Comments on: Recycling research in DEI – andMad magazine

By: bluzman

bluzman — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 17:59:51 +0000

In honor of Tom Lehrer, whose songs I enjoyed as I grew up in the ’50s, I offer his musical commentary on the subject of plagiarism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXlfXirQF3A&ab_channel=themisfitoddity

By: KyPerson

KyPerson — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 15:25:14 +0000

When I was an undergraduate, I majored in Biology and minored in English. If I had to write a paper in any of my biology classes, it was always a different paper. For my English classes I took a paper I had written about the popular American women writers of the 19th century and re-wrote it. I ended up submitting it in four different classes.

By: Mr+Bill

Mr+Bill — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 13:32:50 +0000

(2) teachers seldom read the trash turned in by students anyway!

I once took an econ class, in which I suspected the professor was not actually reading the work handed in. So, in one paper, I foolishly added the sentence, “On the other hand, she had a wart.” It came back marked with a bright red ??!!!, and a mediocre grade. So, maybe they read more than we suspect.

By: gauva

gauva — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 13:30:49 +0000

While it’s not surprising that all these academic DEI officers are being found to have committed plagiarism, in their defense, there are only so many ways one can say “white men are evil racists and the cause of all the world’s ills”.

By: Art+Deco

Art+Deco — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 12:02:52 +0000

1. A typical state system should have few public institutions enfranchised to award research degrees, first professional degrees, or master’s degrees in academic subjects. Two might be the mean number.
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2. It should be a matter of law that instructional divisions of state institutions follow a fairly stereotyped pattern. You have an academic provost under whom there are two or three deans (one for the undergraduate core curriculum, one for the arts and sciences, and (perhaps) one for the performing and studio arts). You have one or two provost for occupational schools each with a dean: business, teacher training, nursing, sports and recreation, counseling & social work, police & security, (non-business) administration, public policy, communications, public health, clinical laboratory sciences, agriculture, engineering, medicine, and one of a menu of treating professions allied with medicine, &c.
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3. Within any institution authorized to issue research degrees, the instructional units which might so offer are properly limited to the faculties of arts and sciences, engineering, medicine, clinical laboratory sciences, business, and public policy.
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4. Any state institution wishing to offer a degree or certificate program of any kind would have to limit its offerings to those within its statutorily prescribed book of business and also seek approval from a commission of the state board of regents ‘ere establishing the program. Other public institutions could offer a reply to such requests making the case that the program was offered elsewhere in the state and the market was saturated.
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5. The state comptroller or like official would conduct annual audits of degree programs offered at the institutions of the state and close programs which were persistently undersubscribed (with the exception of those programs which were the depository for the whole state system).
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6. Any program established and maintained at a state institution would have to fit the title and capsule description prescribed in a glossary enacted into law by the state legislature.
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As a practical matter, a typical teaching institution will seldom have the clientele to justify the maintenance more than about a dozen academic degree programs and two dozen or so occupational degree programs. Victimology programs will never be present because they are patronage programs for favored political interests; students have no interest in them. (Truly. The best subscribed victimology program is women’s studies, in which about 1,200 baccalaureate degrees are awarded in a typical year; that’s less than one per baccalaureate granting institution).

By: Niketas Choniates

Niketas Choniates — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 11:16:29 +0000

There’s PhDs and then there’s PhDs. The STEM PhDs in general are not awarded for having taken classes which could be passed by recycling essays, though it is possible to get a master’s that way in some disciplines at some institutions. In general STEM PhDs are awarded for having done original research, and putting together words in a different way is not sufficient to meet that requirement.

Or perhaps we should say “were” because Didn’t Earn It has throughly parasitized STEM over the last 20 years.

Like the SATs after renorming it may not be valid to compare STEM PhDs awarded before 2010 – 2020 with those awarded after 2010 – 2020.

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 07:21:38 +0000

@ Rufus > “When you three gather in a room you’ve got more degrees than a thermometer!”

LOL – reminds me of the old line about Jefferson dining alone.

I used to have a similar joke about AesopSpouse, who got his BA in history, then a JD, and finally acquired a BS in engineering when he went into patent writing.

So I call him a lawyer in the third-degree.

And don’t forget what Tom Lehrer recommended in this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXlfXirQF3A

I am never forget the day I heard the secret of success in mathematics!

By: Gordon Scott

Gordon Scott — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 06:21:51 +0000

There used to be a debate about morality and ethics. Religious folk said they arise out of religion and without religion they would fade away. Humanists, of whom Iaasic Asimov was a leading light, claimed that the qualities could exist outside the Religious realm.

Academia, now void of religion save Wiccans and Muslims who share the quality of flexible morality, seems to be proving the Humanists to be full of shit.

By: Gringo

Gringo — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 05:11:29 +0000

(2) teachers seldom read the trash turned in by students anyway!

Usually they do read, but perhaps not always. I took a Master’s level class with a prof in his 70s who, I was told, was teaching only because his retirement investments had gone bad and he had to teach additional years to get an acceptable pension. This was his last class before he finally retired- or was it retired for a second and final time. He never bothered to return our final paper. The assumption we made was that for the last assignment before his retirement, he never even bothered to read the papers we had submitted. Previously, he had made cogent comments on our papers.

Some months after he retired, I ran into him at Lowes. Cordial conversation. What the heck.

By: Gregory Harper

Gregory Harper — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 03:31:04 +0000

I remember that bit in Mad Magazine. I though of it when I recycled a paper I wrote on German economic malaise for several different classes.