
Why Do Colleges Give Honorary Degrees? - bpolania
http://priceonomics.com/why-do-colleges-give-out-honorary-degrees/
======
icomefromreddit
[1]Richard P. Feynman:

Dear George,

Yours is the first honorary degree that I have been offered, and I thank you
for considering me for such an honor.

However, I remember the work I did to get a real degree at Princeton and the
guys on the same platform receiving honorary degrees without work—and felt an
"honorary degree" was a debasement of the idea of a "degree which confirms
certain work has been accomplished." It is like giving an "honorary
electricians license." I swore then that if by chance I was ever offered one I
would not accept it.

Now at last (twenty-five years later) you have given me a chance to carry out
my vow.

So thank you, but I do not wish to accept the honorary degree you offered.

Sincerely yours,

Richard P. Feynman

[http://stancarey.tumblr.com/post/30867103451/why-richard-
fey...](http://stancarey.tumblr.com/post/30867103451/why-richard-feynman-
declined)

~~~
brandonmenc
"I don't like honors"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEUcmKDaklY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEUcmKDaklY)

~~~
rdc12
Anyone know if this is part of a longer talk? If so which

~~~
treme
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyqleIxXTpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyqleIxXTpw)

------
brightball
At Clemson I've seen honorary degrees given to very successful people who gave
a lot of money to the university. The degree was usually given during general
graduation and gives the successful business person a chance to speak to the
graduating class.

Honestly, it never bothered me at all. It's one thing if you're saying "here,
take this honorary degree and go work in a new profession"...but that's not
what happens. Honorary degrees are given in an area where the person has
already proven themselves successful...so it's really nothing at all like an
"honorary electricians license".

I'm sure most colleges would love it if people decided to take the "easy
route" and go, be extremely successful in a field, give a bunch of money to
the university and get an honorary degree at some point.

Feynman, in this particular instance, is showboating more than anybody who's
ever been honored. I've got an undergraduate degree and a masters degree. I
worked hard for them. I've worked a hell of a lot harder to be successful in
my field and if I get to a point where I've been so successful that I can dole
out hundreds of thousands of dollars back to the school that they choose to
honor me with another degree I'll appreciate that they thought I was worth
recognizing...

But the amount of work involved to "get a degree" or even two degrees is
TRIVIAL compared to the amount of work involved in actually being successful.
Lots of people have degrees. Lots of people are not overly successful in their
careers.

To that end, Feynman is showboating.

~~~
tormeh
Being successful =/= Being rich

And while being successful or making an outstanding contribution is a way to
get an honorary degree, it is easier still to just buy one.

~~~
bojo
I prefer /=

------
bernardom
"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.)

~~~
tanderson92
An earned undergraduate degree is not an 'honorary degree'.

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

~~~
deong
But the quote explicitly says "honorary degree". She doesn't have an honorary
degree from Cornell.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
If a sentence can be interpreted in two different ways, and it's clear from
context which one the speaker meant, it's considered polite to choose that
one.

~~~
knodi123
Also called the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity)

------
seanmcdirmid
Honorary degrees is a cheap way of increasing prestige by associating the
university with someone who already has prestige.

~~~
gregr401
Exactly. Another form of brand marketing. I do wonder how/when these started.

~~~
jacquesm
It started as a way to recognized important contributions to a field outside
of the academic process.

~~~
rdc12
The article that started this conversation, completely disagrees with you, and
they cite the historical record of the early honorary degrees.

~~~
coldtea
One example of an early honorary degree (the one the authors of said article
probably found with a quick search in Wikipedia) doesn't capture the practice
through the centuries, nor how it was established and used in other countries.

There's a difference between "first" and "representative of how a thing
caught-on and came to be established and practiced" \-- the first uses might
not be representative of neither the reason for widespread adoption nor
current use.

There are countries whose universities need (and do) no marketing at all
otherwise, because they are public and state sponsored, but still give
honorary degrees to honour important contributors from outside the academic
field.

~~~
deong
And the very same article addresses that point as well. From the first one
granted in the 15th century to the most recent granted a few months ago,
honorary degrees are extremely highly correlated with the important
contribution the individual made to the university's coffers, or secondarily
to people whose names lend some sort of beneficial aspect to the university. I
just looked up my doctoral university's list of awardees, and by coincidence,
wouldn't you know that one of their names is on the college of business and
another on the relatively newly formed institute of technology. What are the
odds? :)

------
cm2187
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.

~~~
maratd
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.

~~~
cm2187
Well, this is assuming a honorary doctorate isn't really a diploma

------
fiatmoney
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.

~~~
reuven
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 grain of
salt.)

A PhD doesn't mean that you're a very accomplished person. Or a smart person.
Or an influential person. It demonstrates that you know how to create,
execute, analyze, document, and defend a specific research project, using the
tools and vocabulary of a discipline.

If a university wants to retroactively award Stallman a PhD for his research,
then they should do so. I know that this has been done in the past, because a
professor in my graduate program got his PhD in precisely this way -- he did
amazing work, and someone said, "You know, this is worthy of a PhD." He wrote
it up, and got it. It's quite possible that one or more universities would be
willing to do this for Stallman.

But until they do, his honorary PhD is a way of indicating their gratitude and
respect for his many contributions to the world of free software. Which is
great, but it's not the same as a real PhD.

By the way, MIT (where I got my undergrad degree) doesn't give honorary
degrees:
[http://news.mit.edu/2001/commdegrees](http://news.mit.edu/2001/commdegrees)
I'm rather proud of this, as well as the fact that when you graduate, you
don't do so "with honors" and such. Either you finished, or you didn't.

~~~
vacri
> _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 these days. The work Stallman has done in his field exceeds
that required of a PhD, and he has spent decades defending his thesis - and
not just to experts in the field, but laypeople as well.

When push comes to shove, 'doctor' functionally means 'a master the field'.
Stallman definitely is that. I think if you want to argue against honorary
PhDs based on workload and execution, Stallman is not someone you would want
to draw attention to. Otherwise you're basically arguing that the important
part is the piece of paper and the process of red-tape, not the accomplishment
of mastery.

~~~
PvsNP_ZA
I don't think Stallman would submit his work for a PhD, mainly because one's
PhD work becomes the property of the university. It's against everything he
stands for.

~~~
misnome
That's the default, but usually can be negotiated with the university.

~~~
dalke
For specific examples, here's MIT's policy, from
[http://libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=176367&p=1159444#13351783](http://libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=176367&p=1159444#13351783)
:

> Who holds ownership of the copyright to my thesis?

> In most cases the Institute will hold ownership of the copyright to a
> thesis. In general, students may retain ownership of thesis copyrights when
> the only form of support is from (1) teaching assistantships (the duties of
> which do not include research activities) and (2) NSF and NIH traineeships
> and fellowships (although the trainee or fellow may be required to grant
> certain publishing rights to NSF or NIH). See the current Specifications for
> Thesis Preparation for more details.

> Students may request a waiver of the Institute’s copyrights by written
> application to the Institute’s Technology Licensing Office (NE25-230).

Here's information about the copyright for a Harvard PhD, from
[https://www.physics.harvard.edu/uploads/files/grads/forms/um...](https://www.physics.harvard.edu/uploads/files/grads/forms/umi_dissertation_publ.pdf)
:

> You may choose either open access or traditional publishing. If you choose
> Open Access Publishing, the published version of your dissertation or thesis
> will always be available for free download to anyone who has access to the
> Internet. The Traditional Publishing option works on a standard copy-sales
> and royalty-payments model. We sell copies of your work (in any format) and
> pay royalties as described in the Publishing Agreement. Either option gets
> your graduate research out where other scholars can find and use it through
> the ProQuest® Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) database, subscribed to by
> more than 3000 libraries worldwide.

Or to pick a non-Boston-area school, here are open access PhD these from
Florida State -
[http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/etd/](http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/etd/) .

Stallman has an honorary degree from the University of Glasgow. Pulling up the
first PhD thesis from
[http://theses.gla.ac.uk/cgi/latest](http://theses.gla.ac.uk/cgi/latest) I see
"Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author." The
same is true from the couple of other theses I looked at.

He also has an honorary degree from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology. I
pulled up three PhD thesis from
[http://www.kth.se/en/ict/forskning/ickretsar/publikationer/r...](http://www.kth.se/en/ict/forskning/ickretsar/publikationer/recent-
phd-theses-1.395356) . Two of them had a copyright statement by the PhD
candidate, one had no explicit statement.

So it's not the case that thesis copyright transfer is a major issue
preventing Stallman from getting a PhD.

------
rdancer
Oh, Priceonomics, always looking for a slightly ham-fisted angle!

I am very much looking forward to gaining a degree from some fringe yet
accredited online university, and everybody who cares about that sort of thing
will have to address me as 'Dr.' Precisely because caring too much about
letters before and after one's name is asinine, vapid, and ultimately
delusional.

Strive to be the best person you can be. And if you really want a better seat,
why not embrace your inner arsehole fully, and get a disability badge?

~~~
Loughla
I don't know about that last line, but everything before that rings true.

My graduate school mentor told this story quite a bit, and it has always stuck
with me:

I grew up poor, like dirt poor. Dirt floor, no shoes, backwoods poor. I did
well in high school, I was well known around town, and people liked me. They
knew I was a good kid with good intentions, who just happened to come from
poor folks. I knew that graduating from high school would make me a big man.
My parents had never finished high school. I knew people would look up to me.

Then I heard about university.

I knew that if I graduated with a bachelors that I would be it. People would
respect me. People would look up to me. My parents didn't even know about the
university system, let alone what getting a bachelors meant. So, I went to
college, I did well. People knew me around campus, I was involved in clubs and
sports and worked. People liked me. I knew I was going to be a big man.

Then I heard about graduate school. I had to get a masters. I knew for my
career it would bring me respect. I knew personally it would bring me respect.
People would know me.

Well, by that time, I knew about the PhD, so you can probably see where this
is going.

I knew that when people had to call me Doctor, they would respect me. Doctor
La___. It sounded good. People would know me, people would respect me. So I
went to graduate school and I worked on my doc. I was well known in my
classes. I worked on interesting and exciting research that led me to my
current career. I am a leader in my field.

And I tell people not to call me Doctor. I want them to call me Jim.

It wasn't until my last semester of post-graduate work that I realized it.

People didn't respect me because of my degrees; they respected me because of
who I was and what I did.

I had been treated the same since high school. People had always known my
name, I had always received choice assignments at work, I was always greeted
with friendly smiles and genuine enthusiasm when I traveled to see old
acquaintances.

And none of it had to do with my degrees.

The moral of the story: If you rely on titles and public accolades to feel
big, more than likely you spend too much time making yourself feel small.

------
wtf_is_up
Awarding an honorary degree is analogous to liking a status update on
Facebook.

~~~
jboynyc
Not always, it can also be a very overtly political act. Consider playwright
Tony Kushner's honorary degree from a CUNY college, among many others.

~~~
JupiterMoon
So can liking an overtly political facebook post.

(Ineffectual potentially but still political.)

------
billpg
On my graduation, someone called _Mr_ Jack Jones was being given an honorary
doctorate. (I understand he was a trade unionist or something, if I may be as
dismissive as I possibly can.)

I wanted to walk out when they got to his bit of the ceremony but general
cowardliness took over - they might have revoked my degree if I had made a
scene!

When he was presented for the applause I did my best to remain seated with my
arms folded and a look of disapproval. I observed that over on the other side
of the room where the parents were seated, he was getting a standing ovation,
while my side of the room could be best described as "polite". No-one (as far
I could see) was standing.

------
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!

~~~
JoshM33k
I wonder what kind of entry level positions you could score with a bought-and-
paid-for honorary degree?

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

------
ssaddi
Very 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

~~~
trentmb
> 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.

~~~
jonah
I've always understood them as recognition for accomplishments like other
awards, medals, etc.

------
lordnacho
It's just a way to get some press and maybe some money as well. I doubt anyone
would be fooled by the title.

I went to Oxford, and the arts undergrads there can get an MA OXON 7 years
after matriculation (arts courses are generally 3 years, and you don't do
anything other than send in a form to get the Master's). I doubt anyone
confuses it with the MEng that I got.

Using the title is a poncey thing. The last time I remember someone insisting
on it was Helmut Kohl, when he got pissed off at some journalist.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
I think Germans still place a lot of importance on titles and they still have
formal and informal ways of referring to people Du vs Tu

~~~
crazysaem
Did you mean "Du vs Sie"? If not, what do you mean with "Tu"? I've never heard
of that.

~~~
lordnacho
Looks like he's mixed German and French.

------
peeters
I think there is a case to be made for honorary degrees, but not with how they
are commonly used today. To me it makes sense that if someone becomes one of
the utmost authorities in a field, but didn't do it by spending half a million
dollars and many good years at an Ivy League school, you can still recognize
their credibility through an honorary degree.

~~~
Retra
If someone is the utmost authority in their field, they won't need a degree
for you to recognize their credibility.

------
CephalopodMD
And as usual, Thomas Jefferson's foresight was about 20/20 in this case.

------
Roodgorf
For a supposedly economics oriented site this article sure spends a lot of
time talking about celebrities and how much of a sham it is for them to title
themselves "Dr." I am completely on board with the unearned title thing, but
how many paragraphs about various people's shelves full of honorary degrees do
we need? The title asks why but doesn't supply a straightforward, albeit
somewhat obvious, answer until the last quarter of the article. I hate to be
another "where is all the real journalism?" person but, seriously where is it?

~~~
exelius
They spend time talking about celebrities because that will improve the SEO
results of the article. They have substantial, original content that mentions
famous people.

Journalism is dead. We're now just fodder for the "article hackers" whose job
it is to get page views. There are different ways to do this for different
audiences; this is the snobbish academic equivalent of a Buzzfeed article
titled "15 Signs You Totally Have VD".

------
threatofrain
The cynical side of me says that honorary degrees are ways of collecting big-
name people so that colleges can claim them as one of their own.

Our university boasts the like of Richard Stallman and supreme court justices!

~~~
eots
Big-name people like heads of state, like the then PM of my country to which
the University of Philadelphia in 2004. gave a honorary degree. The same now
sits in jail for corruption, fraud, and war profiteering amongst other
charges.

------
waylandsmithers
Not crazy about the statement about Harvard where "the rate of increase there
is in a league of its own". It looks like in about 2000 they just decided
instead of giving out 1 or 2 a year they would give out about 10. Who cares?
IMO for places like Harvard that already have maximal prestige, throwing
around more degrees is only diluting their value.

On a personal note, the president of my alma mater happened to be leaving the
year that I graduated. She gave herself an honorary doctorate!

------
riffraff
Honorary degrees seem to follow the same pattern in Italy.

Off the top of my head, I remember them being awarded to a few musicians
(literature), a sportsman (Valentino Rossi, bike racer in "Communication
Sciences"), tv personalities and only one that made some sense (Ronald Rivest,
Computer Science).

(Interestingly enough, in Italy the "Dr." honorific is used for people with a
master degree, not just a doctorate as it is elsewhere, so people receive just
a master-level degree, not a Ph.D).

------
gerty
While this article is aimed at the American system, it can't be applied as is
throughout the world. My institution in continental Europe does award honorary
degrees (~3 each year) though very few of the recipients can be considered pop
stars. Most of them have had a significant impact in their domain (e.g. art,
environment, 3rd world politics), though little publicized and quite unknown.
This is something I can feel proud about.

------
rahimnathwani
Small nitpick: The second image in the article, labelled 'Oxford University'
would more properly be labelled 'Keble College, Oxford'.

------
dataker
"One" can buy a doctorate degree, but most can't test out of a simple 4-years
bachelor's degree. Isn't it hypocritical?

------
werber
I thought honorary degrees were just a ploy for universities to drive stoned
wiki stumblers to their pages.

------
seesomesense
Honorary degrees bring dishonour upon both the conferrer and the conferee.

~~~
cafard
I happened a few years ago to be at a relative's graduation from Wilson
College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. They gave Temple Grandin an honorary
degree, and she gave them an excellent commencement speech. I haven't heard a
lot of commencement speeches, but this one was a lot better than the excerpts
I see every year from big universities. I did not think worse of Dr. Grandin
for receiving the award, and I did think much better of Wilson College for
their choice of commencement speaker (to the extent that I thought about it at
all before).

------
phpfan
It's all about PR, I would imagine.

------
vladmk
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.

~~~
animefan
Is this a serious comment? Do you believe that there is literally a "guy who
invented college".

~~~
coldtea
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 teacher or even school were children were taught, but it
was the first higher learning institution, with organized courses and mostly
modern form.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_higher-
learning_instit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_higher-
learning_institutions)

Comparing it to the "guy who invented language"? As if it's something
communally developed, whose origins are lost in prehistoric times? Really?

~~~
animefan
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_

~~~
coldtea
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.

