UNC should lose its accreditation

andrew said:
It's pretty relevant if he is in a position to hire people.

This isn't going to totally destroy the value of a UNC degree, or even majorly diminish it, but you're kidding yourself if you don't think it will have an impact even if there are no academic sanctions.

Degree value is all about image and reputation. The first thing everyone will think of now when they see a UNC degree is of this scandal. That's not the frame of mind you want people to start off in when they're evaluating you.
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This will have no meaningful effect on the perceived value of a degreed UNC graduate. None. Wanting it to be different won't make it so. This is not the sea change you want it to be.
 
originalwombat said:
This will have no meaningful effect on the perceived value of a degreed UNC graduate. None. Wanting it to be different won't make it so. This is not the sea change you want it to be.
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are you defending your degree from UNC or someone you care about has a degree from UNC?
I don't care either way i kinda agree with you.
 
I don't know, you can't go too extreme in either direction as far as the value of a college degree. You have a spectrum between two lines of thought:

1. A college degree from a good school will give you lifelong riches and success and women.
2. A college degree at most gets your foot in the door. It's all about networking and about "who you know, not what you know."

There is some truth to both ends. Many college students go into trades where the college degree is vital, either for professional school or for licensure in the profession. So you have engineers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, nurses, etc. Also, because of laws, teachers need education degrees, but teachers don't really use the college education itself.

But a majority of college graduates probably don't go into a trade specifically using the degree. One can become very, very cynical looking at this aspect of how the "real world" works. There's a lot of irrationality in the people that ultimately write the checks and so a lot of "networking" is exploiting the irrationalities or frictional costs of the system.

Ultimately, the "value of your degree" is only whatever convinces bosses or clients that you make about 3x more than you cost in salary or fees (do you even 240k?). As you go higher up, value can become more ambiguous and so networking and relationships can really overwhelm the rational markers of value. A college degree plays some role in that, in some cases being a signaling device. Top investment banks only hire from Harvard, Princeton or Wharton. You can figure out what that says about the long-term value they create, but certainly at least the managing directors think the degrees will create value in the short-term for their company.

In the end, without the inefficiencies, the value of a college degree will present itself through what that person actually learned in college and not the piece of paper on the wall. Inefficiencies can't go on forever unless there is government protection or some sort of quasi-monopoly power.

Basically, college degrees DO help you get your foot in the door, but you can only 80k if you 240k for your company. That's either through actual competencies you learned in school or through exploiting inefficiencies where you don't have to create 240k of long-term value.
 
originalwombat said:
This will have no meaningful effect on the perceived value of a degreed UNC graduate. None. Wanting it to be different won't make it so. This is not the sea change you want it to be.
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I never said it was going to be a sea change...I specifically said it wouldn't majorly diminish the value of a UNC degree.

I strongly disagree it will have absolutely no impact. The "value" of a degree rests mainly in what people think when they see the name of the school on paper. Having them remember a scandal where there was an entire fake major with a student population that was over half non athletes will hurt in that regard.
 
I like this idea: all student-athletes who are on a paid scholarship for athletics have to take a standardized final exam for each class they take, which is graded by an independent body.
 
Flywheel said:
I like this idea: all student-athletes who are on a paid scholarship for athletics have to take a standardized final exam for each class they take, which is graded by an independent body.
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That would be a disaster because the difficulty of the test would end up being concrete evidence of how much of a joke student athlete education is at the vast majority of schools. Think about that essay from the UGA player a while ago. Either that or the failure rate would be very high.

I mean, it might be what some fans want, but it's definitely not what the people in power want.
 
Flywheel said:
I like this idea: all student-athletes who are on a paid scholarship for athletics have to take a standardized final exam for each class they take, which is graded by an independent body.
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i bet if you did this to the general student body the results would also be very poor. american education seems focused on learning how to take tests, not on learning the material. and i also think that context is often lost in what purpose or what historical significance was the driving force behind the science.

thats my opinion having gone to school most of my life here in Atlanta, but also in Austria and Germany; and as a former high school teacher at a local private school, and a graduate assistant TA at Tech.

Tech graduates are valued because they have now proven that they can complete a pretty significant amount of work in a specific period of time with reasonable results.
 
Note that I never said athletes had to pass to stay eligible. The tests wouldn't really be for the NCAA to see. Right now, there is really only one governing body over athletics, the NCAA, who has a vested interest in keeping players playing, without paying them. If too many players at University X failed an exam for a course in which they all got a B, now that university's accrediting body has a stake in the game because the integrity of transcripts they certify is in question. The accrediting body/auditor has no monetary incentive to keep players playing, and they can protect themselves by bringing an axe down on the university as a whole. Hence, the academic side of schools would start policing their athletic programs tighter.

It seems to me that right now, the only thing missing to make this happen is a "smoking gun" in the data. Everyone knows it's happening, but we're not taking off the blinders to see it. The only data point we currently have for all universities is the SAT score of athletes vs non-athletes, which doesn't say much and it doesn't say anything about the rigor of the coursework. Standardized testing with aggregated public results for each university (no player names) would be a good way to provide transparency. Keep in mind that taxpayer dollars get funneled into these athletic programs.
 
But UNC was just ranked as one of the top ten smartest public schools in the nation, along with Georgia Tech. Are you saying those students cheated on the SAT/ACT tests as well?

I think y'all are blowing the impact of the scandal on the degrees way out of proportion. And for those of y'all that are saying you wouldn't hire a UNC grad...I don't think you're working in a field that would have many UNC grads in it in the first place so that point is moot.

Granted, I'm currently obtaining a UNC degree so take my personal bias into account, but I'm not having any problems getting interviews with Deloitte and the like.
 
Hell, UGA has a high entry SAT score. Doing well on your SATs means nothing to the rigor of the educational system you're entering. Just means the baseline student is smarter going in.

For F's sake, there were non-athlete fratboys taking AFAM classes to pad their GPAs that ACCIDENTALLY ENDED UP WITH AFAM MINORS that they DIDN'T EVEN WANT.

That's how far the scandal bites into the general student base. It's not just an athletic deal.

If something like this were discovered at a college that didn't have athletics, what would happen to their accreditation? That's the litmus test. Pretend they aren't athletes. And half the folks who benefitted weren't athletes. Pretend the school has no athletic program. What should the accreditation boards do in that case? Why should they do anything differently simply because some of the students who took it were athletes?
 
MadTownJacket said:
I don't think you're working in a field that would have many UNC grads in it in the first place so that point is moot.
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what percentage of UNC undergraduate degrees/alumni are in engineering, sciences or business? I would think that would be a fair size percentage of UNC degrees, at least 30%. Tech grads are definitely involved in hiring those majors. (and many more)

MadTownJacket said:
Granted, I'm currently obtaining a UNC degree so take my personal bias into account, but I'm not having any problems getting interviews with Deloitte and the like.
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Your Tech BSc degree would get you interviews with Deloitte too, so I am not sure how much that UNC degree counts in this instance.
 
cyptomcat said:
Your Tech BSc degree would get you interviews with Deloitte too, so I am not sure how much that UNC degree counts in this instance.
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Yeah--Deloitte hires more graduates/year from the Scheller College of Business than any other company.
 
beej67 said:
Hell, UGA has a high entry SAT score. Doing well on your SATs means nothing to the rigor of the educational system you're entering. Just means the baseline student is smarter going in.
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UNC is great at marketing. It's on par with UGA, South Carolina, or Florida in terms of in-state admission rigor, but Emory, Vanderbilt, and Rice from out of state (because a state law limits them to no more than 15% out of state students). Their marketing gets people to align them with the latter and not the former.
 
gtphd said:
:lol: at Deloitte being a big deal. Get an offer from McKinsey and you have a point.
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Wow, step off the high horse. I happen to loathe consulting companies, and even I feel like you're being an ass.
 
Deke said:
Wow, step off the high horse. I happen to loathe consulting companies, and even I feel like you're being an ass.
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My guess is he works or has worked at McKinsey. With that said, McKinsey >>> Deloitte. It's not even close.
 
Deke said:
Wow, step off the high horse. I happen to loathe consulting companies, and even I feel like you're being an ass.
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Naming a company that would have hired her with her GT BS as proof that her MS is worth something is a poor example.
 
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