Honorary degrees? Please.

Now that the college commencement season is almost over it may be safe to pose this question:

What’s the deal with honorary degrees?

I know, I know, most colleges and universities confer honorary degrees and the honorees pretend to be flattered, but what exactly can you do with an honorary degree, besides preface your name with an unearned “Doctor”?

Just wondering.

Seems to me that if a college really wanted to thank a commencement speaker or a friend of the school they’d head over to the university store and pick out a nice sweatshirt.

But a fake degree? Please.

Perhaps college administrators haven’t noticed, but most people getting honorary degrees these days already have degrees. Real ones. Degrees that they actually earned.

I hesitate to point this out, but often these actual degrees are from institutions far more prestigious than the one handing out the honorary.

Take our president, for instance. With a bachelor’s degree from Columbia and a law degree from Harvard, do you really think Barack Obama coveted an honorary doctor of laws degree from Notre Dame? 

(Look, I love the Fighting Irish. And given a choice between going to South Bend or Cambridge for college, I'd be headed to Indiana. Still.)

That said, was it worth all the heartburn, controversy and revolutionary rosaries by protesting priests for a piece of sheepskin that's probably sitting in a corner of the White House attic? 

Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert found  the perfect use for his honorary doctorate: Joke material.

At the conclusion of his enormously entertaining commencement address to Knox College in 2006 - a transcript is here - Colbert gently mocked honorary degrees in his final words of advice to the graduates:

"First, being pre-approved for a credit card does not mean you have to apply for it. And lastly, the best career advice I can give you is to get your own TV show. It pays well, the hours are good, and you are famous. And eventually some very nice people will give you a doctorate in fine arts for doing jack squat. "

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