University of Virginia Library

HONORARY DEGREES NOT GRANTED AT THE UNIVERSITY.

While referring to those features in the organization of the University
which distinguish it from most of the leading institutions in

this country, and which are regarded by its friends as among its
highest merits, it is appropriate to state, that by an express law its
authorities are forbidden to grant honourary degrees, and that accordingly
no diploma of compliment has ever yet received its imprimatur.
In most other colleges and universities, as is well known,
such honours are extended not only to those who have earned some
reputation in divinity, medicine, or law, or even in the uncongenial
pursuits of party politics, but are accorded as of course in the case
of master of arts, after the interval of a few years, to all who have
taken their first academical degree. Rejecting a system so little
friendly to true literary adancement, the legislators of the University
have, we think wisely, made their highest academic honour,
that of master of arts of the University of Virginia, the genuine
test of diligent and successful training, and disdaining such literary
almsgiving, have firmly barred the door against the demands of
spurious merit and noisy popularity.