Actually you guys could help me with my LinkedIn profile.
I attended X school and got a BA, which is appropriately noted.
I also attended the b-school there (evening program), on track to a full MBA but stopped with 10 of the 20 required courses under my belt once I had my twins. I have lectured there as well on occasion as a guest lecturer.
I haven’t used a resume in years, but when I did, I had something like “Significant coursework in marketing and organizational behavior at X” because I didn’t want to signal that I had a MBA when I didn’t.
On my LinkedIn, though - if I add the b-school, it kind of suggests / implies that I have an MBA, and while I want “credit” for having gone there, I don’t want to misstate that I have an MBA when I don’t. Suggestions? I can put in a “commentary” section - what should I say? I don’t want to mislead, but I don’t want to raise more questions than it answers.
There is no such thing as an ABD degree. A person can say they are a Ph.D. candidate, but they cannot honestly say they are a PhD (abd) as there is no such thing and if they didnt do their dissertation they didnt get their degree. Some don’t take their quals or complete some other required part of their program. Many programs have Masters along the way, so the person can say they have an MA or MS, with additional coursework. My licensing board has sent out cease and desist notices to people who imply they are a PhD in this field when they are not, using the abd terminology or something similar.
And the Marilee Jones fabrication is old news. She now works as an independent college consultant.
jym is correct. I intended to affirm some of the other posts re: “earning a PhD” when one is ABD. That “earning” distinction is totally baseless.
@Pizzagirl, that is actually a good question. I think there are suggestions floating around, but I haven’t come across a clearly standardized way to state that professionally. I have seen a degree program, with coursework years listed, and then a “no degree” distinction appended for academic CV’s.
In alumni literature, I’ve seen a terminal degree program attendee listed as “MBAx”, for example (but I don’t think that would be appropriate for a professional resume). I reckon stating the degree program, years attended, and coursework en route to the degree would be appropriate, so long as its clear you didn’t attain the degree. It certainly counts for something.
The issue isn’t so much on a resume, where I can say “Attended classes towards …”
It’s the LinkedIn profile specifically which, when I list the school, doesn’t “allow” me to specify that I didn’t graduate from there. Unless there’s something I’m missing.
Edit: I think I figured it out. I moved it so that my undergrad comes up first, before my grad, and then added a description to the effect of “Took coursework towards X degree while working at Y company,” which is indeed what I did. This was the golden era where companies paid for your MBA
Years ago, when I was in the IT business, I was recruiting for a few different tech positions - a PC network admin, an RPG programmer, etc. (RPG is an IBM language, not used much these days.) I interviewed a young guy who was currently in a network support position and saw he had a degree from a college I didn’t recognize. Being a college buff, I asked him about it. After a bunch of stammering, he admitted it was a mail order degree he had bought to spiff up his resume. If that wasn’t enough to seal his fate, he proceeded to ask me what kind of role playing games we were working on. Wrong RPG. Didn’t wait for strike three…
I know someone who loves to drop references to his time at the Harvard Business School. I happen to know the only thing he ever attended at HBS was a one-week executive education program, which my hubby, who attended HBS, calls the “executive vacation program”. There’s nothing wrong with such programs if you can afford them, and hubby got a lot out of the one he attended years after getting his MBA at HBS, but I fight the urge to snigger every time I hear this guy say things like, “In my study group at HBS…”
Where I live, and in my particular field, I’ve started to note a lot of people who have attended the Bryn Mawr Leadership Institute (a certificate program that entails 10 days of classes and some additional requirements), and when you look the person up on on LinkedIn, “Bryn Mawr College” is the only thing that appears under their summary. You have to scroll down their full profile to see the details. It’s a great program from what I know of it, but it’s hardly the equivalent of having earned a bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr. Talk about misleading! I think it’s mainly a problem with LinkedIn and how it sorts out a person’s education, but IMHO it makes the person touting it look a tad sketchy.
