‘Racketeering waste of money’: Netizens fume over university discarding hardbound PhD theses

On Friday a Twitter user, r @Jeffs_behaviour, shared pictures of hard-bound PhD dissertations tossed in a dumpster trash can and wrote, “Walking home from my lecture tonight, I noticed a whole dumpster full of finely bound theses and dissertations behind the @UAlberta Education Centre. Not even being recycled, just going to the landfill. Can’t help but feel this oddly sums up the state of a modern education.”

This tweet soon gathered over 11,000 likes and sparked outrage against the university. Many former students noted that they spent a significant amount of money to get their thesis bonded according to the university’s prescribed standards. They also argued that if the administration did not want to keep the copies then they should have returned them to the scholars instead of tossing them.

Echoing this view, a Twitter user wrote, “Oh look. My dissertation is in the garbage. Thanks U of A. You forced me to spend hundreds on multiple bound copies printed on cotton rag and give them to you when I had no money—more debt. At least you could have offered them back. I would have taken them.”

Another person remarked, “Every one of these theses was printed at great expense to the impoverished PhD student, by one of a handful of approved printers at the behest of the University. A scandalous, racketeering waste of money.”