Great Rewards of a Master's Degree
Graduates holding a master's degree hold something special. It's not just that master's degrees in certain fields can bring substantially greater economic rewards. It's not just that only about one in seven Americans holds a master's degree, compared to 50% who hold a bachelor's degree. And it's not just that many especially desirable jobs in fields like nursing, social work, psychology, teaching, accounting, business, and computer science require a master's degree. It's also that earning a master's degree can give the holder a much greater sense of value, purpose, worth, and accomplishment, proving the holder's character, discipline, and commitment. Your master's degree can hold great financial, social, and personal rewards.
The Master's Degree Revocation Bombshell
When earning your master's degree, you probably never dreamed you might face its revocation one day. But master's degree revocations do happen for several different graduate school issues. Colleges and universities, for instance, won't hesitate to revoke a master's degree that the school improperly or mistakenly awards. Nor do colleges and universities hesitate to revoke the master's degrees or other degrees and awards improperly bestowed on the highly influential. Yet degree revocation isn't something that schools advertise, which means that learning of your potential degree revocation probably came as a shock to you. If you've recently received notice or inkling that the school from which you received a master's degree is considering or actively pursuing its revocation, then you've felt the bombshell.
What Master's Degree Revocation Means
Understand what it means for a college or university to revoke a master's degree. Master's degree revocation means that the school will change its academic records to remove any indication that you earned the master's degree and replace that indication with a record that you committed a sufficiently serious wrong that the school revoked your degree. Degree revocation is, in other words, turning a huge positive into a huge negative on your official school record. In some cases the University officials will ask that the graduate return the revoked diploma. But the sting is that "the graduate's official transcript and other relevant University documents will be corrected to reflect" the revocation. School policy can also provide that the school president "may publicize the matter to the extent that he or she, in his or her sole judgment, believes advisable," including "to notify relevant publications." Everyone important to you may learn of your master's degree revocation.
Your Master's Degree Revocation Dilemma
Once you get over the shock of it, your school's notice that it may revoke your master's degree should raise with you these several critical questions:
- First, you need to determine which student defense team and national education attorney advisor has the right strategic approach to help you fight master's degree revocation;
- Second, you need to know the steps you and your retained attorney advisor need to immediately take to gain the advantage of your school's protective disciplinary procedures so that you and your attorney advisor can fight the school's charges;
- Third, your retained attorney needs to help you determine exactly what misconduct with which your school charges you and what evidence your school claims to have to support those charges;
- Fourth, your retained attorney needs to help you determine what evidence you hold or can acquire to exonerate you from the charges and mitigate any potential penalty; and
- Fifth, you need to know what else you can, should, and must do to communicate with your current school, job, and professional licensing or certifying bodies while your former school pursues its master's degree revocation proceedings.
The School's Master's Degree Revocation Challenge
Your school seeking to revoke your master's degree faces its own challenges. Your degree revocation defense should account for those school challenges. Your school's disciplinary officials are likely considering each of these things when deciding whether and how to pursue your master's degree revocation and on what terms to resolve their disciplinary proceedings against you:
- what legislative, case, and policy authority your school has or lacks to pursue your master's degree revocation;
- what due process your school's disciplinary officials will have to follow if you retain skilled and experienced disciplinary defense attorney representation;
- the strength or weakness of the grounds and credibility and weight of the evidence the school has for revoking your master's degree;
- the strength and weakness of your case and equities against master's degree revocation, including whether degree revocation would be disproportionate punishment;
- how distracting and disruptive master's degree revocation procedures may be for the school community;
- the skill and experience of your student discipline defense attorney advisor to fight the school's charges effectively;
- what the school's constituencies may demand or desire as to your master's degree revocation, especially students, alumni, accreditors, and employers; and
- the unwanted publicity that master's degree revocation proceedings may attract versus the negative publicity that may remain if your school doesn't pursue revocation.
Usual Grounds for Master's Degree Revocation
The grounds for your master's degree revocation can be your controlling issue. Does your school have good grounds or weak grounds to demand your master's degree revocation? To evaluate that question, your retained attorney advisor should help you understand the common grounds for master's degree revocation and why schools recognize those grounds.
Academic Dishonesty
A master's degree is the school's certification that you hold the knowledge, skills, and ethics representative of the degree's field. To ensure the reliability of that certification, schools need to award degrees only to students who honestly, validly, and reliably meet the degree's standards. That's why academic dishonesty, fraud, or misrepresentation is a primary reason why schools seek master's degree revocation, although not the only grounds. Academic dishonesty can include falsifying transcripts for admission or forging school academic records. Plagiarism is another form of misrepresentation, falsely representing the work of another as one's own work. Altering scores or grades on work already scored and graded, and fabricating research results, are other forms of academic dishonesty that could cause your school to pursue a master's degree revocation.
Academic Misconduct
For the same reason that a master's degree certifies your academic preparedness, schools also use serious academic misconduct as grounds for seeking a master's degree revocation. Academic misconduct can include cheating on course exams or assignments. It can also include self-plagiarism using the same work for credit in two or more courses. It can also include deliberately sabotaging critical course resources or otherwise interfering with other students' studies.
Severe Behavioral Misconduct
Schools typically deal with behavioral misconduct through disciplinary proceedings while the student is still in school before awarding degrees. But in some cases, complaints of serious misconduct come to light after a student's graduation. Schools sometimes use those serious complaints of physical harm to other students on campus or in school activities, such as sexual assault or dating violence, to pursue degree revocation. Title IX policies sometimes authorize the degree revocation remedy. Columbia University's Title IX policy is an example.
School Authority to Revoke a Master's Degree
Colleges and universities may or may not have the legal and institutional authority to revoke a master's degree. Challenging your school's authority could prove a successful defense. The courts have, in some cases, upheld student challenges to school authority to revoke degrees. Whether your defense would be successful depends on your own circumstances and case. Your school's due process violations, for instance, could help your challenge. But your school may also lack clear legislative authority, case precedent, or policy authority to revoke your master's degree.
Example Policies for Master's Degree Revocation
Colleges and universities nationwide maintain policies expressly authorizing degree revocation among lesser sanctions for academic or other misconduct. While many schools have clear policies, some schools don't publish such clear policies for degree revocation. Columbia College of Missouri, for instance, expressly includes graduate degrees in its policy for degree revocation. The University of Michigan's graduate school policy for degree revocation likewise expressly provides that its graduate school board "may recommend that a degree that has been awarded be revoked if it determines that the facts of misconduct if known before the awarding of the degree, would have resulted in a decision not to confer the degree." While a clear policy may help the school's case for master's degree revocation, a policy alone may not be enough if state law does not authorize it. Your retained attorney can help you determine your school's authority.
Impacts of Master's Degree Revocation
Depending on your individual circumstances, revocation of your master's degree may have severe impacts well beyond that which you might ordinarily anticipate. Consider the following potential impacts of master's degree revocation when determining whether to fight your school, how to fight, and the time and resources to invest in that fight.
Master's Degree Revocation: Educational Impacts
A master's degree, although a high-level degree, is not always a terminal degree. Many graduates holding master's degrees go on to professional school, Ph.D. programs, or other graduate programs. Many of those doctorates and other terminal degree programs require a master's degree for admission. College and university graduate admissions officers are well aware that students may seek admission relying on fraudulent credentials or even a master's degree subject to revocation due to academic misconduct or fraud. Johns Hopkins University, for example, maintains an Admissions Fraud Procedure reserving the university the right to revoke admission. You could suffer the loss of your current graduate or professional admission if your former school revokes your master's degree.
Master's Degree Revocation: Job, Career, and License Impacts
You may also suffer severe job and career repercussions if your school revokes your master's degree. You would likely lose any job that depends on your revoked master's degree credential. Teaching, social work, psychology, corporate management and leadership, computer science, and a host of other fields may require a master's degree. You could also lose a job that does not depend on your revoked master's degree, where revocation shows dishonesty or bad character. You could also lose your professional licensure or certification, especially if it expressly depends on your revoked master's degree.
Master's Degree Revocation: Family and Financial Impacts
You may also suffer severe family dislocation due to the financial impacts of the revocation of your master's degree. Consider carefully how your spouse, children, elderly or disabled parents, and others may depend on your employment and income. Consider also how your loss of a job due to master's degree revocation may lead to your loss of a mortgage, loans, housing, health insurance, transportation, and other personal and family essentials.
Fighting Your School in Master's Degree Revocation
Your college or university will very likely provide you with substantial protective procedures against degree revocation, giving you a fair chance to fight for your master's degree. Due process on public college and university campuses is generally a constitutional right. The University of Michigan graduate school procedures, applicable to degree revocation and other disciplines, are an example. Those procedures provide for investigation, advisory report, hearing, decision recommendation, recommendation review, and appeal, among other protections.
Attorney Advisor Role Fighting Master's Degree Revocation
To fight academic discipline effectively in a serious charge seeking master's degree revocation requires an attorney advisor with substantial academic administrative skill and experience. Your attorney advisor may do all of the following, among many other strategic approaches to your master's degree defense:
- require school officials to communicate directly with the attorney;
- deny false and unsupported charges while raising effective defenses;
- demand the school's evidence while gathering and presenting your own;
- attend conferences and hearings to advocate for your defense;
- prepare, file, and argue appeals; and
- negotiate with school oversight officials for special alternative relief.
Nationwide Master's Degree Defense
Nationwide master's degree defense is available from the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team and national education attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento. They have helped hundreds of students and graduates defend and defeat college and university disciplinary proceedings, including master's degree revocation charges. Call 888.535.3686 or go online now to retain the Lento Law Firm Team.
