Honorary Doctorate - value?

I'm currently under consideration for a honorary doctorate award from a mid-tier, fully accredited (regional) university. While this is obviously a great honor, and has kind of fallen into my lap through work I've done in the community, I do have some questions that I'd prefer not to ask the university who is giving me the award out of sheer embarassment at being unfamiliar with this type of award!

What value do honorary doctorates have for further career advancement, such as listing on a resume, seeking a better position, perhaps even teaching as an adjunct faculty? Does anyone have experience with folks who are kind of unknown (such as myself) but yet have accumulated enough local recognition to be granted an honorary degree from a credible school actually using that degree for further advancement?

Please don't beat me up too much in the answers - as I said, this is kind of falling into my lap and I'm of course going to accept, but am mainly interested in the utility of the degree in addition to my other credentials moving forward...

Thank you.

 

Congratulations!

However, please don't get the idea that you can convince the New Zealand Qualifications Authority that your new degree is anything other than honorary.

 

These matters are discussed in the 'honorary doctorates' chapter of Bears' Guide, where my daughter and I continue to find it odd that the honorary designation is "Doctorate" and suggest that it is as if the Army honored people by making them an honorary General, complete with permission to call oneself General.

As an executive at a regionally accredited institution, Mr. Reginstein, you may well find that your school has policies regarding the public use of such degrees. Many schools do. Some (but by no means all) restrict the use of the title, "Doctor." Some (but by no means all) require any written usage to be in the form of "Jane Smith, Sc.D. (hc)". Some (but by no means all) prohibit the use of the narrative form, as in "Doctor Smith will be speaking at the forum."

Michael Jackson has at least two honorary doctorates from regionally accredited universities. As far as I know, he has never been called 'Doctor.' And on the cultural front, he also, incidentally, has had more #1 New York Times bestsellers than William Faulkner.

 

Thanks

Thanks Dr. Bear for the insights. It is pretty much as I assumed, and I tend to be on the cautious side about academic credential usage. Of course I'm delighted to be honored in this way, but would rather not expose myself to ridicule or worse through inappropriate use of the title. I honestly do not know how and where these type of titles are appropriately used so that was the basis of my question.

 

Congratulations! Put it on your resume as an award or professional recognition, Celebrate it! Don't use it as an academic credential.

 

Cogratulations!
I bet it will look nice hanging on your wall.

 

There's an interesting discussion on honorary degrees at www.honorarydegrees.org.

Randy Miller

 

And Randy Miller is listed as the administrator of their website.

It is common practice on this forum, Mr. Miller, for one to identify oneself when one is pointing to ones own organization.

That said, it is an intriguing site, which purports to find GAAP-accredited schools willing to award an honorary doctorate to people with appropriate credentials and a willingness to donate $50,000 to $1 million to the school.

Apparently after one pays a $2,500 fee, one learns which school will honor him or her.

I am trying to reconcile the statement of dealing with 'six to eight' clients a year with the statement that they have marketing representatives all over the world.

 

Good news, Carl.

It's gotta be one of four things:

1) you gave a pile of cash to the school

2) you used to be famous and are about to die

3) someone you don't like volunteered you to speak at commencement

4) you're being honored for some genuinely worthy contribution to the common good, which, like most such things, wouldn't fit in a classroom, and we lack orders of nobility ad vitam, which would be the truly high-class way to honor you and whatever it was you did.

Here at degreeinfo we will all assume (with reason) that it is item #4, and extend to you
your earned AND our honorary congratulations.

Sadly, you can't really do much with that on a resume, either.

Well done, in any case!

 

They do.

Country singer Penny Gilley, dubbed "the female Bob Hope" because of her tours to entertain US troops, was made an honorary general by US Army four-star General Gary Luck in 1996.

King George V of Britain and King Rama VI of Siam conferred honorary generalships on each other in their respective national armies.

Searching Google for "rank of honorary general" also finds instances from Russia, Brazil, India, and Nepal.

I'm surprised as well; the only honorary military officer I knew about was Colonel Sanders. Of course, there are also "real" ranks conferred for clearly honorary reasons. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper comes to mind.

 

I have known several honourary colonels in the Canadian Army. They are usually current or ex-Lieutenant Governors (appointed Queen's reprentatives in provinces) or prominent ex-military people, sometimes with a rank higher than colonel. They get a uniform but are not part of the command structure.

Their job is to be a powerful voice of the regiment outside the hierarchy of the military. The presumption is that they can pick up the phone and call political connections. It is possibly a less powerful connection than it once was.

Many infantry regiments have a Colonel of the Regiment, who is a member of the royal family. On visits to Canada the Queen or other family member will usually visit a couple of their regiments.

 

He should try the New Zealand Ministry of Education. They seem to recognize "honourary" degrees.