Appreciating the Rewards of a Bachelor's Degree
Earning a bachelor's degree is a life accomplishment. A bachelor's degree is a milestone just as much as it is a credential. Your bachelor's degree signifies that you have the character, commitment, and discipline to take the long view, delay gratification, and apply and improve yourself to get ready for bigger things. You were doubtless proud of earning your bachelor's degree, as were your family members and friends. And you had good reason to be proud of and pleased with your accomplishment, trusting that your bachelor's degree would become a foundation for much more you expect to accomplish.
The Shock of Potential Bachelor's Degree Revocation
As high as earning your bachelor's degree lifted you, learning that your college or university might revoke your bachelor's degree must have floored and depressed you. Few students likely have any idea that colleges and universities sometimes revoke bachelor's degrees. But schools do revoke bachelor's degrees, for example, when inappropriately awarded. Schools even revoke degrees of the famous and influential. When you learned that your college or university might revoke your bachelor's degree, you may have wondered whether your school could even do so. Your school awarded you a bachelor's degree. What right would your school have to take back your bachelor's degree after your tuition or school loans had even paid for it?
What Bachelor's Degree Revocation Means
Bachelor's degree revocation means more than taking back your physical degree rolled up on parchment paper, or mounted on your wall. Indeed, your school may be indifferent to whether you return the actual physical degree. Instead, bachelor's degree revocation means that your school will change its academic records to indicate that although you once received a bachelor's degree, the school has rescinded the degree so that you no longer hold it. Bachelor's degree revocation also means that you can no longer represent to employers, licensing bodies, family members, friends, or the world that you hold a bachelor's degree. Or, you can make that representation, but others could regard your representation as untruthful, even fraudulent, if used for your advantage.
The Student's Dilemma with Bachelor's Degree Revocation
Potential bachelor's degree revocation presents the involved student with a real dilemma. The shock of potential bachelor's degree revocation may paralyze the student. But paralysis isn't a sound option. Instead, the student facing bachelor's degree revocation should be thinking of getting national education attorney advisor help for answers to these important questions:
- which national education attorney advisor and student defense team can help the student discern and implement a sound strategic approach to fighting bachelor's degree revocation;
- what steps must you and your retained attorney advisor promptly take to effectively invoke the school's disciplinary procedures to challenge the school's charges;
- what does the student's school actually charge, what evidence do school officials have to support those charges, and what evidence does the accused student have to oppose the charges; and
- what should the involved student do about the student's current school, current job, any professional licenses or certifications that depend on the bachelor's degree, and the student's life in general during the disciplinary proceedings?
The School's Challenge With Bachelor's Degree Revocation
Your strategic approach to defending bachelor's degree revocation should recognize that your college or university faces its own challenges. Bachelor's degree revocation isn't what schools ordinarily do. College and university administrators generally devote their time and school resources to education more so than officiating degree revocation. You surely felt that you were successfully out your school's door after earning your bachelor's degree. So, too, did your school. To invest the substantial time, effort, and resources necessary to revoke your bachelor's degree in defensible posture, your school will likely be evaluating:
- whether your school has clear legal authority, policy support, and case precedent for revoking your bachelor's degree;
- what procedures your school must follow to revoke your bachelor's degree and whether the school has administrative resources available for those procedures;
- whether your school has a strong or weak case for revoking your bachelor's degree, and whether you have a strong or weak case to fight it;
- the degree to which seeking your bachelor's degree revocation may become a major distraction for school officials and the school community;
- whether you will retain a skilled and experienced attorney advisor to effectively defend the school's disciplinary charges;
- whether revoking your bachelor's degree may harm you disproportionately compared to any wrong the school believes you may have done;
- whether your school's students, faculty members, alumni, major employers, accreditors, regulators, and other constituents would favor or oppose, or demand or resist your bachelor's degree revocation; and
- whether revoking your bachelor's degree will garner more adverse attention than not revoking your bachelor's degree would garner.
Bachelor's Degree Revocation Common Grounds
As the above factors indicate, your school will likely look very closely at whether it has strong or weak grounds to revoke your bachelor's degree before it initiates disciplinary procedures to do so. The most common grounds for bachelor's degree revocation have to do with preserving the integrity of your school's awarded degrees. Colleges and universities rely heavily, some would say entirely, on the integrity of their degrees. If the degree is worthless, so may be the school. Thus, the most common grounds for bachelor's degree revocation generally involve alleged academic misconduct. Drugs and alcohol may be a safety and security issue on campus, but they don't have nearly so much to do with whether a student honestly earned a degree. Cheating, though, does have to do with whether the degree represents what it should. Here, then are the most common grounds for bachelor's degree revocation:
- any form of serious academic dishonesty such as falsifying admissions credentials, forging academic records, plagiarizing others' work for false credit as one's own, changing the score or grade on completed work to gain unearned credit, and lying, fabrication, alteration, or other dishonesty in college or university research;
- any form of serious academic misconduct such as cheating on course assignments, using unauthorized materials on exams, copying another's exam answers, using an outside source while taking a closed-book exam, or submitting work for credit in two or more courses without disclosing the duplication, against professor rules; and
- various forms of severe behavioral misconduct affecting other students on campus or in school activities, such as sexual assault, sexual violence, and terroristic threats or acts, before earning the degree but discovered after degree award.
School Authority to Revoke a Bachelor's Degree
Students have succeeded in the courts in challenging school authority for bachelor's degree revocation. Successful challenges have questioned whether the state's legislature granted a public school authority to revoke degrees. Other challenges have relied on the school's failure to follow required protective procedures resulting in due process violations. Those court cases confirm for school officials that they must have authority before they can move forward with a bachelor's degree revocation that they can justify later if need be. Schools also look to their own policies for authority to revoke a bachelor's degree. If the school's board has adopted such a policy, then the authority is more likely to exist than if the board hasn't opined. Retain a qualified national education attorney advisor to evaluate whether your school has the authority to do as it threatens in revoking your bachelor's degree. Your retained attorney advisor may help you call the school's bluff.
Example Policies for Bachelor's Degree Revocation
Many, even if not all, colleges and universities awarding bachelor's degrees nationwide have adopted policies declaring their right to revoke a bachelor's degree that they've already awarded. Those policies often reside in the school's policy against academic dishonesty or academic misconduct. These nationally recognized schools are examples where policy expressly reserves to the school the right to revoke a bachelor's degree for academic or other serious misconduct:
- the University of Missouri System;
- the University of Tennessee System;
- the University of Arizona; and
- the University of Washington.
Bachelor's Degree Revocation Impacts
Revocation of your bachelor's degree is likely to have significant impacts, even severe impacts depending on your circumstances. If you are in school, hold a license or certification, or hold a job or career depending on your bachelor's degree, then you likely face very serious degree revocation challenges. Don't panic over potential consequences. But don't ignore or minimize those potential consequences, either. Recognize and respect the potential consequences so that you respond to your disciplinary charges appropriately.
Impacts on Further Education of Bachelor's Degree Revocation
You may be in graduate or professional school by merit of your bachelor's degree. If so, then you could lose your graduate or professional school admission and everything you've invested in that higher education with a bachelor's degree revocation. Surveys indicate that students in higher education present false or invalid credentials for admission in a surprisingly high percentage of applications. Admissions officials know so, keeping a sharp lookout for fraudulent credentials. Ohio State University, for instance, warns students that "[s]ubmitting fraudulent materials" in admissions applications "is considered academic misconduct." Schools revoke admissions for fraudulent applications. If your former school revokes your bachelor's degree, your current school will take notice and likely revoke your admission.
Impacts on Jobs and Careers of Bachelor's Degree Revocation
Revocation of your bachelor's degree may also terminate your employment in any field requiring a bachelor's degree. The job you hold or seek probably depends on your bachelor's degree. Getting that job may be exactly why you pursued your bachelor's degree. If so, then you'll lose your job if you lose your bachelor's degree.
Impact on Licenses of Bachelor's Degree Revocation
Revocation of your bachelor's degree will also likely cause you to lose any license or certification that depends on that education. Nursing registration, teacher certification, social work licenses, and many other professional licenses and vocational certifications depend on a bachelor's degree. Lose the degree, and you'll lose the license or certification.
Financial Impacts of Bachelor's Degree Revocation
Revocation of your bachelor's degree can also mean huge financial impacts, especially if your employment depends on the degree. Lost employment can mean lost health insurance and your inability to pay your mortgage or rent and related loss of housing. You can also lose your savings, transportation, and credit. Your inability to pay school and other loans may result in lawsuits, garnishments, and bankruptcy.
Family Impacts of Bachelor's Degree Revocation
Revocation of your bachelor's degree can also seriously impact your family members who depend on your income. Your loss of income, housing, transportation, and health insurance can all strain your family welfare and relationships, especially with a spouse or children for whom you are the primary provider.
Fighting Bachelor's Degree Revocation
Because colleges and universities must generally provide a student facing bachelor's degree revocation with constitutional or contractual due process, you should have a fair chance to fight degree revocation. Most procedures procedures nationwide provide for school investigation, sharing of the investigation report with the accused graduate, a hearing before an impartial committee, and your retained attorney advisor's attendance at that hearing. Appeals from an adverse decision are also possible. School officials may also resolve the matter with the graduate through a voluntary agreement. You should have a good chance to fight, defend, and turn back bachelor's degree revocation.
The Lento Law Firm Will Fight Your Bachelor's Degree Revocation
Fighting academic discipline generally takes special academic administrative skills. Even otherwise-sophisticated bachelor's degree holders don't ordinarily have those academic administrative skills. Criminal court and civil court attorneys don't even ordinarily have those special skills. A national education attorney advisor may do any or all of the following for your effective bachelor's degree revocation defense:
- notify school officials to communicate with your attorney, ensuring that school officials know you have skilled advocacy for your defense;
- answer the charges with appropriate denials and corrections while also raising affirmative defenses;
- discover and help you evaluate the school's incriminating evidence;
- gather and present your exonerating and mitigating evidence;
- attend informal resolution conferences and formal hearings;
- conduct appeals;
- help you communicate with employers, licensing officials, and others interested in your school proceeding's outcome;
- negotiate with school oversight officials for voluntary resolution, even after you have exhausted all available formal proceedings; and
- evaluate and pursue litigation and regulatory complaint options.
Bachelor's Degree Defense Nationwide
The Lento Law Firm's preeminent Student Defense Team and premier national education attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento are available for your bachelor's degree revocation defense nationwide, no matter your school or its location. The Lento Law Firm Team has helped hundreds of students and graduates defend and defeat college and university disciplinary proceedings. Call 888.535.3686 or go online now to retain the Lento Law Firm Team.
