Honorary Degrees and Bogus Degree Alert!
There are four divisions to this CT:
1. Honorary Degrees are not academic degrees, but they may be valuable and desirable under the right circumstances.
2. A real Honorary Degree will not cost anything, not even "administrative fees."
3.
Anyone, including you , may give out Honorary Degrees.
4. An Honorary Degree is a recognition of past achievements, and is not a credential to empower one to do future work.
Have you ever heard of an honorary doctorate? (I shall also refer to it as an "HD" in this letter.) It is honorary because it is given to a person as an honor and not as an award for academic achievement.
Many people think that HDs mean something in academia: they don't. An HD is not an earned degree, and thus it is not a real degree.
An HD is a type of Certificate of Appreciation. And, it is a valuable "award" when it is given for legitimate reasons and by legitimate organizations (and legitimate organizations never charge the recipient any monies whatsoever).
The honorary degree, however, has no more relationship or connection with academia than the comedian "Dr. Jerry Seinfeld" has with the world of medicine.
It is, purely and simply, a title that some institutions (and some scoundrels) have chosen to bestow, from time to time, and for a wide variety of reasons. These reasons often have to do with money .
More than 1,000 traditional, accredited colleges and universities award the Honorary Doctorate (anywhere from 1 to 50 per year, each). And, many bogus schools and degree mills sell them to anyone willing to pay the price.
At worst, many so-called honorary degrees are bought from diploma mills for money, from $10 to $1000s.
You have to understand, Honorary Degrees are not equal to earned degrees. In fact, they are NOT REAL degrees at all.
Theoretically, a person who has never been to school a day in his life may be awarded an HD. Thus, from this fact alone, you can clearly understand that an HD is not an academic degree.
Let's say that I was given an honorary D.D.S (doctor of dental surgery) from Harvard University. Now would you allow me to pull your teeth? Fill your cavity? Do a root canal on you? In other words, if one has an earned (i.e., real) D.D.S. from a small, little-known but legitimate university, it is better than an honorary one from some well-known university.
Next, the HD must be free, completely free. If you pay one penny for the HD, it is not honorary. Honorary degrees are only honorary if they are given without cost.
You can give out honorary degrees. Yes, you read that correctly. Even you can give an honorary degree, and you can give it to anyone you want to, and your honorary degree is just as legitimate as an honorary degree from Harvard.
Now, it may not be viewed by others as highly as an honorary degree from Harvard, but the honorary degree that you give is just as legitimate and valid as an honorary degree from any school. Surprised? Don't be. This is the key to helping people understand that an honorary degree DOES NOT MEAN academics.
Churches and parachurch organizations can give them. Wives can give them to their husbands, and husbands can give them to their wives. Friends can give them to friends. Sunday School children can give them to their Sunday School teachers.
You might be asking, "But is this legitimate? Is it legitimate for just anyone to give honorary degrees?" Answer: YES . . . it is. That is the entire point. An honorary degree means nothing more than this: Someone or some group is honoring someone else for whatever reason they want to. That's all.
There are no laws or academic regulations governing the granting of honorary degrees, just as there are no laws or academic regulations governing the granting of Certificates of Appreciation. It is not uncommon for churches to give honorary degrees to their pastors or people associated with the church in some level of leadership.
So, in the end, do not be fooled by all of this honorary-degree hype by schools who charge "administrative fees" for their HDs. They are just hocking degrees, and those who pay for these "degrees" are just buying them. And, under these actions of selling and purchasing degrees, these schools are called diploma mills.
If it is honorary, there is no "work" to do. If there is work to do, it's not honorary.
Full Article :-
http://www.columbiaseminary.org/coffeetalk/036.html
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