The truth about honorary degrees. (Members Only).

In 1845, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, William Barton Rogers, wrote in a report to the Virginia legislature that honorary degrees amounted to "literary almsgiving...of spurious merit and noisy popularity." To this day, MIT has awarded no such honors.

But plenty of schools do, often with the fanfare of a Nobel Peace Prize. Though much-coveted by business leaders, some experts complain that the real worth of the honorary degree exists only in the mind of the individual who traded it for a half-hour speech on commencement day or a generous donation.

Lloyd Elliott, author of The University and Corporate America (October 2001), estimates that only about half of the honorary degrees awarded during his tenure as president of George Washington University from 1965 to 1988 were in recognition of genuine achievement.

He came to view them as an unpleasant fact of academic life. "I could almost smell the campaigns when they started," recalls Elliot.

"I'd get phone calls and letters from people promoting an individual to be recognized for a honorary degree," Elliott says. "Sometimes it was someone really deserving, but most of the time it wasn't."

MIT isn't the only school that eschews honorary degrees. The University of Minnesota, Rice University, Cornell University and University of Virginia, among others, ban the practice on the grounds that academic merit should be earned.

Even as far back as the 1800s, university founders already felt that honorary degrees were awarded too lightly. The University of Virginia hasn't granted an honorary degree since its founding by Thomas Jefferson in 1819. Cornell's policy dates back to its founding in 1865 by Ezra Cornell.

Today, few colleges baldly award honorary degrees to benefactors. But all engage in some form of quid pro quo. Cornell, like most, rewards large gifts with professorships, trusteeships, prizes or named buildings.

"We even had an endowed dean," remarks Linda Grace-Kobas, director of Cornell's news service.

The Weill Cornell Medical College, for instance, was named after Sanford Weill, chairman and CEO of Citigroup, after he gave the school $100 million in 1998. On Jan. 9, Weill gave his medical moniker an additional $100 million, though his name has yet to grace additional buildings or boulevards.