I would like to ask those of you familiar with Cambridge about Malthus's MA. Could that degree be described as Scott Cullen does below?

Scot Stradley


Scot A. Stradley, Ph.D.
Professor of Finance
Offutt School of Business
Concordia College
Moorhead, MN 56562

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From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Cullen [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2013 2:44 PM
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Subject: Re: [SHOE] Coase Obituary

Fascinating.  Is it also true that at Oxford and or Cambridge the MA is not an earned degree but a maturing or seasoning of an earned BA that is conferred on a member of the university by passage of 2-3 years?  I seem to recall that US faculty listings would have a parenthetical (Oxon), for example, after such degrees.

SC
----- Original Message -----
From: Anthony Waterman<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2013 3:08 PM
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Coase Obituary

The degree of D.Sc. at London, as at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and other British universities, is normally not an 'honorary' degree. A member of the university may submit his more important published work to his Faculty, and if after examination its members regard that work as of major scholarly significance, the Faculty will recommend that he be admitted 'Doctor.' Honorary doctorates are also awarded, but usually to members of other universities, without examination and -- as an American universities -- for reasons that are often not in the least academic.

American readers of this List ought to be aware that the so-called 'Doctor of Philosophy' degree, awarded upon successful submission of a thesis upon almost any subject, does not count as a full doctorate in English universities. At Oxford and Cambridge for example, full Doctors (in Divinity, Laws, Music, Letters, Science, Medicine) wear scarlet gowns in procession and take precedence of all others. Mere PhDs wear a black gown with a scarlet hood, and rank with MAs. The PhD is of late origin, and was a German invention -- brought back to the USA by a series of famous, late-19th C. university presidents who had studied at German universities.

When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge the PhD was largely confined to chemists, who had to take this degree in order to be taken seriously by German chemists, then in the forefront of research. In my own college there were only three Fellows of any degree higher than MA: the Master, an eminent pastristic scholar who had a DD, H. B. Cott who was Sc.D for his pathbreaking work on crocodiles, and my tutor, P. J. Durrant who was a chemist and therefore PhD.
In the Faculty of Economics and Politics, few of the dons who lectured or taught us -- including my supervisor, Joan Robinson, Harry Johnson and Peter Bauer -- had (like Keynes himself) any degree beyond the MA.

Anthony Waterman



On 04/09/2013 12:45 PM, Klein, Peter G. wrote:
Coase was awarded a D.Sc. degree from the University of London in 1951. Usually, this is an honorary degree, given in recognition of past achievements – i.e., there is no doctoral thesis or thesis supervisor. I assume this is the case with Coase’s degree, but perhaps someone knows otherwise.
Peter Klein
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bylund, Per L.
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2013 12:00 PM
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Subject: Re: [SHOE] Coase Obituary
He earned his bachelor’s degree in commerce at LSE the last year in residence on a traveling scholarship in the US (he already had the coursework). He then became a lecturer at Dundee (and later LSE).
I’m not sure about the PhD – if memory serves me right, he only had an honorary PhD.
PLB
_____________________
Per L. Bylund, Ph.D.
Baylor University
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(573) 268-3235
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Cullen
Sent: Wednesday, September 4, 2013 8:30 AM
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Subject: [SHOE] Coase Obituary
Interesting obituary in today's Financial Times on Ronald Coase who died at 102.
It of course mentions his association with LSE, but not  that Coase - if I recall correctly - earned his Ph.D. from LSE as an external student.  The current buzz word is "distance learning" which is much more enabled by the internet than it ever was before.  But the story goes that one of LSE's founding goals was to offer an alternative to the Oxbridge model of residential colleges that only a privileged elite could afford to attend.  This was accomplished with external programmes.
Part of the current trend, again fueled in part by the high cost of traditional university programmes, is debate about quality.  It seemed very telling to me when I learned that this Nobel laureate did an external doctorate at such an iconic institution.
Scott Cullen