The Dumbing Down of The Title “Doctor”

    Remember the sports film Draft Day, starring Kevin Costner? Well, there is a scene where Costner, who plays a General Manager for a fictitious pro football team, has another GM by the stones on the day of the NFL draft. It’s payback time because the other GM got the best of Costner earlier in the movie. Anyway, Costner has gotten every player he wants in this negotiation, but he wants blood, so out of the blue he asks for some guy nobody knows. When the other GM asks (knowing he has to pay up), “Where the hell did that come from?” Costner says, “Just because I feel like it!” It’s a great line, in a better than average movie.

    Anyway, that’s where this piece comes from. I could have let this go because it happened a number of years back, but when I read excerpts of Jill Biden’s recently published memoirs, and how she was so frighteningly shallow and obtuse and untruthful and holier-than-thou when talking about her husband’s performance in the debate against Trump, I told my Editor-at-Large, Chas Magee, what I was going to write. He replied, “Where did that come from?” I said, “Just because I feel like it.” And we’re off! You’re an idiot, and you’re going to get absolutely hammered for this. Oh, you don’t know the half, Sancho.

    “I’m hoping Dr. Jill becomes the surgeon general, his wife. Joe Biden’s wife. She would never do it, but, yeah, she’s a hell of a doctor. She’s an amazing doctor,” proclaimed Whoopi Goldberg (this past March), actress, comedienne and co-host of the talk show, The View, where intelligence goes to die After someone alerted Whoopi (Can I call her Whoopi?) to the fact that “Dr. Jill” has a doctor of education (EdD) degree from the University of Delaware and not a medical degree, Goldberg apologized. “I was wrong about his wife. I was wrong, before you start texting and emailing,” she said. Actually, all of that was worth it just to hear Goldberg say, “I was wrong.” 

    Starting with Goldberg’s slip-up in March and ending with Joseph Epstein’s Wall Street Journal op-ed asking Biden to “drop the doc” in December, Jill Biden’s ubiquitous presence on the national stage during the 2020 presidential election revived long-standing debates about the use of the “Dr.” honorific and the academic degrees that underlie it.
    What does the honorific mean in an era of mass credentialing and god-awful low academic standards? Well, your intrepid reporter did some research. To begin with, in a syrupy profile published in the Spring 2007 issue of Wilmington, Delaware lifestyle magazine Brandywine Signature, Jill Biden recounts her delight after returning home from defending her dissertation and finding two signs in the yard waiting for her: “Congratulations Dr. Jacobs-Biden” and “Dr. and Senator Biden Live Here.”
    Everywhere the Bidens traveled, the titles went with them. Presumably, Senator Biden’s team considered Mrs. Biden’s honorific to be so politically expedient that it became a prominent feature of every one of his campaigns, starting with his unsuccessful attempt to obtain the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. Until recently, only one writer dared to question their comically excessive use of the title.
    In early 2009, Los Angeles Times opinion columnist Robin Abcarian noticed that campaign news releases and subsequent White House announcements persistently referred to her as “Dr. Jill Biden.” Ms. Abcarian asked fellow journalists and academics to weigh in. Responses ranged from “dismissive” to “disapproval.” Abcarian wrote that Joel Goldstein, a professor at St. Louis University School of Law, appeared to be “mildly amused upon hearing that Biden liked to be called Doctor.” Time magazine writer Amy Sullivan opined, “Ordinarily, when someone goes by doctor and they are a PhD, not an MD, I find it a little bit obnoxious.” Washington Post desk chief Bill Walsh observed that “if you can’t heal the sick, we don’t call you doctor.” I love that quote! Sorry...

    Despite the criticism, the Biden camp continued to use the title whenever they felt like it, because, well, they’re the Biden’s. Many lap-dogs, uh, I mean media outlets, dutifully complied (because well, they’re the media), even as the AP Stylebook established the reasonable standard of mandating the use of “Dr.” only for individuals who possessed a degree in medicine, dentistry, optometry, or veterinary medicine. 

    Those sentiments were acceptable in 2009, but are no longer tolerated today. Epstein’s Wall Street Journal essay provoked an avalanche of condemnation from every corner of the Internet. Mostly left-of-center writers lined up to accuse Epstein of sexism and other human rights abuses, while Northwestern University erased all mention of Epstein, who had taught with distinction at that institution years ago, on its website and affirmed its commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion. The criticism, because it was stupid, missed the point of Epstein’s essay. The honorific is not the issue...sort of. The lowly state of doctoral education in America is.
    History lesson, kids! (Try not to go to sleep.) The creation of the doctor of education, or EdD degree, came at the intersection of three critical developments in the history of American higher education. In the 19th century, American colleges, institutes, and universities began to develop formal teacher training programs that combined instruction in pedagogy with the emerging field of psychology.
    At the same time, colleges and universities created advanced degree programs for professions like law and medicine. Finally, institutions of higher education began to adopt the research university model introduced to the United States with the founding of Johns Hopkins University in 1876.
    The result was the creation of doctoral programs in education designed to legitimize education as a scientific, professional, and independent field of study. Amusingly, the field itself hadn’t developed a meaningful body of knowledge by the time the Teacher’s College at Columbia University launched the first doctor of philosophy program in education in 1893. (Some would argue that it still hasn’t).

    Although credit hour requirements are similar between the two doctorates, coursework, residency, and dissertation requirements vary by program. For example, most, if not all, PhD program requirements include 3 academic years of full-time graduate work, completing multiple courses in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the successful defense of a doctoral dissertation.
    Most EdD degrees can be completed part-time with no coursework beyond the often substandard offerings from the school of education. Some doctor of education degree candidates may complete a capstone project in lieu of a dissertation. Jill Biden’s 120-page dissertation, “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs,” is a capstone project masquerading as a dissertation. Yes, I found it on the Internet and read it. As one commentator wrote, it “shimmers with the wan, term-papery feel of middle school.”
    In 2014, the Harvard Graduate School of Education announced that it had transitioned from the EdD to the PhD. Harvard leaders declared that the justification for eliminating the EdD was to “better signal the research emphasis that has characterized the program since its inception in 1921” and to “strengthen ties with academic departments across Harvard University.” I think Harvard has the right idea. An interdisciplinary approach similar to the one employed by the PhD program at the University of Virginia would be one way to raise the quality of doctoral studies in education. 

    As for me, even if there were some kind of advanced degree in essay writing, and I actually went through the process of attaining it (no matter how rudimentary it might be), I would hope against hope that nobody would be silly enough to call me “Dr.” But the Jill Biden episode has revealed a world of new possibilities. Shortly after the publication of Epstein’s op-ed, a so-called etiquette expert, Steven Petrow, implored Americans to “start calling people as they wish.” This, of course, reeks of the transgender crowd demanding to be called something they are obviously not.
    So fine…call me Grand Master Essayist Peter B., but please, use “Dr.” for those who can heal the sick. 

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com