George S. Chua l January 17, 2024 l Business Mirror
IN the United States, stolen valor refers to the behavior of military impostors, individuals who lie about their military service. There are actually some states that consider it a crime to fraudulently wear medals, embellish rank or make false claims of military service to obtain money, employment, property or some other tangible benefit. With such a high regard for soldiers who have served their country, it is only appropriate that their integrity is protected.
Having been a part time professor for over 30 years in a number of top universities in both the graduate and undergraduate programs, I take interest in the teaching profession. I was recently looking over some of the credentials posted by the faculty of a known and highly respected university and I was quite disappointed at this faculty who shamelessly claimed to have been the COO of a leading company in a particular industry in the Philippines. This is definitely, to put it politely, a misrepresentation.
First of all, as a professor, we are supposed to hold ourselves to certain standards of integrity. The school, students and even fellow professors look at the qualifications and credentials of the instructor to determine their suitability in terms of the courses they teach, who their students are, their rank, pay grade and so on. Typically, qualifications and credentials include their formal degrees, awards and distinctions, work experience in terms of years, function and title, and other competencies. If you have to lie about these things, the teaching profession is not for you. It may be ok for you to delude yourself, but shame on you for forcing your delusion upon your students!
Secondly, the educational institution itself should police the credentials of all their personnel, especially their faculty. They owe it to their students to ensure that their professor is qualified to teach a particular course and that these students chose that class because of the credentials of the faculty. Embellishments should not be tolerated and it also reflects poorly on the college or university to have faculty that claim more credentials than they actually have or deserve.
Faculty with stolen credentials are an embarrassment to our profession and the academic institution they work in. Such professors should not be tolerated and be banned from ever teaching again. I can think of many reasons to make use of stolen credentials but none of them good. As a student, if you have doubts on the credentials of your professor, you should speak out and ask the faculty involved directly or make inquiries and bring this to the attention of the school administration or academic department head.
Don’t you think the tolerance level for stolen credentials should be zero?
*** The views and comments of Dr. George S. Chua are his own and not of the newspaper or FINEX. The author was 2016 FINEX President, 2010 to 2020 FPI President, an active Entrepreneur in fintech, broadcast, media, telecommunications, properties and a regular member of the National Press Club. Dr. Chua is also Professorial Lecturer 2 at the University of the Philippines’s Diliman Campus and BGC Campus, the Vice Chairman and Governor of the Market Governance Board of the PDEx and a Trustee of the Finex Foundation. Comments may be sent to georgechuaph@yahoo.com or gschua@up.edu.ph