When is it appropriate to use (c) as in "EdD (c) or PhD (c)" meaning that a ...

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Nilda Gonzalez, May 22, 2011.

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  1. Helpful2013

    Helpful2013 Active Member

    Hah! Brilliant...
     
  2. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I recall a night back in or around 2002(ish). I was standing admin watch (about as fun as it sounds), it was around 11pm and I was reading one of John Bear's books which included the gentleman whose post-nominals had spiraled out of control to include BSA (Boy Scouts of America), NGS (National Geographic Society) and a slew of other letters he felt entitled to claim as his own.

    It stuck with me and I began to pay special attention to what people were putting on resumes and business cards (side note: it really pisses off HR when you put post-nominals on the headings of resumes with only a few notable exceptions).

    When I first left the recruiting world to become an HR Business Partner I found an unnerving trend in our marketing department where seemingly every single person in the department was using the post-nominals: "M.S."

    I couldn't help but think how odd it was that everyone had a Masters (including the intern who was still enrolled as an undergrad at LeMoyne). After some digging I discovered that "M.S." was "Marketing Specialist" and was added after a very jealous marketing manager took issue with the fact that she had an engineer counterpart who, rightfully, included "P.E." on his business cards.

    She didn't realize that "Professional Engineer" designated a license held by said engineer. This misconception was, in her mind, buttressed by the fact that I appeared to be doing the same since my business cards included "PHR" or "Professional in Human Resources." Again, she didn't realize that this was a certification for which I had taken an exam and routinely complete CE. She thought it was just people restating their job title and felt left out. It went undetected for so long because marketing is the department that prints the business cards.
     
  3. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    I seem to be noting that people on this thread are using PhD candidate and ABD as if they are the same. They are not. To be a PhD candidate means that you have completed coursework and comps and are currently actively writing up the dissertation. ABD means that once upon a time you passed your coursework and comps but have washed on the dissertation.
     
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  4. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    This is inaccurate. While many people (as we've noted) use ABD to designate that they washed, many current doctoral candidates identify themselves as ABD.
     
  5. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    You can be ABD either way, but you are only a candidate if you're actively enrolled and pursuing the degree.
     
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  6. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Very true. Moveover, different schools use different milestones as the starting point for "candidacy", it's not always when the coursework is done and comps are passed.
     
  7. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    At Union, it was the acceptance of your learning agreement. This was earlier than a traditional program with courses, comps, and a dissertation proposal.

    At Leicester, it was the acceptance of your thesis proposal. For the PhD (which had no courses and, thus, no comps), this was after your thesis proposal was accepted and your enrollment was upgraded from the MPhil to the PhD--a year or often more after enrollment. The DSocSci had a "taught" component (typically British: no actual teaching occurred in the taught component), but no comps. The thesis proposal followed the taught component.
     
  8. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    Are you a brain in a bucket?

    At Vanderbilt (when my wife did it), candidacy came after passing four 18-hour qualifying exams, two weeks apart. For each exam, they gave you a list of six questions 24 hours in advance. (Different set of questions each time.) Then you went into the chair's office and were handed a ceremonial die, which you rolled. Whichever number came up, that was your question, and you had 18 hours to write and submit a 20-page paper. Questions ranged from long elaborate statements to analyze and deconstruct to Marina's favorite, the classic eleven-worder: "How do you know you're not a brain in a bucket."
     
  9. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I'm not sure I could drag "I don't" out to twenty pages....
     
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  10. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    And that's why you're not going to get a PhD in Philosophy.:sad6:
     
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  11. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Don't be sorry. I'm not! :jester:
     
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  12. Jergen Gothe

    Jergen Gothe New Member

    With respect, I'm a lawyer with an LLM in Intellectual Property and you are incorrect. For copyright the symbol is a small "c" inside a circle (not brackets). Further, PhD (c) is quite commonly used in academia.
     
  13. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Alright! A little thread archeology! I love it when people read the archives.

    [​IMG]
     
  14. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    While the copyright symbol is better, I've seen (c) as a shorthand replacement for it many times and if you really have an LLM in IP, I'm rather surprised you never have.
     
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  15. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    Hey, this looks like a great time to share my self-credentialing story again!

    In my work as an interpreter, a lot of clout is placed on the initialisms you can tack on to the end of your name, despite the fact that it has extremely little to do with your actual ability to perform. For the sheer joy of roasting this practice, I started to sign all of my emails as such-

    Maniac Craniac, SSD

    Thousands of emails later, nobody has ever asked me what degree or cert an SSD is. Now, I don't feel like I have anything to hide, so if anyone asked me, I would have happily told them that it stood for Super Smart Dude.
     
  16. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator


    I now know much more about the history of the copywrite symbol than I ever needed

    "Because the © symbol has long been unavailable on typewriters and ASCII-based computer systems, it has been common to approximate this symbol with the characters (C), a practice that has been accepted by the U.S. Copyright Office under both the 1909[17] and 1976[18][19] U.S. Copyright Acts. "

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_symbol
     
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