Hung Hsiu-chu's (洪秀柱) master's degree is probably real, but is Clara Chou's (周玉蔻)?

Political commentator Clara Chou (周玉蔻) claimed on her show on Monday that KMT presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) master’s degree is fake, asserting that she only took courses during summer sessions and did not receive a real degree. In response, Hung released a copy of her degree, which clearly shows that she earned a Master’s of Arts degree in August 1991 from Northeast Missouri State University, now known as Truman State University. Chou also claimed that the university was not recognized by the Ministry of Education, but the China Post reports that:

The MOE only requires foreign degrees to be certified if the credentials are used for applying for higher education degrees in Taiwan, becoming a civil servant, or becoming an instructor or receiving a promotion at a university.

As Hung was already a legislator by the time she received her degree and has been one ever since, she never sought to use her degree for any of the above purposes. Regardless, whether the school or degree is recognized by the Ministry of Education is irrelevant to whether the degree in and of itself is real.

Those who are familiar with higher education in the United States would probably quickly realize that the degree is most likely real. There is no requirement that degree programs must have an extended or continuous residential component, and as long as Hung met the requirements of the degree as set out by the university, who is to say the degree is not real? An accusation against Hung that her degree is fake would also be an accusation against the university, which would be preposterous as it is a state school and not a diploma-mill. Is Chou ready to go down that road?

My alma mater, University of California, Berkeley School of Law, recently started an LLM program that only requires students to be in residence in Berkeley, California for two summers. Would Chou claim that this is summer school, and therefore anybody who graduates from it does not possess a master of laws degree from Berkeley?

During her rant, Chou claimed that she studied at Harvard for a year and completed a thesis for her master’s degree. Her Chinese Wikipedia entry (I have been unable to find other biographies of her online) shows that she received a public administration master’s degree at Harvard, but what program did she attend since the Master in Public Administration (MPA) program at Harvard Kennedy School of Government is two years? Perhaps she attended the one-year Mid-Career Master in Public Administration (MC/MPA) program, which appears to be less rigorous than the MPA and is what Executive MBA programs are to regular MBAs. Either way, it is highly unlikely she completed a “thesis” in the way she used the word on her show – which was meant to make her viewers believe she wrote a master’s thesis – as the Kennedy School MPA programs do not require a thesis for graduation.  [Edit: Admittedly these are today’s requirements and I don’t know what the requirements were when Chou was enrolled.]

Now that Chou has forced Hung to defend herself, which she did ably, perhaps it’s time for Chou to show the public her own degree certificate and her “thesis” so that we know exactly what degree she has, as a regular MPA and a mid-career MPA are very different things. Using Chou’s own logic, she should be accusing herself of fraud because she has not publicly clarified that her master’s degree is most likely a watered-down version that took half the time of normal MPAs.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what academic degrees presidential candidates and political pundits have. What’s important is that they are honest about their credentials, which Hung has been. Chou, however, has not been honest in her accusation that Hung has a fake degree. Would pan-Green folks call out Chou on her mudslinging just as they have against the KMT’s baseless accusations? If an honest political system is what the Taiwanese want, then it would only be fair that Chou is held to the same standards and be criticized for her swiftboating.

[Edit: See new post for additional comments.]