I can has higher education?
Oreo C. Collins, a 2-year-old cat hailing from Macon, GA, has earned himself a GED. Oreo’s owner, Kelvin, is president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Central Georgia. He assisted Oreo’s pursuit of her high school diploma in an investigation of online “diploma mills.”
Collins paid $199 for the degree. But other than the ability to pay, the accrediting institution, Jefferson High School Online, doesn’t require much else to get your GED :
All Oreo needed to do to earn her ersatz sheepskin was answer 14 questions to determine her “elective and life experience credits” – including questions about her level of physical activity and her favorite musical genre…
JHSO doesn’t ask much from its students. In the Accounting category of the life-experience questions, for example, a drop-down menu lists “Basic” as a skill level below “Balance Check Book.” What, we must ask, could be a more-basic accounting skill than balancing a checkbook? Sharpening a pencil, perchance?
The quiz includes a series of multiple-choice questions – but unlike any test you ever took in school, this one includes a “JHSO Test Wizard” that offers hints should you answer any of the exceedingly simple questions incorrectly.
Each question offer four possible answers, and you have four tries – with hints – to get each of them correct.
Kelvin Collins hopes his kitteh’s quest for knowledge will serve as a cautionary tale to those who may seek an easy route to educational credentials:
Collins said that while he knows Oreo was in it for the education, he concedes that the cat’s “degree” serves as a cautionary tale to those who might be lured into spending well-earned cash on useless diplomas. “We (the BBB) do a lot of stories on these diploma mills, but a lot of times consumers really don’t get it until you show them an example of how they (the diplomas) aren’t worth much.”
