Some Academic Degrees Are Not So High: Is Your Degree Overvalued?

American higher education contains its own erroneous nomenclature. Most notably, people having earned one degree in law or medicine are told even by their schools that the degree is doctorates.  Common sense alone can point out that merely three or four years of courses in an academic discipline do not a doctorate make, especially considering that the first year or two consist of survey courses (i.e., courses that survey the different areas in a subject rather than go into depth). That having a prior bachelor’s degree is a required does not mean that the first degree in law, medicine, or divinity is advanced, for the prior degree is not in those schools (of knowledge). For instance, a person can go to a law school in America with a BA in English. Even if a person in one's first degree in medicine, the MD, has earned a prior degree in biochemistry, that subject is not medicine and thus is not relied on. I was surprised when a medical student told me that very little of even his bio-chemistry major was taught to the first-degree medical students. Hence medical students can major in different subjects without being at a disadvantage in the survey courses in the first degree in medical schools. 

The full essay is at "Some Higher Degrees."

Physicians and Lawyers: On the Presumption of Ignorance

It would surprise virtually every American (but only a few Europeans) to know that neither the JD nor the MD degree is a doctorate.   Each one is the first degree in its school, or discipline.  Yet we presume them to evince advanced knowledge, even allowing people with two undergraduate degrees to be "professors" (really instructors) in American law and medical schools. In the school of law, the sequence of degrees is: JD (same as the LLB), LLM (hint: M...Masters), and JSD (Doctorate in Juridical Science). The JSD degree includes advance study, a comprensive exam (an academic exam graded by faculty--not a industry-qualifying exam like the bar), and a defended dissertation. A doctoral degree must be the terminal degree of a field, contain a comprehensive exam, and include significant original research in a defended dissertation. The JD misses on all three points. The title of the first degree in law, the LLB (bachalors in letters of law) was replaced with "JD" largely for marketing purposes in 1901 in the founding of the U of Chicago law school (by three Harvard professors) because prospective students were complaining about having two "B" degrees after seven years of school.  People don't like to think they have gone to school for seven or eight years for two undergraduate degrees, but this is precisely what they have done. Nevertheless, the new law school in need of students complied with the "customer" complaint with a feat of mirrored marketing that was perhaps intentionally ambiguous.  To eviscerate the ambiguity in  Juris Doctor and a doctorate, one must look beyond the mere words.

The full essay is at "Professionals Over the Top." 

American Students View College as Job-Training: Forsaking Education?

“What is your major?” is a mantra (and undoubtedly a pick-up line too) on college campuses. In giving students some exposure to a variety of academic disciplines, distribution requirements are meant in part to help students make more informed decisions of what to major in. According to an analysis of twelve randomly-chosen American colleges and universities in 2015, an increasing percentage of students since the recession of 2009 were circumventing this help by declaring their respective majors during their freshman year.[1] The reason, according to the business newspaper, is pragmatism, student debt-loads, and a difficult job market. “In 2012, nearly half of college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 were unemployed or had jobs that didn’t use their degrees.”[2] In response, a higher proportion of students were going to college to get a job. Although The Wall Street Journal lauds the reduction of education to vocation, even more striking is how even academic administrators mischaracterize the intellectual mission of colleges and universities. 

The full essay is at “College as Job-Training.”

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[1] Douglas Belkin, “Freshman Are Picking Their Majors Earlier,” The Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2015.

[2] A 2014 paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Quote taken from Belkin, “Freshman.”