The Ethics of Selling Honorary Titles

Where a genuine honour is conferred, a counterfeit market sells imitations with similar vocabulary. Why a purchasable honour is a contradiction that cannot be dressed up.

What separates a genuine honorary award from its counterfeit imitations is the absence of a transaction. Reputable institutions do not sell honorary degrees; candidates are proposed by faculties or special committees, approved by governing bodies, and announced publicly with reasons. The moment a title can be bought — however the invoice is dressed up as a donation or an administration fee — the honour becomes a commodity and the awarding body forfeits its credibility.

The practice of awarding honorary degrees reaches back to the medieval universities of Europe. As institutions such as Bologna, Paris and Oxford formalised their degree structures in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they also developed the habit of granting the insignia of a degree without requiring the candidate to complete the usual course of study — a gesture of respect rather than an academic judgement.

Revocation is part of the tradition’s self-correction. Universities have withdrawn honorary degrees from honorees whose later conduct betrayed the values the award was meant to recognise — from financial scandals to serious misconduct. Such cases are rare and painful for institutions, but they demonstrate that the honour is a relationship of trust, not a perpetual asset.

Criticism of the practice is longstanding and worth reading. Observers have argued that honorary degrees can serve as fundraising instruments, that celebrities receive them for visibility rather than merit, and that genuinely deserving contributors — teachers, nurses, public servants — are overlooked in favour of the wealthy and famous. These critiques have pushed many institutions to publish transparent criteria and diversify their honourees.

The tradition has survived eight centuries precisely because institutions keep the boundary between honour and qualification clearly marked. Respecting that boundary is what keeps the ceremony meaningful.