Honorary Degrees
As I watched the Dartmouth graduation two days ago, I sat in the drizzle and thought to myself that honorary degrees are really quite silly. Dartmouth, like many other colleges and universities (especially big-name ones) gives honorary degrees to people it thinks have (I suppose) done good in the world and deserve to be recognized in some form. That's all well and good I suppose. People who do good things should get recognition. But is a college graduation really the place to give it? Especially as, in the case of some honorees, it was mentioned that they'd already received such-and-such prestigious recognition for their actions? Some of the honourees seemed more deserving of recognition and others less so (ahem, a basketball player), but regardless of merit I'm not sure an honourary Dartmouth degree is the right sort of recognition. Colleges and Universities are about learning, are they not? Is honouring anything that isn't directly related to learning and academic pursuits even within their purview? Each of the honourary degree recipients had a short bio of his/her accomplishments read and was individually applauded by the audience. That's far more recognition than was given to any one student (except perhaps the two co-valedictorians, who read remarks), yet some of the graduating students were amazingly talented and accomplished. They would have likely been just as interesting to hear about, and they actually graduated from Dartmouth as proper students.