sakky

I said that your ideas were naive. Not that you were naive. Let's be perfectly honest: employers are not your friends, and it is indeed naive to think otherwise. You do not owe them complete honest, just like they have no obligation to be and indeed are often times are not completely honest with you. To always provide complete information to a counterparty that is under no obligation to reciprocate is, unfortunately, naive.

The sad fact is, discrimination happens all the time, and information that you provide to employers can easily be used against you. For example, given that age discrimination is rife within the tech industry, many job candidates will deliberately dress in youthful and fashionable (but still business appropriate) clothes, dye their hair, and, for the women, undergo a full facial all in an effort to appear younger than they actually are. The fear is obvious: if the company actually knew how old they were, they might not hire them. Similarly, I know a woman whose first name is Christina who calls herself "Chris" on her resume, in an effort to avoid gender discrimination. Obviously the company will find out she's a woman when they bring her in, but at least she'll be in the interview room, so she still has a chance to impress them. If they knew she was a woman beforehand, she might not even get the interview, she fears. I read about an African-American guy whose first name strongly identifies him as African-American, and is the name that all of his friends use to address him, but identifies himself by his middle name - which is a far more neutral name - on his resume so that employers won't immediately know that he's African-American.

And of course there may be the most pervasive source of discrimination of all: hiring based on potential health insurance costs. One of my friends has children that suffer from various chronic conditions, but he of course will not utter a single word about it during any of his interviews for fear that employers won't hire him so as to avoid potentially high health insurance claims. A recent news article listed 5 medical conditions that employers don't want to see, some of which are detectable by an interviewer, such as obesity or smoker's breath. The appropriate counterstrategy is to then wear a wardrobe that doesn't make you look fat and don't smoke right before the interview.

The 5 Medical Conditions That Employers Don?t Want to See in a Candidate :: Delaware Employment Law Blog

Newsmax.com - Obesity Now Being Pushed As Civil Rights Issue

Weight Discrimination: The Effects of Obesity on Employment - Hohonu

But the point is, information is a strategic weapon, whether in a hiring context or any other business context. You never want to volunteer any information that would simply provide employers with reasons to reject you. Since an ALB degree from HES is in fact a bachelor's degree from Harvard, I see no problem in listing it as such. Note, you're not claiming to have an AB degree, nor are you claiming to have earned your degree at Harvard College. All you are saying is that you earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard, which is perfectly within bounds for it's not a lie and you are under no obligation to clarify the matter further. Just like "Chris" from the above discussion is under no obligation to clarify that she is a woman.