On Why Not to Award Honorary Doctorates to Those Whose Body of Work is Yet to Come

President Barack Obama was invited to deliver a commencement address at the Arizona State University (ASU) the other day. His hosts at ASU -- Smell a rat? Isn't that in John McCain's home-state!?! -- had seen it fit to warn him in advance that he would not be getting any honorary degree from them, much as they desired that he grace the occasion. Their reasoning: His "body of work is yet to come."

Obama went anyway: Click here

Moral of the story: Honorary degrees are not rewards for political success -- or office.

Obama of course joked that those who chose to not award him a degree would have their financial records subjected to IRS scrutiny. He joked, but University Vice-Chancellors in Africa would not find such a joke a joke, but rather something real -- a sort of life-changing rebuke and promise. So our VCs continue to dish out honorary degrees (DOCTORATES) to all and sundry -- even people who will never earn a doctorate. Before you know it, these people are Dr. This and That, all over the place. There is, in all this, palpable devaluation of a good and inspiring thing -- so that those who aspire to earn it wonder if the effort is worth the effort; as they note with growing alarm -- the obscenity of it all -- that there is no place in which those who have it on a silver platter allow their last names to be mentioned at all without the prefix Dr.

Yet what is a mere Vice-Chancellor to do when pressed by those -- either the Chancellor himself, who doubles up as head of state and for whom the Vice-Chancellor technically or in principle "deputizes" at univerity, or the Chancellor's cronies -- who hold his/her fate in their hands and, by virtue of that fact alone, subtly or crudely demand a name-changing ceremony? But even ordinary citizens, who can tell a real doctorate when they see one (that is, determine that it was earned, not "taken" = nyakuad) are getting worked up by this rule of the jungle -- with none of the comic relief in PhDComics -- as was recently witnessed in Kenya. And they don't know how to stop it, or get relief.

With the mushrooming of universities around the world, including Kenya, nearly everyone with consequential muscles to flex is assured of his or her honorary doctorate. But standards are important: And a recognizable body of (scholarly) work seems to me a good, solid metric. Thank you, ASU!

Tourism Training at the Degree Level in Kenya

I visited the website of Kenya's Ministry of tourism. This is the far-from-complete information that the site continues to tell the world about tourism training in Kenya: Click here to see. One might be excused to think that that part of the website is administered by someone who is neither interested in, nor embarrased in not telling, the whole truth about tourism training in this country. So I decided to use the "contact us" link at the website to send the email which I reproduce below. The email will probably be read tomorrow, Monday, at the earliest, so consider this an advance copy for the time-being:

Dear Sir,

Your website has information about tourism-related training in Kenya, and I congratulate you for that. You do mention the pioneer institution in this field, Utalii College; and that’s fine. One glaring omission continues at the website, however, given that Utalii College does not, let me add YET, train any students at the degree level.

The fact that the University of Nairobi has been offering a degree in B.A. Tourism since 2001 continues to escape the attention of all who manage the website, and indeed of the entire ministry’s official attention. Or is this deliberate neglect and “ignorance”?

Several cohorts of tourism students have in fact already graduated from the University of Nairobi. In the September-December 2008 semester, I may add, the University of Nairobi admitted over 70 tourism students. Only yesterday, December 20, we were invigilating 73 students taking their end-of-semester examination in CTO 101: Introduction to Tourism. By the time this semester’s final examination period ends on December 24th, tourism students from Level I to Level IV (the graduating level) will have been examined in a combined total of over sixteen courses.

We are striving to train high-level HR for the tourism sector here. It would help if the website, and those at the Ministry’s headquarters, acknowledged the simple truth and reality. You are giving the world the wrong impression of the depth of tourism training in Kenya.

And kindly remember that the University of Nairobi is not the only [Kenyan] institution offering tourism courses at the degree level. I just happen to be at the big U of N, to have been central to the launch of the tourism programme, and to be proud of what we are trying to accomplish here, with much enthusiasm despite your looking the other way!