Friday, December 24, 2010

About that Phil Barnesosophy degree...

When John Adams was first appointed Chief of CSE in 2005 there was a mildly amusing typo in his official bio reporting that the new Chief had received a Masters degree in "Phil Barnesosophy" from Oxford University. The typo was later corrected to read "Masters, Philosophy, University of Oxford".

So far, so good. But today I happened to check out the Chief's bio on the CSE website, and what do I read? This: "As a Rhodes Scholar, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree at Oxford university in England in 1967." No mention of a Masters degree at all.

What's up with that? A Masters degree from Oxford isn't worth mentioning any more? Chinese cyberspies stole it?

I'm not alleging anything here. I don't know what the explanation is. I'm just curious about the discrepancy.

Update 18 January 2011:
Corrected to fix a typo about a typo -- ironically, in the original version of this post I misspelled Barnesosophy!

2 Comments:

Anonymous Milan said...

An Oxford master's degree can be a misleading thing.

Anyone who completes a BA or BFA at Oxford automatically gets a Master of Arts (MA) degree seven years after matriculating, for a nominal fee.

There are master's degrees issued by Oxford that require real work, like M.Phils.

December 31, 2010 5:55 pm  
Blogger Bill Robinson said...

Interesting comment, Milan! I'm still wondering what degree(s) Adams actually received though.

January 01, 2011 9:32 pm  

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