In the recent brouhaha about Temp. Dem. Mont. Sen. & 33-yr. Army vet John Walsh's alleged plagiarism, Paul Waldman noted something more important than a hack's hackery & election chances. (Hold on to something; this may come as a surprise, but unless this is more snooty liberal elitism, the U.S. Army may be wasting your tax dollars wholesale at its War College.)
You can read Walsh's entire thesis at the Times, and it won't take you that long, because not including footnotes, it's all of 14 pages. And this is my first question:SNAP! & BURN!
What the hell are the standards at the Army War College that you can write a 14-page paper and get a master's degree?
Is it like that at the colleges the other services run? It might be OK if it was 14 pages of dense calculations for a degree in economics or something, but it reads like a paper written by a reasonably bright high school sophomore in his international relations class, not somebody getting an advanced degree. Not only that, there's no original research in it, which is usually a requirement of a graduate thesis. He could have written this thing over the course of a weekend.
As I said, I knew next to nothing about Walsh before this, and he was going to have a hard time holding on to his seat anyway; that cause may be lost now. But maybe this should be a lesson to the War College. If you're going to hand out things you call advanced degrees, maybe you ought to ask a little more of your students.Your students who are allegedly defending these United Snakes. Reasonably bright high school sophomores. We are ab-so-fuggin'-lutely screwed.
Publisher's Hiring & Firing Note to Self: Army War College degrees; not worth paper on which they've been printed out.
1 comment:
I can guarantee that this isn't the only place giving out grad degrees on spurious accomplishments.
I used to write about my previous experience with such dubious ventures (Pope Air Force Base - Ft. Bragg), but got tired of the yawns.
Thanks for still being shocked.
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