Honorary Degrees
According to an article in Wikipedia the king of Thailand has the most honorary degrees in the world:
Bhumibol set a world record for receiving the greatest number of honorary university degrees (136) in 1997. … Most of his degrees came from Thai universities: for instance, Kasetsart University awarded him ten honorary doctoral degrees at once.
To put this in perspective, here is an interesting article about the value of honorary degrees. It starts thus:
If an honorary degree lacks value to begin with, does withdrawing it deliver a rebuke to the recipient? Is whatever honor that comes with the distinction embedded in the fancy paper, or is it wholly in the eye of the degree holder? Was Jacques Barzun right, years ago in The American University, when he suggested dumping all academic giveaways to government leaders?
And here’s another item from Adam Goodman about an honorary degree the king received from Penn university…
for the tremendous hospitality he showed to a certain Penn professor in allowing him to investigate Thailand’s, uh, astonishing culture.
Interesting stuff. 