University Sues Student For Graduating Too Fast
from the don't-expect-an-alumni-gift dept
Here's an odd one. The School of Economics and Management in Essen, Germany is suing former student, Marcel Pohl, for graduating too quickly. You see, he finished all of the necessary exams for both a bachelor's and master's degree in 20 months -- representing three semesters. Normally, it takes students 11 semesters, and the school feels ripped off. The complaint is that, even though they charge per semester, what they're really charging for is the degree, and Pohl didn't pay enough for his. So they want another €3,000.Of course, in the details, we learn that part of the reason he was able to take so many exams is that he teamed up with two friends and they all traded notes on classes they didn't actually attend. You can question whether or not that meets academic ethics requirements, but the fact is that Pohl still did pass the required exams, and met all of the qualifications to graduate -- and the University apparently let him graduate before it realized what happened. It's hard to see what the legal issue is here. Perhaps instead of suing, they should look at their own setup and question why they force students to spend 11 semesters on material when at least some can get through it all in about a quarter of the time...
In the meantime, was there really no one at the school who didn't think that the cost of legal fees and negative publicity combined is very likely to exceed the money they're seeking?
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Filed Under: essen, germany, marcel pohl, university
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Also, I think the real story here is that there are schools in europe that are apparently ~$500/semester (maybe that explains why they think that this lawsuit is in some way a good idea...). I think that would have covered the "misc. fees" section of my tuition.
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Whether the student is to blame for anything, though, I can't imagine any of this ending well for the university. On the one hand it looks like they're jealously going after a genius or someone who managed to figure out their loopholes; on the other hand, it looks like their management failed and they couldn't catch a guy who shouldn't have graduated.
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A classic Mike moment
Are they trying to educate students or just collect fees for students being there?
The student was highly motivated to get his education in the shortest period of time and did just that. The university wants to charge him for time and resources that he didn't use or need.
Maybe they should be suing him for copyright infringements on the notes he used. That might be a stronger case.
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Re: A classic Mike moment
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Except here, there was no cash in the slightest.
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Re: A classic Mike moment
http://www.theaggie.org/2012/02/14/uc-csu-curb-use-of-note-sharing-websites/
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There is absolutely nothing 'hinky' about this unless the school is going to try and claim that the work that he turned in wasn't his work!
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If I were that school, I'd parade him around saying: "Look, we have the smartest students ever!" What are they thinking?
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who else?
If it was good enough for him...
But if this guy managed to learn all this in that time and managed all his exams... the university should get him into a doctorates education or maybe look over the difficulty of their exams.
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The lawsuit is stupid, since it is not the students fault. imo. it falls back on whoever makes the exams and I think it is more telling about the lazy professors than the university when cases like this is brought to court...
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This world is completely corrupted.
Marcel Pohl deserves scholar of the year. What he done is called "making do with what you got".
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Re: who else?
Music composers ...
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Ethics?
Of course I might be wrong in thinking that the point is to learn and show learning, and to share information, not to respect imaginary intellectual property rights. Trading notes with fellow students is a sign of a good, independent, motivated student.
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Not free?
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Re: Ethics?
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The above was not intended to be a factual statement, however - it is an analogy and includes a car.
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I hope you succeed in your educational, financial and career aims. Failing that, which may be a blessing in disguise, i hope you have a happier life than 0.2GPA genius girl !
You should look at what "0.2GPA genius girl" is doing now, it may make you lulz, for a start you know she aint got a Nobel Peace Prize for a spectacular physics discovery.
I bet ...a "beauty technician" or a willfully subordinate, dipsy housewife.
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It's a sad truth
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I would have liked doing that at my university I could have graduated a year earlier while still working full time.
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It is up to the institution to ensure they set robust standards. Anyone who meets their standards for passing, meets their standards for passing.
It's unacceptable that someone capable of meeting the standards ought to spend money attending classes they obviously do not need, just so these "educators" can ticket clip. The authority to offer a degree or qualification is not supposed to be money printing licenses.
Either this person has demonstrated they meet the standard where they deserve this qualification, or this institution is handing out qualifications without ensuring candidates merit them. That would be a very disturbing situation.
The fact is his note taking friends did not sit the exam for him. The point of the lectures, classes and notes is to learn the information and acquire the skills necessary to merit the qualification. Either the examination process is utterly useless, or the candidate merited their degree.
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Re: Not free?
May I ask if you are Finland?
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Haha!
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Exactly. If they can point to a single student who received such a refund, or who was allowed to attend beyond the eleventh semester for free, or even reduced fees, then they might legitimately pursue this money.
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Even better. Those of us that took longer then normal, and still graduated. I took light loads and enjoyed college. It took me five years instead of four. I think I should have gotten that last year for free!
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The university agreed to this deal according to the grad, and only after he "defeated" them, wants to change the terms. I bet they thought this guy was just another stupid perpetual student who was soooo full of himself and would not be able to pass their tests without going through the "alleged" required courses, because nobody is that smart or motivated. I guess he proved them wrong, and you know how academia doesn't like to be proved wrong.
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The German Equivalent of the University of Phoenix.
German universities are different from American universities-- they are more like graduate schools. The German academic secondary school certificate, the Abitur, includes all the foreign languages and math that you will ever need, unless you become an engineer, a mathematician or hard scientist, a philologist, or something like that. There are no general education requirements after the Abitur, so it's really more like a Bachelor's degree, earned at the age of nineteen or so, with kids staring serious work at the age of twelve. University students start studying one definite subject, such as law or economics-- or they join a fraternity, and start making up for lost time on their adolescence (the classic duel-fighting Heidelberg Korps-student).
Another way in which German universities differ is that they are traditionally "Royal Universities," even though the Kaiser has since been replaced by a republic, and a series of states, or "lander." The full professors are civil servants, paid their salary by the government. An assistant professor is known as a "privatdozent," traditionally meaning that he has no official standing but makes a living collecting fees from students. Private universities are, almost by definition, disreputable, inferior, and suspect.
This school seems to be the:
FOM - Hochschule fur Oekonomie und Management - University of Applied Sciences
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOM_%E2%80%93_Hochschule_f%C3%BCr_Oekonomie_und_Management_ %E2%80%93_University_of_Applied_Sciences
It seems to have been founded in 1990, privately owned, and it is apparently a sort of extension school, the German equivalent of the University of Phoenix. It probably caters to people who were not in the academic track in high school, and were diverted to apprenticeships at the age of sixteen. My guess is that this student came in, probably with a regular academic background, and knocked over a whole bunch of examinations for things he had been taught at the age of sixteen or seventeen (at least one foreign language, more likely two, math up to calculus, stuff like that), it seems he spent twenty months mastering the specific content of an MBA, starting from scratch, which is not abnormal, compared to what people do at the better American MBA programs. He may very well have worked an eighty-hour week, half on his job and half on school, and in that case, he would have stood out, compared to people who were working only fifty hours, say twenty on school and thirty on their jobs.
I'm not sure whether there is such a thing as a regular American-style MBA in Germany, in the sense of one being offered by a reputable university. I suspect that a regular German university might have wanted someone with an Abitur to spend, say, four years doing a Ph.D in economics, writing a thesis, and all. Once you get off the main track of an educational system, you find a lot of courses and programs which are designed for people who are not very good at learning from books. The main gateposts of an educational system, such as the German Abitur, are essentially certificates that someone _is_ good at learning from books. There is sometimes a kind of student who is good at learning from books, but who refuses to identify with the values of the university. He wants to get an educational credential which is "good enough," and get out into the world.
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My sentiments exactly.
The authority to offer a degree or qualification is not supposed to be money printing licenses.
Unfortunately, for the many students with (or without) degrees, that is all that it turns out to be.
Either the examination process is utterly useless, or the candidate merited their degree.
Or, in many cases, both.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out this lawsuit is based upon something as stupid as the books he didn't need to purchase from the university in the first place to pass the courses. Unless, that first place had nothing to do with teaching the student anything about the knowledge he need to pass the tests, but was more likely to teach the old adage: "A fool and his money are soon parted".
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This guy is nothing but a resourceful GRADUATE.
FTFY
Then you are prepared for class discussions where you are challenged to think for yourself to come up with educated and in some cases logical or unique answers.
In many, many courses there are only two answers: The wrong one (i.e. student answers) and right one (i.e. what the instructor wants you to answer).
Thinking for yourself in these types of classes will only get you in trouble, and a less than passing grade.
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wait...
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1) A student of the School of Economics and Management, showed both Economic and Management savy by passing the course in such a short period of time.
2) Would you take a course at a School of Economics and Management when it shows that it is making a huge economic mistake by wasting more money on lawyers then they'd regain in fees? Not to mention the huge PR Management snafu.
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Waste of time
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Re: It's a sad truth
I learned that this continued after my resignation. They compressed the timeline further to 5 week classes, with nearly no break at all during the year. It was then I came to realize that they were trying to compress the program in order to put as many students through their system as possible to increase revenue regardless of whether the education they received was practically beneficial or not. In fact, the farther I got in the program, the more I realized how utterly useless the education they were providing was. It was a vague and over-generalized program that failed to teach any proficiency in any discipline that would be marketable to employers in that industry. They were pushing a fantasy on the students to get them to come in and give their federal aid to them, which meant students were left with a degree that was useless in any practical sense and a huge debt against them that they had no way to get a job that could pay it off. They lied to us about how we were going to have great careers to gull us into sacrificing our FAFSA funds that could have been used to get a real education.
This was in 2010. I'm now 30, I'm married (my wife has a spinal injury and can't currently work), and I have a child who will turn a year old this month. I'm unemployed and my ADHD has deteriorated to the point that I'm hardly functioning in my own household. I have over $100K in debt that I can't pay back and the deferments are running out. Eventually, I will be forced to pay it back whether I can or not. If I don't, I may have to declare bankruptcy (which I may not likely even be able to do that) or possibly loose all the government food assistance I'm receiving. These profit-focused schools are destroying people's lives. My case is probably one of the worst given my cognitive disability/disorder.
Before someone tries to counter my story with a "nobody held a gun to your head, it was your choice" line, let me point out that I was conned, lied to, and pressured into this arrangement. Former admissions reps have come forward and admitted that they were compelled to use high pressure tactics to "make the decision for the student". It was very much a predatory operation. I was promised a dream and I had no idea what I was getting into.
TL;DR
I know exactly what you mean. I lived it.
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Re: Re: who else?
> Music composers ...
Mozart used too many of them.
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So I guess all that advanced stuff I learned on my own by reading books isn't actually learning at all? I just cheated? But it's a good sort of cheating that leaves me able to perform higher mathematics, advanced software engineering, business management, etc.
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They're probably just vindictively...
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there are no limits
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"In education, you attend classes, take your own notes and read the book." [emphasis added]
Taking notes is an important skill, one which most university students learn, and one which this guy may have neglected.
But on the whole you're dead wrong.
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Discussed at this forum here.
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Grab Him!
Oh, BTW, the original "school" has shown it's true colors, and lost the PR war, big time. With any luck, they'll never recover.
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Re: The German Equivalent of the University of Phoenix.
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