Korean Job Discussion Forums

[anjinsan]

I do a lot of editing for Korean professors.
These are all people who received PhDs in the US.
Several from our most expensive universities (Ivy League)

My question is this:

HOW IN THE HELL DID THESE FOLKS GET PhD S IN THE USA WHEN THEY
CAN"T FORMULATE A SIMPLE ENGLISH SENTENCE??????????????????????????????????


I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. I've been doing this work for almost ten years now, and I just haven't been able to figure it out.
I've dealt with about twenty or thirty diiferent K. professors--all of whom
have degrees from Western universities--and only one or two could produce mildly readable English prose (and these weren't the English
PhD s either!!!).

How the f is this possible?


Can someone please explain this to me????

(Note: Newbies--a simple "they cheated" explanation doesn't need
to be given; this fact is already quite obvious)

[ttompatz]

Just look at the BIG scandals, over the last few years, of Korean Professionals with prestigious western degrees (post grad) being found to have fabricated such degrees and you will have your answer.

It goes all the way from simple insurance salesmen to university Profs, and indeed, all the way up to presidential aids.

.

[Straphanger]

[okokok]

Are you sure they really have the degrees they claim?

My former hagwon boss became my hagwon boss after he was fired from a local university because he falsely claimed that he had a PhD from the University of Toronto.

[Paji eh Wong]

I worked for a Korean prof with a fake PhD. The guy had problems stringing sentences together. Its not uncommon.

Also, its common for people to purchase their thesis.

[sarbonn]

When I was doing my Ph.D. in political science, I used to work alongside graduate students from many different countries, but the ones I used to notice mostly were those from China. Their English would usually be atrocious, but at the same time, they would be doing really well in their courses. In the beginning, I was unable to ascertain what was the case, but then after awhile you realize what's going on. Quite often, they are actually brilliant scholars, but they just have problems with English communication. After I st arted befriending some of them, I found out that a lot of them would have someone else to type their papers for them in English, usually hiring out an assistant who was able to translate a lot of their gibberish back into proper English. At first, I thought this was some kind of cheating, but the ideas were still theirs, and for the most part, so were the words, other than the ones that were being corrected. It was essentially hiring an editor is what they were doing. I believe this is how a lot of them go through the Ph.D. programs they were in.

When I had conversations with them, they were definitely deserving of their placement in the academic institution, and you knew it. I rarely dealt with someone who wasn't a stellar scholar at that level. And a few of them did fail or drop out from time to time, so it was never a green light affair.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I was at a conference once where a 'famous' professor suddenly found himself with the embarrassing task of having to read off some English names. And they were mostly pretty common given and surnames of the Anglo-Celtic variety. He was as bad as I am (or worse) at reading off Korean names. For one a younger professor (I believe it was Hee-bon Park) had to step in and clarify what the hell he was trying to say because no one in the audience could understand what name he was trying to pronounce. You could just tell that he had almost no familiarity with actual English speakers.

[kimchi_pizza]

[Troll_Bait]

[Alyssa]

[skconqueror]