14 ms·

Judge sends two to prison for 7 years for H-1B fraud

222 points by us0r 10y ago

dangjc 10y ago
The H1B system favors inexperienced grads straight out of school over truly experienced workers bringing unique skills. Grads get 3 years on OPT while the company can navigate the labyrinth H1B application process. A company looking for a critical senior position for which they cannot have a large class of intakes is at a huge disadvantage. With the level of unemployment of recent grads still high, I think we need to seriously rethink how to structure the H1B program to actually be for uniquely skilled, highly paid workers who would otherwise be "irreplaceable".
mimo777 10y ago
Now can Disney go to jail for the same in conspiracy with the outsourcing company to replace employed tech workers with cheaper H1Bs when that's not what the visa program is about?
Animats 10y ago
Another 50 convictions like this and the H1-B problem will be over. If your employer is considering replacing you with an H1-B, give them a copy of this article.
- jordanb 10y ago
  It'll just encourage companies to stick with the big body shops that can manage the legal risk.
  - lallysingh 10y ago
    Concentrate the crimes to a few places, then prosecute those places.
- LorenPechtel 10y ago
  You need at least another zero on that.
verst 10y ago
This abuse of the H-1B program also hurts the many students attending US universities, hoping to gain work experience here post graduation. Remember that the number of H-1B visas granted every year are capped. Plenty of students from top US universities (and often at the top of their class) cannot accept jobs (or only do so for a very short term under the F-1 OPT program) for which they are the most qualified candidate because they cannot attain the right to work.
- verst 10y ago
  This might be interesting to some: The big tech companies in the Bay area may initially hire recent international student graduates on F-1 OPT status and then attempt to apply for their H-1B. If this fails the common approach is to move them to Europe (usually Dublin) to work there for a year. After that time they can return on L-1 (company internal transfer) visas. Note that these candidates are extremely competitive in terms of performance, don't replace anyone, and are paid the same kind of salaries as any other highly qualified individuals.
  - selectron 10y ago
    The don't replace anyone statement doesn't make any sense. Instead of training foreign workers we could be training American workers for these jobs.
    - itsnotlupus 10y ago
      Do you mean to train them against their will?
      - selectron 10y ago
        There are always people willing to do the job at the right price and work conditions. Companies would rather pay lower salaries with worse working conditions than pay US workers the wages needed to match the demand. It is basic supply and demand - the more supply of something the less demand it has. The country as a whole may benefit from immigration but the US workers who have to compete with foreign workers definitely do not.
qxf2 10y ago
I rarely comment but this story makes me happy enough to do so. I'm a former H1-B with an American Masters degree in STEM. I think this conviction will go a long way in making the system fairer. Here is what happened. H1-Bs must be legally employed all (well most of) the time they are in the USA. To get past that rule, these H1-B shops act as employers and then farm out the employees to other companies. Employers need to pay H1-Bs at least the prevailing wage that is mentioned in their H1-B application. This employer did not. Instead, they reduced wages when the employees were on the bench. That is the violation that they have been convicted for. So this conviction is not that much about H1-B's replacing American workers as much as it is about an unethical employer paying his employees less than the promised wage. Usually, people who join this kind of shop are people who have not been able to land a direct employer on their own and desperately want to stay in the USA. This judgment will go a long way in correcting the system because now all shops (and there are many!) that run this scam will close down. That, in turn, will decrease the number of people who end up applying for H1-Bs without a real employer. Hopefully, that will improve the perception around genuine H1-B VISA holders.
- verst 10y ago
  Exactly! Thanks for this insightful comment.
- chrisper 10y ago
  Also many of these consultancy firms just flood the H1B application pool and then just take whoever got accepted. Very unfair.
  - vostok 10y ago
    This is why I strongly believe that H1Bs should be given out to employees that are offered the highest salary. Clearly there is no shortage if you are not willing to pay one of the highest salaries. Yea, this wouldn't be perfect, but it's much better than the significantly more gameable lottery system we have now.
    - hkmurakami 10y ago
MrTonyD 10y ago
I had a friend at HP - who worked in a group arranging for "tourists" to staff HP projects. It was a "secret" group offsite from HQ and they got lists of major development projects. Then they worked with recruiters worldwide to find staff. They would arrange cars at the airport, long term hotels, and rotated teams in and out of the country to keep the project going. They did this for years and years. We need some real laws with real enforcement. Right now, there are too many ways to evade the H1B program. My understanding it that most foreign workers aren't using that program - and that other programs were specifically set up with minimal monitoring in order to provide a way to get around the H1B program. So the numbers of foreign workers being reported is a complete fiction.
- revelation 10y ago
  Sounds like the Tesla case: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/16/elon-musk-tesla-wages-apology https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/16/elon-musk...
  - MrTonyD 10y ago
    That does sound similar. One difference I notice - my friend's boss met routinely with executive staff and senior managers at HP to go over future projects. They all made an effort to keep their entire organization secret - even renting offices to do the development off-site in the Bay Area. I have no doubt that HP's use of tourist visas for staffing was well known to all their executives. I do know that HP was working on a lot of secret defense department programs at the time - I wonder how many of those secret military programs were actually implemented by foreign nationals hidden away at HP?
- jmspring 10y ago
  I think if H1-B, and skilled visas in general, was truly about skill level and best fit, fine. However, every situation (like Disney) where visas are used to bring in labor to be trained to replace technical workers who may not necessarily be the HN crowd, but are a vital part of business, should be disallowed. If a company wants to offshore, fine, but it shouldn't use the Visa system to have workers being replaced training their replacements.
dominotw 10y ago
computerworld hits a jackpot .
moon_of_moon 10y ago
If they made the H1-B system fairer for the immigrant workers, so that they their employability wasn't tied to a sponsorship, it would actually be better for American workers. How? Because H1-B employees cannot transfer out easily and live in fear of losing their jobs, because it means packing up and going home. (I can only imagine how much managerial abuse and in the worst case, sexual harassment this situation can lead to.) Employers love this arrangement, because it allows lower wages (the H1B worker isnt going to fight for a higher salary because he knows its dangerous to walk without another sponsor lined up.) and this pseudo indentured servitude arrangement makes for dependable employees. Now if they took that away those restrictions, salaries would increase and employers would have no incentive to hire an immigrant over a local worker.
- unclebucknasty 10y ago
  Not that I'm in favor of the current system, but your argument is flawed. How? Loosening restrictions on sponsorships would invariably result in a net increase in the available labor pool, which would put downward pressure on wages for everyone. This is because the program as-is does not restrict people from changing jobs. It just requires a sponsorship. So, what you are really advocating is that people without jobs can remain in-country "off-visa". This is not the purpose of the H1-B program. So, if you were to allow this, yet still keep the notion of H1-B sponsorship alive, then there would be the source of the net increase of available workers. Now, you could make arguments about lowering the expense and friction involved for sponsoring companies, which would then increase the appeal of H1-B visa holders and make finding new sponsors easier. That would probably go further in the direction of increased salaries you mentioned, so long as you kept the visa-holder cap constant. But, of course, part of the reason for this cost/friction is to provide companies with incentives to source labor locally before looking to non-U.S. labor markets. It's a complex problem with no easy solutions.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>This is because the program as-is does not restrict people from changing jobs. It just requires a sponsorship. It doesn't technically restrict them, but the window for changing jobs is so short that the employees are practically anchored to the employer. In addition to the short window, changing jobs during H1B also resets the immigrant's place in the green card queue, which can cost them years and years of progress they have made towards permanent residency and citizenship. You claim that if H1B workers could stay in the country without jobs, it would put downward pressure on wages. I disagree. The current system already places downward pressure: since H1B workers are anchored to their sponsor employer, they have close to zero leverage in salary negotiations. If they could change jobs freely and at their own leisure (during the course of their visa) then they could shop around and go to the highest paying employer.
throwaway_45 10y ago
I hate Indians who try to hate on other people trying to make it. Why the heck do you deserve to be in America? These are the rules you learn to play it.
- ardit33 10y ago
  Not Indian, but I have had too many awesome co-workers, while offered full salary and great benefits, not being able to get the H-1B, because scummy shops like these take a huge chunk of them. I'd rather have a great engineer, employed by a good company, with a good salary, pays taxes, etc... then a desperate not so good engineer, that gets half of the salary, and pays half the taxes, while scummy employer skims off some of his pay.
- ganeshkrishnan 10y ago
  Calm down mr Trump, we do not hate any group. And we are not trying to steal your jobs
  - throwaway_45 10y ago
    The op is being Mr trump. He is like screw those other Indians from coming in. I think everyone should have a shot.
- dang 10y ago
  This breaks HN's civility rule badly. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it again. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11842661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11842661 and marked it off-topic.
cloudjacker 10y ago
> These two brothers created a highly profitable, and highly illegal business model at the extreme expense of the alien workforce that they recruited Independence Day: Resurgence
vthallam 10y ago
As long as the DHS doesn't find a way to shut all these shops and reform the immigration rules, nothing will ever change.Part of the problem exists with the thousands of universities which gives admits to everyone who applies without even a GRE. These universities are pumping the market with resources these H1B shops rely on. The problem with consulting companies which get thousands of visas which actually replaces some American jobs is a whole different story. All of this takes a comprehensive immigration reforms which encourages merit based visa assignment than a ridiculous lottery, guess this will takes years to happen, sadly.
cplease 10y ago
About time.
a_small_island 10y ago
So what is actually being paid on these H1B as salary? Using something like h1bdata.info, you can look into any company's filings. For example, the most recent Uber h1b filing[0] has a rate of pay from 110-140k but only a prevailing wage of 68k. Any insight as to what these employees are getting for base salaries? >"F. Rate of Pay 1. Wage Rate (Required) From: $ 115,000.00 To: $ 140,000.00" >"9. Prevailing wage $ 67,683.00 " [0]http://h1bdata.info/lca.php?id=4536234&em=UBER%20TECHNOLOGIES,%20INC.&job=DATA%20SCIENTIST http://h1bdata.info/lca.php?id=4536234&em=UBER%20TECHNOLOGIE...
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  "Wage rate" is what they are actually being paid. "Prevailing wage" is the legal minimum to be paid for the visa application to be approved for that specific position. Which just goes to show how much of a joke the prevailing wage requirement is, since this person is being paid twice what the supposed prevailing wage for their position is.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
williesleg 10y ago
Whoops! Forgot to make their donations to their elected official.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
yanilkr 10y ago
* * un popular opinion alert * * I don't think the employers in this case deserve prison time. I understand they are being made example of. This law breaking of h1b ranges from subtle to glaringly wrong. Where should we draw the line?. What about all the other consulting companies that do the same thing but have enough influence that they can get out of being caught? Out of all the people abusing this system, how is that the names of the convicted people look foreign? The employment model of these convicted people benefits from a very bad and outdated h1b law. They find talent every year and get the paperwork done, hope the lottery wins them some visas and then rent out the talent. In good times, the employer saves and in bad times shares the misery with the employees. Some employees might understand this and some don't. They are meeting the demands of market that allowed them to sustain. The employees sign up for this knowing all well what is happening. The employer should compensate the other employees for their losses and they should be not allowed to hire any other foreign worker. Anything beyond that is excessive. This is another case of a developer blaming the user.
someguydave 10y ago
I think all visas (employment or otherwise) should be auctioned off to the highest bidder. The "most fair" way to allocate resources is in accordance with how much people are willing to pay.
known 10y ago
Not surprised. http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-among-most-corrupt-while-doing-business-abroad.htm http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-among-...
known 10y ago
Indian regime is trying to protect Bania hegemony http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When-will-the-BrahminBania-hegemony-end.html http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When-...
splooge 10y ago
This will definitely curtail the abuse. Nonetheless this is a double-edged sword. Many so called STEM grads just do it to land a software job. They just invest a couple of years in some anon university and then bring their self entitlement and half-baked semi-polished language skills feeling entitled over guys who invested time and try to find an opportunity to work in the US. These "Grads" are copious in numbers and sickeningly pretentious. Sadly the system runs on money and keep feeding these idiots to attract tuitions into half-arsed universities. Most of them are rich douches with mediocre skills and can't do a lick without begging around for help. part of the rut.

222 points by us0r 10y ago

The H1B system favors inexperienced grads straight out of school over truly experienced workers bringing unique skills. Grads get 3 years on OPT while the company can navigate the labyrinth H1B application process. A company looking for a critical senior position for which they cannot have a large class of intakes is at a huge disadvantage. With the level of unemployment of recent grads still high, I think we need to seriously rethink how to structure the H1B program to actually be for uniquely skilled, highly paid workers who would otherwise be "irreplaceable".

mimo777 10y ago

Now can Disney go to jail for the same in conspiracy with the outsourcing company to replace employed tech workers with cheaper H1Bs when that's not what the visa program is about?

Animats 10y ago

Another 50 convictions like this and the H1-B problem will be over. If your employer is considering replacing you with an H1-B, give them a copy of this article.

jordanb 10y ago
It'll just encourage companies to stick with the big body shops that can manage the legal risk.
- lallysingh 10y ago
  Concentrate the crimes to a few places, then prosecute those places.
LorenPechtel 10y ago
You need at least another zero on that.

verst 10y ago

This abuse of the H-1B program also hurts the many students attending US universities, hoping to gain work experience here post graduation. Remember that the number of H-1B visas granted every year are capped. Plenty of students from top US universities (and often at the top of their class) cannot accept jobs (or only do so for a very short term under the F-1 OPT program) for which they are the most qualified candidate because they cannot attain the right to work.

verst 10y ago
This might be interesting to some: The big tech companies in the Bay area may initially hire recent international student graduates on F-1 OPT status and then attempt to apply for their H-1B. If this fails the common approach is to move them to Europe (usually Dublin) to work there for a year. After that time they can return on L-1 (company internal transfer) visas. Note that these candidates are extremely competitive in terms of performance, don't replace anyone, and are paid the same kind of salaries as any other highly qualified individuals.
- selectron 10y ago
  The don't replace anyone statement doesn't make any sense. Instead of training foreign workers we could be training American workers for these jobs.
  - itsnotlupus 10y ago
    Do you mean to train them against their will?
    - selectron 10y ago
      There are always people willing to do the job at the right price and work conditions. Companies would rather pay lower salaries with worse working conditions than pay US workers the wages needed to match the demand. It is basic supply and demand - the more supply of something the less demand it has. The country as a whole may benefit from immigration but the US workers who have to compete with foreign workers definitely do not.

qxf2 10y ago

I rarely comment but this story makes me happy enough to do so. I'm a former H1-B with an American Masters degree in STEM. I think this conviction will go a long way in making the system fairer. Here is what happened. H1-Bs must be legally employed all (well most of) the time they are in the USA. To get past that rule, these H1-B shops act as employers and then farm out the employees to other companies. Employers need to pay H1-Bs at least the prevailing wage that is mentioned in their H1-B application. This employer did not. Instead, they reduced wages when the employees were on the bench. That is the violation that they have been convicted for. So this conviction is not that much about H1-B's replacing American workers as much as it is about an unethical employer paying his employees less than the promised wage. Usually, people who join this kind of shop are people who have not been able to land a direct employer on their own and desperately want to stay in the USA. This judgment will go a long way in correcting the system because now all shops (and there are many!) that run this scam will close down. That, in turn, will decrease the number of people who end up applying for H1-Bs without a real employer. Hopefully, that will improve the perception around genuine H1-B VISA holders.

verst 10y ago
Exactly! Thanks for this insightful comment.
chrisper 10y ago
Also many of these consultancy firms just flood the H1B application pool and then just take whoever got accepted. Very unfair.
- vostok 10y ago
  This is why I strongly believe that H1Bs should be given out to employees that are offered the highest salary. Clearly there is no shortage if you are not willing to pay one of the highest salaries. Yea, this wouldn't be perfect, but it's much better than the significantly more gameable lottery system we have now.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago

MrTonyD 10y ago

I had a friend at HP - who worked in a group arranging for "tourists" to staff HP projects. It was a "secret" group offsite from HQ and they got lists of major development projects. Then they worked with recruiters worldwide to find staff. They would arrange cars at the airport, long term hotels, and rotated teams in and out of the country to keep the project going. They did this for years and years. We need some real laws with real enforcement. Right now, there are too many ways to evade the H1B program. My understanding it that most foreign workers aren't using that program - and that other programs were specifically set up with minimal monitoring in order to provide a way to get around the H1B program. So the numbers of foreign workers being reported is a complete fiction.

revelation 10y ago
Sounds like the Tesla case: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/16/elon-musk-tesla-wages-apology https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/16/elon-musk...
- MrTonyD 10y ago
  That does sound similar. One difference I notice - my friend's boss met routinely with executive staff and senior managers at HP to go over future projects. They all made an effort to keep their entire organization secret - even renting offices to do the development off-site in the Bay Area. I have no doubt that HP's use of tourist visas for staffing was well known to all their executives. I do know that HP was working on a lot of secret defense department programs at the time - I wonder how many of those secret military programs were actually implemented by foreign nationals hidden away at HP?
jmspring 10y ago
I think if H1-B, and skilled visas in general, was truly about skill level and best fit, fine. However, every situation (like Disney) where visas are used to bring in labor to be trained to replace technical workers who may not necessarily be the HN crowd, but are a vital part of business, should be disallowed. If a company wants to offshore, fine, but it shouldn't use the Visa system to have workers being replaced training their replacements.

dominotw 10y ago

computerworld hits a jackpot .

moon_of_moon 10y ago

If they made the H1-B system fairer for the immigrant workers, so that they their employability wasn't tied to a sponsorship, it would actually be better for American workers. How? Because H1-B employees cannot transfer out easily and live in fear of losing their jobs, because it means packing up and going home. (I can only imagine how much managerial abuse and in the worst case, sexual harassment this situation can lead to.) Employers love this arrangement, because it allows lower wages (the H1B worker isnt going to fight for a higher salary because he knows its dangerous to walk without another sponsor lined up.) and this pseudo indentured servitude arrangement makes for dependable employees. Now if they took that away those restrictions, salaries would increase and employers would have no incentive to hire an immigrant over a local worker.

unclebucknasty 10y ago
Not that I'm in favor of the current system, but your argument is flawed. How? Loosening restrictions on sponsorships would invariably result in a net increase in the available labor pool, which would put downward pressure on wages for everyone. This is because the program as-is does not restrict people from changing jobs. It just requires a sponsorship. So, what you are really advocating is that people without jobs can remain in-country "off-visa". This is not the purpose of the H1-B program. So, if you were to allow this, yet still keep the notion of H1-B sponsorship alive, then there would be the source of the net increase of available workers. Now, you could make arguments about lowering the expense and friction involved for sponsoring companies, which would then increase the appeal of H1-B visa holders and make finding new sponsors easier. That would probably go further in the direction of increased salaries you mentioned, so long as you kept the visa-holder cap constant. But, of course, part of the reason for this cost/friction is to provide companies with incentives to source labor locally before looking to non-U.S. labor markets. It's a complex problem with no easy solutions.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  >>This is because the program as-is does not restrict people from changing jobs. It just requires a sponsorship. It doesn't technically restrict them, but the window for changing jobs is so short that the employees are practically anchored to the employer. In addition to the short window, changing jobs during H1B also resets the immigrant's place in the green card queue, which can cost them years and years of progress they have made towards permanent residency and citizenship. You claim that if H1B workers could stay in the country without jobs, it would put downward pressure on wages. I disagree. The current system already places downward pressure: since H1B workers are anchored to their sponsor employer, they have close to zero leverage in salary negotiations. If they could change jobs freely and at their own leisure (during the course of their visa) then they could shop around and go to the highest paying employer.

throwaway_45 10y ago

I hate Indians who try to hate on other people trying to make it. Why the heck do you deserve to be in America? These are the rules you learn to play it.

ardit33 10y ago
Not Indian, but I have had too many awesome co-workers, while offered full salary and great benefits, not being able to get the H-1B, because scummy shops like these take a huge chunk of them. I'd rather have a great engineer, employed by a good company, with a good salary, pays taxes, etc... then a desperate not so good engineer, that gets half of the salary, and pays half the taxes, while scummy employer skims off some of his pay.
ganeshkrishnan 10y ago
Calm down mr Trump, we do not hate any group. And we are not trying to steal your jobs
- throwaway_45 10y ago
  The op is being Mr trump. He is like screw those other Indians from coming in. I think everyone should have a shot.
dang 10y ago
This breaks HN's civility rule badly. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it again. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11842661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11842661 and marked it off-topic.

cloudjacker 10y ago

> These two brothers created a highly profitable, and highly illegal business model at the extreme expense of the alien workforce that they recruited Independence Day: Resurgence

vthallam 10y ago

As long as the DHS doesn't find a way to shut all these shops and reform the immigration rules, nothing will ever change.Part of the problem exists with the thousands of universities which gives admits to everyone who applies without even a GRE. These universities are pumping the market with resources these H1B shops rely on. The problem with consulting companies which get thousands of visas which actually replaces some American jobs is a whole different story. All of this takes a comprehensive immigration reforms which encourages merit based visa assignment than a ridiculous lottery, guess this will takes years to happen, sadly.

cplease 10y ago

About time.

a_small_island 10y ago

So what is actually being paid on these H1B as salary? Using something like h1bdata.info, you can look into any company's filings. For example, the most recent Uber h1b filing[0] has a rate of pay from 110-140k but only a prevailing wage of 68k. Any insight as to what these employees are getting for base salaries? >"F. Rate of Pay 1. Wage Rate (Required) From: $ 115,000.00 To: $ 140,000.00" >"9. Prevailing wage $ 67,683.00 " [0]http://h1bdata.info/lca.php?id=4536234&em=UBER%20TECHNOLOGIES,%20INC.&job=DATA%20SCIENTIST http://h1bdata.info/lca.php?id=4536234&em=UBER%20TECHNOLOGIE...

TheCoelacanth 10y ago
"Wage rate" is what they are actually being paid. "Prevailing wage" is the legal minimum to be paid for the visa application to be approved for that specific position. Which just goes to show how much of a joke the prevailing wage requirement is, since this person is being paid twice what the supposed prevailing wage for their position is.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

williesleg 10y ago

Whoops! Forgot to make their donations to their elected official.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

yanilkr 10y ago

* * un popular opinion alert * * I don't think the employers in this case deserve prison time. I understand they are being made example of. This law breaking of h1b ranges from subtle to glaringly wrong. Where should we draw the line?. What about all the other consulting companies that do the same thing but have enough influence that they can get out of being caught? Out of all the people abusing this system, how is that the names of the convicted people look foreign? The employment model of these convicted people benefits from a very bad and outdated h1b law. They find talent every year and get the paperwork done, hope the lottery wins them some visas and then rent out the talent. In good times, the employer saves and in bad times shares the misery with the employees. Some employees might understand this and some don't. They are meeting the demands of market that allowed them to sustain. The employees sign up for this knowing all well what is happening. The employer should compensate the other employees for their losses and they should be not allowed to hire any other foreign worker. Anything beyond that is excessive. This is another case of a developer blaming the user.

someguydave 10y ago

I think all visas (employment or otherwise) should be auctioned off to the highest bidder. The "most fair" way to allocate resources is in accordance with how much people are willing to pay.

known 10y ago

Not surprised. http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-among-most-corrupt-while-doing-business-abroad.htm http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-among-...

known 10y ago

Indian regime is trying to protect Bania hegemony http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When-will-the-BrahminBania-hegemony-end.html http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When-...

splooge 10y ago

This will definitely curtail the abuse. Nonetheless this is a double-edged sword. Many so called STEM grads just do it to land a software job. They just invest a couple of years in some anon university and then bring their self entitlement and half-baked semi-polished language skills feeling entitled over guys who invested time and try to find an opportunity to work in the US. These "Grads" are copious in numbers and sickeningly pretentious. Sadly the system runs on money and keep feeding these idiots to attract tuitions into half-arsed universities. Most of them are rich douches with mediocre skills and can't do a lick without begging around for help. part of the rut.