Anyone have any background on this site as it is barely mentioned here (twice I believe)? I see various DI regulars there.

I wanted to see how often forums like DI appeared in news stories and ran across this one from 2002 and did not see it mentioned here.

'Mail Bomb' Attack Threatens Web Site Popular With Diploma-Mill Watchdogs (Chronicle of Higher Education, May 22, 2002) Archived: Highbeam

This is all that is available for free,

Quote:The survival of Degreeinfo.com, an online forum on distance learning that is popular among diploma-mill watchdogs, students, and some college officials, has been threatened by anonymous attackers who barraged the Web site's domain-name server with 65,000 messages in one day.

The Web site's administrator, Chip White, says he doesn't know who perpetrated the "mail bomb" attack but suspects it was a diploma mill. He says the messages were sent by only a few people -- perhaps only one person -- but were made to appear as if they had been sent by many more.

"These vigilantes don't like what we're saying," says Mr. White, an administrator for a California-based health-care company. …

I made the mistake of trying to inform people of Ashworth's National Transfer Network at DI without knowing all of the back story on these forums. I am slowly getting caught up now.

As part of the debate I wound up with a (IMO) useful argument against RA being necessary.

I did some simple job search queries and found some empirical confirmation that academic snobbery is in academia.

"Regionally Accredited" = 3,800 Job Postings (almost entirely colleges and universities)

Out of 3.7 million job listings that is 0.1% of jobs explicitly requiring a "Regionally Accredited" degree.

The prestige argument was also rather interesting as a reason given not to go to an NA school was lack of "prestige". Yet, no one would argue any of the Big 3 or any other RA schools they frequently recommend had any "prestige".

And apparently having New Mexico Junior College on my resume as opposed to Ashworth College will make the employers swoon, as it obvious projects educational excellence of the highest caliber being RA.

Finally they pimp StraighterLine, which I have no problem with except for their hypocrisy of it being an unaccredited, for-profit corporation that does not offer financial aid.

Almost forgot, when you need to figure out which schools take NA credits you are just supposed to use Google and people who don't like to use government bureaucracies to do their own financial aid are lazy. If you argue with this "advice" you do not belong in college.

Quote:How Much Is That Psychology Degree Worth?

Ann Coulter | Jan 28, 2015




The Republican leadership in Congress still hasn't held hearings on why college is so expensive, although I proposed the idea two weeks ago. Of course, it's been a month since the GOP took control of Congress, and they also haven't voided Obama's unconstitutional executive amnesty, passed e-Verify, a fence bill or the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act.

Democrats are on offense all the time, even when they've just had their legs cut off. They announce absurd agenda items and then indignantly demand to know why Republicans are refusing to deal with the free unicorn-rides proposal. Obama is a lame-duck president and, three months ago, his party was slaughtered in midterm elections. And yet, I gather that his State of the Union address consisted of a litany of insanely expensive, utterly pointless ideas.

And Republicans fall for it every time. They consider it a major victory to come back with a free-market approach to surrender.

In response to Obama's "free" community college idea, Republicans should say: We're not giving you anything, and, in fact, we're demanding answers from the entire "higher ed" establishment. You'll be surprised how liberating and fun it is to go on offense, Republicans.

The GOP needs to hold tobacco company-style hearings, hauling in the presidents of various universities and asking them to justify their multimillion-dollar salaries.

We want professors explaining, under penalty of perjury, exactly how much they make per hour for their rigorous schedules of two classes a week, summers off, and full-year "sabbaticals" every few terms.

Also, we'd like to know how driving the getaway car for a cop-killer constitutes a qualification to teach college.

College professors relentlessly hound the rest of society for its crimes -- racism, sexism, "white privilege" -- look what you're doing to the environment! Why are we paying them, again? There's no visible reason most of these people should be teaching at all. How about they explain their value to the taxpayers who subsidize their cushy lives?

Other than engineers, economists and quarterbacks, no one acquires any marketable knowledge at college. The sole purpose of a degree is to function as a substitute IQ test. If employers were allowed to give applicants 15-minute intelligence tests, they'd have the exact same information as knowing what college a person attended.

But they can't do that, so families have to spend a quarter of a million dollars to give their kids the parchment equivalent of an IQ score. High school kids who get into good schools should present employers with their college acceptance letters and skip the going-to-college part.

Republicans need to force colleges to issue reports, just like drug companies, attesting to the average cost, and the average salary, for every degree. It will cost you $160,000 to receive a degree in Spanish literature and will take you 88 years to pay that back.

Trust Ann -- liberals will go wild. That's how you'll know you've struck gold.

They will scream bloody murder, accuse Republicans of "McCarthyism," say it's too burdensome to collect this information and how can you put a dollar value on a college education?

They better be able to put a dollar value on a college degree! That's how it's being sold. Obama doesn't say it's important to go to college to learn to think analytically, read critically or be exposed to different ideas -- none of which occurs at most colleges, anyway.

No, that's not the pitch. The pitch is: You're going to fail in this economy without a college degree!

If colleges really believe their product is worth anything, why don't they guarantee their own student loans? Why should taxpayers be on the hook for everyone's tuition?

According to the colleges, their graduates are going to earn all sorts of money! At least that's what they say when they're conning teenagers into taking out colossal student loans.

"It's burdensome" is not an excuse accepted by the government in any other context. It doesn't work for businesses being forced to come up with reams of information for the IRS, the EPA or OSHA. And the taxpayer isn't on the hook for the deceptive promises of any other industry -- except hucksters for home mortgages and student loans.

I would like to hear college presidents explain that what they do is totally different from any other company.

Democrats need to be exposed as hustlers for the most fraudulent, overpriced scam in the country. There's no other industry that has politicians flacking for it, much less conniving to prevent consumers from getting truthful information about the merchandise.

Going after Big Education is all upside for the GOP. College professors and administrators already vote 98 percent for the Democrats. In fact, it's a triple-play for Republicans: They would punish a liberal constituency, strike a blow against the principal vehicle of liberal indoctrination in America, and the middle class will love it.

Quote:Awakening to the damage done by teachers' unions
By Washington Examiner | January 28, 2015 | 5:00 am

When conservatives think of education reform, they tend to regard it as their own fight. They bring up the charter and voucher programs promoted by Republicans such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. They mention Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose 2011 public-sector union reforms have already saved his state's school districts at least $3 billion dollars and averted the need to fire teachers in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

But Democrats also want their children to get a good education, and as a result something new and bipartisan is happening in the world of education policy. There appears to be a great awakening across the ideological spectrum to the fact that primary and secondary education is failing badly and that the entrenched enemies of reform — the teachers' unions — are much too powerful. The unions are a key impediment to much-needed education reforms. Everyone knows it and now more people are willing to say it out loud.

For all of his faults, one pleasant surprise of President Obama's administration has been his display of independence from the teachers' unions that oppose anything that might create standards, competition, or accountability for the often deplorable quality of their members' work. Even Obama's promotion of Common Core, which many conservatives oppose for different reasons, has rankled the unions because it would subject teachers to clear standards and measurements of success.

New York's Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, also deserves bipartisan recognition for what he is doing in this vital policy area. The recent corruption indictment of anti-reform state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, makes it more likely that much or all of the governor's education agenda will pass.

Cuomo has complained that the standards intended to evaluate teachers in his state are “baloney” — only one percent of teachers have been found to be ineffective even though two-thirds of students cannot read or do math at grade level. Thus, the governor has conditioned a $1.1 billion increase in education spending this year on reforms that would toughen standards and make only the best teachers get tenure.

The deal making method that Cuomo has employed is part of a broader pattern that shows he is serious about reform. In the face of opposition from his fellow Democrats, he has shrewdly packaged measures they don't like (such as tax credits for donors to private school scholarships) into bills that include measures they want (such as extending in-state tuition to illegal immigrants).

Cuomo has also signed a law that Bill de Blasio, New York City's anti-reform mayor, opposed, making it easier for charter schools to use empty space in public school buildings. The governor is trying to raise the cap on the number of charter schools in the state from 460 to 560.

Cuomo is not anti-union — in fact, the New York Times notes that several labor unions back his private scholarship bill, hoping it will benefit their members' children. The teachers' unions, however, withheld their endorsement from Cuomo in his 2014 re-election. This frees his hand to pursue true reform, for he is not beholden to them.

It could hurt his national aspirations, about which he has not been shy. But still, he is doing what he was elected to do — making decisions that better the lives of people in his state. Cuomo may be spotting a trend sooner than some of his colleagues. An understanding that schools needs to be prized from the sclerotic grip of the teachers' unions is an admirable departure from the reflexive defense of the status quo (with pleas for more money) that have long passed for education policy in the Democratic Party.

Porn producers like Thomas Vernon "Chip" White surely agree, RA is the Gold Standard...for finding more porn actors.

Quote:UTEP Graduate Receives Death Threats After Deemed Top Porn Star
Updated: Thursday, January 8, 2015 | Chrisdyann Uribe


?

EL PASO, Texas - A 21-year-old [regionally accredited] University of Texas at El Paso graduate is the center of Lebanese controversy for being dubbed the queen of an adult film site.

Mia Khalifa, born in Lebanon, graduated from UTEP with a B.A. in history before becoming involved in the porn industry. Recently she was ranked the mostly popular actress on a notorious adult film site. In Lebanon, she is the center of media attention scrutinized for posing in scenes wearing a hijab and also for showing her Lebanese tattoos. One of the tattoos is the beginning of the Lebanese National Anthem another is of a Lebanese Forces Cross.

The Lebanese community is saying she's shaming the country by appearing in porn with the country's anthem on her. In an interview with Newsweek, Khalifa strikes back saying, "They're embarrassed I'm 'claiming' them--as if I had a choice. I was born there."

Khalifa's family has disowned her and she feels guilty for for [sic] putting the spotlight on them saying it was never her intention.

Khalifa also receives online death threats through Twitter for her adult performances. She fights back tweeting, "Doesn't the Middle East have more important things to worry about besides me? How about finding a president? Or containing ISIS?"

Khalifa said she doesn't plan on making a career out of porn forever and wishes the media would leave her family alone. In the same interview after being asked if it was worth losing her family she replies, "Can't say it's worth it," she says. "But I can't self-pity, because I consciously made this decision myself."

Your check's in the mail.  I love you.  Regional accreditation is the gold standard.


Lisa Haynes

Quote:A Degree in Question
January 2, 2015
By Ry Rivard

A community college official in Tennessee retroactively received a degree from [regionally accredited] Duquesne University in Pennsylvania this year despite failing to complete required coursework a decade ago, according to an unusual cross-state investigation by Tennessee auditors.

The audit by the Tennessee Board of Regents focused on a controversial Chattanooga State Community College official, Lisa Haynes.

The longtime president of Chattanooga State, James Catanzaro, retired this week amid questions about Haynes. She was his executive assistant and then the college’s chief innovations officer. Catanzaro met Haynes in Barbados before she was hired by the college.

For Tennessee auditors’ purpose, the key questions were about Haynes’ qualifications. Even though a job opening in fall 2013 required a degree she did not have at the time, Chattanooga State paid for her to fly from Barbados to Tennessee for an interview, hired her even before other candidates for the job finished their interviews and then sponsored her work visa.

For Duquesne, the audit raises questions about why the university granted a degree now to someone who does not appear to have met the university’s graduation requirements a decade ago.



Haynes, according to the Tennessee auditors, was not qualified on paper for the Chattanooga State job because she was hired in August 2013 without having the undergraduate degree required for the job. Duquesne retroactively awarded her the degree in September 2014 – for reasons that have not been fully explained, though it seems likely the university waived a graduation requirement or allowed Haynes to substitute a course she finished for a required course she did not.

“Duquesne awards degrees only to those students who legitimately earn them,” university spokeswoman Bridget Fare said in an email.

While at Duquesne, Haynes failed to complete a course that fulfilled a requirement for her communications bachelor's degree, even though she attempted the course three different times, according to auditors. Haynes had enough raw credit hours to graduate but lacked a required course.

A Duquesne official told the auditors the university did not grant Haynes a degree in 2005 because she had not met the department’s graduation requirements for her major. Even though “no apparent changes occurred since,” the auditors said last month, the university agreed in September to issue her a “back-dated degree.”

According to the audit, Duquesne’s director of core curriculum “did not disagree” that Haynes had failed to meet graduation requirements in 2005. But the director said that Duquesne officials could waive required courses or allow a student to substitute another course for a required one. The director did not tell the auditors if Duquesne had allowed this in Haynes's case, but auditors said it seems likely that this is how the university granted Haynes a degree.

Fare, the Duquesne spokeswoman, said the university’s decision to award Haynes a degree “rested on extensive analysis by faculty members and administrators of the available information and a desire, within the parameters set by appropriate academic judgment, to recognize the work in the timeframe it actually occurred.” Haynes’s situation was reviewed by her old department, its dean, the university provost and the president.

Fare said that, generally speaking, colleges and universities do occasionally waive requirements or allow one course to be substituted for another.

Catanzaro said he could not comment about what Duquesne did, but has said in the past the degree question resulted from a mixup of some kind.

“She earned the degree in 2005, and that’s what they did, they awarded the degree retroactively to 2005, recognizing that she did,” he said.

At one point during the auditing process, Catanzaro told an auditor to take a “more enlightened view” of degrees. He also downplayed the significance of a degree and noted several successful business people who do not have college degrees, according to the audit.

Haynes, who did not comment on a previous story, did not respond to an email seeking comment earlier this week.

The Tennessee Board of Regents’ audit came after people on the campus began to raise questions about how Haynes got the job.  

Back in October, roughly a third of the college's faculty backed a no-confidence vote in Catanzaro’s leadership.

Catanzaro said he was in Barbados visiting the ambassador to the country when he met Haynes.

Catanzaro said Haynes's job was to help build an entrepreneurial culture at Chattanooga State. He has said that she’s working with the University of West Indies in Barbados to bring Barbadians to Chattanooga.

The audit questioned the importance of her work for the college, as well as travel expenses incurred by her and by Catanzaro on trips that, according to the audit, did not have clearly documented purposes or schedules.

Representatives of the Duquesne Faculty Senate did not return multiple emails seeking comment about the situation.

Who is Farhan Zaidi?  Dodger fans already know, but for most everyone else:

Quote:Farhan Zaidi is the General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Zaidi was born in Canada and raised in the Philippines. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PHD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He briefly worked for the Boston Consulting Group and the Sporting News website between MIT and Berkeley.

While at Berkeley, he read the book Moneyball and it changed his life. He saw a job posting for a baseball operations position with the Oakland Athletics and sent out his resume, beating out 1,000 other applicants for the job. He was a data analysis sabermetrics assistant when he started. His boss with the Athletics, Billy Beane called him "absolutely brilliant" and credited him with the acquisition of Cuban star Yoenis Céspedes.

For the 2013 season he was promoted by the Athletics to the post of Director of Baseball Operations and added Assistant General Manager to his title in 2014.

On November 6, 2014, he was hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers as their new General Manager.

Zaidi is one of two Muslim executives in Major League Baseball. He is of Pakistani ancestry. He is the first Muslim General Manager of any American pro sports franchise.

Quote:

Abstract
Top of Mind in Task-Based Environments and Choice Under Risk
by
Farhan Zaidi
Doctor of Philosophy in Economics
University of California, Berkeley
Professor Matthew Rabin, Chair

I examine psychological biases that influence “top-of-mind” status in task-based environments and choice under risk, and the implications of those biases for predicting and explaining consumer behavior in the field. I develop (in joint work with Jeff Holman) a model of prospective memory, defined as the capacity to recall tasks to be carried out in the future. Motivated by the economics and psychology literature on overconfidence, we introduce memory overconfidence into the model, and show that it leads to 1) inefficiently low rates of task completion, and 2) the prediction that the probability of task completion may vary inversely with the length of time allocated to completing the task. We discuss two instances where consumers face tasks that broadly fit our model – submitting rebates and cancelling negative-option subscriptions.

I then present empirical evidence of this latter instance through a field experiment with a membership-based website. I find that implementing “camouflage” pricing – that is, charging amounts such as $20.13 or $19.83 rather than “standard” amounts such as $20 or $19.95 – significantly lowers cancellation rates. Assuming that credit card statements can serve as a reminder to cancel unused subscriptions, and that the strength of this reminder is greater with standard amounts that tend to “stand out” on a bill and draw more attention than camouflage amounts, the lower cancellation rates in the camouflage-pricing groups are consistent with the prediction of our prospective memory model.

I also consider how what is top of mind may affect consumers’ choices under risk. I exploit a “natural experiment” from the trading card industry to find evidence that existing models of choice under risk may understate the extent to which salient outcomes affect the valuation of risky prospects. I track auction sales of a particular card that experienced a sudden jump in value, as well as auction sales of the sealed, unopened card boxes into which this card was randomly inserted at known odds. I estimate the price jumps for both the single card and the unopened boxes, and back out the “decision weight” that would reconcile these price movements. The estimated decision weight is well beyond the range of previous experimental estimates. I discuss how consumers’ attention to particularly salient or vivid outcomes (i.e., the extent to which they are top of mind) may provide an explanation for the result.

Implicit in these suggestions: The current system ain't cutting it!

Quote:Accreditation Panel Issues Higher Ed Act Suggestions
December 12, 2014

The federal panel tasked with advising the U.S. Department of Education on accreditation issues on Thursday released a draft set of recommendations for changing accreditation during reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity has been working on an updated set of recommendations since earlier this year. The panel previously made a series of recommendations in 2011 and 2012, but the Education Department has asked members of the committee to update those documents.

“This is not a final document in any sense,” said Susan Phillips, who chairs the panel and is provost and vice president for academic affairs at the State University of New York at Albany. She said the panel would continue working on the recommendations with the goal of producing a more final product during its next meeting in June.

Among the ideas in the draft recommendations:

• Convert all accrediting agencies into national accreditors and eliminate regionally focused ones.
  

• Allow for alternative accrediting organizations.
  

• Simplify the recognition process for accreditors by establishing common definitions across various different accrediting agencies
  

• Allow NACIQI reviews to be focused on “the health and well-being and the quality of institutions of higher education and their affordability, rather than on technical compliance with the criteria for recognition.”
  

• Give accrediting agencies greater authority to create different tiers of approval of institutions.
  

• Require colleges to produce self-certified data on “key metrics of access, cost and student success” (such as dropout rate, student loan burdens, repayment rates, and job placement rates for vocational programs).
  

• Establish a range of accreditation statutes that provide differential access to Title IV funds, which would move away from the current “all or nothing” system.
  

An alleged university where alleged rapist Bill Cosby allegedly "earned" masters and doctorate degrees now is having second thoughts.

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.”

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:

• 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)
  

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.

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. 

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 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."

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. 

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."

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.