When I informed my buddy JB that I had earned a Doctor of Health Administration degree, he exclaimed joyfully, "Now you are an institution!"
Internalizing that expression took some time. I set down to conduct research on the "institution." I began my search for a solution to the question, "What is an institution?" Can a Doctor of Philosophy or comparable degree be considered an institution? The following text is derived from numerous pieces in the literature.
A Ph.D. or comparable qualification holder is an institution.
An institution is stable, respected, and persistent, and can manage the behavior of a group of people within a society. That includes training in leadership and other disciplines. It is governed by an integrated system of regulations that apply to both official and informal social connections. A Ph.D. is governed by a comprehensive set of rules and answers to the qualities inherent in an institution. Because the holder of a Ph.D. is a human being, he or she is in fact a primary institution.
A Ph.D. is associated with a societal purpose that transcends personality and intentions, governing the laws that regulate behavior and serving as a foundation of social order. It expresses socially sanctioned and enforced behavioral expectations among human Networks.
Family, religion, peer groups, economic systems, the legal system, the criminal system, language, education, the research community, and academia are all examples of institutions. A Ph.D. functions by socially shared rules that are typically written down and known by everyone in the community.
It is an inherent part of the culture within a defined discipline; for example, a Doctor of Health Administration is an institution whose scope covers health care and social services. A Ph.D. has rights, expectations, and duties as an institution. The Ph.D. operates on norms, beliefs, and organizational rules. A Ph.D. characteristically possesses persistence and continuity. Institutions are constraints that human behavior requires to govern them.
I recognized JB's comment as accurate. The literature on this issue is readily available and relatively straightforward.
