The C-J's Tim Carpenter took to Google to dig up more information about this British-sounding institution and found a 2002 Wired article explaining that the University of Devonshire is one of many online diploma factories with legit-seeming names that charge a few grand for a degree with "no tests or coursework required."
Wired referred to the phony university this way: "The 'university,' owned by an American resident in Romania, uses mail-drop addresses in the United Kingdom, printing services in Jerusalem and banking options in Cyprus. The operation has sold 70,000 diplomas in the United States alone, raking in over $100 million, according to diploma mill expert John Bear."
The Chronicle of Higher Education, in a 2004 piece, described the scheme as the "granddaddy" of diploma printers.
The governor is apparently unconcerned about how Mann's hiring looks. A Brownback spokeswoman told the Cap Journal that the governor didn't hire Mann for his educational pedigree. Instead, the Florida-based IT guy was brought to Kansas for his experience. The paper quoted spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag as saying: "Jim Mann was hired based on his more than 20 years of top-flight, private-sector experience. Information technology is a constantly changing field where the best preparation is private-sector experience."
You can read the governor's hiring announcement here. It reads in part, "Mann earned his Bachelor in Business Administration from the University of Devonshire." Since the administration is apparently aware that the school is a fraud, "earned" seems like a bad choice of words.
Another problem with Mann's credentials is that several media outlets are reporting Mann's résumé says he earned the Devonshire degree studying 1993-1995, which, of course, can't be true because it's a degree that requires zero work. Does that qualify as lying on a job application?
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I have to agree with Bobp. I am taking classes at WPI right now for an MSEE degree and much of the material is a rehash of what I studied as an undergraduate at MIT back in the 80's. The biggest difference so far is that we use MATLAB to run simulations, explore different filter parameters, etc. All of that math I learned years ago (Fourier, Laplacek, Z transforms) is still relevant and useful.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
>>>Anything he would have learn at MIT working on a PhD in >>>1993 would be completely irrelevant to anything he >>>would be doing today.
It's clear that you have never attended college. Last time I checked, most of the basic college math (differential & integral calculus, differential equations, etc) and science (basic biology, chemistry, physics - up through quantum physics and beyond even) classes haven't changed a whole lot since, well, since the 70's if not longer. What HAS changed about them is that some problems are now done on a computer rather than writing them out by hand, but, computers are a crutch that in many ways hamper development by the student - they keep them from REALLY understanding what is going on underneath the surface... How many NEW students can sit down and do a rough order of magnitude back of the envelope calculation today - VIRTUALLY NONE!
Sure, Computer Science Courses have changed, but, even in this day and age, learning the difference between a direct mapped and set associative cache is THE SAME THING as when I studied it way back in 1988. You see, even in COMPUTER SCIENCE, there are basic fundamentals upon which most everything is built and they really haven't changed much.
The internet has lots of APPLICATIONS running on it and has evolved new areas of study, but it is all branching from the same ideas and thought processes that existed back in the days of the ARPA net.
If you look at processor chips, what is the difference today? The primary difference is the size of the transistors on the die, but, the concept of a CPU is still there (only today we can put 4 or 6 CPU cores on one chip), the concept of RAM is there (only there are more layers of CACHE between the CPU core and the hard disk), etc...
You see - to say everything has changed really shows how little you have learned.
I'm sure there are qualified people who could do this job without lying about their education. Taxpayers deserve better than another Brownback cronie.
The difference in between a "Bricks and Mortar" Degree and one bought off the internet is at the very least, Integrity.
I know folks with a bricks & mortar degree, and I know folks with a laserjet 1100 degree.
There are no standouts among them....they are all pretty much intelligent folk. I cant pinpoint any particular differences at all, not that I'm a professor or anything.
So, the point here is that a) you have pretended to go to school for two years on your resume for a degree you actually bought in ten minutes online, and b) no one in the governor's office thought to review that, then c) pretended like experience was all that mattered, of which he had less than many Kansans.
I am not a fan of the Governor, but this is the one post I will give him a pass on. Anything he would have learn at MIT working on a PhD in 1993 would be completely irrelevant to anything he would be doing today. The only reason I can see why anyone would be upset is that they had to go to college and are upset he got to skip it.
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