Reading the Charlotte Sun Newspaper

It seems the man who wants to unseat incumbent Paige Kreegle as the District 72 representative to the state legislature claims to be working on an advanced degree — from a British diploma mill. News-Press reporter Betty Parker broke the story Tuesday after wanna-be Rep. Brian Richter was “demoted” from adjunct faculty member to teaching assistant at Hodges University, a relatively new but quite legitimate college in Fort Myers.

Today, after three days of his own investigation, local business editor Bob Fliss reported essentially the same facts as Parker’s story and clarified a few things Richter said about the incumbent’s ability to get things done in the legislature.

This reader hopes the local story, “Kreegle challenger’s doctorate questioned,” signals a new level of willingness of the part of the Charlotte Sun to pry open the lid, look into the trash, and let readers know where the stink is coming from — even if we’re five days behind the rest of the Gulf coast.

The only thing I have to add is my take on Richter’s apparent statement to both reporters about paying for his degree. Parker reports Richer said he had not finished paying for his doctorate from “Canterbury University,” which is why he doesn’t yet have the credential and why the local college demoted him. Fliss quotes Richter as saying he’s “waiting on the verification and final payment” for the degree.

Speaking as someone who earned a real master’s degree and then spent three years attempting a real Ph.D. at a large Midwestern university, I can say that “payment” was rarely the first word my fellow graduate students or I used to describe the challenges we faced in completing the degree. In fact, I didn’t finish. I didn’t finish writing the all-important disseration, a book-length, heavily documented research effort that, in my case, was overseen by a committee of five full professors, who conducted twice-a-semester interrogations about my work (on John Donne, a 17th century English poet) and closely related fields, such as European history, art and philosophy. At a real university, the dissertation respresents original work and original thinking. It is expected to contribute to informed discussions percolating in the specialty and raise new questions. It establishes one’s expertise among experts. In addition to being the culminating phase for a real philosophiae doctor, the dissertaion is the initial step in a lifetime of ongoing research and investigation. Nothing the reporters quoted from Richter indicated that he’s working on a dissertation topic that contributes to the field he claims: mathematics. He’s just waiting to “finish paying for it.”