Every law student dreams that someday his business card will be decorated with the words “doctor of legal sciences” magical for him. There is no such graduate student-economist who would not mentally reveal a beautiful diploma with the elegant inscription "Doctor of Economics." One of the first to proudly list a doctorate in a long list of posts, prizes and awards of a distinguished academician. Even the fierce maestro from the work known to us all about Pinocchio Karabas-Barabas described himself as a doctor of sciences, in his case, puppetry.
What is the secret of the prestige of this title? Yes, there are no secrets, just a doctor of science - this is the highest degree, which is not easy to get. To do this, at least you should graduate from a higher educational institution, enter graduate school, first defend a candidate’s dissertation, and only then proceed to write a doctoral work. When it is finished, the monograph (the dissertation in writing) is submitted to reviewers, and then the most dramatic moment comes - the work for the coveted degree is sent to the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC). This process is called a ballot when the members of the commission cast their votes for or against, depending on how important the work presented by the candidate is of scientific importance to them. Here, the applicant will have to literally zealously “defend”, defending the value of his creation to his opponents and proving that his monograph is a new word in the field of science.
If everything ends happily for the applicant, then the freshly baked Doctor of Sciences receives not only moral satisfaction from the fact that his student dreams and dreams have finally come true, and he joined the ranks of the "aristocrats" of the scientific world. Now he has access to the post of professor in a higher educational institution of the corresponding profile, and, of course, some increase in salary is provided. The solidity of the doctorate is also in the fact that the history of this scientific degree has nearly a thousand years. It was first approved at the oldest university in Europe - the Bologna educational institution in 1130!
The doctoral degree has a wide worldwide circulation, it is accepted in most states as evidence of undeniable scientific merits. The only difference is that in some countries they become doctors after defending only one dissertation, skipping the candidate stage. Thus, the weight of the "classical", Soviet, and now Russian title "Doctor of Science" is an order of magnitude higher than its, say, British counterpart.
There is such a thing as the title of “honorary doctor” - this is the title by which many educational institutions mark public figures (politicians, cultural representatives and others), regardless of whether the awarded person has a scientific degree or not. In any case, the title of doctor confers considerable privileges and guarantees its owner honor and respect, and this alone is, in principle, enough to compete for it properly!