Doctorate Degree
The word doctor comes from Latin and means “teacher”. The title was used as a qualification to teach at universities. One of the earliest universities was the University of Constantinople, 849, considered to be constituted in a form that might be considered to look to be close to what universities are today. In Ernest Volkman’s book, Science Goes To War, the author describes how Kaiser Wilhelm, (about 1911), helped toward building a premier science community within Germany to move that country into achieving more military power and thus national power. A reward for scientists that cooperated with this effort was the awarding of titles of “Herr Doktor” and “lifetime tenure as a university professor” (p142). So out of a mechanism toward moving a European country into being an important war machine, we now are burdened with titles that further stratify our society.