'I'm a celebrity, get me an honorary degree!'

(Here's some food for thought and kind of humorous as well, I was pointed to this article by Alfred Thompson at the on10.net education blog...oed3)

Why bother going to college, studying hard and getting into debt for the sake of some letters after your name? All you need to do is get famous - and they'll throw doctorates at you. But why? Stuart Jeffries reports

Thursday July 6, 2006
The Guardian

On July 11 2001, Billy Connolly was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Glasgow. He was thrilled, telling reporters: "It's an enormous honour to get, especially from academia, because my behaviour over the years hasn't exactly been academic. I have had salmon flies named after me and I thought that was my lot."

The Daily Mail eulogised the Scottish funnyman's honour: "The boy from Anderston may have left school aged 15 with no qualifications but his success on stage and screen has more than earned him his place among the nation's brightest talents."

I love that phrase "more than earned". It suggests: you may think you're clever Stephen Hawking, and all you other big-brained Britons, but you're nothing next to the Big Yin. You might think the phrase "less than earned" would have been more appropriate, but that would show you to be out of step with what celebrity can achieve in what many contend is this increasingly dumb Britain.

Celebrating the award with him in 2001 was his wife Pamela Stephenson, who five years earlier had completed six years' study for a PhD in clinical psychology at the California Graduate Institute. In the light of Connolly's honorary degree, one really wonders why she bothered. Indeed, at a time when a degree costs at least three years of your life minimum and up to £20,000 in tuition fees and living costs, why does any student bother? Surely it would be much less demanding to become famous for something fatuous (how's your father in the BB Jacuzzi, centre-court streaking) and then issue your demand: "I'm a celebrity, get me an honorary doctorate!"

This, you might be forgiven for thinking, is the way academia is going. In 2002, for example, the University of Wolverhampton gave honorary degrees to members of Slade. Italian referee Pierluigi Collina has one from Hull. Over-indulged bigmouth TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has one from Oxford Brookes University. Michael Douglas and Joanna Lumley just got ones from St Andrews (his is for - no really - "services to film"). The Bee Gees' Robin and Barry Gibb are honorary doctors of music at the University of Manchester, sharing their degree with their late brother Maurice. The titles are revealing: a Doctor of Letters is usually accorded to arty types or entertainers; when Kofi Annan received his honorary doctorate from Oxford they made him a doctor of civil law - there is method in the honorary madness. There is, however, only one Honorary Doctorate in Amphibious Studies: it was awarded to Kermit the Frog in 1996 by Long Island's Southampton College (whatever that is).

(article continued here)