Bachelor of Conspiracy Theory Engineering
Conferred by Red String University
Foundational training in cork board construction, the epistemology of 'do your own research,' and graduate-level string-and-photograph connectivity analysis.
"Omnia Connectuntur Si Vis"
Program Overview
The Bachelor of Conspiracy Theory Engineering at Red String University is a four-year program for the student who, having noticed one or two genuinely strange things about the world, has decided to commit to the long work of noticing more. The program is fully unaccredited, which the faculty believes is itself meaningful. Coursework is structured around the central tool of the discipline: a cork board, a pile of printed photographs, and a roll of red string.
First-year students complete a foundation sequence in Pattern Recognition. The course is taught from the premise that pattern recognition is the human nervous system's greatest gift and its greatest liability. Students learn to distinguish between meaningful patterns, such as a recurring symbol on a corporate building, and meaningless ones, such as a number of birds passing the window in a sequence the student finds personally significant. A studio practicum requires each student to build a working cork board on a single neutral topic, such as the local water utility, and to submit it to peer review.
The second-year sequence introduces String Theory, which in this institution refers exclusively to the use of red string. Students learn the conventions of the discipline: the direct connection, the bypass connection, the question-mark connection (used to indicate suspicion without commitment), and the rare double-stranded connection, reserved for relationships the student believes are especially significant. A required studio asks each candidate to map a network of forty-six entities and to defend, in front of a committee, the meaning of each string.
Third-year students may concentrate in either Local Conspiracy or Global Conspiracy. The Local track focuses on the small civic mysteries: the strange permitting history of the corner building, the city council member who is also somehow a landlord, the unnamed corporation that owns six lots and has done nothing with them. The Global track focuses on the larger fields and is complicated by the fact that the faculty does not entirely agree on which conspiracies are real, which are useful fictions, and which are simply the way the world works when very wealthy people do not have to explain themselves.
A senior capstone requires the candidate to identify a single real, demonstrable, well-documented case of institutional malfeasance and to present it without embellishment, without red string, and without a soundtrack. The committee evaluates the candidate's ability to be precise about a thing that is genuinely wrong, after four years of being trained to suspect a thousand things that are not. Most graduates pass. The few who do not are gently encouraged to take a year off and return when they are ready.
A Note From the Dean
It is fashionable to mock the conspiracy theorist. The honest scholar of conspiracy theory takes them more seriously than that. Some of what we call conspiracy thinking is the recognition, by people without other tools, that the official explanation does not quite cover the available facts. Most of it is unfortunately wrong. A small portion, historically, has turned out to be correct.
Our program tries to teach the student the difference. This is harder than it sounds. The same cognitive machinery that produces the brilliant correction of an official lie also produces, in a different student, the elaborate map by which everything in the world is the fault of one specific small group of people. The two outputs share a structure. The graduate of our program is supposed to be able to tell them apart.
Whether our graduates actually do tell them apart is, regrettably, beyond the scope of what a four-year credential can guarantee. We do our best. We charge tuition. The world continues to do whatever the world does, and our alumni mostly try to explain it on podcasts.
Common Questions About This Program
Is the Bachelor of Conspiracy Theory Engineering an accredited credential?
No. The Bachelor of Conspiracy Theory Engineering conferred by Red String University is a novelty parody. It is not recognized by any actual accrediting body, it does not satisfy any real academic or professional requirement, and it may not be used as evidence of qualification in any setting where a genuine credential is required. Every diploma printed by this site carries a permanent watermark identifying it as a novelty.
Who is this program intended for?
The Bachelor of Conspiracy Theory Engineering is intended for adults who enjoy a particular kind of deadpan satirical premise and would like a printable artifact that extends the joke. Common uses include framed gag gifts, office desk decoration, social media screenshots in private group chats, and the occasional small ceremonial moment when a friend has done something the world refuses to recognize as worth a credential.
How does Red String University relate to the rest of the catalog?
Red String University is a fictional institution whose only public output is the Bachelor of Conspiracy Theory Engineering. It joins a roster of similarly fictional institutions across the catalog. Each institution exists as a small piece of the larger gag, and the names are chosen to evoke a generic flavor of real-world institution that the program is gently teasing. No institution mentioned anywhere on this site refers to a real organization, current or former. Any resemblance to a real school, agency, or business name is unintentional and will be corrected on request.
What does the printed diploma actually look like?
After typing your name and submitting the form below, the site renders a single-page diploma image that includes the program title, your name styled in a traditional diploma script, the fictional institution name, the Latin-style motto, and a small notice identifying the document as a novelty. The artwork is sized to print cleanly at standard letter size on cardstock. There is no digital signature, no embossed seal, and no real watermark beyond the one printed visibly on the artwork itself.
About the Catalog
Every program in the fake.degree catalog is an original satirical creation. The writing team studies an area of contemporary life that has become, in some quiet way, deserving of a degree, and then writes the kind of program bulletin a real university might publish if it were willing to recognize the area honestly. The bulletin you have just read is one of sixteen such programs. New programs are added only when an honest case can be made that the field exists.
If this page made you laugh, the editorial team will consider its work successful. If it made you slightly more skeptical of the next real credential you see described in serious tones, the team will consider its work doubly successful. The diploma is a small piece of printed paper. The work it claims to certify is, in every real case, the work itself. We try, in our small satirical way, never to confuse the two.
Claim Your Credential
Enter your name to generate your official-looking, entirely fake diploma.