Dive Brief:
- Stanford University's Graduate School of Business on Wednesday revealed that a 2003 MBA graduate was stripped of his degree after it was discovered that he had been admitted under "false pretenses."
- The decision marks the first time the school has ever nullified a degree.
- The holder of the degree — Mathew Martoma, a hedge fund trader — was also convicted last month of insider trading, but that had nothing to do with the decision to strip his degree.
Dive Insight:
What led to Martoma's degree being stripped was his cover-up of having been kicked out of Harvard Law School for sending a forged grade transcript to federal judges during a job search. One name change later, he applied and was admitted to Stanford's business school with no one apparently in the know regarding the Harvard expulsion. That said, one has to wonder how many similar cases are out there across all colleges and universities — and how many degrees could theoretically be at stake if a crackdown resulted in closer scrutiny of records. Martoma is probably not the only student to ever pull this move off, or the last to attempt it.