Your wildest story from Academia

[Anonymous]

I just read an article about a student at the U. of Colorado's urban planning school who gave a large contribution to the school in exchange for a fast-track PhD. However, the money he used for his 'philanthropy" was embezzled so he wound up being prosecuted and is now in federal prison. The university got to keep the money and the student/felon received his PhD.

Sounds like the academia I know and loathe.

[Anonymous]

Too many to list. But I went through a PhD program in which students were given degrees after three years and with ~70-page dissertations because our department had a horrible attrition record. The joke was that you could turn in a chicken casserole recipe for a dissertation and get your degree.

[Anonymous]

My advisor decided my dissertation wasn't long enough - after weighing it. Like, with a scale.

[Anonymous]

Adviser gave his PhD advisees t-shirts with his name and face printed on them. HE EXPECTED US TO WEAR THEM AT SCHOOL EVENTS. Narcissistic doesn't begin to describe him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Adviser gave his PhD advisees t-shirts with his name and face printed on them. HE EXPECTED US TO WEAR THEM AT SCHOOL EVENTS. Narcissistic doesn't begin to describe him.

[Anonymous]

Student turned in "funny brownies" as a law school project. Received the highest grade for the course.

Numerous stories of undergrad and graduate students trading sex for grades. So many, that they're not even close to wild stories.

[Anonymous]

The Dean of our department had three bogus degrees - BA, MA, PhD. Had actually flunked out of undergrad at Yale and just made up a persona and had fake transcripts. Published 70+ articles in business journals. Had a 30+ year career before they "caught" him. Turns out this is more common than is generally known and is usually handled quietly by the universities (which look pretty darn stupid).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Student turned in "funny brownies" as a law school project. Received the highest grade for the course.

Numerous stories of undergrad and graduate students trading sex for grades. So many, that they're not even close to wild stories.

The sex-for-grades swap was so common at my school that we jokingly said this requirement should be in the catalogue.

[Anonymous]

Tenured professor submitted his student's work as a journal article. Was censured and not allowed to have grad students, but kept his job.

Prominent labor historian who pressured his/her grad students to TA for free, because "it will be great for your CV."

Professor threw a white board eraser at a student's head and called her stupid in class (she's now a professor at an Ivy).

When I started my Ph.D., my cohort received the infamous "B is for bad" speech as part of our orientation.

Sat through a day-long sexual harassment seminar for TAs, during which a professor chose to spend his half hour talking about the glories of the "erotic charge of the classroom."

Good times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Prominent labor historian who pressured his/her grad students to TA for free, because "it will be great for your CV."

.

I teach at a school of gerontology. The director of our program told us he was interviewing "young blood" for an open faculty position and was "relieved the best candidates are all under age 35." Several newly-minted PhDs interviewed for the positions but all were over age 50 and never had a chance at the jobs.

Irony and hypocrisy rule in post-secondary education.

[Anonymous]

A faction of the faculty in my school hated the dean. So they left a bag of dog poop on the chair in his office on a Friday (in August) so that when he came in on Monday, it would be unbearable.

The school had to replace all of his upholstered furniture and the carpet.

These are adults. And they all kept their jobs.

[Anonymous]

I was an RA in grad school. In my first year (I was 22), I went up to a prof after class to ask a question, and he asked me if I wanted to go get drinks with him. When I said no, he asked if I wanted to go to dinner instead. A few days later, he showed up in my dorm one evening and asked if I wanted to show him the art prints on my walls, which he'd heard me discussing with another student in class. I didn't want to take him into my room, of course, and he was really pushy before finally leaving.

He's still teaching, and a lot of his students love him. I never told anyone because he apparently showed a different side to everyone else, and I didn't think anyone would believe me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was an RA in grad school. In my first year (I was 22), I went up to a prof after class to ask a question, and he asked me if I wanted to go get drinks with him. When I said no, he asked if I wanted to go to dinner instead. A few days later, he showed up in my dorm one evening and asked if I wanted to show him the art prints on my walls, which he'd heard me discussing with another student in class. I didn't want to take him into my room, of course, and he was really pushy before finally leaving.

He's still teaching, and a lot of his students love him. I never told anyone because he apparently showed a different side to everyone else, and I didn't think anyone would believe me.

I'm really proud of you for saying no, repeatedly. I believe you. My DD is 13 and has been having lunch with her math teacher (female). I've been trying to figure out how to talk with her about moving a relationship from student/teacher to friendship.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

He's still teaching, and a lot of his students love him. I never told anyone because he apparently showed a different side to everyone else, and I didn't think anyone would believe me.

Many academics are emotionally stunted. It's the effect of spending so many years cocooned in the Ivory Tower and it's probably also because the emotionally stunted are attracted to life in academia. I totally believe what you posted because something similar happened to me but it was with a female professor and I'm female and not gay. I could never tell anyone because it was a school of social work and my commenting about the professor's behavior would have been deemed a micro-aggression or some other such nonsense. She's still there, too -- with an endowed professorship.

[Anonymous]

My PsyD program had 14 people in our cohort. Thirteen were on psychotropic drugs and eight of those had personality disorders. Those four years almost killed me. The academic component was a cakewalk in comparison with having to navigate classes with really disturbed students.