Honorary degrees are becoming more common, says Blaise Cronin, a professor of information science at Indiana University at Bloomington, and that threatens to make them less meaningful.

Apparently no one keeps track of how many honorary doctorates are given out each year, Mr. Cronin says, but he gives a ballpark estimate of 10,000 in the United States alone. With that many parchments up for grabs, "not all can be going to paragons of science, scholarship, and statecraft," he writes.

Many colleges have made a practice of awarding honorary doctorates to donors, athletes, and pop stars, according to Mr. Cronin. It may be time to create a new kind of recognition for such recipients, he says. "D.Hon. has been proposed," he writes, "or even a university fellowship or medal, which is reserved for those categories of accomplishment which have no scholastic component to them."

Some institutions, however, have refrained from giving honorary degrees, and others watch their nominations carefully, he says. "Whilst the rot may have set in, we have not quite reached the point where either Princeton or Cambridge is likely to wrap Brittany Spears in scarlet robes any day soon."