The University of Delaware has issued a formal statement “clarifying the status” of Jill Biden’s 2007 doctoral degree, confirming that “while Mrs. Biden completed all requirements for the Doctor of Education, she has not met the specific criteria to hold the title of Doctor under university bylaws as currently interpreted.” The statement, which appeared on the university’s website before being “removed for administrative review,” suggested that Biden’s Ed.D. in educational leadership “does not confer the same privileges as the Doctor of Philosophy” and “should not be used in formal address by the holder.”
The clarification came after a “routine records audit” requested by a “concerned alumnus” who questioned why Biden “uses the title Doctor when she is not a medical doctor nor a researcher in the traditional sense.” University spokesperson Patricia Halloway initially told reporters that “Mrs. Biden’s dissertation, while passable, lacked the ‘original contribution to knowledge’ required for full doctoral status” and that “we have asked her to stop using the title effective immediately.”
“This is accountability,” said Joan Berro, a commercial academic credential verifier who once checked a professor’s transcript for a community college and now consults on “First Lady degree authentication.” “Finally, someone is standing up to the title inflation. Ed.D. is not Ph.D. I’ve verified credentials. It’s all in the fine print. She wrote a dissertation about community colleges. That’s not original research. That’s a book report with footnotes.”
Reno Borja, a dental hygienist who once attended a community college, noted that “Ed.D. sounds less important than Ph.D. when you say them out loud.” “Ph.D. has weight. It has history. Ed.D. sounds like you’re just adding education to education. I’ve seen degrees. In dental offices. The hygienists with bachelor’s degrees make more than those with certificates. It’s hierarchy. Jill Biden tried to jump the hierarchy.”
Joe Barron, who once successfully told people for three years that he had “some college” when he actually had “two semesters and a parking ticket” and now consults on “academic title forensics,” analyzed the university’s statement. “The key is ‘as currently interpreted,'” Barron noted. “That suggests someone just read the bylaws for the first time. Like when I discovered my apartment lease prohibited ferrets after I’d had one for two years. I had to reclassify him as a ‘long cat.’ It was awkward. But legal. Mostly.”
Barron has offered to serve as Jill Biden’s “title defense coordinator,” provided the First Lady allows him to wear his custom “Doctor of Everything” robe and bring his emotional support ferret, which he claims can detect “credential fraud from the salad bar.”
The university retracted its statement within four hours, explaining that “a temporary employee misinterpreted the distinction between Ed.D. and Ph.D. credentialing” and that “both degrees confer the title Doctor, as Mrs. Biden has correctly used since 2007.” The concerned alumnus was revealed to be “a 2019 graduate with a bachelor’s in communications who did not realize doctoral degrees exist outside of medicine.” Barron noted that “this explains everything” and that “if you add the years of Biden’s teaching career to the pages of her dissertation, you get a number that represents exactly how many people care about this non-scandal, which is approximately twelve, all of whom are currently on Twitter with accounts created in 2022.”
