11 hard-fought LESSONS that I LEARNED from the lies and deception from university presidents, conference organizers, and supposedly “successful” businesspeople
For most of us, when we are in our younger formative years, we are presented the idea that financial success equates with some type of spiritual purity or intellectual prowess.
In societies that praise and deify capitalism (making money) and ascensionism (“upward” social-financial progression, which eventually attains a pseudo-spiritual status), rich and positioned people are assumed to be good, pure, and truthful.
Most people would be shocked at the level of incompetence, criminality, and (self)deception displayed by supposedly “successful” people at the higher ranks of academia, education, and business.
I don’t know if I was either “triggered” (negative connotation) or “inspired” (positive connotation) by a personal email that I received yesterday morning, but I do feel and judge the need to address the topic of incompetence among conference organizers, university presidents and supposedly successful businesspeople. I’ve been thinking about these topics for a while so this appears to be the weekend to put these thoughts into some type of organized written structure.
When I was 25 years of age, I realized that the social gridiron around me was more complex and less benign than I had previously assumed; more specifically, I saw that I needed to apply my learning abilities toward understanding people and social dynamics otherwise I was going to get steamrolled. I have continued to study people, personalities, personality disorders, psychology and philosophy for most of my adult life.
For most of us, when we are in our younger formative years, we are presented the idea that financial-professional success equates with some type of spiritual purity or intellectual achievement.
When we gain life experience in the real world, we commonly see the reverse: 1) higher positioning does not indicate better ability nor trustworthiness, and 2) talent, hard work, and high standards are commonly unrewarded, if not overtly punished.
For most of us, when we are in our younger formative years, we are presented the idea that financial success equates with some type of spiritual purity or intellectual achievement. Even if the idea is mostly false, it does serve a useful positive purpose in inspiring the youth to persevere toward higher goals and achievements in academics and business, albeit typically while neglecting personal development and social contribution. As I’ve gained more experience in the real world, I’ve seen the negative side of this illusion and for that reason I’ll discuss a few examples that I’ve personally witnessed in the following three sections.
[1st of 3] Lies from University Presidents and Academic Directors (Deans and Vice-Presidents)
Having dedicated my life to Education from a young age, one of the biggest shocks and disappointments of my life has been to see the absolute incompetence and permeating corruption that typifies many academic/educational institutions.
In a fully accredited nonprofit American university where I was a professor and new administrator, a few of us eventually caught onto the fact that the University President and top three Vice-Presidents were stealing money from the school by having assigned themselves payment in the form of “performance bonuses” which in their greedy hands included stealing scholarship money directly from accounts of the students; they also gave money to their family members in the form of unearned faculty positions and free scholarships to the institution. Again: this was a fully accredited American “University” that had been in existence for more than 100 years, had tax-free status as a “nonprofit organization”, and was awarding undergraduate degrees (Bachelor of Science), graduate degrees (Master of Science in…), and Doctorate degrees (Doctor of…). The University was fully accredited by a regional accreditation nonprofit organization which was itself empowered by the US Department of Education; I know for a fact that the school lied to the regional accreditor about the quality of our program because the school reversed the quality standards and graduation requirements that I personally had set in place for the graduating students in one of the programs—I set the standards, the program was accredited based on those standards, and then the school undermined and deflated those standards so that the students would graduate without any inconveniences such as having to study and perform at a graduate level. One day I woke up to find myself fired via email from the program I had nurtured, the courses that I had designed, and from the very students and professors I had personally recruited. The University President and his pawns simply lied about the entire sequence of events and told people that they “didn’t know what had happened to [me]” and that I had personally decided to “move on to a different institution.” Obviously I would never voluntarily abandon the students and faculty, and I would’ve never been forced out of the institution had it not been for the massive corruption that was taking place and which continues to take place years later. The President of the University had earlier confided to me that he could do whatever he wanted because he had emotionally or financially bought-off all the members in the Board of Trustees, which guaranteed his unchallenged tenure. All of the upper administrators were playing shell games with money as they paid themselves and each other for “school expenses” but they sufficiently covered for each other to allow the scheme to continue. The financial/accounting audits, supposedly performed by an outside accounting agency, were completely fraudulent, as the outside agency simply rubber-stamped the false figures proffered by the Vice-President of Finance. When faculty or staff became suspicious or asked the wrong questions, they were demoted, constructively dismissed, or fired; the school disappeared 26 faculty members and middle administrators within 24 months which is an insane rate of faculty turnover, and one that should have triggered an investigation were regulators not discouraged from regulating profitable private schools.1 Regional accreditation of schools is mostly a strategic move that creates the illusion of credibility without any guarantee of quality education while it affords schools with access to public and private monies2, especially in the form of student loans which are a major source of school income.
In another accredited American “University” where I was a professor in a doctorate-level program, the academic Dean and Program Manager eventually informed me that my class was the only class in the entire program that actually included exams and the required memorization of facts; this was a program awarding a doctorate in clinical sciences that would eventually allow its graduates to practice within the healthcare arena directly supervising patient care. “Yes,” I said, “obviously the students needed to memorize facts.” “Yes,” I said, “obviously the students needed to display some modicum of intellectual ability and ethical behavior.” The other faculty were notably miserable and also miserably underpaid, but like many of us in academics, we stay on and struggle on for the sake of our students and this aspirational Renaissance-Enlightenment idea we have that education can actually improve people and society and the world. Again, I was relieved of my large duties and small pay by email, and I was glad it was over.
In the one European college where I worked for a short time, I didn’t have the occasion to see overt incompetence and corruption, but I could easily tell that the students were not being held to high standards so that they could all graduate without too much difficulty. This was another “doctorate” healthcare program, but unfortunately many private schools are so heavily dependent on tuition from their students that they don’t have the luxury of enforcing high academic or behavioral standards because otherwise—if the program were more difficult—their students would simply go to other programs or professions that are easier or more lucrative, respectively.
What I learned from these experiences:
Lesson 1: People and institutions cannot be trusted simply because they have impressive titles, positions, or accreditations. Corruption, incompetence, outright fraud and theft occur within the highest levels of academia.
Lesson 2: Government regulators (and their for-profit surrogates) are essentially worthless. Regional accreditors are paid by the Universities that they regulate, so in order to approve more programs and collect more fees, they rubberstamp accreditation and have no interest in the abstract concept of corruption and even less interest in the humanitarian grievance of faculty abuse. If you complain to the Department of Education about fraud and theft, they will refuse to take action and defer the problem to the Department of Justice. If you complain to the Department of Justice about educational fraud and theft, they will reply that they “don’t deal with issues in education” and will send you back to the Department of Education.
Lesson 3: Positioning trumps competence. When we are young and naïve and earnest, we think that competence is necessary for gaining and holding positions of power, especially when these positions appear to be elected and supported by a group of “endorsers” such as an electing Board of Trustees. What I learned from observing the strategy of the University President mentioned above is that 1) he always presented the facade of innocence and “service” even to the point of pretending to be a Mormon devout to faith and community, and 2) he maintained the illusion of support from the Board of Trustees by stocking the fishpond with his friends and ensuring high turn-over so that by the time newbies had enough experience and growing awareness to see the patterns of fraud and theft, he would have them removed from the Board. When the President chooses the Board and the Board chooses the President, a conniving President can stack the deck in his favor by filling the Board with 1) sycophants, 2) dummies, 3) cheerleaders, and 4) the expendable so that no opposition ever arises against him. In short: Positioning trumps competence; the position does not demonstrate nor ensure competence.
Lesson 4: When things look and feel crazy, then you’re probably dealing with a high-functioning psychopath*—a person hardwired (damaged brain, lacking empathy, sees people as stepping-stones) for manipulation and abuse but who is “smart enough” to maintain the facade of normalcy most (not all) of the time. High-functioning psychopaths commonly work together because they thrive and profit in chaos and crazy-making; in fact, anytime I find one of them I expect to find another one, or at least a boss who is mentally absent.
Lesson 5: DON’T LET THE FRIENDLINESS FOOL YOU even if they invite you for dinner, let you stay in their luxurious spare bedroom, and pick you up from the airport. We can only be betrayed and manipulated by people who first appear trustworthy; for them to get what they want, they have to first pretend to be your friend, do nice things for you, tell you how great you are (ie, “love-bombing”), how loyal they are to you and your goals, and how nice and altruistic they are. From these experiences, I came to distinguish “friendly” (acts like a friend) from “nice” (actually behaves in a kind, reasonable, and dependable manner).
Lesson 6: Accreditation and pre-paid audits are meaningless, because Universities can lie to the accreditors (while the accreditors don’t care because they are paid by the Universities) and the administrators can cook the books and gerrymander the numbers before handing over the information to the auditing accountants, who are always paid by the school and thus have an interest in keeping the client happy. Unless it is an independent audit or forensic accounting, then the paid accountants will simply rubber-stamp “verify” the fake numbers they received from the University administrators.
