by Sisyphus » Fri Aug 07, 2020 2:38 pm
I'd be GLAD to share stories about both my experience:
- Being trapped in a dysfunctional PhD program with no way out and ultimately tossed aside from the program with no warning despite continued progress on my degree, which anyone who knows anything about academia knows PhDs don't have consistent timelines.
OR some other participants' experiences:
- Being placed in a hostile working environment SF by SMART, removed from that SF after complaining than literally just "forgotten" by SMART and never reassigned...until it became repayment time when suddenly the participant was asked to repay everything.
- Being a retention candidate and having their SF take advantage of the fact they were trapped by SMART to try and be forced to take a substantially lower salary than a) peers and b) what was originally offered along with breaking all sorts of other agreed upon terms because hey, why not exploit a debt trapped SMART sucker.
I could go on. There's quite a body of literature for the far-too-probable downside of this dumpster fire of a program.
Sure the program "works out" for the bulk of people...but it also actively fucks over ~10% of participants leaving them debt laden (as per admission by USDR&E office letter I received) and an even higher % is sitting around just running out the clock...there's a reason only about half of participants are still in the DoD after the 5 year mark and all of them are free to move on to better pastures (per IDA report). Given the authority of the SPO, there is NO reason for a 1 in 10 chance of owing SMART money if SMART actually cared about helping participants finish and not just viewing them as SF chattel that they would consign to massive debt at either the first time something goes wrong beyond their control, or when participants don't just bend over as their SF tries to screw them over (FYI: SMART will side with the SF/DoD as a whole literally every time over you, you are a widget).
Going by the standard of judging the moral quality of a program based on "how much and hard it fails" SMART would be downright evil, which is quite a feat for a program designed to simply get people STEM degrees to come work for the DoD.
I'd be GLAD to share stories about both my experience:
- Being trapped in a dysfunctional PhD program with no way out and ultimately tossed aside from the program with no warning despite continued progress on my degree, which anyone who knows anything about academia knows PhDs don't have consistent timelines.
OR some other participants' experiences:
- Being placed in a hostile working environment SF by SMART, removed from that SF after complaining than literally just "forgotten" by SMART and never reassigned...until it became repayment time when suddenly the participant was asked to repay everything.
- Being a retention candidate and having their SF take advantage of the fact they were trapped by SMART to try and be forced to take a substantially lower salary than a) peers and b) what was originally offered along with breaking all sorts of other agreed upon terms because hey, why not exploit a debt trapped SMART sucker.
I could go on. There's quite a body of literature for the far-too-probable downside of this dumpster fire of a program.
Sure the program "works out" for the bulk of people...but it also actively fucks over ~10% of participants leaving them debt laden (as per admission by USDR&E office letter I received) and an even higher % is sitting around just running out the clock...there's a reason [b]only about half[/b] of participants are still in the DoD after the 5 year mark and all of them are free to move on to better pastures (per IDA report). Given the authority of the SPO, there is NO reason for a 1 in 10 chance of owing SMART money if SMART actually cared about helping participants finish and not just viewing them as SF chattel that they would consign to massive debt at either the first time something goes wrong beyond their control, or when participants don't just bend over as their SF tries to screw them over (FYI: SMART will side with the SF/DoD as a whole literally every time over you, you are a widget).
Going by the standard of judging the moral quality of a program based on "how much and hard it fails" SMART would be downright evil, which is quite a feat for a program designed to simply get people STEM degrees to come work for the DoD.