Talk:Laura Callahan

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An entry from Laura Callahan appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 18 November 2006.

[edit] Personal life?

There is *nothing* about he personal life. That's a bit disappointing for a biographical article. Circeus 02:40, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diploma Mills section analysis and rewrite relative to the GAO article inclusion

I noticed the following writeup in the Diploma Mills section of this article:

A 2004 report [1] released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) detailed a pattern of widespread and ongoing abuse by numerous federal employees, based on information provided by three unaccredited schools that cooperated with the initial probe. The institutions, California Coast University, Kennedy-Western University, and Pacific Western University, represented a small fraction of the dozens of suspected diploma mills in existence nationwide.

463 federal employees were discovered to have been enrolled in the three schools at the time of the inquiry. The Department of Defense had the highest number of enrollees, with 257 employees registered. The GAO also found that the government itself had paid at least $170,000 for questionable "coursework" by federal employees at California Coast and Kennedy-Western alone, and believed that even this amount had been significantly understated by the institutions involved.

The GAO report revealed that at least 28 senior-level employees had obtained their degrees from diploma mills, while cautioning that "this number is believed to be an understatement." The implicated officials included three unnamed National Nuclear Security Administration managers with emergency operations responsibility and top "Q level" security clearance allowing access to sensitive nuclear weapons information. In May 2004, NNSA spokesman Brian Wilkes told reporters that "the [managers'] conditions of employment did not rest on the education that they were claiming," and that the revelations would not affect their job status.^[1]

However, the writeup is rather cavalier when mentioning nonaccredited institutions and alluding to their being diploma mills.
According to the actual GAO report referenced, the investigation was only to determine:

"...whether the federal government has paid for degrees from diploma mills and other unaccredited postsecondary schools. Section 4107 of title 5, U. S. Code, only permits the federal government to pay for the cost of academic degree training provided by a college or university that is accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting body."

"...whether federal employees who hold senior-level positions have degrees from diploma mills and other unaccredited schools.

The writeup in this article prior to my editing it also mentioned the following:

"The GAO report revealed that at least 28 senior-level employees had obtained their degrees from diploma mills."

However, the report actually stated:

"Data provided by 8 agencies indicated that 28 senior-level employees have degrees from diploma mills and other unaccredited schools."

In fact, the section this information reports on is titled:

"Senior-Level Federal Employees Have Degrees from Unaccredited Schools"

Unaccredited does equal a diploma mill. Consequently, the contents of this writeup constitute violations of WP:NPOV and WP:V. While the reference is accurate, the writup in this article is not only very biased, but highly inaccurate on many counts of which I've listed just a few above.

I think the below writeup is a little bit better and placing it into the aftermath section as it was not necessarily directly related to Laura, nor to diploma mills only, rather it was a separate action related to funding "degrees" at unauthorized institutions. In fact, there was what was called a loophole that allowed payment of classes from nonaccredited institutions so long as it was not for a degree. However, funding for each class in succession could end up paying for all of the classes necessary to obtain a degree and that was the loophole.
My writeup is as follows:

==Aftermath==

===GAO investigation===

"From July 2003 through February 2004",^[2] an investigation was conducted by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) to determine whether the federal government had paid for degrees from diploma mills and other unaccredited postsecondary schools. These findings were presented in 2004 to a U.S. Senate committee on Governmental Affairs. ^[3] 463 federal employees were discovered to have been enrolled in three of the four schools that responded to the GAO inquiry. It is unknown what disciplinary action, if any, was taken regarding payments made to the unaccredited institutions. It should be noted that none of the three schools that cooperated by providing information to the GAO investigation were invited to respond to the GAO report and testimony before the Senate committee.

Rkowalke 01:41, 6 October 2007 (UTC)