For some reason, this is controversial.

She has a doctorate in education, and per custom a person with a doctorate can be called by the title “doctor”. Yet for some reason she’s been accusing of being a fraud because she is not a medical doctor, the most common usage of “doctor”.

Now, I may not refer to someone with a non-medical doctorate as “doctor” unless they are my instructor or I’m talking about them in an academic context, but I hardly see what’s “fraudulent” (according to a WSJ opinion piece) about her using the appellation. This feels like a joke out of Friends about Ross Geller using the title “doctor” when he is not a medical doctor, but a professor of paleontology.

Would you refer to people with doctorates as “doctor” outside of a university campus or do you think the title should be reserved for medical doctors?

I’m pursuing a doctorate myself. Soon you will have to call me Dr. Demosthenes. :)

Topics: education, politics, teaching, university, teachers