties.

The Neue Westfaelische newspaper reported that "hundreds" of students were involved, and that the company paid professors between euro2,000 to euro5,000 when their clients had successfully received their Ph.D.'s. It was not clear whether the students knew that bribes were being paid.

The professors are being investigated on suspicion of fraud, Feld said.

"The supervision of a Ph.D. thesis is a public service, and one is not allowed to take money for it," Feld told the newspaper.

So far, evidence points to the involvement of about 100 professors across the country spanning "numerous disciplines," Feld was quoted as saying. Most are people teaching classes on a contract basis, rather than full-time professors, he said.

Focus reported that the investigation involved universities in Frankfurt, Tuebingen, Leipzig, Rostock, Jena, Bayreuth, Ingolstadt, Hamburg, Hannover, Bielefeld, Hagen, Cologne and Berlin.

The investigation was opened last year after another probe of the Institute for Scientific Consulting in connection with a similar scheme.

After authorities searched the firm's headquarters in March 2008, the company's head was charged with paying bribes in a case involving a Hannover University law professor. The man, whose name was not released in line with German privacy laws, was found guilty and sentenced in July 2008 to 3 1/2 years in prison, and fined euro75,000.

The professor, whose name was also not released, was found guilty as well and sentenced to three years in prison for accepting the bribes.

The professor confessed in court to accepting nearly euro200,000 to serve as a faculty adviser to more than 60 doctorate students between 1998 and 2005.

The professor said he needed the money to renovate his Hamburg mansion.