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Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

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Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#121

Post by sampo »

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. :)

> the only use for his 'Dr' was for getting a good seat table when making a reservation at a restaurant

Does that actually work? Will one get a better table?

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#122

Post by coldtea »

animefan wrote: post #107
coldtea wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there's IS literally a "guy who invented college"... "An academy is an institution of secondary education or higher learning, research, or honorary membership. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia (...) north of Athens, Greece". This has been the early prototype for later roman, middle-ages, renaissance and finally modern colleges. It wasn't the first tea…

The same wikipedia article goes on to say [these academies] are to be distinguished from the Western-style university which is an autonomous organization of scholars that originated in medieval Europe and was adopted in other world regions since the onset of modern times

I only copy/pasted that part to provide the exact dates and location.

Other than that, it's neither a well written article nor very accurate. In any case, the missing part before your quoted text is not "these academies". The article talks about several "ancient higher-learning institutions were developed in many cultures to provide institutional frameworks for scholarly activities". That part of the article is quite sloppy too (mentioning "museums", "scientific institutions" in a lemma referring to antiquity [1]).

Then it goes on to refer to the Academy too, later on, but even so, it undermines its own differentiation, as the Academy was both an "Autonomous organization"(check), and of "scholars" (check).

It didn't follow the full template of how a univerity today is (that starts around the 16th century), but it was most of the way there and is widely regarded as the precursor of the modern university (even the name "academic" is not a coincidence).

Now, my intention of reffering to the Academy was to give an example that the earliest college is something that we got in historical times and we know who created it (contrary to what the parents wrote).

If, as you suggest, we maintain that the first "actual" college was created even later, that serves me even better.

[1] There were museums in antiquity, but extremely few, and of them we know nothing much, and especially not that they operated any schools.

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#123

Post by coldtea »

CocaKoala wrote: post #116
coldtea wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is equivalent to saying "does not compute". We're not computers, and we can't fix syntax errors in natural language from context. Not that what he said wasn't clear enough itself.

Before we start sassing somebody for interpreting a sentence improperly, let's look at the ACTUAL full quote; "Supreme Court member Ruth Bader Ginsburg has an honorary doctorate degree from every single Ivy League School, with the exception of Cornell, which doesn’t give them out." It doesn't seem unreasonable to point out that an earned undergraduate degree is significantly different from an honorary doctorate degre…

>It doesn't seem unreasonable to point out that an earned undergraduate degree is significantly different from an honorary doctorate degree, and that perhaps when somebody EXPLICITLY SPECIFIES the second type, they aren't talking about the first.

It's very unreasonable, and kind of rude to divert the discussion just to split hairs.

Not to mention that there wasn't even a syntactic or logical error in the original bloody statement. The full original quote plus parent comment was this:

>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.

Clearly mentioning that her "undergrad degree" is an ACTUAL one, and not a "honorary".

Very clearly he adds to the information that "she has a honorary degree from every single Ivy League school except Conrell" that she also has "an actual udergrad degree, which is from Cornell".

It's CLEAR that his intention is to say that she has a degree, regardless of kind, from ALL Ivy League schools, and to also explain why she doesn't have one from Cornell (because Cornell doesn't need to give her a honorary one, they gave her their actual degree).

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#124

Post by CocaKoala »

coldtea wrote: post #123
CocaKoala wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before we start sassing somebody for interpreting a sentence improperly, let's look at the ACTUAL full quote; "Supreme Court member Ruth Bader Ginsburg has an honorary doctorate degree from every single Ivy League School, with the exception of Cornell, which doesn’t give them out." It doesn't seem unreasonable to point out that an earned undergraduate degree is significantly different from an honorary doctorate degre…

> It doesn't seem unreasonable to point out that an earned undergraduate degree is significantly different from an honorary doctorate degree, and that perhaps when somebody EXPLICITLY SPECIFIES the second type, they aren't talking about the first. It's very unreasonable, and kind of rude to divert the discussion just to split hairs. Not to mention that there wasn't even a syntactic or logical error in the original bl…

The parent misquotes the original article (or the article has been edited since the quotation without a note indicating as such). I quoted the actual article and pointed out that it specifies honorary doctorate.

I agree that the parent comment is trying to say that RBG has a degree from Cornell already, but that's not really relevant to the article and it doesn't seem unreasonable to point out exactly why her degree from Cornell wasn't mentioned. It's not a categorical list of every degree she has, and doesn't pretend to be.

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#125

Post by tanderson92 »

coldtea wrote: post #60
tanderson92 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An earned undergraduate degree is not an 'honorary degree'.

No, but it's a "degree", and she has that university covered too, degree-wise, which is what he means.

The parent uses the words "...except", indicating they take exception to the quote directly above. In this instance, adding information about earned undergraduate degrees is misleading as the quote is only about honorary degrees. It's equally as irrelevant as her earned Columbia law degree.

Nobody would object to the OP saying "funnily enough, she does have an earned degree from Cornell...", which is my point. Taking exception requires something to be factually incorrect.

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#126

Post by vacri »

tormeh wrote: post #104
pluma wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oldfas…

A line from the show "The West Wing" went something like this: "Please, Reverend, call me 'Mr. President'. It's not that I need you to stroke my ego, it's that in this job I have to make some difficult choices that can be uncomfortable to me personally, and I would like you to emphasize the office rather than the person holding it" As a Scandinavian, all honorifics, including "Mr." etc. sound weird, but that was a gr…

Mad Magazine had a gag way back in the day saying that one of the benefits of being a senator is being called "The Honorable [name]", right up until they jail you for all the horrible things you did in office...

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#127

Post by thebooktocome »

chrisseaton wrote: post #87
thebooktocome wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why should we accept medics stealing the meaning of a title that was created for academics? The real question is why are medics without any form of doctoral degree calling themselves 'dr'?

Why should we accept that academics "stole" the meaning of a title that was created for theologians?

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=doctor

It's a matter of custom. Customs can be changed. If I'm injured and cry out, "someone fetch a doctor!" I sincerely hope a "medic" answers the call.

Re: Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees?

#128

Post by jamesfe »

JoshM33k wrote: post #98
jamesfe wrote: post #75

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!

I wonder what kind of entry level positions you could score with a bought-and-paid-for honorary degree?

If I were the kind to actually enact this plan, I'd be the kind to forget my degree was honorary on my resume.
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