Isn't that the the same as what Cambridge, Oxford, and other major universities did until recently? Maybe it is still practice.
I was told that many years ago at Cambridge and Oxford, as an alumni it was easy to get that next degree up just by the passage of time and the acquisition of expertise. As an example, 7 years after undergrad, one was suppose to be a master at the skill set, thus the awarding of the master degree
A person experience but not similar. In the U.K, I was make a Fellow after seven years of continuous membership as a chartered certified accountant. In Canada, to become a Fellow, I have to do something substantial to earned that title.
The tradition only extends to MA degrees: Tradition of Oxbridge 'free' Masters degrees under fire - Telegraph
They are still doing it. Individuals with an 'honours' (4-year) BA earned from Oxford can be awarded an MA without any additional work, provided only that a suitable amount of time has passed. Oxford MA | Oriel College Cambridge does this too, as does Trinity College Dublin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Arts_(Oxbridge_and_Dublin) In my opinion it comes across to the rest of the world as just another expression of Oxbridge elitism and is essentially a degree mill practice. They justify it by "tradition" and say that they are very clear that these are not earned academic awards and simply assume that the rest of the world should know this. Of course here in the United States, almost nobody knows it. If somebody presents an employer with an MA from Oxford, the employer will assume that it is the equivalent of an MA from an American university, or even better because, well, it's Oxford. Degreeinfo had a thread several years ago about an individual with an Oxford MA making a stink and getting into the papers because he/she wasn't receiving extra pay promised to individuals with masters degrees.
They are still doing it. Individuals with an 'honours' (4-year) BA earned from Oxford can be awarded an MA without any work, provided only that a suitable amount of time has passed. Oxford MA | Oriel College Cambridge does this too, as does Trinity College Dublin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Arts_(Oxbridge_and_Dublin) They justify it by "tradition". In my opinion it's essentially a degree mill practice. (The response when I say that is "How dare you accuse Oxford of being a degree mill?? How ridiculous!") It's just another expression of elitism. They say that they are very clear that these are not earned academic awards and assume that the rest of the world should know this. Of course here in the United States, almost nobody knows this. If somebody presents an employer with an MA from Oxford, the employer will assume that it is the equivalent of an MA from an American university, or even better because, well, it's Oxford. Degreeinfo had a thread several years ago about an individual with an Oxford MA making a stink and getting into the papers because he/she wasn't receiving extra pay promised to individuals with masters degrees. It's even worse in Scotland, where at several universities the Master of Arts (MA) is a four-year undergraduate degree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Arts_(Scotland)
I think there are really two ways of looking at this... 1. This is a terrible practice that must be stopped 2. It's really not such a terrible practice we've just arbitrarily decided to get upset about it One of the issues I have with how schools tend to be labeled "diploma mills" is that the practices themselves are of little significance. At this stage it is purely a matter of accreditation or another nation's scheme for approving universities. People say that any program awarding a degree based on "life experience" is obviously a mill. But we have no issue with portfolio evaluations to award credits when the awarding entity is an accredited school. On the one hand we might say "Well, an accredited school doing something couldn't really be shady if the activity was approved by their accrediting body." Well then the act itself isn't actually in question it's a matter of who supervises it, isn't it? If it's OK for Oxford to award a Masters based on "passage of time" then there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a school under religious exemption offering a shady M.Div. In fact, it seems a person may well put in actual effort on an unaccredited M.Div. while an Oxford M.A. might come for no other reason than the fact that you graduated with an undergrad and let time pass. The issue, of course, is that Oxford is a prestigious university while a school like LBU isn't very prestigious. The former has unquestionable authority to award degrees that are regarded as legitimate by the broader academic world. The latter is a bit more questionable. So we're at a stage now where what a school does isn't necessarily sufficient to label a school a mill. But the accreditation question seems sufficient, for many people at least, to make that determination. The problem I have with that is that well-intending new schools, ones that intend to maybe even become accredited and are actively working toward that goal, have to basically endure years of being labeled as a mill even if they have all the rigor of the B&M school around the corner. All the while Oxford can do whatever they please.
I am surprise that this practice continues. I learned about this over 30 years ago as a teenager in the Caribbean. Most graduate that I am aware of from Oxford and Cambridge have both the undergrad degree and the master. Also earning a PhD may be even be easier than going from undergrad to master, because it it’s only a matter of impressing/convincing someone that the MPhil/MRES is also worthy of the Dphil/Phd.
Yale awards a master's degree to newly hired faculty who do not have a Yale degree. No additional work required. Who cares?
If you are qualified to teach at Yale then you're obviously qualified to graduate from Yale. But I think there is a difference between telling a person with a PhD, likely from a very well regarded university, who is accepted to teach at Yale that they can have a Yale Masters so that, as Kizmet says, they are adopted into the family and allowing a person to upgrade a degree for little to no extra work. Let's take prestige out of the mix for a second. Rich, if I told you that CTU just called me and said "Hey Neuhaus, because you graduated from here more than 10 years ago and have been working in your field for at least that long, we are giving you a Master of Science in Human Resources!" Not an honorary degree for being an amazing alumnus but an actual degree upgrade. Even in Yale's case the degree is an Honorary Master of Arts (MAH). They build the "Honorary" right into the name. Also, the largest number of recipients are people who are receiving it AFTER receiving both a PhD and a full professorship at the school. Even if you consider the people on the Board of Trustees who lack an advanced degree to be receiving a sort of "upgrade" that's still different than saying that every undergraduate will get one.
