11 ms·

Math prof challenges granting of PhD to unqualified student in court

155 points by agconway 16y ago

joshrule 16y ago
Taken with the recent http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843491 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843491, I'm a bit concerned. As time moves forward, shouldn't we be setting the bar higher, not continually dropping it lower and lower? Why, in so many areas, are standards sliding rather than getting stronger (not just in education, but in government and some industries, too)? What's happening to personal responsibility and a clear set of rules by which to play the game? Am I wrong in seeing things this way?
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  nope. we have standards and requirements for very good reasons. but we don't want anyone to ever experience a negative feeling.
- roel_v 16y ago
  The standards are being lowered for several reasons. One is that the university gets paid per student they graduate (in most countries in Western Europe that I know about). Another is that politicians feel they need to raise the % of people with degrees in their region/country so they pressure universities to 'accommodate' students as much as possible. Couple this with top positions in universities increasingly being given to non-academics, but rather bureaucrat politicians who get these positions as a reward for years of service to their party and in these roles fill the last few years until their retirement with a cushy, well paid job in which they mostly try to run the university as a company (not being hindered by the fact that they know nothing about actually running a business), and you get every lower academic standards. And then finally, and this may not be the majority of cases but I've seen this happen from very close myself, a part of the problem is the many exchange students who come from developing countries and pay big bucks for their studies. These people have sometimes scraped together everything they and their extended families have to go to the West. If they fail their program, to them it feels like they might as well have been executed on the spot. There's no way they can go back to their countries without a degree. I've seen people on the brink of suicide over the thought of failing exams and having to go back (yes, other ('native') students also get exam anxiety, I'm not dismissing those). So imagine being a professor and having to grade a thesis of a guy that is only a few years younger than you are (these students often come after several years of working and saving), with a wife and a family to support. You know he doesn't live up to the standards of the program. You also know that everybody else knows (academics at universities in the area) so nobody's going to give him a postdoc anyway. So there's no real harm in giving him the degree, at least not until 'the work gets out' and all diplomas devaluated. The student will most likely be going back to where he came from, where he's going to be welcomed as a genius and offered a cushy government or consulting job. All in all, there he's still going to be quite good, at least compared to the other people at the places that would hire him (yes there are very bright Indian, Chinese etc. students who are just as good as any Western student, I'm not disparaging Asians in general - I'm talking about this specific subset of 'academic refugee students'). And then consider that if you fail this guy, you know you're basically doing the equivalent of a 'thumbs down' in a Roman amphitheater. That's a tough decision to make. I know, this sort of factors shouldn't come into play, but that's easy to say from behind a desk far far away from this situation. I've seen people seriously struggle with this dilemma, and I've seen choices being made in both directions. It's heart wrenching, and it makes people think several times before accepting a next student who may turn out this way.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  It's somewhat like what we do to airlines. When air travel was expensive, couch seats were comfortable, silverware was made of metals, glasses, of glass and real food was served in long-duration flights. We put pressures on them to lower prices and they responded by packing passenger in as little space as medically safe and by serving the most lightweight food that will keep you alive during the flight. We turned airlines into people movers just like we are turning universities into degree mills.
KoZeN 16y ago
Unfortunately this happens more often than the public are aware of. I'm familiar with a handful of PhD holders who didn't even attend the University that granted it. It's a shame that these qualifications can be purchased as it completely obliterates the integrity of the title.
- pbiggar 16y ago
  Could we have more detail? Perhaps the name of the University, or at least the country in which it happened?
  - KoZeN 16y ago
    Perhaps the name of the University Not likely. To be fair, if I was to name and shame I may as well pack my bags and leave the country. All I'll say is that these are red-brick Uni's in the UK. A close friend highlighted the issue through a discovery he made whilst developing plagarism detection software for a private organisation that worked closely with a certain collective of Universities, I recognised one of the names of the people he mentioned and I know for a fact, due to my own personal connection with the individual that she never attended or would even come close to qualifying for the PhD she claims to have been awarded. Another Swedish gentleman who I became very good friends with during my travels in NZ eventually disclosed how he achieved his PhD through certain 'investments' and has since used said qualification to leverage his residency application to stay in NZ permanently.
    - pbiggar 16y ago
      > Not likely. To be fair, if I was to name and shame I may as well pack my bags and leave the country. Of course, perfectly understandable. > All I'll say is that these are red-brick Uni's in the UK. Which are the 'redbrick' ones? Are they the ones which used to be polytechnics, or Oxbridge, or the ones in between like Bath and Glasgow?
      - rglovejoy 16y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university
Nitramp 16y ago
This seems fundamentally flawed: where do you draw the line between a psychological condition and personal ineptitude? "Exam anxiety" sounds a lot like "cannot focus in situations where results are expected". I would have thought that that's actually a reasonable requirement for a PhD.
- jacobolus 16y ago
  Doesn't seem like necessarily the best qualification to me. Mathematicians do (1) teaching, and (2) mathematical research. Neither of those two is remotely like taking a timed test. Of course, in this particular case it’s not clear that the candidate has demonstrated he can do competent mathematical work. I can’t imagine the prof. would be going to the mat here if the student couldn’t handle stressful exams but was otherwise a brilliant mathematician.
  - Nitramp 16y ago
    I agree, in particular with your second point. But the problem is: where do you draw the line? Is it only test anxiety, what about people struck by procrastination that don't manage to finish a thesis? Why is that not a valid medical condition? Is being lazy maybe also a medical condition? And being not all that smart? But more importantly, how do you make sure such excuses are not exploited by people simply failing the standards?
  - gregpilling 16y ago
    The student did not even complete the coursework. That alone should have prevented the PhD.
- acabal 16y ago
  I don't know... how often will one be taking exams as an official PhD holder? Exams are sometimes better at measuring how one takes exams than what one knows. Take job interviews for example. I hold a CS degree from a major university and my business is a website that so far gets 500,000 pageviews a month and is profitable. It was coded and designed by me from scratch; its server is administered and monitored by me; its community and customer support is managed by me. Given these accomplishments I would say I have a reasonable grasp of the art of web programming. But put me in a job interview situation where an interviewer asks me to write an implementation of something basic like a linked list and I'll probably manage to screw it up somehow. Then when I get sent home and I sit down in front of my monitor, I'll have it done in 5 minutes. Does my being unable to cope with programming interview situations make me a bad programmer? Does being unable to cope with a math exam make one a bad math researcher? Edit: though on the whole I do agree that degrees nowadays are being handed out like candy and far to often to people completely undeserving of them.
cool-RR 16y ago
These kind of annoying disputes are a result of people basing their professional reputation on a degree, instead of basing it on projects.
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  Huh? Isn't an advanced degree, in this case, just a set of projects? And isn't the professor in question complaining that some of the projects (i.e., the exam and one of the courses) were not completed?
  - cool-RR 16y ago
    The PhD is a set of projects, but the person is recognized not by the projects but by the degree. (As in "That guy's a doctor" and not "That's that guy who built the awesome Foobsnicator project".) This is what the argument is about here, that the value of the PhD is being cheapened. If a person was judged by his projects, this would become irrelevant.
    - St-Clock 16y ago
      Wrong, Ph.D. candidates get a lot of pressure to be associated with an idea, or a set of related projects, and they can get a lot of flak if they deviate a little because when you apply for an academic or industrial job, "you want to be known for an idea, not for your degree" (disclaimer: i'm a ph.d. candidate)
      - ChristianMarks 16y ago
        That's where I went wrong!
    - lrm242 16y ago
      A lot of PhD recipients are judged by their project, in that they continue to do research in and explore the area of their research. Building something and releasing it as an open source project, for example, says something about an individual. It doesn't necessarily say everything you need to know. The same goes for someone with a PhD or any academic degree. Both are useful in judging the worthwhileness of an individual.
swalberg 16y ago
It seems there's more to it than just the exam thing. In August 2010 (according to the timeline on the left of the article), one of the student's undergrad courses was upgraded to a PhD level course. Suspension of the prof for violating student's privacy by complaining about the case. Keep in mind this is the same University of Manitoba that will turn over your personal information to bill collectors should you not pay a parking ticket. (UofM Computer Engineering 1998)
- metageek 16y ago
  > turn over your personal information to bill collectors The spokesman pointed out that this was health-related information (since the student had a doctor diagnose his test anxiety); it'd be reasonable to treat that more carefully.
  - invisible 16y ago
    I think him having "exam anxiety" hardly counts for health-related. Where do we draw the line on what is health-related and what is pertinent information?
    - metageek 16y ago
      >I think him having "exam anxiety" hardly counts for health-related. I tend to agree, but apparently the university believes in it, and requires a doctor's note. Given that, I can't really be surprised that they treat it as health information.
      - jmm 16y ago
        Testing related diagnoses should be viewed with a bit of skepticism, I think. I worked in test prep for five years, and our [high end] clientele had quite a way of paying their way to various diagnoses that granted extended time on the P/SAT, ACT, or whatever. (And in case you're curious, colleges are unable to view whether a student took the SAT under extended time conditions or not.) That said, "exam anxiety" might be a new one to try in the college admissions racket.
sethg 16y ago
Disability issues aside, why does the professor have standing to sue in this issue?
- patio11 16y ago
  If he didn't have standing prior to the disciplinary action, he certainly has it now. If it becomes an issue, all the lawyers have to do is play connect-the-dots through a tort tangentially related to academic freedom. (Note: not a lawyer, not a Canadian, not a Canadian lawyer.)
- chegra 16y ago
  I think the problem is that the committee said no to the Phd but someone unilaterally overturn the decision. I think his problem is with the university and not with the student(students cant give themselves PhD).
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  According to the article, he's a member of the Graduate Studies Committee, and he claims that the Dean doesn't have the authority to over-ride their decision.
Splines 16y ago
I'm a graduate of the U of M, and managed to do so despite being a lazy idiot. This student should be ashamed that they've resorted to bending the rules of the system to complete their degree.
- viggity 16y ago
  its not even just a degree, they're bending the rules for a PhD, the rigor of which is much greater than a BA or a BS
pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>The University of Manitoba's disability services office last year registered 136 students who have medical certification that they suffer exam anxiety and must be accommodated with some other form of evaluation. Doesn't everyone get some sort of "exam anxiety". Isn't ability in exam like situations part of what is being tested? Does anyone have info about what the alternate testing methods are. They should be elective in any case to provide equal opportunity. For example if the alternative is a extended project and viva then any student should be allowed to take the alternative. Also the degree transcript should make it clear how the degree was achieved so that an employer doesn't wrongly assume a skill (working under [exam] pressure) that the applicant doesn't have.
DevX101 16y ago
The most interesting thing in this article was the Math professor himself. He received his PhD at age 20. He forced Air Canada to change it's policy that claimed the airline wasn't responsible for lost luggage. He's standing up for the integrity of his profession. And he's only 27. I hope he continues to contribute to society outside of the domain of theoretical maths.
- joshrule 16y ago
  Right on. People who care enough to act when mistreated are becoming increasingly rare, it seems. Plenty are willing to complain, but complaining is not really acting. It's pointing out a problem, not trying to fix it. The question is, though, how do we positively reward this type of action? For example, if the professor is fired, my guess is that he will have a hard time finding a job somewhere else, because he has rocked the boat. But, he deserves much better than that. How do we solve that?
  - pbiggar 16y ago
    Looking at his qualifications, I think he'll have no problem getting a similar role in another university.
  - cperciva 16y ago
    For example, if the professor is fired, my guess is that he will have a hard time finding a job somewhere else... I doubt it. In fact, I suspect the first thought of every mathematics department chair in Canada upon reading this story was "Lukacs is running into problems at Manitoba? Is there any way we can get him to come here instead?"
- purpledove 16y ago
  The implication being that he is too good to waste his time on math.
greenlblue 16y ago
There must be something else at stake here. This kind of thing happens all the time and now all of a sudden some professor decides to stand up. This is definitely not the full story.
- rubentopo 16y ago
  "This kind of thing happens all the time" Perhaps this is why he is standing up against this?, perhaps he thinks that someone's got a put an end to all this and that he must take matters into his own hands?
  - greenlblue 16y ago
    My point is that math professors as a bunch put up with this kind of stuff all the time because more than half of the incoming class is just going to be horribly unprepared for any kind of graduate work. Are the students to blame for being unprepared? Yes, I think so but there is also the fact that universities take on way too many graduate students simply because somebody has to be a TA for all the lower division classes the math department offers. This is just bureaucratic bloat and a byproduct of this bureaucratic bloat is that people who shouldn't get a PhD get pushed through the system because it keeps the attrition rate down, at least on paper. So it's great that this guy is standing up for what he believes in but the problem is more systemic and I doubt his one man stand against one student is going to make much difference to how the universities currently operate.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      > Are the students to blame for being unprepared? Not really. For many, it's just that it's not "their thing". More that 50% of the incoming students failed the first semester at the college I attended. Many tried a couple times and then went away to pursue other careers. I would never favor dumbing down the curriculum to accommodate people who want to be professional engineers but can't do math... One day, I could be flying the planes they designed.
      - 16y ago
brudgers 16y ago
It's the logical extension of classroom inclusion (and mainstreaming) policies for students with learning disabilities. Expect to see more of it as it gained traction among in US colleges of education about 20 years ago - particularly in primary education departments. On the bright side, at least it's not an MD. Edit: I believe that in general mainstreaming and inclusion are a good public policy concept with a really thorny ethical issue attached. The thorny issue is, at what point you tell the student, "We were only kidding. You're not really smart enough to continue on the academic path with your classmates." In the US its rise coincided with that of facilitated communication in the classroom for autistic individuals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication Both ideas gained a lot of traction in primary education departments in the early 90's [US]. Primary educators loved Mainstreaming because they were able to pretend the thorny issue didn't exist and let it be dealt with at the secondary level. As with any bureaucracy, secondary educators have an incentive to continue to pass the buck and little to gain by kicking the mayor's autistic nephew out of AP calculus (so to speak).
- brudgers 16y ago
  It's the logical extension of classroom inclusion (and mainstreaming) policies for students with learning disabilities. Expect to see more of it as it gained traction among in US colleges of education about 20 years ago - particularly in primary education departments. On the bright side, at least it's not an MD. Edit: I believe that in general mainstreaming and inclusion are a good public policy concept with a really thorny ethical issue attached. The thorny issue is, at what point you tell the student, "We were only kidding. You're not really smart enough to continue on the academic path with your classmates." In the US its rise coincided with that of facilitated communication in the classroom for autistic individuals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication Both ideas gained a lot of traction in primary education departments in the early 90's [US]. Primary educators loved Mainstreaming because they were able to pretend the thorny issue didn't exist and let it be dealt with at the secondary level. As with any bureaucracy, secondary educators have an incentive to continue to pass the buck and little to gain by kicking the mayor's autistic nephew out of AP calculus (so to speak).
- 16y ago
jgrahamc 16y ago
Part of me would like to feel for the student who may have a genuine illness, but the other part of me that has a doctorate knows that it was very, very hard and I totally lost it in my second year and went off around the US for 6 weeks to get my head clear. The bottom line is that a doctorate is not an easy thing to get, it's stressful and some people probably can't take the stress.
- random42 16y ago
  The bottom line is that a doctorate is not an easy thing to get, it's stressful and some people probably can't take the stress. Then, Unfortunately, they should not get doctorate. (I realize this sounds awful and unfair, but it is actually the only fair deal)
  - eqdw 16y ago
    I agree it sounds awful, but I agree that you are correct. Not everyone who wants a PhD can just get one. It is damn hard work. You devote your ENTIRE CAREER and in some cases life, to your Ph.D. It's not fair to the others who are working hard if you are just given one.
    - seanc 16y ago
      I don't have a PhD but I do have a black belt, which shares some characteristics. Specifically, I see people from time to time who I feel perhaps did not work as hard for their rank as I did for mine. The lesson I've learned in the end is don't trust credentials too much. If you want to find out what kind of martial artist someone is, don't look at the belt, look at how they train. I would imagine the same can be said for a PhD. Don't look at the degree, read the research!
      - random42 16y ago
        Its not feasible to "test" knowledge always. Many degrees, are the qualification to practice a particular profession. Think about how bad it would be, if medical degree holders do not know how to treat people, pilot license holder do not know how to fly airplanes or civil engineer degree holder not knowing what alleviation is safe for the suspension bridge. The only way patients/flying authorities/ government authorities etc. would know if a doctor/pilot/engineer is qualified to carryout the assigned task, if the degree actually reflect a reasonable level of proficiency in the particular field.
peterbotond 16y ago
i do not have a doctorate. To the most I support prof Lukacs's stand a doctorate must be earned without a doubt. All the strength and health to him to continure his quest and keep math the best. He should be a dean, at least. :-)
Brashman 16y ago
To be honest, I feel like as long as the student completed a thesis that deserved a PhD then I think he deserves the degree. A PhD focuses around that piece of work. The article is unclear about this point but it sounds like the deficiencies were more with the other requirements that tend to be tacked onto the degree such as classes and exams.
Nick_C 16y ago
I'm very surprised by many of the comments here implying that a PhD involves course work and exams. Is there a difference in PhDs between countries? Here in Australia, the last degree involving exams and course work is the Masters. A PhD involves writing a thesis on new and original work under the supervision of your adviser. It usually takes 2 to 3 years. There are no exams. I'd be interested to hear the perspective of those from the US and Europe.
- chollida1 16y ago
  > It usually takes 2 to 3 years. There must be a few differences. 2 years is an incredibly short time period to get a Phd. here is Canada, and any US program I looked at... 4 years is usually a minimum and 5 years is common.
- Lewisham 16y ago
  In the UK, you don't take classes, because you don't take a Masters. You do three years in and out. Four if you struggle, but that's it. What people are talking about here is usually the US system, where your PhD path includes Masters classes. You get a Masters along the way (I have mine in a drawer somewhere), but this is incidental along the path to the PhD. It takes 2-3 years to get those classes out the way, then you're all research. The system is the same as you are describing, except that Americans don't tend to split them up in their heads.
  - nagrom 16y ago
    It must depend upon your subject and university in the UK. As a physicist, I have never known a student to obtain a PhD in less than 3 years. My students have taken 3.5 years minimum. There's one guy in our department who should get his PhD soon, after 8 years. What you're describing is maybe how they are funded - but not the reality in my experience.
- scott_s 16y ago
  US (and, I assume) Canadian schools typically have a PhD Candidacy exam. Until you pass the exam, you are not officially a PhD candidate. The format of mine was quite fair, I believe, and representative of whether or not one can do research. In December, we were told 15 papers that we needed to read. In January, we were given 6 questions based on those papers. The questions had parts, and they ranged in depth from, basically, "tell us what they did in this paper," to "poke holes in this work" and "compare/contrast the work in this paper with the work in this other paper." We were given two weeks. I wrote about 24 pages for that exam. The candidacy exam is one of the exams the student got out of. There is, of course, then the proposal and the final defense.
dfj225 16y ago
I'm curious about the "exam anxiety" aspect. I've never heard of allowances for alternate types of examination being made for this before, and I just left University in the US earlier this year. Is this recognized in the US as well? Seems like it would be something that's hard to draw the line between a legitimate psychological issue and normal behavior. I'd venture that nearly everyone experiences some sort of "exam anxiety".
- ajays 16y ago
  I'm sure there are people with all sorts of issues with test-taking. But there are a fair number of shirkers too, who use this as an excuse to bypass the system. I remember once I was teaching a class, and one of the students sprung this on me: he claimed he had some issues with the tests and the time required was too short (in reality, my tests were always designed such that if you knew the material you could ace them in 20 minutes; if you didn't, you could sit there for an hour. And they were open book, open notes, so no memorization required). So the next test came, and I told him: take as long as you want; I'll be here. The test started at 6pm (it was an evening course). Most of the class left in an hour or so. But he stayed. And I stayed with him. I did my reading, etc. Finally, at 1AM, he gave up and said he was done. The next day, he dropped the course.
- ramchip 16y ago
  For the record, I'm a Canadian from another province, and I've never heard of such a thing either.
- blahedo 16y ago
  We need to draw a distinction between the anxiety we all feel when faced with a stressful situation, and the pathological diagnosis of exam anxiety, just as some of us are "obsessive" but do not suffer from clinical OCD, or get "depressed" but do not suffer from clinical depression. Equating the milder "everyone gets this" form with the clinical version is a real disservice to the people with an actual disability. Speaking as a college professor, I see that in practice the key distinction is that the students with the actual disability both A) get a doctor's note and B) tell me long in advance of requesting any specific accommodations. And much of the time they don't even dip very heavily into their accommodations---they may be allotted double time on an exam, for instance, but on an exam where the best un-disabled students finish in 35 minutes, the double-time students (who often are very good students) take the full period or slightly longer, rather than the full 100 minutes they're allotted. I'm not going to try to diagnose the UM student here, but I will note that it is somewhat suspicious that the "exam anxiety" claim didn't come up until after he or she had failed for the second time.
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eqdw 16y ago
To everyone, from someone who has dealt with this man personally: I don't know the specifics of the situation. I generally assume I'm only getting part of the story when I read these sorts of articles. However, knowing Dr. Lukacs, he is most probably correct and in the right on (almost?) everything he is saying, and he is most certainly being royally f*'d over by the university. That being said, it was just a matter of time until he went up against someone who didn't appreciate his lack of social skills. He is certainly not a diplomatic person by any means. He's one of those guys who would go up to you, tell you how everything about you is wrong (assuming you are in fact wrong), and be honestly perplexed when you get upset about it. In short, he reminds me of that scene in The Big Lebowski: "You're not wrong, Walter, YOU'RE JUST AN ASSHOLE". This guy is Walter. He's not wrong, but his lack of tact pissed off someone in power over him. I hope he comes out of this on top, because (as far as I can tell) he didn't do anything wrong, and even if his conduct was in error, seriously university, thanks for giving my degree a bad reputation (by proxy; I got CS, not math). Just some insight from someone who knows the guy (me!). Hope you find it interesting
- DevX101 16y ago
  People like Lukacs need to find organizations that are compatible with their irreverence. Although merit goes a long way, academia is VERY political especially when it comes to making tenure decisions. Most large companies don't have a place for him either. Telling your boss directly he's wrong (even if he is) is a career staller, and going over his head will definitely give you enemies. There are probably quite a few "Walters" here on HN who said "F* it, I'll do my own startup".
  - eqdw 16y ago
    I think what you say is very true. I know one fellow from Electrical Engineering, who was very much like Gabi. Insanely smart (did the 5-year degree in 4 years, with an A+ in every course except two), utter balls at tact and diplomacy. He actually quit his masters because he couldn't deal with the politics at that level.
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eqdw 16y ago
WRT the student with exam anxiety: I can sympathize, as I have some pretty crippling anxiety (albiet in other areas). However what I have to wonder is this. If you've got exam anxiety, what happens when you get your PhD, and your university is pressuring you to publish. "You haven't put out a paper in over a year. We're giving you 2 months to get on that, if you don't, we'll find someone who will". What do you do about your 'paper anxiety' then? It really sucks that you have to deal with this, but the thing is that that's life. If you can't deal with it now, you're not going to be any better dealing with it later.
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raganwald 16y ago
Sayre's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_Law
- ctkrohn 16y ago
  Fixed link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_Law
  - deleted 16y ago
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sprout 16y ago
I think there's an interesting statement being made by this professor about speed, if the thing in question is really his exams. I mean, he seems to be making the statement that someone who produces excellent papers and research but is incapable of coming up with a coherent response to an arbitrary topic in a short timeframe is unworthy of a PhD. It seems to me there's a place for people who can't think on their toes, even among the ranks of the official Doctors.
rglovejoy 16y ago
Maclean's also has an article about this: http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/01/umanitoba%E2%80%94phd-diploma-mill/ http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/01/umanitoba%E2%80%94phd-dip...
raganwald 16y ago
The Maclean's article adds some interesting points. http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/01/umanitoba%E2%80%94phd-diploma-mill/ http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/01/umanitoba%E2%80%94phd-dip... Lukacs wasn't on the board when this student was exempted from the exam requirement or had his course upgraded. Another professor resigned in protest and Lukacs took his place. He had never met the student until he served the student with papers for the lawsuit. The University says it has suspended Lukacs without pay for violating the student's privacy by naming the student and discussing the student's medical conditions in the lawsuit. UofM claims this is a violation of academic privacy and a violation of the law concerning medical privacy. Lukacs claims he is acting so that his good name is not sullied by being associated with a degree mill. Interesting, to say the least. I see many laudatory comments here. Are other universities as interested in having Lukacs on board as posters here would suggest? If so, why not go to a place with the standards he admires, instead of trying to carry UofM on his shoulders?
- donohoe 16y ago
  It would not surprise me if he did, and it's indicated that he is not sure that he wants to remain there.
- gamble 16y ago
  My first two startup jobs were in the Canadian health and education sectors, respectively. As government responsibilities, education and health care are covered by provincial freedom of information and privacy protection (FOIPP) laws. They go by different names in each province; Manitoba's is known as FIPPA. In general, the laws are pretty strict about not releasing information. Student and health information is not supposed to be available to anyone except on a need-to-know basis, much less made available publicly. Our product had to have an elaborate system of permissions to prevent instructors from inappropriately viewing student data. Even something as apparently innocuous as posting a list of grades matched up against student names or IDs is forbidden. The laws aren't for show, either. Everyone I interacted with in the course of that job, from bureaucrats down to individual instructors, took FOIPP very seriously. FOIPP compliance was a non-negotiable feature, and FOIPP violation bugs were always highest priority. Typically, instructors become aware of student disabilities when they are asked to make special arrangements, such as arranging assistant note takers or special exams. Anyone who reveals that information is breaking educational and medical privacy, and would be in for a world of hurt. I'm not aware if there are special exceptions for information released in the course of a lawsuit, but I'm not surprised that the university reacted severely. They take those laws seriously here.

155 points by agconway 16y ago

Taken with the recent http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843491 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843491, I'm a bit concerned. As time moves forward, shouldn't we be setting the bar higher, not continually dropping it lower and lower? Why, in so many areas, are standards sliding rather than getting stronger (not just in education, but in government and some industries, too)? What's happening to personal responsibility and a clear set of rules by which to play the game? Am I wrong in seeing things this way?

stretchwithme 16y ago
nope. we have standards and requirements for very good reasons. but we don't want anyone to ever experience a negative feeling.
roel_v 16y ago
The standards are being lowered for several reasons. One is that the university gets paid per student they graduate (in most countries in Western Europe that I know about). Another is that politicians feel they need to raise the % of people with degrees in their region/country so they pressure universities to 'accommodate' students as much as possible. Couple this with top positions in universities increasingly being given to non-academics, but rather bureaucrat politicians who get these positions as a reward for years of service to their party and in these roles fill the last few years until their retirement with a cushy, well paid job in which they mostly try to run the university as a company (not being hindered by the fact that they know nothing about actually running a business), and you get every lower academic standards. And then finally, and this may not be the majority of cases but I've seen this happen from very close myself, a part of the problem is the many exchange students who come from developing countries and pay big bucks for their studies. These people have sometimes scraped together everything they and their extended families have to go to the West. If they fail their program, to them it feels like they might as well have been executed on the spot. There's no way they can go back to their countries without a degree. I've seen people on the brink of suicide over the thought of failing exams and having to go back (yes, other ('native') students also get exam anxiety, I'm not dismissing those). So imagine being a professor and having to grade a thesis of a guy that is only a few years younger than you are (these students often come after several years of working and saving), with a wife and a family to support. You know he doesn't live up to the standards of the program. You also know that everybody else knows (academics at universities in the area) so nobody's going to give him a postdoc anyway. So there's no real harm in giving him the degree, at least not until 'the work gets out' and all diplomas devaluated. The student will most likely be going back to where he came from, where he's going to be welcomed as a genius and offered a cushy government or consulting job. All in all, there he's still going to be quite good, at least compared to the other people at the places that would hire him (yes there are very bright Indian, Chinese etc. students who are just as good as any Western student, I'm not disparaging Asians in general - I'm talking about this specific subset of 'academic refugee students'). And then consider that if you fail this guy, you know you're basically doing the equivalent of a 'thumbs down' in a Roman amphitheater. That's a tough decision to make. I know, this sort of factors shouldn't come into play, but that's easy to say from behind a desk far far away from this situation. I've seen people seriously struggle with this dilemma, and I've seen choices being made in both directions. It's heart wrenching, and it makes people think several times before accepting a next student who may turn out this way.
rbanffy 16y ago
It's somewhat like what we do to airlines. When air travel was expensive, couch seats were comfortable, silverware was made of metals, glasses, of glass and real food was served in long-duration flights. We put pressures on them to lower prices and they responded by packing passenger in as little space as medically safe and by serving the most lightweight food that will keep you alive during the flight. We turned airlines into people movers just like we are turning universities into degree mills.

KoZeN 16y ago

Unfortunately this happens more often than the public are aware of. I'm familiar with a handful of PhD holders who didn't even attend the University that granted it. It's a shame that these qualifications can be purchased as it completely obliterates the integrity of the title.

pbiggar 16y ago
Could we have more detail? Perhaps the name of the University, or at least the country in which it happened?
- KoZeN 16y ago
  Perhaps the name of the University Not likely. To be fair, if I was to name and shame I may as well pack my bags and leave the country. All I'll say is that these are red-brick Uni's in the UK. A close friend highlighted the issue through a discovery he made whilst developing plagarism detection software for a private organisation that worked closely with a certain collective of Universities, I recognised one of the names of the people he mentioned and I know for a fact, due to my own personal connection with the individual that she never attended or would even come close to qualifying for the PhD she claims to have been awarded. Another Swedish gentleman who I became very good friends with during my travels in NZ eventually disclosed how he achieved his PhD through certain 'investments' and has since used said qualification to leverage his residency application to stay in NZ permanently.
  - pbiggar 16y ago
    > Not likely. To be fair, if I was to name and shame I may as well pack my bags and leave the country. Of course, perfectly understandable. > All I'll say is that these are red-brick Uni's in the UK. Which are the 'redbrick' ones? Are they the ones which used to be polytechnics, or Oxbridge, or the ones in between like Bath and Glasgow?
    - rglovejoy 16y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university

Nitramp 16y ago

This seems fundamentally flawed: where do you draw the line between a psychological condition and personal ineptitude? "Exam anxiety" sounds a lot like "cannot focus in situations where results are expected". I would have thought that that's actually a reasonable requirement for a PhD.

jacobolus 16y ago
Doesn't seem like necessarily the best qualification to me. Mathematicians do (1) teaching, and (2) mathematical research. Neither of those two is remotely like taking a timed test. Of course, in this particular case it’s not clear that the candidate has demonstrated he can do competent mathematical work. I can’t imagine the prof. would be going to the mat here if the student couldn’t handle stressful exams but was otherwise a brilliant mathematician.
- Nitramp 16y ago
  I agree, in particular with your second point. But the problem is: where do you draw the line? Is it only test anxiety, what about people struck by procrastination that don't manage to finish a thesis? Why is that not a valid medical condition? Is being lazy maybe also a medical condition? And being not all that smart? But more importantly, how do you make sure such excuses are not exploited by people simply failing the standards?
- gregpilling 16y ago
  The student did not even complete the coursework. That alone should have prevented the PhD.
acabal 16y ago
I don't know... how often will one be taking exams as an official PhD holder? Exams are sometimes better at measuring how one takes exams than what one knows. Take job interviews for example. I hold a CS degree from a major university and my business is a website that so far gets 500,000 pageviews a month and is profitable. It was coded and designed by me from scratch; its server is administered and monitored by me; its community and customer support is managed by me. Given these accomplishments I would say I have a reasonable grasp of the art of web programming. But put me in a job interview situation where an interviewer asks me to write an implementation of something basic like a linked list and I'll probably manage to screw it up somehow. Then when I get sent home and I sit down in front of my monitor, I'll have it done in 5 minutes. Does my being unable to cope with programming interview situations make me a bad programmer? Does being unable to cope with a math exam make one a bad math researcher? Edit: though on the whole I do agree that degrees nowadays are being handed out like candy and far to often to people completely undeserving of them.

cool-RR 16y ago

These kind of annoying disputes are a result of people basing their professional reputation on a degree, instead of basing it on projects.

michael_dorfman 16y ago
Huh? Isn't an advanced degree, in this case, just a set of projects? And isn't the professor in question complaining that some of the projects (i.e., the exam and one of the courses) were not completed?
- cool-RR 16y ago
  The PhD is a set of projects, but the person is recognized not by the projects but by the degree. (As in "That guy's a doctor" and not "That's that guy who built the awesome Foobsnicator project".) This is what the argument is about here, that the value of the PhD is being cheapened. If a person was judged by his projects, this would become irrelevant.
  - St-Clock 16y ago
    Wrong, Ph.D. candidates get a lot of pressure to be associated with an idea, or a set of related projects, and they can get a lot of flak if they deviate a little because when you apply for an academic or industrial job, "you want to be known for an idea, not for your degree" (disclaimer: i'm a ph.d. candidate)
    - ChristianMarks 16y ago
      That's where I went wrong!
  - lrm242 16y ago
    A lot of PhD recipients are judged by their project, in that they continue to do research in and explore the area of their research. Building something and releasing it as an open source project, for example, says something about an individual. It doesn't necessarily say everything you need to know. The same goes for someone with a PhD or any academic degree. Both are useful in judging the worthwhileness of an individual.

swalberg 16y ago

It seems there's more to it than just the exam thing. In August 2010 (according to the timeline on the left of the article), one of the student's undergrad courses was upgraded to a PhD level course. Suspension of the prof for violating student's privacy by complaining about the case. Keep in mind this is the same University of Manitoba that will turn over your personal information to bill collectors should you not pay a parking ticket. (UofM Computer Engineering 1998)

metageek 16y ago
> turn over your personal information to bill collectors The spokesman pointed out that this was health-related information (since the student had a doctor diagnose his test anxiety); it'd be reasonable to treat that more carefully.
- invisible 16y ago
  I think him having "exam anxiety" hardly counts for health-related. Where do we draw the line on what is health-related and what is pertinent information?
  - metageek 16y ago
    >I think him having "exam anxiety" hardly counts for health-related. I tend to agree, but apparently the university believes in it, and requires a doctor's note. Given that, I can't really be surprised that they treat it as health information.
    - jmm 16y ago
      Testing related diagnoses should be viewed with a bit of skepticism, I think. I worked in test prep for five years, and our [high end] clientele had quite a way of paying their way to various diagnoses that granted extended time on the P/SAT, ACT, or whatever. (And in case you're curious, colleges are unable to view whether a student took the SAT under extended time conditions or not.) That said, "exam anxiety" might be a new one to try in the college admissions racket.

sethg 16y ago

Disability issues aside, why does the professor have standing to sue in this issue?

patio11 16y ago
If he didn't have standing prior to the disciplinary action, he certainly has it now. If it becomes an issue, all the lawyers have to do is play connect-the-dots through a tort tangentially related to academic freedom. (Note: not a lawyer, not a Canadian, not a Canadian lawyer.)
chegra 16y ago
I think the problem is that the committee said no to the Phd but someone unilaterally overturn the decision. I think his problem is with the university and not with the student(students cant give themselves PhD).
michael_dorfman 16y ago
According to the article, he's a member of the Graduate Studies Committee, and he claims that the Dean doesn't have the authority to over-ride their decision.

Splines 16y ago

I'm a graduate of the U of M, and managed to do so despite being a lazy idiot. This student should be ashamed that they've resorted to bending the rules of the system to complete their degree.

viggity 16y ago
its not even just a degree, they're bending the rules for a PhD, the rigor of which is much greater than a BA or a BS

pbhjpbhj 16y ago

>The University of Manitoba's disability services office last year registered 136 students who have medical certification that they suffer exam anxiety and must be accommodated with some other form of evaluation. Doesn't everyone get some sort of "exam anxiety". Isn't ability in exam like situations part of what is being tested? Does anyone have info about what the alternate testing methods are. They should be elective in any case to provide equal opportunity. For example if the alternative is a extended project and viva then any student should be allowed to take the alternative. Also the degree transcript should make it clear how the degree was achieved so that an employer doesn't wrongly assume a skill (working under [exam] pressure) that the applicant doesn't have.

DevX101 16y ago

The most interesting thing in this article was the Math professor himself. He received his PhD at age 20. He forced Air Canada to change it's policy that claimed the airline wasn't responsible for lost luggage. He's standing up for the integrity of his profession. And he's only 27. I hope he continues to contribute to society outside of the domain of theoretical maths.

joshrule 16y ago
Right on. People who care enough to act when mistreated are becoming increasingly rare, it seems. Plenty are willing to complain, but complaining is not really acting. It's pointing out a problem, not trying to fix it. The question is, though, how do we positively reward this type of action? For example, if the professor is fired, my guess is that he will have a hard time finding a job somewhere else, because he has rocked the boat. But, he deserves much better than that. How do we solve that?
- pbiggar 16y ago
  Looking at his qualifications, I think he'll have no problem getting a similar role in another university.
- cperciva 16y ago
  For example, if the professor is fired, my guess is that he will have a hard time finding a job somewhere else... I doubt it. In fact, I suspect the first thought of every mathematics department chair in Canada upon reading this story was "Lukacs is running into problems at Manitoba? Is there any way we can get him to come here instead?"
purpledove 16y ago
The implication being that he is too good to waste his time on math.

greenlblue 16y ago

There must be something else at stake here. This kind of thing happens all the time and now all of a sudden some professor decides to stand up. This is definitely not the full story.

rubentopo 16y ago
"This kind of thing happens all the time" Perhaps this is why he is standing up against this?, perhaps he thinks that someone's got a put an end to all this and that he must take matters into his own hands?
- greenlblue 16y ago
  My point is that math professors as a bunch put up with this kind of stuff all the time because more than half of the incoming class is just going to be horribly unprepared for any kind of graduate work. Are the students to blame for being unprepared? Yes, I think so but there is also the fact that universities take on way too many graduate students simply because somebody has to be a TA for all the lower division classes the math department offers. This is just bureaucratic bloat and a byproduct of this bureaucratic bloat is that people who shouldn't get a PhD get pushed through the system because it keeps the attrition rate down, at least on paper. So it's great that this guy is standing up for what he believes in but the problem is more systemic and I doubt his one man stand against one student is going to make much difference to how the universities currently operate.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > Are the students to blame for being unprepared? Not really. For many, it's just that it's not "their thing". More that 50% of the incoming students failed the first semester at the college I attended. Many tried a couple times and then went away to pursue other careers. I would never favor dumbing down the curriculum to accommodate people who want to be professional engineers but can't do math... One day, I could be flying the planes they designed.
    - 16y ago

brudgers 16y ago

It's the logical extension of classroom inclusion (and mainstreaming) policies for students with learning disabilities. Expect to see more of it as it gained traction among in US colleges of education about 20 years ago - particularly in primary education departments. On the bright side, at least it's not an MD. Edit: I believe that in general mainstreaming and inclusion are a good public policy concept with a really thorny ethical issue attached. The thorny issue is, at what point you tell the student, "We were only kidding. You're not really smart enough to continue on the academic path with your classmates." In the US its rise coincided with that of facilitated communication in the classroom for autistic individuals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication Both ideas gained a lot of traction in primary education departments in the early 90's [US]. Primary educators loved Mainstreaming because they were able to pretend the thorny issue didn't exist and let it be dealt with at the secondary level. As with any bureaucracy, secondary educators have an incentive to continue to pass the buck and little to gain by kicking the mayor's autistic nephew out of AP calculus (so to speak).

brudgers 16y ago
It's the logical extension of classroom inclusion (and mainstreaming) policies for students with learning disabilities. Expect to see more of it as it gained traction among in US colleges of education about 20 years ago - particularly in primary education departments. On the bright side, at least it's not an MD. Edit: I believe that in general mainstreaming and inclusion are a good public policy concept with a really thorny ethical issue attached. The thorny issue is, at what point you tell the student, "We were only kidding. You're not really smart enough to continue on the academic path with your classmates." In the US its rise coincided with that of facilitated communication in the classroom for autistic individuals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication Both ideas gained a lot of traction in primary education departments in the early 90's [US]. Primary educators loved Mainstreaming because they were able to pretend the thorny issue didn't exist and let it be dealt with at the secondary level. As with any bureaucracy, secondary educators have an incentive to continue to pass the buck and little to gain by kicking the mayor's autistic nephew out of AP calculus (so to speak).
16y ago

jgrahamc 16y ago

Part of me would like to feel for the student who may have a genuine illness, but the other part of me that has a doctorate knows that it was very, very hard and I totally lost it in my second year and went off around the US for 6 weeks to get my head clear. The bottom line is that a doctorate is not an easy thing to get, it's stressful and some people probably can't take the stress.

random42 16y ago
The bottom line is that a doctorate is not an easy thing to get, it's stressful and some people probably can't take the stress. Then, Unfortunately, they should not get doctorate. (I realize this sounds awful and unfair, but it is actually the only fair deal)
- eqdw 16y ago
  I agree it sounds awful, but I agree that you are correct. Not everyone who wants a PhD can just get one. It is damn hard work. You devote your ENTIRE CAREER and in some cases life, to your Ph.D. It's not fair to the others who are working hard if you are just given one.
  - seanc 16y ago
    I don't have a PhD but I do have a black belt, which shares some characteristics. Specifically, I see people from time to time who I feel perhaps did not work as hard for their rank as I did for mine. The lesson I've learned in the end is don't trust credentials too much. If you want to find out what kind of martial artist someone is, don't look at the belt, look at how they train. I would imagine the same can be said for a PhD. Don't look at the degree, read the research!
    - random42 16y ago
      Its not feasible to "test" knowledge always. Many degrees, are the qualification to practice a particular profession. Think about how bad it would be, if medical degree holders do not know how to treat people, pilot license holder do not know how to fly airplanes or civil engineer degree holder not knowing what alleviation is safe for the suspension bridge. The only way patients/flying authorities/ government authorities etc. would know if a doctor/pilot/engineer is qualified to carryout the assigned task, if the degree actually reflect a reasonable level of proficiency in the particular field.

peterbotond 16y ago

i do not have a doctorate. To the most I support prof Lukacs's stand a doctorate must be earned without a doubt. All the strength and health to him to continure his quest and keep math the best. He should be a dean, at least. :-)

Brashman 16y ago

To be honest, I feel like as long as the student completed a thesis that deserved a PhD then I think he deserves the degree. A PhD focuses around that piece of work. The article is unclear about this point but it sounds like the deficiencies were more with the other requirements that tend to be tacked onto the degree such as classes and exams.

Nick_C 16y ago

I'm very surprised by many of the comments here implying that a PhD involves course work and exams. Is there a difference in PhDs between countries? Here in Australia, the last degree involving exams and course work is the Masters. A PhD involves writing a thesis on new and original work under the supervision of your adviser. It usually takes 2 to 3 years. There are no exams. I'd be interested to hear the perspective of those from the US and Europe.

chollida1 16y ago
> It usually takes 2 to 3 years. There must be a few differences. 2 years is an incredibly short time period to get a Phd. here is Canada, and any US program I looked at... 4 years is usually a minimum and 5 years is common.
Lewisham 16y ago
In the UK, you don't take classes, because you don't take a Masters. You do three years in and out. Four if you struggle, but that's it. What people are talking about here is usually the US system, where your PhD path includes Masters classes. You get a Masters along the way (I have mine in a drawer somewhere), but this is incidental along the path to the PhD. It takes 2-3 years to get those classes out the way, then you're all research. The system is the same as you are describing, except that Americans don't tend to split them up in their heads.
- nagrom 16y ago
  It must depend upon your subject and university in the UK. As a physicist, I have never known a student to obtain a PhD in less than 3 years. My students have taken 3.5 years minimum. There's one guy in our department who should get his PhD soon, after 8 years. What you're describing is maybe how they are funded - but not the reality in my experience.
scott_s 16y ago
US (and, I assume) Canadian schools typically have a PhD Candidacy exam. Until you pass the exam, you are not officially a PhD candidate. The format of mine was quite fair, I believe, and representative of whether or not one can do research. In December, we were told 15 papers that we needed to read. In January, we were given 6 questions based on those papers. The questions had parts, and they ranged in depth from, basically, "tell us what they did in this paper," to "poke holes in this work" and "compare/contrast the work in this paper with the work in this other paper." We were given two weeks. I wrote about 24 pages for that exam. The candidacy exam is one of the exams the student got out of. There is, of course, then the proposal and the final defense.

dfj225 16y ago

I'm curious about the "exam anxiety" aspect. I've never heard of allowances for alternate types of examination being made for this before, and I just left University in the US earlier this year. Is this recognized in the US as well? Seems like it would be something that's hard to draw the line between a legitimate psychological issue and normal behavior. I'd venture that nearly everyone experiences some sort of "exam anxiety".

ajays 16y ago
I'm sure there are people with all sorts of issues with test-taking. But there are a fair number of shirkers too, who use this as an excuse to bypass the system. I remember once I was teaching a class, and one of the students sprung this on me: he claimed he had some issues with the tests and the time required was too short (in reality, my tests were always designed such that if you knew the material you could ace them in 20 minutes; if you didn't, you could sit there for an hour. And they were open book, open notes, so no memorization required). So the next test came, and I told him: take as long as you want; I'll be here. The test started at 6pm (it was an evening course). Most of the class left in an hour or so. But he stayed. And I stayed with him. I did my reading, etc. Finally, at 1AM, he gave up and said he was done. The next day, he dropped the course.
ramchip 16y ago
For the record, I'm a Canadian from another province, and I've never heard of such a thing either.
blahedo 16y ago
We need to draw a distinction between the anxiety we all feel when faced with a stressful situation, and the pathological diagnosis of exam anxiety, just as some of us are "obsessive" but do not suffer from clinical OCD, or get "depressed" but do not suffer from clinical depression. Equating the milder "everyone gets this" form with the clinical version is a real disservice to the people with an actual disability. Speaking as a college professor, I see that in practice the key distinction is that the students with the actual disability both A) get a doctor's note and B) tell me long in advance of requesting any specific accommodations. And much of the time they don't even dip very heavily into their accommodations---they may be allotted double time on an exam, for instance, but on an exam where the best un-disabled students finish in 35 minutes, the double-time students (who often are very good students) take the full period or slightly longer, rather than the full 100 minutes they're allotted. I'm not going to try to diagnose the UM student here, but I will note that it is somewhat suspicious that the "exam anxiety" claim didn't come up until after he or she had failed for the second time.

deleted 16y ago

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eqdw 16y ago

To everyone, from someone who has dealt with this man personally: I don't know the specifics of the situation. I generally assume I'm only getting part of the story when I read these sorts of articles. However, knowing Dr. Lukacs, he is most probably correct and in the right on (almost?) everything he is saying, and he is most certainly being royally f*'d over by the university. That being said, it was just a matter of time until he went up against someone who didn't appreciate his lack of social skills. He is certainly not a diplomatic person by any means. He's one of those guys who would go up to you, tell you how everything about you is wrong (assuming you are in fact wrong), and be honestly perplexed when you get upset about it. In short, he reminds me of that scene in The Big Lebowski: "You're not wrong, Walter, YOU'RE JUST AN ASSHOLE". This guy is Walter. He's not wrong, but his lack of tact pissed off someone in power over him. I hope he comes out of this on top, because (as far as I can tell) he didn't do anything wrong, and even if his conduct was in error, seriously university, thanks for giving my degree a bad reputation (by proxy; I got CS, not math). Just some insight from someone who knows the guy (me!). Hope you find it interesting

DevX101 16y ago
People like Lukacs need to find organizations that are compatible with their irreverence. Although merit goes a long way, academia is VERY political especially when it comes to making tenure decisions. Most large companies don't have a place for him either. Telling your boss directly he's wrong (even if he is) is a career staller, and going over his head will definitely give you enemies. There are probably quite a few "Walters" here on HN who said "F* it, I'll do my own startup".
- eqdw 16y ago
  I think what you say is very true. I know one fellow from Electrical Engineering, who was very much like Gabi. Insanely smart (did the 5-year degree in 4 years, with an A+ in every course except two), utter balls at tact and diplomacy. He actually quit his masters because he couldn't deal with the politics at that level.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

eqdw 16y ago

WRT the student with exam anxiety: I can sympathize, as I have some pretty crippling anxiety (albiet in other areas). However what I have to wonder is this. If you've got exam anxiety, what happens when you get your PhD, and your university is pressuring you to publish. "You haven't put out a paper in over a year. We're giving you 2 months to get on that, if you don't, we'll find someone who will". What do you do about your 'paper anxiety' then? It really sucks that you have to deal with this, but the thing is that that's life. If you can't deal with it now, you're not going to be any better dealing with it later.

deleted 16y ago

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raganwald 16y ago

Sayre's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_Law

ctkrohn 16y ago
Fixed link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_Law
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

sprout 16y ago

I think there's an interesting statement being made by this professor about speed, if the thing in question is really his exams. I mean, he seems to be making the statement that someone who produces excellent papers and research but is incapable of coming up with a coherent response to an arbitrary topic in a short timeframe is unworthy of a PhD. It seems to me there's a place for people who can't think on their toes, even among the ranks of the official Doctors.

rglovejoy 16y ago

Maclean's also has an article about this: http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/01/umanitoba%E2%80%94phd-diploma-mill/ http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/01/umanitoba%E2%80%94phd-dip...

raganwald 16y ago

The Maclean's article adds some interesting points. http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/01/umanitoba%E2%80%94phd-diploma-mill/ http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/01/umanitoba%E2%80%94phd-dip... Lukacs wasn't on the board when this student was exempted from the exam requirement or had his course upgraded. Another professor resigned in protest and Lukacs took his place. He had never met the student until he served the student with papers for the lawsuit. The University says it has suspended Lukacs without pay for violating the student's privacy by naming the student and discussing the student's medical conditions in the lawsuit. UofM claims this is a violation of academic privacy and a violation of the law concerning medical privacy. Lukacs claims he is acting so that his good name is not sullied by being associated with a degree mill. Interesting, to say the least. I see many laudatory comments here. Are other universities as interested in having Lukacs on board as posters here would suggest? If so, why not go to a place with the standards he admires, instead of trying to carry UofM on his shoulders?

donohoe 16y ago
It would not surprise me if he did, and it's indicated that he is not sure that he wants to remain there.
gamble 16y ago
My first two startup jobs were in the Canadian health and education sectors, respectively. As government responsibilities, education and health care are covered by provincial freedom of information and privacy protection (FOIPP) laws. They go by different names in each province; Manitoba's is known as FIPPA. In general, the laws are pretty strict about not releasing information. Student and health information is not supposed to be available to anyone except on a need-to-know basis, much less made available publicly. Our product had to have an elaborate system of permissions to prevent instructors from inappropriately viewing student data. Even something as apparently innocuous as posting a list of grades matched up against student names or IDs is forbidden. The laws aren't for show, either. Everyone I interacted with in the course of that job, from bureaucrats down to individual instructors, took FOIPP very seriously. FOIPP compliance was a non-negotiable feature, and FOIPP violation bugs were always highest priority. Typically, instructors become aware of student disabilities when they are asked to make special arrangements, such as arranging assistant note takers or special exams. Anyone who reveals that information is breaking educational and medical privacy, and would be in for a world of hurt. I'm not aware if there are special exceptions for information released in the course of a lawsuit, but I'm not surprised that the university reacted severely. They take those laws seriously here.