raincitygirl | (no subject)

Real Life has been absolutely INSANE. So if anybody had anything exciting happen and I didn't comment, I probably didn't know about it. Rather than try to go to skip =280 or whatever, I'm sitting on the sofa with John Henry (I love having a laptop!) watching Manchester City kick Fulham's ass in a snow storm. Yes I know that game was played on Saturday. It's a recording. And please don't spoil me for the ending.

I was re-reading bits of Gaudy Night the other day, in a rare moment of solitude, and I am perplexed. Most of the academic staff at Shrewsbury College are referred to as "Miss". Only the Warden is referred to as "Dr". For the uninitiated, Gaudy Night was written in 1935, and is a mystery novel set at a women's college of Oxford University (in those days there were no co-ed colleges). Now, it seems to me that by the 1930's surely to be a university teacher would require a doctorate, wouldn't it? Particularly at a prestigious university like Oxford. Or am I wrong?

Edited to Add: apparently I'm wrong. See, this is why I love the net. Someone, somewhere always has the answer to my questions.

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In the 1960s it wasn't needed, certainly in any of the universities I knew anything about. In the psychology department I think 2 out of about 10 lecturers had doctorates, and one of them was the professor (head of department). Most of the others were working for it, but it's a long drawn out process and you have to make a genuine contribution to human knowledge.

For the record, when I went back into school teaching after getting a Master's degree I kept quiet about it - it made me over-qualified. In most of the schools I worked in, it gave me a higher qualification than the head had.

Interesting. I have amended the original post to reflect your insights. I suppose the doctorate has been rather cheapened these days, compared to the 30's or even the 60's. And I can see how you would keep quiet about being more qualified than the head!

executrix over on LJ also made t he interesting point that some of the Shrewsbury lecturers might have qualified for a doctorate but not been officially awarded it yet. She said DLS herself had to wait quite a long time to get her Master's degree officially recognized because Oxford was a lot slower on granting women degrees, particularly advanced degrees, than it was at actually letting them in to study.