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Comment by melagonster | Hacker News Reader

I don't think being a governor is a bad experience, but not having a doctoral degree is a very unfavorable situation because essentially all academic research stems from holders of doctoral degrees. A doctoral degree is the foundational course on how to conduct research. In this scenario, how can someone without a doctoral degree lead an academic institution in its activities?

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But we’re talking about the office of the president. Isn’t this role more analogous to the CEO?

The president isn’t researching as an individual practitioner, but rather as an executive administrator.

CEOs for many companies should have some amount of 'lower level' experience in the business of the company. I would argue the 'CEO' for institutions focused primarily on research should have a relatively good amount of experience with performing the research. A doctoral degree is a pretty good indicator that the person has done some serious research, so it does not seem unreasonable to me to want the person leading a research institution to have one.

But isn’t University of Nevada a simply a state school?

I understand they have some research programs, but this primarily is a higher ed institution.

If there primary focus was research I’d agree with you.

It's a state school, but Nevada isn't exactly overflowing with them, so in the context of the higher-ed system in Nevada, they not 'simply' a state school.

Outside of the northeast, most large research universities in the US are state schools.

unfortunately, usually professors in university should have Ph.D. let people who focus on research cutting-edge technology/knowledge to teach students in a higher education is important (at least in a perfect world).

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