I am absolutely flabbergasted.



You can pay someone to do an entire PhD for you. I know this happens for undergrad essays but how bad is it when PhD students have to resort to this?

I seem to remember seeing certificated for sale in Thailand (in fact certificates for anything...degrees...medicine etc) but, strangely, never saw a PhD thesis on sale!
I'm not keen to work for this though!

Incidentally...how did you find that website? What phrase were your googling?!!!

I suppose one can buy a PhD in the same way that one can buy love or respect. I would have thought that beyond the 'glory' of the title, purchased PhDs are worthless in the academic community, and laughed at in the media when unearthed... cf. Gillian McKeith.

And I think the fact that your supervisors would not have seen the bouhgt thesis develop over time, would mean that it would be virtually undefendable in a viva?

chris... I have to admit I didn't know who G McK was till your post - now I hang my head in shame as a Scot and an honest head blown PhD researcher.

My boyfriend hates that woman., not only is she obsessed with peoples poo, but also because she seemed to buy her PhD...Did you notice, she has now stopped using 'Doctor' on all her books etc and seems to not be the diet guru for chanel 4 any more?

Might be an amusing thing to say at a dinner party one day... 'Oh, so you have a PhD?; ... 'Yeah, bought it off the internet'...

Apparently, you can even get government posts. Barry McSweeney was the government's chief science adviser but was removed when they found out that he got his PhD from Pacific Western University, "a US university known for selling qualifications" according to Diploma Mills News (Link: http://diplomamillnews.blogspot.com/2005/11/ireland-second-government-advisor.html. The chair of the Financial Services Ombudsman Council in Ireland, Con Power, apparently also got his Phd from Pacific Western.

There seem to be quite a lot of "universities" that offer PhD's and other degrees based on life experience or even just write up a thesis, wait 6 months and you get your PhD.

Personally, I don't know how people could feel proud or even good about obtaining a degree that way.

I wish I could write my thesis in 30 days, I don't know how somebody with no experience of the subject would...

Actually I feel sorry for the people who do write them, if they are as successful as they claim, these guys could probably have 20 PhDs each, instead of selling them to stupid students...

'Actually I feel sorry for the people who do write them, if they are as successful as they claim, these guys could probably have 20 PhDs each, instead of selling them to stupid students...'

Maybe they've all got their PhD's, realised academia wasn't that great and decided to exploit peoples greed, stupidity and laziness and are writing thesis for others? 1 PhD... 20...

Shame people do it, I wouldn't imagine there was much point to being called 'Doctor' unless you're in academia and if you are.. surely they check your quals anyway?

I seem to remember Gillian whatshername was compelled to drop the Dr. title by the ASA. Serves her right doesn't it.

Yes well even if she was a real doctor, she should have been forced to drop the title. She used to smell and poke peoples' crap and tell them whether it was good smelling crap or bad smelling crap. hehe

Paul McKenna, master of the mind and wizard of hypnosis, is another academic titan, that, erm, decided to buy a PhD - sorry, unfortunately found it was unaccredited. Only when he was ousted, by Victor Lewis Smith, he got his knickers in a twist, had a hissy fit and freatened to sue.

#threatened#

Gillian McKeith...hmm...I have issues with her research. Ben Goldacre wrote this article about her in Bad Science:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/feb/12/advertising.food

The thing that bothers me the most is the John Garrow aspect...best not to say too much though...

A

There was an interesting story in THES a while ago, where a Korean 'professor' (she also had a very high ranking post- I can't remember what though) in a top university turned out to have absolutely no qualifications whatsoever, not even from school, and she'd been working there for a long time. Makes you wonder what the point of all this is!