Doctorates are nominally awarded for advancing science in a particular discipline. In practice, to the layman, it seems you have to get a degree first.
When was the last time a non-honorary doctorate was awarded to someone without a degree (BA / BSc / MA / etc)? I’ll also exclude medical doctors except for exceptional circumstances.
How common is it?
I’m sure somebody will be along to show one sooner, but here is some in December of 2006:
Honorary doctorates aren’t “real” doctorates. I think what the OP means is the case of someone appearing before the faculty of a university in which they are not matriculated, placing before them some great and tangible contribution to the field, and receiving a “real” doctorate for that achievement.
I specifically excluded honorary doctorates in my OP.
I’d dispute the premise. Doctorates are awarded for fulfilling various requirements set by a university, usually (always?) involving writing a dissertation. Many fields have awards and honors for advancing the state of science, awards for which any particular degree is not required.
Ah, sorry, I thought you were specifically asking about Honorary degrees. I missed the non part of the honorary.
Then by all means start another thread.
Sure, but those awards aren’t doctorate degrees. What Quartz asked is, when was the last time that an academic doctoral degree was conferred on someone who didn’t have any prior university degree. I don’t know the answer to this, but I suspect that it has happened quite recently, and may even happen again in the future. It’s true that having some sort of degree is usually a requirement to be accepted into a doctoral program, but I can see a university accepting a student who doesn’t have any formal degree, but has equivalent experience. For example, this student might have done three years out of a four-year undergraduate program, and then worked for ten years as a scientific researcher in the private sector. He or she doesn’t actually have a degree, but he or she is certainly ready to start a doctoral program, and will probably be able to complete it.
I think that you’re right. I also think that they would probably be awarded a BS degree one year or so into the PhD program.
It guess it depends. Around here, you can be admitted in a master’s or doctorate program in discipline A even if you don’t have a bachelor’s in this exact discipline, but you usually have to do a qualifying year (say, a year of advanced courses in discipline A) before actually starting. But you aren’t awarded a bachelor’s in A after doing so. This isn’t exactly the same, but I guess it would depend on the particular university.
I think the OP requires a slight re-wording in order to make it clear –
Why? I think all U.S. medical schools require those seeking admission to already hold a bachelor’s degree.
And in those countries (such as the U.K. and India) that don’t require a previous degree, the medical degree that’s awarded is a bachelor’s degree (for example, M.B.B.S.), not an M.D.
Only if someone specifically pushed through the paperwork for it. And academes are about as fond of paperwork as anyone else, so probably nobody would bother with it. It’s possible, and in some cases routine, to skip over the master’s degree on the way to the doctorate, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to also skip over the bachelor’s.
You would, as noted, need some sort of special exemption to be allowed into the program without a bachelor’s, but that kind of thing can be done.
Nowadays, almost all doctoral programs require applicants for admission to have completed at least an undergraduate degree. As other posters have noted, however, exceptions happen. For example, noted primate researcher Jane Goodall earned her doctorate from Cambridge University in the 1960’s with no previous college education:
I don’t know any stats about how often this happens nowadays, though, nor how recently it’s been done.
As I’ve said [post=8244231]here[/post], it’s possible in Quebec to be admitted to medical school straight out of cégep, and the degree awarded is a M.D. So I understand why Quartz specifically excluded it.
The premise that I was disputing was that degrees are given for advancing scientific knowledge. If a university wished to admit someone to a PhD program who did not have a degree, they could, and that person could fulfill all the requirements for a PhD and get one.
The two closest cases I know of are Ed Fredkin, who was a professor at MIT without a PhD, or even bachelor’s degree, and a friend of mine who went to MIT, and eventually got a PhD, without officially getting a high school diploma.
I think that for the most part someone with as much credibility in the field wouldn’t want to bother spending years getting a PhD, since it wouldn’t buy him or her anything. But there is no reason it isn’t possible.
The paleontologist John R. Horner is normally referred to as Dr. Horner, even though he never went through a formal Ph.D. program or even got an undergraduate degree. His doctorate is an honorary doctorate, but an honorary Doctorate of Science in 1986, not the usual honorary doc that people get. He holds a position one would normally need a doctorate for, and he has the knowledge, credentials, and research cred of anybody in his field. I’d put him in the OP’s category.
Why? The OP is specifically (although admittedly not very clearly) asking about holders of earned, non-honorary, doctorates who never received a bachelor’s degree prior to earning their doctorates. Your Dr. Horner is simply a researcher with no formal academic credentials who has nonetheless made sufficiently important contributions to his field to attain an important position and to be recognized with an honorary degree. Good for him, but that’s not what this thread is about.
Huh? There is nothing particularly “unusual” about an honorary Doctorate of Science (D.Sc.). The different types of doctoral degrees honoris causa (i.e., honorary ones) include D.Sc., D.Litt., and many others.
In fact, AFAIK the D.Sc. is more likely to be awarded as an honorary degree than as an earned degree. Students who complete doctoral programs in scientific fields generally receive the standard Ph.D. degree, not a D.Sc.
There seem to be two different understandings of what the OP meant, and I’m not at all sure which is correct. One, expressed by Kimstu, is that the OP is asking about people who have been admitted to and completed a doctoral program at a university without having previously received any lower degree. The other, expressed by Crescend, is that the OP is asking about people who have received an earned doctorate without having matriculated in a doctoral program, and also without having completed a lower degree.
The former case is not that rare, and examples have been given. I’ve never heard of the latter, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it has happened. It may be more common for so-called higher doctorates in the UK.
Incidentally, I once knew an MD who had been accepted to medical school after his Junior year in college (on the assumption that he would graduate) and who then dropped out rather than completing his bachelor’s degree.
From my former department, for the MPhil (the normal initial registration, which then converts to the PhD course after one year): “First-class or upper second-class honours degree in Music (or with Music as a substantial component of the course) at an approved university. Others may be admitted in exceptional circumstances.” I’m pretty sure one or two of my peers didn’t have the normal requirements, particularly those on the composition course, a field where it’s certainly possible to demonstrate experience and competence through other means.
A couple of examples from my alma mater (with my emphases):
Economics Dept.
Education Dept.
Other departments require you to complete a Masters course if you do not meet the standard requirements.