Joanne Rowling's Doctorates

[psychic_serpent]

"Coble, Katherine" wrote:

Hey. It took my 5 years of watching "The Cosby Show" to realize that 
the Educational Consultant they used who called himself "William H. 
[?] Cosby Jr. Ed.D" was Bill Cosby flaunting his honorary doctorate. 
I thought it was his father. Imagine using your Honorary Doctorate 
to score a job as a consultant.  Oh well.   

Me:

Well, since he helped create and starred in the show, he didn't 
exactly 'score a job as a consultant.'  What he really did was to 
decide to use his honorary doctorate to give his billing on the 
show, other than as an actor, a little academic boost.  Most people 
in this position get themselves billed as executive producer, or if 
it's really more of an honorary position, someone else who really 
does the work is the executive producer and the star and center of 
the universe on the show is also billed as the producer.  

I went to Temple University years ago, where Cosby is a very big 
deal (he went there and he's given gobs of money to the school) and 
whenever he was introduced at university functions, such as 
graduations, his honorary degree was ALWAYS used.  

"Coble, Katherine" wrote:

My father has an earned doctorate, and has never called 
himself "Doctor". His closest male friend, however, has an honorary 
degree conferred by a college without a Grad school (I didn't know 
they could do that) and insists that that everyone call him Doctor.
 
Me:

It's funny, I was always taught that a PhD did not give you the 
right to be called doctor, although most professors I knew would 
accept being addressed in this way.  Usually freshmen seemed to feel 
the need for the formality, before settling into university life.  I 
think I ended up being on a first-name basis with most professors, 
rendering this moot.  Recently I've gone back to school, and my 
professors are Paula, Gretchen, Miles, Tony, Michael, Bob... It's 
probably in part because I'm studying architecture now, and no one 
in this field has a doctorate, but even when I was young, my 
professors were called things like Peter, Sam, Martha, Dan, Judy, 
Jim and Ron.  That's what they expected us to call them.  Other 
instructors, if they had doctorates, would insist upon the "doctor" 
title being used.  (A bad sign, usually, although there were 
exceptions.)  A few instructors with only master's degrees would get 
huffy if you called them 'doctor.' (One guy in the English 
department thought it would imply that he'd 'sold out.')  

I was taught that people with medical degrees could be 
called 'doctor' and that was it.  In practice, most people who've 
actually earned PhDs or DDivs (Doctor of Divinity, resulting in the 
title "Reverend Doctor") will go by 'Doctor.'  I do think it's 
misleading, however, to use a title from an honorary degree.  It's 
meant to be something nice you can hang up in your home, not a way 
to mislead people so that they think you attained an academic degree 
that you did not.  JKR doesn't seem like the sort to do this.  I do 
like the idea of her using the O.B.E. after her name, though. 
("Joanne Rowling, O.B.E.")  That looks rather nice, and it's 
perfectly appropriate.


--Barb

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