From Newsgroup: rec.arts.comics.strips

On 10/28/2025 3:15 PM, William Hyde wrote:

Paul S Person wrote:

On Mon, 27 Oct 2025 18:08:01 -0500, Lynn McGuire
<lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:

xkcd: rCLDocument ForgeryrCY
-a-a-a https://www.xkcd.com/3160/

I need to do this !-a Many of my customer assume that I have a PhD in
Chemical Engineering and are surprised when they find out that I do not.

Knowledge is more important than paperwork.

So it should be. And when you own the company, it is.-a However:

A friend at NASA had a number of scientific publications to his name,
easily more than arise from a PhD, but was blocked for further promotion
in the civil service for lack of that piece of paper.

So he took one of the projects he was contemplating and turned it into a
PhD thesis.-a Promotion followed, and a lucrative private sector post-
NASA position which would not have been available to a "Mr".

For an assistant professor of meteorology position we hired someone with almost no experience in the field, with no coursework, no thesis, and
few publications.-a But he had a PhD in condensed matter physics, which
was qualification enough.-a He turned out to be a very successful hire, a credit to the department and university.

But without that doctorate he wouldn't have made the short list, even if
he had more publications than was the case.

In C. P. Snow's novel "The Masters" (1937) Oxford dons get a bit snide
about "Dr" Jago's title.-a They see a doctorate as something between a
piece of unnecessary frivolity and an ego-trip.-a I am old enough that I
had a few professors who did not have-a a doctorate or real-world equivalent.-a They were no better or worse on average than the other professors.

William Hyde

My grandfather taught drafting at TAMU with a BS Industrial Engineering
degree from 1938 to 1970. He got his MS in Industrial Engineering
around 1950 or so. He became the assistant Engineering College Dean in
1970 because he was running the Cooperative Work and High School JETS
programs on the side. When he retired in 1976 they replaced him with
three PhDs.

Grandad helped 6,000 Aggie Engineering students find coop jobs so they
could stay in school. He had the biggest Rolodex on his desk that I
ever saw in my life. He would flip around his Rolodex when a broke engineering student came in, call a former engineering student, and have
a coop job for them in less than an hour.

A couple of years later in 1978, one of the new drafting PhDs told me
that he knew my grandfather well and that I was not to his level of
drafting, especially in lettering. I was not hurt, I liked
thermodynamics. I could have cared less about drafting.

Lynn

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