Doctor of Philosophy/Talk

In the modern world, it indicates an individual who went back to school because they were unable to get a real job. Typical PhDs do not like this pointed out in public, and tend to edit out comments such as this one.

Riiggght.

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Omitted the above. :-)))

(My Ph.D. was awarded only after I was sufficiently motivated, by Jimbo, to finish the dissertation; my finishing was a condition of my employment and got me a raise. So there!)

Hey, all the above being said, the article should probably contain some information about the notion of the perpetual student and the envy and contempt of overeducated people on the part of some other people, such as the person who wrote the above. The page should also probably be located on Doctor of Philosophy. --Larry Sanger, Ph.D.

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Mention should perhaps also be made of the contempt of undereducated people on the part of some Ph.D's ! ;-) --Seb

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Ahem -- I worked "real jobs" and taught while working on my PhD. I've worked in Telecom, dotcoms,and regulatory jobs, as well as food service and other crap money jobs. i have a PhD because it's a prerequisite for teaching at a university level and pretty useful for competing to teach at community colleges. Many of the people I went to grad school with also have similar real world experience. I suggest that the person above may not know his ass from his elbow, and my need anal-cranial separation therapy...JHK

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Ph.D's don't exist just in english speaking countries - it's used all over the world. Local variants are commonly translated to Ph.D when they are comparable with the international convention. I didn't change the article because I didn't know how to refrase it properly. --Tbackstr

I think in other countries they are usually just called "Doctor", abbreviated as Dr., or "Doctor of medicine", "Doctor of natural sciences" etc. The general use of the Philosophy label is only used in English speaking countries I believe. By the way, do engineers get a Ph.D.? --AxelBoldt

I know that with some luck I'm going to get my Ph.D or D.Sc. (Doctor of Science) in a few years in a non-english speaking country (Finland). However, the question of which one I'll get, Ph.D. or D.Sc., is still a bit diffuse for me, since I'm an engineer. Tbackstr