Hmm, judging from the barrage of email & a couple of comments, the previous post wasn't very clear in meaning.
One role in Mine Host's organisation that pretty much requires formal qualifications is that of accountant. An accountant was hired, with a degree from a certain university.
This turned out to be to date one of the bigger hiring mistakes of Mine Host's.
The damage done to Mine Host's image & reputation, not to mention the damage in the internal processes & accountancy software, was beyond parallel.
Mine Host has employed plenty of complete nitwits. However this one was without equal.
That this dud was packing a university degree was incomprehensible.
Mine Host does not accept that this person passed the examinations required to qualify as an accountant.
The blighter was too stupid to post a letter. Mine Host gave them a pile of urgent letters to post (mail is a sensitive area, and the accountant is one of the few people trusted to handle it). A week later the letters were still sitting between the keyboard & the monitor screen.
A bit got said about this, in response the degree qualified person looked up at Mine Host, smiled like an idiot & nodded like a marionette.
The letters remained on the desk a further two days. The idiot wasn't competent to post a letter and responded to most anything by nodding furiously & smiling idiotically.
It is not known who sat the university examinations in this person's place, or if perhaps the pass grade was lowered to accommodate the full-fee paying students. But this person cannot have demonstrated a standard of scholarship sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the accountancy profession.
For heaven't sake they were too stupid to post letters, or answer the phone, or even to place a phone call. They couldn't even be relied upon to place a lunch order.
It took months to fix up the mess. The cost in grey hairs, never mind dollars, was immense.
Yet a professor (Mine Host has this professor's name copied down diligently, in case they ever meet) has put their signature to a piece of parchment to say that this person has satisfied certain academic thresholds. When clearly no such achievement had occurred.
For heaven's sake, the coot couldn't even be depended upon to be able to write their name on a piece of paper.
Such was the scale of the discrepancy between the representation on the degree, & the reality, and such was the loss, inconvenience & damage to Mine Host, that he is now gun shy about hiring anyone with a degree from that university.
Universities have no excuse when they issue a degree under false pretences, the quality of the graduates is the quality of the university.
A quick phone around to a few other employers brought a series of stories that the quality of graduates from this university isn't what it used to be.
A phone call to a family acquaintance who marks papers for this university revealed that they were under pressure to "pass" students regardless of their scholarship standard, & the shame of this was the cause of this acquaintance's impending parting from this university.
Mine Host's money is too hard earned to risk it by dipping his toe in that pond again. "Graduates" of that university will have to look elsewhere for a job. (Or perhaps conceal their dud degree from employers.)
3 comments:
That's a pretty clear explanation. And a good reason to avoid some schools, or at least not accept a diploma at face value. I've seen similar "graduates" from "prestigious" colleges who weren't worth the powder to blow them up.
One person I knew managed to get a 4 year degree from a major college in New York (I forget which one) with a reading level around the 5th grade.
Another was so stupid that no one could imagine how he got out of high school, let alone a university in the southwest US.
And, I might add, I met both at the Officer Basic Course required for all newly commissioned officers. Neither graduated, and both were discharged, thank God.
And the quality of instruction continues to fall. Never mind the nodding heads lacking the ability to perform simple tasks (like mailing a letter). The students with potential aren't being taught critical thinking. Problem solving usually means looking around for a similar situation, and copying that solution, whether it's appropriate or not.
So Mine Host is right to be gun shy.
You should send her up here to Singapore. She'll fit right in! You could have been describing any one of the current generation of graduates here.
They all seem to have that kind of half arsed bo-chap attitude instilled into them.
They reckon they are the bees-knees, entitled to high pay and managerial roles immediately on graduation and far too 'good' to do anything as menial as *shock*horror* actually work. Not that they'd have a clue about anything they didn't memorise for an exam or that requires actual thought.
If they don't get their expected sinecure on a silver plate or are let go for being a clueless bludger, well that's all the fault of foreign talents for stealing their job right?
Sadly, that's the way with full-fee paying students. The Uni dare not fail them because The Uni can be sued.
The academic dare not fail them because the academic must explain why they failed this perfectly suitable student, and it reflects badly on the academic - too bad if the student is barely literate and/or a dill.
Post a Comment