User talk:BrassRat

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Welcome!

Hello, BrassRat, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  D. J. Bracey (talk) 21:56, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Technology Review

See my comments on Talk:Technology Review. Agree it has problems. Maybe you can help figure out how to sort out what's important and factual without making it tell a story it's not supposed to be telling. I've made one change in the 2005 paragraph which contained two facts whose juxtaposition was definitely snarky and inappropropriate. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:05, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification on the degrees given out by the Sloan School

I appreciate your efforts in trying to clean up the entries of all of the Sloan alumni. But I think we should be careful and precise about exactly which degrees that these alumni have earned. The Sloan School didn't grant M.B.A. degrees in its regular 2-year fulltime master's degree program until 1995, instead granting only S.M. degrees before that time, and now gives you a choice of which degrees that you can earn. If you write a thesis, you have the option of earning the S.M. or the M.B.A, whereas if you don't write a thesis, you will earn the M.B.A. Some graduates still prefer to obtain the S.M. degree. The Sloan Fellows program granted only S.M. degrees until 2005, when you now have the same choice of an M.B.A. or an S.M. Some people, particularly in academia, see the S.M. degree in management to be a more powerful credential because of its thesis component.

Hence, I think it's misleading to say that somebody obtained an M.B.A. when what they actually received was the S.M. We can include a blurb to discuss the history of Sloan's degree designations, or a link that points to such a blurb, but we shouldn't be designating people with the "wrong" degree. If somebody earned an S.M., then we should say that that person earned an S.M. The degree designations can be checked on Infinite Connection (http://alum.mit.edu), presuming that you are a graduate. Sakhalinrf 09:44, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reclarification of the Sloan School degrees

I still don't believe that stating that one received a "Master's degree in Management (M.B.A.)" is sufficiently clear, as by stating such a thing, it seems as if you are implying that the person did get an MBA, which he did not. Something like "S.M. in Management (equivalent of an MBA)" or "Master's degree in Management {the Sloan School equivalent of the MBA}", or placing a blurb in footnotes would be a clearer way to state it.

My point is, you can't be giving people degrees that they don't actually have. If somebody earned an SM from MIT, then that fact should be clearly stated as such. We can also say state that that SM is effectively the equivalent of the MBA, but we can't actually give that person an MBA. Nor is referring a person back to the Sloan School article sufficiently clarifying because the truth is, most people aren't going to read the Sloan School entry. They are just going to see the words "Master's degree in Management (M.B.A.)" and simply assume that that person obtained an MBA, which he did not. Sakhalinrf 22:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

This is why the M.B.A. is in parentheses. Obviously the degree is the Master's degree in Management, the MBA in parentheses clarifies that it is equivalent to that better known degree. BrassRat 18:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
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