Is there a Doctor in the house?

[dremiel]

I've been sorting out the last few boxes of stuff from Mom's house - the ones that have been lingering in the back of the hall closet for two years now - and honestly, I think I may just tape them back up and shove them back in the closet. Well, I think I can get it all down to one box at least but I have no idea what to do with these things and

Comments

[taffimai]

I've done a bunch of work in student affairs, and a lot of department heads and/or VPs in that field use the title. But it's a pretty pretentious field of work.

[dremiel]

I think usage does correspond pretty closely to the level of expectation that everyone at the level has the degree. Or rather the inverse of that. Or rather, yeah - the faculty tend to NOT use it but Higher Ed Admin types and folks w/o teaching loads need to credentialize. Oddly, most of the post docs I know in research tend to go by Dr. Firstname but that could easily be a function of field of study and or Physicists-are-weird syndrome.

[ancarett]

In Germany and the German-speaking world, Doctor is a highly-coveted title and rarely accorded to people whose degrees are granted from "suspect places". Lots of US universities aren't recognized as conveying the doctorate for German purposes under German law. No place in Canada, as far as I know (that's more a question of Germany just not caring about Canada or getting many people there with Canadian doctorates

[dremiel]

This makes a lot of sense and supports my assumption that someone in Zurich made the call and my Dad just used the cards they gave him, possibly checking to see if it was his name on the cards but not necessarily. I'm afraid that my father embodied several tired cliches of the mathematically gifted (although I'm virtually certain he could ties his shoes.)

And yes, reinforcing your position with incoming freshman and a department with lingering ABDs sounds pretty wise!

[cbackson]

My dad (Ph.D) never uses it. Students call him that, but he prefers "Professor Backson" even in that situation.

[lavidaessueno]

When I worked at Think Tank, it was considered declasse to insist on being called "Doctor" because it was pretty much a given that everyone had a PhD. Pretty much everyone went by their first names.