Reply to Colleagues with "fake" advanced degrees? Ordered to address someone as "Doctor" (online doctorate)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was out of the workforce for about 15 years, then finished my bachelor's and master's at the end of my SAHM tenure, so I'm not sure if this a recent phenom or I'm just more perceptive of it after a run-in with one of these types.

It began with a professional peer my age randomly adding "Dr." to their internal email. I got wind folks directly under this person were ordered (and corrected) to address them as "Dr. so-and-so" moving forward. "Dr." was added to their desk, board meeting and office door name plates. According to LinkedIn, the "doctorate" was picked up from Walden University, which I had never heard of:

[quote]Walden University is an online for-profit university and Public Benefit Corporation headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.[/quote]

I was suddenly a credential skeptic. Now I notice so many folks have shaky credentials picked up online (often from cyber for-profit schools) or from hybrid online/weekend pay-as-you-go non-selective programs at good universities that could pass as solid to masses. The persons (who are often dumb as bricks) use these credentials for end-all-be-all superiority. I noticed a correlation between lettered credentials after their name in their email signatures to lack of selectivity of the program they were in.

Does it just not matter where you get degrees anymore, [b]it's just become a box-checking exercise for promotions and raises[/b]? I'm not being a snob, my degrees are from a barely top 100 university we lived near.[/quote]

I think in a lot of cases, yes. I think that many people go to graduate school in order to achieve some promotion or raise that would be off the table if they only had the undergraduate degree.

I think that in terms of online education, it does make a difference whether the school in question offers a brick-and-mortar program, but as someone who has an online master's degree from an institution that also has a brick-and-mortar program, what I can tell you was that the actual education I received in no way compared with peers who went to the brick-and-mortar program. They had more course options, better instructors, more interesting material, etc. For me, it really was a box-checking exercise in that in order to switch from what I was doing (nonprofit admin) to what I do now (social work), I needed a master's degree and a professional license. That is obviously not true for everyone in every field, but I will say that if not for the field work that was a required part of my degree and the first two years I spent earning clinical hours, I would worry about my own competence based on the education I received. One of my closest professional friends went to the same university in person and I have no such concerns about her competence based on our conversations about work matters.[/quote]

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