Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 172 posts

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#151

Post by Macsenour »

jrs235 wrote: post #125
Macsenour wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, it's rude to THEM. My point is that you are deciding that you are not rude, when you shouldn't be the judge in this case.

Why should the other person get to decide and be judge on what's rude and disrespectful? If I believe it's rude if you do not kiss the ground I walk on and that's it's disrespectful if you don't obey my commands, tough shit for me and anyone else who thinks that way. If someone is rude to you in your eyes and based on your standards, how you react is still on you and is your responsibility. You can still be respectfu…

Respect is a two way street, agreed. The other person decides if it's rude to THEM. You decide for yourself if something is rude. The knight will decide for himself if it is rude to not call him Sir. I think it's wrong for someone to say it's NOT rude to NOT call him Sir. It should be up to THEM.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#152

Post by splawn »

sebleon wrote: post #147
sebleon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More comments like these are needed here!

Welp this got downvoted, I guess HN doesn't look kindly at promoting positivity here?!

First "hn rule" of the voting system... use it. (Its a good way of promoting positivity)

Second "hn rule" of the voting system... don't needlessly talk about it.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#153

Post by jlarocco »

magic_beans wrote: post #139
pc86 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or in most non-tech jobs. You can't be a nutritionist without a four-year degree in Nutrition (or I believe a few very closely related fields). There are even some fitness certifications you can't get without (any) four-year degree. No amount of self-study or exam passage will get you to be an RN. Tech is an outlier in that education is secondary to most other factors. I'm happy for that because my Political Science…

I suspect that requirements for degrees in STEM have much more to do with weeding out "undesirables" from your hiring process. Many companies won't even take candidates from non-ivies + soft ivies (Stanford, CM, etc).

That's a pretty strong generalization to present without evidence.

I'm sure some companies favor candidates from certain schools, but I've never seen any evidence that it's a systemic problem. The one exception I can think of is high level, publicly facing positions. I could see a company choosing a CTO with a PhD from MIT over one with a PhD from somewhere else, just to impress investors, for example. For rank and file software engineer positions, alma mater isn't usually so important.

As far as STEM goes, those fields require so much math and other background knowledge that it's almost unbelievable that somebody could learn it all on their own. Not that it's impossible, but it's a pretty wild claim, and it's reasonable that people would be suspicious.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#154

Post by nkurz »

leephillips wrote: post #96
throwaway729 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. To this day, it's nearly impossible to find any account of these events. It's really hard to imagine that someone could commit such outright blatant theft and get away without so much as a hit on Google. Was the con artist ever tracked down?

Fascinating indeed: the notion that a college president would hold title to the school's buildings. Etc.

I'm guessing that by "fascinating" you are implying that it's implausible to abscond with the money from a remortgage of a building one does not own? And by "Etc" that all the rest is wrong too?

I don't think anyone believed that he had any sort of legal title, rather that through some combination of forgery and fraud he managed to convince someone that he had the right to make the transaction. If you haven't experienced one personally, you may be underestimating the persuasive power of a talented psychopath.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#155

Post by nkurz »

WhiteSource1 wrote: post #42
nkurz wrote: post #29

I don't know how common falsified credentials are in school administration, but I'll mention a parallel experience that was a formative part of my upbringing. While I was in high school, my father taught at a small private college in Wisconsin, where he was on the hiring committee for the new college president. After being hired, the chosen candidate's behavior was surprisingly erratic, prompting my my father to cont…

But wouldn't academics have to at least show framed diplomas somewhere? Or research?

Here's an odd part: it was a small enough college community that a "get to know you" type party was held at the president's private residence soon after his arrival. Being an asocial high-schooler dragged along, I noticed a bound copy of his PhD thesis was one of the few books on the shelf. I skimmed through it (something very verbose and academic about the theory of business administration) and found it incomprehensible.

So his "research" existed, at least in some form. In retrospect, I'm wondering if it was "real", but from a diploma mill. Or purchased? Or someone else's rebound? Or as real as a thesis on business administration can be, from an earlier time in his life. In retrospect I wish I'd read it a little closer so I had a better clue as to what he actually did.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#156

Post by jrs235 »

Macsenour wrote: post #151
jrs235 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the other person get to decide and be judge on what's rude and disrespectful? If I believe it's rude if you do not kiss the ground I walk on and that's it's disrespectful if you don't obey my commands, tough shit for me and anyone else who thinks that way. If someone is rude to you in your eyes and based on your standards, how you react is still on you and is your responsibility. You can still be respectfu…

Respect is a two way street, agreed. The other person decides if it's rude to THEM. You decide for yourself if something is rude. The knight will decide for himself if it is rude to not call him Sir. I think it's wrong for someone to say it's NOT rude to NOT call him Sir. It should be up to THEM.

Fair enough.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#157

Post by antisthenes »

losteverything wrote: post #150
magic_beans wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't explained why you think it's wrong to Google someone. Note: not everyone you encounter is a "normal, well-reared" person. Googling someone is a good way to weed out the less "well-reared".

Hmm. Googling a person is nosey. Nosey is not desireable. Nosey is not acceptable behavior I had passed on to me and I passed it on to all my children. Google lets a nosey person be nosey in private and anonymously. It is still not desireable. Young people ( and some older ones) Google everything and think it's all the same. That was my point. Nobody my age tells me or my peers "Hay, I just found out our new manager…

You're projecting a lot of opinions without anything substantial to back it up.

Privacy has been dead for a while. What you call nosy, I call cautious, curious and well-informed.

Would it surprise you, that I, for example, looked up judiciary cases on some of my employees?

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#158

Post by timv »

scrummytim wrote: post #63
lordnacho wrote: post #25

It's time consuming to chase down credentials, especially as when you're hiring someone, it always feels more likely that they aren't making it up. After all, you have a great hiring process, right? My father-in-law is a doctor, and he tells me there's been several occasions where he's thought some colleague was really quite shockingly ill informed. He's always been too timid to call the bluff, but he says it's happe…

MD here. Is your father-in-law suggesting that several doctors he works with aren't legitimate physicians? It seems a bit hard to believe. I've had to apply for medical licenses in 3 states, and it was a colossal pain the ass for each. Took 4 months the first time; and I have a completely clean record. Getting hospital privileges takes forever, too. If fact, I think it should be easier, especially for those of us who…

Not the US, but ...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-07/doctors-identity-alleg...

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#159

Post by throwaway729 »

nkurz wrote: post #144
throwaway729 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. To this day, it's nearly impossible to find any account of these events. It's really hard to imagine that someone could commit such outright blatant theft and get away without so much as a hit on Google. Was the con artist ever tracked down?

It's really hard to imagine that someone could commit such outright blatant theft and get away without so much as a hit on Google. The events happened in the early 1990's, just prior to the advent of the internet. The false resume and the firing are the parts of the story that I have personal knowledge of. The financial allegations are third hand, but I believe them to be true. It's possible that recent events have b…

> The events happened in the early 1990's, just prior to the advent of the internet

Ah, makes a lot more sense. I was assuming some time in the early naughts given the school's timeline, and was disappointed I couldn't find a detailed account.

> The false resume and the firing are the parts of the story that I have personal knowledge of. The financial allegations are third hand, but I believe them to be true.

To clarify, I don't doubt this happened :)

> I've occasionally wondered whether this might be because someone took matters into their own hands, and he's dead and buried in the woods somewhere.

What a wild world we live in. Who needs television when you can read about the intrigues of failed liberal arts colleges.

Re: High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

#160

Post by derrickdirge »

losteverything wrote: post #150
magic_beans wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't explained why you think it's wrong to Google someone. Note: not everyone you encounter is a "normal, well-reared" person. Googling someone is a good way to weed out the less "well-reared".

Hmm. Googling a person is nosey. Nosey is not desireable. Nosey is not acceptable behavior I had passed on to me and I passed it on to all my children. Google lets a nosey person be nosey in private and anonymously. It is still not desireable. Young people ( and some older ones) Google everything and think it's all the same. That was my point. Nobody my age tells me or my peers "Hay, I just found out our new manager…

Honestly I don't see how it's any different than a prospective employer running a background check on me, which has been a relatively common practice since before google achieved ubiquity.

Do you find that gauche as well?

Post reply on HN