Joseph Epstein is an essayist clearly from a different generation. He was born in 1937, so he is long in the tooth as it is. However, that is no excuse for being a sexist asshole who not just denigrates women like Jill Biden, but he clearly thinks education degrees are worthless and "easy" to get, which again is vile sexism.
Education doctorates (Ed.D.) are professional doctorates often obtained when people in the field of education want to go into education administration. Biden's major is in fact in educational administration. The difference between this doctorate and the Ph.D. is the former has a shorter dissertation requirement, typically one semester, as opposed to a Ph.D., which requires an entire year to work on a dissertation. It is also more of a professional doctorate rather than a research doctorate.
Epstein, though, just has to denigrate Biden because she went into a female-dominated field and got advanced degrees in her field (she has four degrees in all), and has remained there to this day. She has also indicated she would remain in her job as a teacher, just as she did throughout Joe's tenure in the Senate and the vice-presidency. I don't know how she would be able to do this given the far greater security issues although distance learning is the likely course of action.
Regardless, Dr. Biden can call herself whatever she wants, and there isn't one damned thing an old fart like Joseph Epstein can do about it.
For the record, Bill Cosby may have a number of honorary doctorates, but he, like Jill Biden, has an earned Ed.D. He earned it years ago from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He earned his doctorate in 1976. His long-suffering wife, Camille, earned a Ph.D. from the same university in 1992.
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