A PhD is meant to signify that the person bearing it has made a significant and original contribution to the body of knowledge. Usually this is done through a formal program with a schedule for the thesis and a defense and so on, but a university can decide to count a pre-existing work as the thesis, provided that it’s significant and original. The result is an actual PhD, not an honorary doctorate.
But if we’re going to talk about honorary degrees, my favorite is that Southampton College conferred the degree of Doctor of Amphibious Letters on Kermit the Frog, in recognition of his work in wetlands conservation.
Think of it this way: if two people are equally qualified and suitable in all respects for a job, but one of them additionally has an honorary degree, which one do you think would have the competitive advantage?
The rules for PhD vary considerably across universities. And they change over time. Awarding a PhD based upon what is little more than a bound set of peer reviewed papers is less usual, but totally legitimate, and many, if not most, have such an option. However, you can’t just roll up to the door with a set of publications and ask for a degree. There is typically a requirement that the work has been done as part of a PhD program in some manner, or in an accredited academic setting. There are famous exceptions, Wittgenstein perhaps one of the best. But you need an advocate (like Russell) to thug the usual academic and admin conservatives to get it past.
But PhD work is in some ways eternal. Brian May (of rock band Queen fame) submitted his thesis about 30 years late, but it was awarded. He was lucky that not many people were actively researching interstellar dust, and so he didn’t get scooped.
As Chronos says, the bottom line is an original contribution to the body of knowledge. There is a subtext to this that relates to the OP. There is a general understanding that a PhD is a degree in doing research. Most people don’t get a job in the area of their thesis work. The point is that they have shown that they can think critically and do original work to a well understood high standard. Those skills are hard to quantify, but are what gets you a job.
Usually by the time you get an honorary degree, you’re well-established in your field. You don’t apply for jobs – people offer you jobs. The honorary degree wouldn’t matter.
Einstein had his teaching degree by then, so he was essentially a graduate student in 1901. There’s nothing terribly unusual about graduate students publishing papers. And that paper, along with its follow-up in 1902, wasn’t even good science, let alone breakthroughs. They were wrong, and Einstein himself called them worthless in 1907.
By 1905 he had started doing much better work and published a number of papers, but his Ph.D. dissertation came out first. Getting several publishable papers out of the work for a Ph.D. is also not unusual. The quality of the work certainly is: it’s flat-out remarkable. Overall, though, you can’t use Einstein either as a unique case in publishing or as any sort of commentary on honorary degrees.
Here’s my comment on honorary degrees: They mean exactly as much in practical terms as the “World’s Greatest Boss” mug sitting on a desk, although the presentation is usually gaudier and more formal.
By the time in a career when a person starts getting honorary degrees, there is no such thing as two people equally qualified and suitable in every other way. Everybody at that level is unique.
Here’s how honorary degrees happened at the universities I used to teach at.
A committee would compile a list of candidates, vet them, and make sure the person is willing to show up and go thru the ceremony.
The ideal candidate is someone with a lot of money the university is hoping to create a connection with in order to get $ down the line. But someone who can give a good speech is nice. Media/political types in this category. (Not all were awarded during spring commencement, so not always the main commencement speaker.) And from time to time, someone who is just a famously decent person. Might be one, might be 4 or more picked depending on the size of the school, how big the ceremony is, etc.
One time we awarded an honorary degree to a retired faculty member (who obviously already had a real one). He was so old and out of it I’m not sure if he was aware what was going on.
The committee puts the nominees forward at a faculty meeting. We say “aye” (if we even bother to open our mouths), and then it’s set.
Basically the honoree gets some letters to add after their name, expenses, maybe an honorarium and that’s it. Their life is otherwise the same after as before.
Awarding real degrees to people who haven’t satisfied the official requirements happens, but is uncommon. The only case where I was personally involved was a PhD student who died midway thru. The chair took the student’s writings, made it into a thesis. We then voted to approve it, awarded the degree, etc. The administration was cool with this sort of thing.
Other cases that I knew about were also posthumous things.
It was also common in the 40s and 50s to award degrees to students who left to fight in a war a degree if they were sort of close. The feeling was that it would be too hard to resume studies afterwards.
Nope, Episcopal seminaries use the same degres as other Protestant denominations. Catholic institutions have their own degrees instead of or in addition to the MDiv and DMin, but the DD isn’t among them either.
Psychiatrists are MDs, not PhDs or PsyDs, and you’re right, they don’t usually do psychotherapy or psychological counseling (though some do!) A psychologist in the US may do psychotherapy, or they may focus on evaluations and testing, which are often outside the scope of Masters-level clinicians, or they may do research and teach at a university. To call yourself a psychologist in the US, you must be licensed by the state you practice in and you must have either a PhD or a PsyD. Both PhD programs in Psychology and PsyD programs are accredited by the American Psychological Association. It’s not at all like comparing an MD to a Doctor of Chiropractic. It is perhaps a bit like comparing MDs to DOs.
It’s complicated by the fact that there are, as I mentioned, several large, freestanding, for-profit “psychology schools.” These are usually accredited by the APA just like other schools are (though of course, there are unaccredited schools as well). At a traditional university, most or all PhD students are funded by the university in exchange for the research provided by the student. PhD programs must therefore be limited and selective, since each additional student costs the university money. PsyD programs are not typically research-based, and so they operate more like other “first-professional” degree programs (medical schools, law schools, business schools, etc). A for-profit school can therefore charge full tuition and make money by accepting as many students as possible. PsyD programs are therefore much larger, and account for half of all psychologists in the US. Most of these are competent professionals, but of course, there are people in both tails of the bell curve, and those at the far right are more likely to apply to prestigious PhD programs like Stanford and UCLA, while those at the left are more likely to apply to less selective schools, many of which offer the PsyD. But there are a handful of PsyD programs like Rutgers and the University of Denver that are ranked among the top psychology programs in the country, and most of the large freestanding “psychologist mills” offer PhD programs as well for those who want to do research even though they’re paying for the privilege. And the majority of practitioners regardless of the degree are somewhere in the bulk of the bell curve, and whether they have a PsyD or a PhD doesn’t say anything about them.
If you really want to know whether a psychologist has a decent education (without actually speaking to them) what you need to know is not whether they have a PsyD or a PhD, but first, whether their degree is APA accredited, and second, whether they received it from a traditional university program or a freestanding school. Universities have reputations to maintain and they aren’t trying to make money off the backs of their students. Freestanding schools, if they’re accredited, have to live up to the accreditation standards, but beyond that they have a financial incentive to accept and graduate as many psychologists as possible. I wouldn’t trust anyone with a non-accredited degree, regardless of the field it’s in or the institution granting it.
BTW, following up on my last sentence, if someone claims to have a doctorate in psychology but doesn’t identify as a psychologist, that’s a pretty good indicator that either their degree is not accredited or they couldn’t pass the licensing exam in their state. Because a lot of states don’t have strict licensing requirements (or even any licensing requirements, e.g., in Colorado) for practicing counseling or psychotherapy (as long as you don’t claim to be a psychologist or other licensed professional), this would be an attractive scam for a lot of people. Is it possible, Rivkah, that that accounts for some of the people you were dealing with?
Back when I was in grad school, the husband of one of the other grad students was always coming to the physics department’s events. And that grad student was one of the ones who took a longer time to finish, so that added up to a lot of events. At our awards party at the end of the year one year, the department head awarded said husband an honorary bachelor’s degree in physics.
> All the higher Warrant officers I met had doctorates. I assumed it was a
> requirement to get past a W-2, but maybe it was just a coincidence.
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t make any sense. This didn’t sound right to me, so I talked with a couple of military people who work in my office. We couldn’t figure out any way for this to be true. The ranks of warrant officers are between the enlisted ranks and the officer ranks. They are for enlisted people who’ve already been in the military for a while and want to move up. A warrant officer is a specialist in some technical field, something that you can’t get a college degree in generally. A doctorate in such a field is probably impossible to obtain anyway. What do these warrant officers that you know do as their job in the military? What do they have their doctorate in?
Yeah I was about to say the same thing. Each branch (branch in the Army sense as in Ordinance, Quartermaster etc) sets their own prerequisites but most do not even require an associates degree. No higher education is needed. I have known many warrant officers in my career. Not one has a doctorate. It would just be a waste of time. Requiring warrants to have degrees kind of defeats the purpose. A warrant officer is (in most cases) an enlisted soldier who has excelled in his field and met the requirements to be considered and expert. They have intelligence and hands on experience. Degrees are for the college boys who want command.
Here is a list of all the warrant officer positions in the Army. If you click on the job title on the right side the qualifications are listed.