Graduate Certificates

I worked with a complete jackass who said he graduated from Tulane. Come to find out, he took some certificate program requiring minimum hours. If I were affiliated with Tulane in any way, I would NOT want that jackass saying he was a Tulane graduate. It weakens the brand.

Havard has a "graduate" program that is essentially a rent-a-degree for folks who couldn't finish 4 simple years to get an undergraduate degree.

It's a money grab.

Thanks for the feedback. To be more specific, if someone already earned a degree from a major university and then their employer sent them to obtain the Graduate Certificate from another university specific to their career. Would that person be able to be considered alumni?

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I know it’s a limited sample; but, from my shoes “the brand” is shite.

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I agree with everything you just said. So maybe the total jackass would actually raise their profile. Good point.

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If someone completes a 12-18 month Graduate Certificate with a major university, should they be able to consider themselves alumni of that university?

I googled this and results are split 50-50. I’ve also asked the opinion of several people who I know and trust their opinion. They’re also split pretty evenly.

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To me, the issue or dispute comes about because people often assume something that doesn’t meet the actual definition of the word in question. An alumnus is simply someone who has graduated from or attended a particular school.

Just because I was involved in a discussion about this topic many moons ago, when I was taking real estate law courses as part of my CCIM designation at the UVA School of Law, the professor stated that the people in that program would indeed be alumni of the School of Law, just not necessarily graduates (unless they continued on the graduate path). Because of that, I’ve never mixed & matched alumnus with graduate. Much like all pistols are guns, but not all guns are pistols… all graduates are alumni, but not all alumni are graduates.

MIT offers micro Masters program but I wouldn’t consider myself an alum of MIT if I did the program. I also wouldn’t discount that it’s an earned certificate. I think about skills earned via the certificate much more so than the institution granting (as long as it’s not a for profit institution).

If the certificate is teaching you marketable job skills / knowledge in the field, what does it matter? The idea that 4 years plus graduate school and tens of thousands + in student loan debt is the only way is one of the biggest lies ever told in our society.