[DRAFT] The Old Diploma Mill

[Jakker City]

Title:
The Old Diploma Mill

Description:
Dozens of deaths from botched surgeries and procedures have been reported to your office. After a thorough investigation, it has been discovered that many medical schools across @@NAME@@ have been charged with offering fraudulent degrees. This leaves thousands of current students and alumni to wonder what will become of their edumacation.

Options:
[option]Several of the victims' family members go to speak on a popular morning show. "These schools manipulated all of us for profit," one mother decries. "They must be shut down immediately. Otherwise, how can I ever trust my health in someone else's hands again?"
[effect]Doctor appointments must be scheduled years in advance.

[option]"Shutting them down does not go far enough," another family member pleaded. "The administrators at those schools need a taste of their own medicine. They should only be allowed to use their students for medical care. An eye for an eye!"
[effect]The administrators turn to the black market for medical care.

[option]President of the Medical Student Association scrambles to respond, "This is the fault of the corrupted regional accreditors who let this happen. Make all collegiate accreditations go through the federal government and create a simple, objective standard for us to follow."
[effect]Watchdog government officials devote nearly all of their time overseeing accreditations.

[option]"My entire reputation has been destroyed," an alumnus of @@CAPITAL@@ University Medical School says in an interview while performing surgery. "I am a good doctor and I deserve to continue practicing. Just give us some kind of test to prove ourselves."
[effect]Doctors must prove their skills on a tv reality series before performing surgery.

[Trotterdam]

First you say that it's one particular school to blame, then you say that lots of schools are guilty. Which is it?

[Jakker City]

First you say that it's one particular school to blame, then you say that lots of schools are guilty. Which is it?

Edited it a bit, so hopefully it makes more sense!

[Pentaga Giudici]

This is funny, I love it!!!

Btw, this is the crazy guy who laughs a lot.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Does this have any basis in reality?

I've often heard news stories of people falsely claiming they have medical degrees, but never before heard of a medical school offering fraudulent degrees.

[Australian rePublic]

Nice issue, I actually like the premise. However,
1. Option 1, why no prison? That's what I would do to them if i were in charge
2. Option 2. Why are we blamming the students for this? It says in the issue itself that the students were unaware of the fraudulance

[Caracasus]

A couple of potential directions I can see this going in:

1) You could eliminate the medical aspect. The issue here is the idea of diploma mills - universities that rip off students and hand out "qualifications". If you were to do this, you could perhaps include medical "certificates" being handed out when you collect enough bottle tops as a humorous effect for one option.

2) If you wanted to keep the medical aspect, you could reference the "Dr" Gillian Mceith scandal: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/ ... ising.food

(TL:DR - woman got awarded doctorates from a so-called university that weren't worth the paper they were written on. Used the title Dr and a fancy lab coat to make her pseudoscientific nutritional claims sound like they carried more weight, ran a TV show giving advice that was either blatantly obvious or plain wrong and was eventually done under false advertising legislation).

[Australian rePublic]

Dr. Nick, from the Simpsons comes to mind. I would suggest introducing the quack with "Hi Everybody" says Dr. Nick"

[Jakker City]

Does this have any basis in reality?

I've often heard news stories of people falsely claiming they have medical degrees, but never before heard of a medical school offering fraudulent degrees.

Yeah, universities have been known to offer degrees like these at several points in history from the beginning of higher education. When the G.I. Bill was first passed after WWII, a lot of veterans were taken advantage of. This is what let to universities having to get regional accreditations, which is where one of the options come from. Most recently, this issue can be seen with for-profit universities. Essentially, the students take courses and get the degree, but it is not to the standards of what they should be. The practice is called degree mill, hence the title.

At first, I thought about making generalizing the degrees, but I wanted to make sure there was some kind of spark and the medical aspect focusing it a bit.

Nice issue, I actually like the premise. However,
1. Option 1, why no prison? That's what I would do to them if i were in charge
2. Option 2. Why are we blamming the students for this? It says in the issue itself that the students were unaware of the fraudulance

1. The first option focuses on exclusively getting rid of the schools, which is more of a kneejerk reaction. I see what you are saying about prison and could be an option for the administrators. I tried to make each option focus on different aspects of the problem.
2. If prison were to be option, it could be part of option 2. This option is more about punishing the administrators rather than the students. With this coming out, students will probably be out of work and not have practices. At least, it gives them an audience to practice on and still make money. However, I do understand that this does hurt them because there are being used and forced to now take care of the people that screwed them over. I tried to make the effect show that the students, either because of their poor training or on purpose, were not giving the administrators great care, which is why the turning to the black market.

Thanks for the feedback both of you!

[Jakker City]

A couple of potential directions I can see this going in:

1) You could eliminate the medical aspect. The issue here is the idea of diploma mills - universities that rip off students and hand out "qualifications". If you were to do this, you could perhaps include medical "certificates" being handed out when you collect enough bottle tops as a humorous effect for one option.

2) If you wanted to keep the medical aspect, you could reference the "Dr" Gillian Mceith scandal: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/ ... ising.food

(TL:DR - woman got awarded doctorates from a so-called university that weren't worth the paper they were written on. Used the title Dr and a fancy lab coat to make her pseudoscientific nutritional claims sound like they carried more weight, ran a TV show giving advice that was either blatantly obvious or plain wrong and was eventually done under false advertising legislation).

Thanks for the thoughts, Caracasus. You are correct that I could eliminate the medical aspect. My reason for going that route was to focus the issue and give a tangible effect (deaths from surgeries).

I could reference a RL situation if it would make the issue more realistic and grounded. Additionally, I did not offer an option to retain the schools, which I figured could just happen by dismissing the issue. If anyone thinks it makes sense to add that, I would.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I think that a medical degree doesn't fit well, as doctors aren't allowed to practice because they have a degree, but because they are given access to a Performer's List, which has within its requirements training of an accepted standard. The existence of milled medical degrees would not let you practice medicine, as the universities aren't the ones who get to say who practices medicine. In the real world, nations either have professional bodies and government legislation regulating the practice of medicine, or they let anyone do what they like. In no country that I can think of is the possession of a diploma in itself the prerequisite for practising medicine.

Same thing would be true of any regulated profession, such as engineers, lawyers, accountants, dentists and so on. There's a separate issue possible for looking at degree of qualification that is needed to practice (for example, should only dieticians be allowed to dispense diet advice professionally, or is it okay for nutritionists with no expertise other than self-proclaimed expertise to set up shop as professional diet advisors?) However, I don't think that's what you're getting at with this issue.

[Drasnia]

Perhaps a good pivot would be to make it about accreditation and whether that should be a requirement for tests and examinations (like the bar exam). There was a situation about 3 years ago near me where a university opened a law school and struggled to get accredited. The first class of students attended without knowing if they'd ever be able to take the Bar exam. Only a couple months before graduation did the school actually get accredited.

[Jakker City]

You both bring up good points and list a few ways to approach it. My only concern is that I don't want things to get too convoluted. Maybe I could also choose a different field like computer science or business where bachelors is usually enough to get you into the field.

I can try different options and then see what you all think!

[The Grim Reaper]

You both bring up good points and list a few ways to approach it. My only concern is that I don't want things to get too convoluted. Maybe I could also choose a different field like computer science or business where bachelors is usually enough to get you into the field.

I can try different options and then see what you all think!

Business is an interesting one. In the real world, the MBA (Masters in Business Administration) is notorious for being basically a degree entirely predicated on reputation (at least, in comparison to other Masters programs). That'd be an interesting way of escaping from CWA's concerns about professional associations.

If, instead, you'd rather focus in on the medical profession and drop the professional context, you could do Drasnia's suggested pivot.

Both Drasnia and CWA have mutually exclusive, but perfectly good solutions. I'd suggest that you pick which one you're more interested in, and just try and make that one work.

[USS Monitor]

I know you've already got a bunch of suggestions and this might become irrelevant if you do a rewrite, but effect lines need to make sense when they appear on your nation page without the context of knowing what the issue was about. "The administrators turn to the black market for medical care" is very unclear. If I saw it without the rest of the issue, I'd be wondering, "What administrators?"