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Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

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Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#71

Post by thebooktocome »

reuven wrote: post #14
fiatmoney wrote: post #4

There 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.

Stallman is a hugely influential person. He has contributed a great deal to the world of free software. And giving him an honorary degree is a great thing, demonstrating his many accomplishments. But it still really bugs me that he calls himself a PhD, and asks for the title "Dr." (And yes, I have a PhD, on which I worked for 11 years, at great cost to myself and my family. So feel free to take my comments with a gra…

I have a PhD (in mathematics) and am conflicted about the "Dr." title. I think it ought to be reserved for medical doctors, as there is a social good associated with knowing there is a medical doctor in the general vicinity.

For non-MDs, it feels like insisting on the title is petty.

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#72

Post by Guyag »

vacri wrote: post #28
reuven wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman is a hugely influential person. He has contributed a great deal to the world of free software. And giving him an honorary degree is a great thing, demonstrating his many accomplishments. But it still really bugs me that he calls himself a PhD, and asks for the title "Dr." (And yes, I have a PhD, on which I worked for 11 years, at great cost to myself and my family. So feel free to take my comments with a gra…

> And yes, I have a PhD, on which I worked for 11 years, at great cost to myself and my family. Stallman's work hasn't entailed great effort, long years, and costs to himself and loved ones? As you say, a PhD is more about elbow-grease than intellect, but Stallman has that in spades - not only about the philosophy he espouses, but also that he personally created so much of the GNU environment that we take for granted…

The second paragraph of the Wikipeda[1] article on honorary degrees covers this:

With regard to the use of this honorific, the policies of institutions of higher education generally ask that recipients "refrain from adopting the misleading title" and that a recipient of an honorary doctorate's use of the title "Dr" before their name should be restricted to engagement with the institution of higher education in question and not within the broader community.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_degree

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#73

Post by peterfirefly »

thebooktocome wrote: post #71
reuven wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman is a hugely influential person. He has contributed a great deal to the world of free software. And giving him an honorary degree is a great thing, demonstrating his many accomplishments. But it still really bugs me that he calls himself a PhD, and asks for the title "Dr." (And yes, I have a PhD, on which I worked for 11 years, at great cost to myself and my family. So feel free to take my comments with a gra…

I have a PhD (in mathematics) and am conflicted about the "Dr." title. I think it ought to be reserved for medical doctors, as there is a social good associated with knowing there is a medical doctor in the general vicinity. For non-MDs, it feels like insisting on the title is petty.

I think medics should not be called doctors ("teachers") precisely because they don't have that degree.

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#74

Post by pluma »

vacri wrote: post #30
adevine wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as a UVA grad I didn't realize they didn't give honorary degrees, but I think their approach of giving "medals" instead is the right one. Also, even if you are Richard Stallman or Maya Angelou, demanding to be called "Dr" due to an honorary degree is just lame.

My favourite professor said that the only use for his 'Dr' was for getting a good seat table when making a reservation at a restaurant. It doesn't make your work or your opinions magically better, and there are plenty of clueless PhDs out there. Besides, demanding any honourific is lame - proof of this is in the honorifics for politicians. :)

As a German I find the honorifics in politics just weird.

We don't normally call Ms Merkel "Frau Bundeskanzlerin" and we don't normally call MPs "Herr Bundestagsabgeordneter" or "Frau Bundestagsabgeordnete" (although you might address them this way in a formal letter, maybe).

Maybe this has something to do with abolishing royal/aristocratic titles in the aftermath of WW1 -- it certainly feels anachronistic and oldfashioned to me.

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#75

Post by jamesfe »

If the average donation for an honorary degree was $68,854, would it make more sense for me to just forego the four years of effort and write a check for $70k in return for a degree?

A masters is two years, so that's $35k per year. A PhD is 4-10 years, so that's 17.5k-7k per year.

It's starting to sound like a good investment!

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#76

Post by pluma »

keithpeter wrote: post #56
reuven wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman is a hugely influential person. He has contributed a great deal to the world of free software. And giving him an honorary degree is a great thing, demonstrating his many accomplishments. But it still really bugs me that he calls himself a PhD, and asks for the title "Dr." (And yes, I have a PhD, on which I worked for 11 years, at great cost to myself and my family. So feel free to take my comments with a gra…

In the UK at some universities ('redbrick' ones like Birmingham and Sheffield) it was possible to earn a Doctor of Science Degree by essentially listing research papers you had published in appropriate journals and writing a critical evaluation of your research field. It struck me that process might suit people like Stallman. The local Universities in my city award honorary degrees to College principles who sometimes…

For anyone else unfamiliar with the term "red brick":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university

> Red brick university (or redbrick university) is a term originally used to refer to six civic universities founded in the major industrial cities of England. The term is now used more broadly to refer to British universities founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in major cities. All of the six original redbrick institutions, or their predecessor institutes, gained university status before World War I and were initially established as civic science or engineering colleges.

i.e. "old" universities

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#77

Post by maratd »

cm2187 wrote: post #45

It's cheaper to issue a worthless piece of paper than to pay cash to a celebrity to make a speech at a conference. I think it is a rather smart use of tuition funds. Paying people in esteem is a management 101.

By your logic, it would be an even smarter use of tuition funds not to turn those funds into tuition for the sake of a worthless piece of paper.

I happen to agree, but that's a different conversation.

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#78

Post by Mr24601 »

fiatmoney wrote: post #4

There 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.

Isn't it fairly well accepted that 90% of PhD thesis will never be referenced or for the most part looked at again? Seems like an unworthy thing to get up on a high horse over.

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#79

Post by arethuza »

pluma wrote: post #76
keithpeter wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK at some universities ('redbrick' ones like Birmingham and Sheffield) it was possible to earn a Doctor of Science Degree by essentially listing research papers you had published in appropriate journals and writing a critical evaluation of your research field. It struck me that process might suit people like Stallman. The local Universities in my city award honorary degrees to College principles who sometimes…

For anyone else unfamiliar with the term "red brick": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university > Red brick university (or redbrick university) is a term originally used to refer to six civic universities founded in the major industrial cities of England. The term is now used more broadly to refer to British universities founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in major cities. All of the six origin…

In the UK and Ireland the really old universities are sometimes referred to as "ancient":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_university

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#80

Post by pluma »

jon-wood wrote: post #29
vladmk wrote: post #15

Do you think the guy who invented college went to college? Nope. It's obviously degrees are bullshit, one day I hope people learn that.

I agree that degrees are overrated as a way of assessing ones ability to fulfill a job, but to claim they're bullshit is pushing it. In an ideal world degrees would be about learning a subject to a greater depth, without the current mess of every job requiring a degree (any degree), so kids by default go to university and study something they have a vague interest in. A degree is a fantastic thing for some people, it…

Degrees are a stupid metric but they're a metric no less. Sadly people like to mistake them for general qualifications and think an unrelated degree justifies higher pay (although this is a more general problem, not really something any individual company can easily fix).

It's cargo cult thinking, really. It's not about the degree but what the individual degree represents. We like to assign unrelated meanings to it because we like easy answers.

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