Honorary Degrees
SIR,—The discussion in your correspondence columns on Lambeth degrees provokes me to write to you on the subject of honorary degrees. It is apparent to most of us that far too many universities are giving far too many honorary degrees. Just today a Toronto news- paper announces that one Canadian university is awarding sixty honorary degrees at one fell swoop."'" One wonders whether the university honours the recipient or the recipient honours the university, or neither.
Far too many of those in the upper reaches of university life spend too much time gathering honorary degrees from friendly universities. In suspicious effect, " You get your university to give me a degree and I will get mine to give you one." Hence the humour and sarcasm with which some lists of horary degrees are received. I wonder when this spate of giving honorary degrees started. Even newly-created universities celebrate their birth by a burst of honorary degrees. I admit that in some cases the honorary degree is well-given and well- earned, but I think a good rule for a university to adopt would be " Never give an honorary doctorate to one who is going to use it to advance himself either politically or financially." Neither do I like to see universities giving honorary degrees for cash or buildings.
May I suggest also that perhaps the universities are giving too many graduate degrees. In this new world where it is almost necessary for a young man to have a Ph.D. degree before he can get a job, university departments are inclined to fling the doctorate gate wide open. Sometimes the mastership or doctorate is awarded as part payment for the work done in an ill-paid demonstratorship, sometimes even as a means of wishing God-speed to the young hopeful and persuading him it is time to leave his old university and go elsewhere. If this flood of doctors' degrees continues, I think that soon the only worth-while university degree will be the first degree, the B.A. or B.Sc. For this degree the work is honestly done and impartially judged.—
Yours faithfully, JOHN SATTERLY. University of Toronto, Toronto 5, Canada.
Previous page
