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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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George W. Bush went to Yale and he was famously seen as an idiot by the left in the 2000's merely because he had a few malapropisms and committed the largest foreign policy blunder in my lifetime. If your family is loaded and you're not an eloquent speaker people will assume that your degree wasn't really earned. The right is similarly dismissive of Jill Biden's PhD because she got it after Joe became a senator.

Jill Biden has a Ed.D which is a doctorate in education, and enables you to make more money if you are a teacher. It is not a Ph.D. A Ed.D is a practical degree, for people who plan to teach. Most schools pay you more the more education you have, so it makes sense to get the qualification. At Delaware, where she got her degree, you need a portfolio rather than a dissertation, and and Ed.D is part-time for 3-4 years as opposed to a Ph.D. which is full-time for 5 to 6 years.

The right is similarly dismissive of Jill Biden's PhD because she got it after Joe became a senator.

It's more than reasonable to be dismissive of something that doesn't exist, such as Jill Biden's PhD, since Jill holds a Doctor of Education (EdD) and not a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).

Equating EdD degrees with PhD degrees is a common misconception—one that EdD holders are in no hurry to correct—as they get to gas themselves up with the prestige of a PhD using a degree obtained at a much lower difficult setting. Academic stolen valor: plus it's not like one would expect even Education PhDs to be all that tough either, in the first place.