Ghana gets tough on Honoraries

In Ghana, the Accreditation Board is "mad" at honorary degree awards Ghana News reports that the country's Accreditation Board is "mad" at honorary degree awards by unqualified institutions: The conferment of honorary degrees is the prerogative of degree awarding institutions so mandated. Therefore accredited private tertiary institutions operating under the mentorship of chartered, degree-awarding universities …

Can we have our Honorary Degree back please?

Honorary Degree revocation is pretty unusual Previous posts have commented on the awards of Honorary Degrees to celebrities. The risk for universities in making such awards though is that famous people sometimes turn out to be not such terrific assets to the institution's reputation. There are only a few examples of this but they are …

Hobbit talk

A great oration. Continuing the ceremonial theme this week. I recently received an email from a Tolkien scholar asking for a copy of the oration delivered when the great man was awarded an Honorary Degree by the University of Nottingham back in 1970. Well, I must admit I thought it might be a little tricky …

Rich celebrations

Two ceremonies to celebrate the achievements of Dr Tony Rich I was privileged to attend two ceremonies in February to celebrate the achievements of Tony Rich, formerly Registrar and Secretary at the University of Essex and a mentor to me for nearly 20 years. The first event was the naming of a new teaching centre …

Honorary degree anyone?

More graduation fun The Guardian invites us to consider this year's honorary degree recipients: It's about this time of year that academics start digging out their robes and dusting off their mortar boards, as thousands of students prepare to receive their degrees at graduation ceremonies across the country. Accompanying them will be a hand-selected elite …

Another view on Honorary Degrees

Another view on Honorary Degrees Following an earlier post, here we have a slightly different take, this time from the Daily Mail: Degree day at a university in 21st-century Britain...'And our honorary doctorates this year,' he intones, 'go to . . .' And the crowd tenses, expecting the name of some international polymath with numerous …

How many Honorary Degrees?

An honourable business for the President and the frog? There has been a bit of controversy recently about Barack Obama receiving an Honorary Degree from Notre Dame University and not receiving one from Arizona State. It's not entirely clear how many Honorary Degrees the President does have but it certainly isn't as many as Theodore …