I'm tired of phony credentials. This stuff is rampantly permeating every discipline, even the real estate sales business.
For an example, it has always been a mystery to me how few of the religious leaders sporting doctorate degrees actually have completed the academic studies from accredited universities. And even worse, how many of them are honorary and how many of the honorary ones are from non-accredited sources?
I read in this week's New Yorker about a program at a Chicago church on Good Friday where seven ministers each gave a sermon. Each spoke on one of the "seven last words of Christ." Every one of them had the title "doctor" following "The Rev." I couldn't help but wonder their academic sources.
There was a family of three that sang on a number of the Gaither Gospel Homecoming TV shows. I was interested in knowing more about them, so I searched and found their web site. The vitae of the leader showed a doctorate degree from a school I had never heard of, somewhere in one of the southern states.
I called the school and learned that the school 1) was unaccredited 2) did not even have a doctoral program 3) that this fellow had never completed his undergraduate requirements for a degree and 4) that they thought they may have given him an honorary doctorate but they had no record of it. If it had happened at all, the dean told me, it had probably been one time when this family had performed there.
And then there is a famous poet who changed both her first and last names, who has no earned college degrees at all, but who uses the title doctor (one of several honorary doctorates) and is able to teach at a well-known university because of the honorary doctorate(s).
I find all of this so interesting, and here's why: Those who have studied and worked so hard for their academic degrees are willing to grant and honor phony ones...especially when they primarily show up in the ministry and in universities. One would think they would be protesting.
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