Stars and celebs

I’ve long been entertained by the award of honorary degrees by universities. It’s one of those things that almost every institution does – issuing honorary doctorates to celebrities, superstars and remarkable individuals, some of them even academic achievers, in the hope that the recognition will prove mutually beneficial and some of that stardust will be sprinkled around a graduation ceremony.

Of course there is a rigorous selection process for such awards involving detailed investigations into candidates’ life histories just to make sure that there are not too many skeletons in the closet. At least that’s how it is now. Unfortunately, until relatively recently, this kind of due diligence was largely absent for most institutions. This meant that quite a few awards have been made which universities have come to regret leading to a series of honorary degree revocations as I have previously reported over on Wonkhe. Revocations are therefore increasingly common and greater caution advised for institutions.

All the big names 

There have been some big honorary degrees handed out and these are just some of the awards that have caught my eye in recent times:

• Oxford recognized some heavy hitters earlier this year including Dominic Sandbrook, John Kerry, John Curtice and theUniversity’s serving Vice-Chancellor, Irene Tracey (it is not terribly common to recognise a VC before they retire).

• Carol Vorderman was honoured by the University of the West of England.

• Naomi Campbell threw a big party it seems to celebrate the conferral of her honorary at the University for the Creative Arts.

• Sports commentator all round decent person Hazel Irvine was recognized by her home town University of St Andrews.

• Bob Dylan accepted an honorary degree from a US university, Berklee College of Music, for the first time in over half a century. Fortunately there was no actual ceremony involved otherwise he surely would not have turned up – if you are going to avoid the Nobel Prize ceremony  it seems a bit unlikely you will turn up to wear a silly had at a graduation event.

• Jamie Lee Curtis picked up a Doctorate of Fine Arts from the American Film Industry Conservatory.

• At Cambridge there were awards for Stormzy and Katherine Grainger among others at a ceremony last year.

• Newcastle University honored Davina McCall in the same week her daughter graduated.

• Renowned writer and humorist David Sedaris received an honorary degree from the University of Chichester.

• The BBC’s long-serving chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet received an honorary degree in 2024 from Keele.

Further confurrals

Perhaps surprisingly there were some other four-legged honorary awards conferred recently.

This group of service dogs was recognized by the University of Maryland:

Make no bones about it: These dogs are a breed apart. The University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) honored therapy and service dogs during Paws to Honor: UMB Service and Therapy Dog Awareness Day on June 13 in which “dogtorate” degrees were “confurred” on the companions of three recent graduates.

And, even more deserved you could argue, Doug the pug , a leading canine influencer (it says here), received an honorary degree too.

 Pawfully good news.

Fake it to make it

Honorary degrees, as we all know, aren’t real and mean next to nothing alongside real, studied-for and assessed doctorates so it does seem remarkable that there has been a market in fake honorary degrees.

This Wonkhe piece from a few years ago reports on this remarkable phenomenon including this great example of a less than wholly convincing degree certificate:

Nigeria has been particularly exercised about fake honoraries for a while as this article in University World News demonstrates.

As the headline has it:‘Honorary degrees to go to the honourable, not the riff-raff.’ Down with this sort of thing.