In academia, status hierarchy is real.
Absolutely, just as with this guy’s quote. But it is idiotic.
It is like working for a food company that wants you to eat all and only its products. They have to maintain the fiction of the hallowed PhD since that is both their most profitable product and the making of almost all their product.
Here’s the vaunted D Ed for you:
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20407226/bidens-dissertation.pdf