Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
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Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
1–10 of 128 posts
Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
#2"Supreme Court member Ruth Bader Ginsburg has an honorary degree from every single Ivy League School, with the exception of Cornell, which doesn’t give them out."
...except for her actual undergrad degree, which is from Cornell.
(Hey, when you don't have presidents, you take what you can get. And we'll take RBG over several presidents.)
Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
#3Very interesting article .. it demonstrates that big ivy league institutions used it as means to obtain funding and built connections for their institutions. An "honorary" degree cannot be compared to a degree won through sheer hard work and dexterity ... society should know this and highlight it
Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
#4There should be a distinction between an "honorary" degree awarded because a "real" one would be superfluous (Richard Stallman, Increase Mather, etc) and those awarded because of donations or co-branding.
Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
#5And as usual, Thomas Jefferson's foresight was about 20/20 in this case.
Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
#6Awarding an honorary degree is analogous to liking a status update on Facebook.
Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
#7"Supreme Court member Ruth Bader Ginsburg has an honorary degree from every single Ivy League School, with the exception of Cornell, which doesn’t give them out." ...except for her actual undergrad degree, which is from Cornell. (Hey, when you don't have presidents, you take what you can get. And we'll take RBG over several presidents.)
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Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
#8Awarding an honorary degree is analogous to liking a status update on Facebook.
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Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
#9Very interesting article .. it demonstrates that big ivy league institutions used it as means to obtain funding and built connections for their institutions. An "honorary" degree cannot be compared to a degree won through sheer hard work and dexterity ... society should know this and highlight it
> An "honorary" degree cannot be compared to a degree won through sheer hard work and dexterity
I thought that was kinda the point of honorary degrees- a person accomplishes something in a particular field despite the lack of the formal education.
Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?
#10Honorary degrees is a cheap way of increasing prestige by associating the university with someone who already has prestige.