Friday, June 11, 2021

Degree Story

 About a month or two ago, I made an essay up over the thesis issue that a German political figure had.  The person?  SPD Party member...Franziska Giffey....Family Minister.

So the discrepancy was suggested to the German college, and this week....they finally came to the conclusion....the thesis had around 119 errors (mostly citations of comments that were not attributed).  So the degree is thrown out.  Two whole years wasted.....Giffey probably left in a mild state of frustration and anger.

She's already resigned from the minister position, and was running for the fall election in her district to be mayor of Berlin.

I've sat and looked over this discussion a good bit.  It's obvious that the university....Free University of Berlin....did a pretty crappy review of her thesis in 2009/2010.  

But this brings me around to these PhD/Master's degrees, and the general situation that after two years of classes....when it's time to write a thesis....a large percentage of people just aren't that capable of writing.  I worked with individuals in the 1980s that were working on their thesis and readily admitted it was all crap in the initial draft.  The same people ended up paying some guy to take their draft, and 'write' the material into a understandable product.  

I knew an NCO who probably made a thousand dollars a year working on private projects like this.....re-writing a forty-page thesis over a weekend, and making it a decent readable document. 

As for this scandal being the end?  No.  It's very likely that SPD Party members are looking at CDU-CSU members in the Bundestag and trying to identify folks that they can 'burn' in the next couple of years..  

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