I know I've probably tweeted a few times on this topic, although a search of my blog doesn't reveal any one-off posts. I want to set a context to avoid misunderstandings: as someone who has earned 4 degrees, including 3 advanced ones, I respect people who go to through the process of earning advanced degrees. I had to publish a Master's thesis (math) and a dissertation (MIS) and those can be grueling experiences. Two of my siblings have also earned Master's (business administration (like me) and library science), and so far multiple nephews have earned Master's in English, engineering, and meteorology), the last I heard another one, whose dream job is a school principal, was pursuing his in education, and my youngest niece was reportedly looking at graduate school in archeology (I think she was considering pursuing a doctorate at Berkeley). The engineer and meteorologist were accepted into doctoral programs (I highly encouraged them) but ultimately stopped with their Master's; they are doing very well: the former works at SpaceX and the other for NWS.
Programs can differ in quality and requirements, of course. It can be difficult to compare; my most direct comparison was the MIS doctoral programs at UH and UWM; at the time I started as a UWM faculty member, one had to qualify for the PhD faculty, including published research; I did in my first year. (They later waived that requirement. I never sat on anyone's committee (there were politics involved) but I did sit on on the comprehensive exams. I easily wrote the best questions but I was only allowed one question for the first exam. The other questions were highly predictable and more practical than research-oriented. I think it was like a 3- or 4-hour exam.
My own major comprehensive at UH was literally 2 days long, I had no sample exams to go by, just be up for anything in the research literature over the past decade or so. (The discipline started at U. Minnesota in the late 1960's.) Some of the prerequisite coursework was brutal; the rumor was most students opted for easier research methodology courses, say in psychology; I took a research design course in QMS, where I got one of 2 A's in a class of 20-odd students. In addition, I had a pass a minor comprehensive exam (accounting in my case) and an oral comprehensive exam; once I completed these, I attained ABD status (All But Dissertation). I think mine (a few hundred pages long) took about 14 months, including original research of a rating measure and data collection of almost 500 questionnaires. In my case I was doing truly interdisciplinary research and read thousands of journal articles in the applied psychology, education, technical communications, and other disciplines, not to mention other MIS dissertations. I didn't have faculty micromanaging me, advising me what to do; I mostly learned research by doing.
[Other programs can make it really hard. Initially when I went to UT, I had the idea of earning a math PhD. But there were a lot of unemployed PhD's at the time, and UT decided to raise its standards to 6 exams. I remember one guy who stalled at 5. I exited the program with a Master's when I lost my stipend after my first year.]
It was easier on me than others because I was an unattached bachelor with no social life. Once you get to ABD status, you have a time limit of say 5 years to defend your dissertation. You also had a residency, in my case requiring teaching a couple of undergraduate classes; I got a stipend of a few hundred dollars a month which was just enough to cover my school and personal expenses. I remember celebrating one of my comp exams by going to a dollar cinema and splurging on popcorn and soda pop. I didn't know how much I would make as a professor (maybe $40K+?) but it would improve my standard of living. What I know is that I was ABD #16 in our MIS area, and I was #4 to defend my dissertation, one week after #3. (You're actually a PhD when your committee signs off on your dissertation; the graduation ceremony is more of a family celebration. I think I may be the only PhD in history with no photos from my graduation; nobody in my large family brought a camera thinking others would. The college didn't. That's fine; I still have my hood and gold tassel.
Now not all doctorates are the same (over and beyond different degrees, programs, etc.) Broadly speaking, you have professional doctorates (like MD, JD, Biden's EdD, DBA, etc.) and research doctorates (typically a PhD) which are a prerequisite for an academic career.
Here is a relevant sample discussion:
Is a JD Higher Than a Masters?
While the J.D. is the only degree necessary to become a professor of law or to obtain a license to practice law, it is not a research degree. However, there are two types of research degrees available to individuals who are interested in studying law. These are the Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree, which typically requires a J.D. as a prerequisite before pursuing study, and the Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D./J.S.D.) degree, which typically requires a Master of Laws as a prerequisite.
I had a former colleague, a retired Marine who had earned a DBA (not to be confused with my profession, post-academia, as a database administrator: think of a step beyond an MBA) in organizational behavior, I think, from some Arizona college I had never heard of. "DBA? What the hell is a DBA degree?" I don't want to oversimplify here, because there are probably nuances. It's probably an interim degree between a Master's and a research doctorate. There may be a research project of sorts, probably a step above what most high school or college students think of as a research project. But quite often it's in the form of something like a case study. For example, my former colleague had contacts in the Marine Corps. (I think he was studying something about leadership styles.) He was able to collect some data but it was more qualitative or descriptive data, with dubious generalizability of findings beyond that one organization. (I never read his thesis or whatever his end product was called.) It wasn't like he came to his study with a theory of leadership constructs and tried to validate theoretical relationships through relevant research hypotheses, using standard measures, where you try to control for things like factors specific to certain organizations.
This isn't to say there isn't a time and place for case studies. They can serve as an input for theory building. But what we are trying to do in science is to simplify relationships, not to argue the world is complex. This is similar to what we call a paradigm shift; the Copernican revolution swept aside the increasingly convoluted Ptolemaic patchwork.
I'm sure that my former colleague created information of value; he personally got very defensive around me on the topic of the degrees. I think in part it was more a naive impression among other colleagues that all doctorates confer similar status. Yes, Barry Obama's JD from Harvard did enable him to teach courses in constitutional law in Chicago; on the other hand, having suffered through 8 years of Barry as POTUS, I'm fairly certain without a JSD that Obama doesn't know a lot about the Constitution because he didn't apply it in his role.
I have not read Jill Biden's thesis or coursework transcript, but I will say I have respect for her continuing her graduate coursework. I will say although I have a lot of respect for the educational scholars I reviewed for my own work, I'm not encouraged by the mediocrity I've seen from students I've seen in my own classes as a professor. Now of course I wasn't your typical student; I was checking out calculus textbooks from the base library in high school for fun. I was my high school valedictorian at 16. I was a UT/Austin grad student at 19. I didn't have unrealistic expectations of my own RAG's in my own classes. But many students were fundamentally unprepared for college. It was also my colleagues. I remember I was teaching database at UTEP, and I discovered over 90% of the students didn't know what a linked list is, and the prerequisite for the class was a course in data structures. So I had to stop what I was teaching and do a mini-course in data structures (think they were happy? Nope. All they wanted was for me to punch their job ticket to a lucrative IT career.) I don't know what the hell their lecturer had taught them in that course. The attitudes? Tell me about it. This went beyond testing my patience. I remember I told them one paper, two pages, double-spaced, inch margins. One kid turned in 5 pages, no margins, single-spaced. I'm not kidding. Another student turned in a computer listing with literally a muddy tire track on top. There wasn't much I could do with these students, many of whom had been socially promoted with inflated grades, and had never been in a real college class like mine. I remember when I took my first computer science course at OLL, I got 2 shots to compile my weekly programming assignment from scratch. (This was the old days of FORTRAN card decks, and we didn't have a computer to load them at OLL.) I might require 4 computer assignments from my students at UWM, and I had students ready to mutiny. I had students literally crying over computer science students doing my assignments in 30 minutes while they didn't have a working program after 12 hours. They suddenly realized their limitations.
So I'm not a fan of our public school system, guided by all these teachers and administrators with advanced education degrees; it doesn't trickle down to improved standard test scores. Should Jill Biden be included in that group? Probably not. I think she was looking at (community?) college education.
I think the kerfuffle appears to be focused on her apparent preference that others refer to her as "Dr. Jill Biden". That's a more nuanced subject for me. As a PhD, I almost never refer to another academic as "Dr". I will to my dissertation chair (Dr. Richard Scamell) or certain academics I hold a lot of respect for.
I did require that measure of respect from my students. I think some of my colleagues preferred a more informal approach and voiced an opinion that the rest of us were snobs. In one case, a student called me 'Ron' like 5 times in a row. "Dr. Guillemette". He finally spat it out in contempt when he saw the conversation was going nowhere.
I think I'm more favorable impressed when others use it outside of academia, where I don't really insist on it. I don't put it on my Twitter handle or my Outlook signature at work. (Some do.) Most of the people I clip in my daily blog have PhD's (e.g., Tom Woods, Brion McClanahan, George Will) and you'll find it out if you look at their bios. A former supervisor about 3 years back started calling me "Dr. Ron" (probably a takeoff on "Dr. Phil" McGraw) and my colleagues started doing the same. I thought it was charming.
I'm not like Barbara Boxer who insisted she had earned the title of "Senator" vs "ma'am". (The poor military guy was just following protocol and meant no offense.) Yes, I've earned the title "Dr.", but my ego isn't threatened if others don't use it. The PhD stands, with or without their approval.
Now I generally think it's a good idea in talking to other people that you make allowances for their sensibilities. So if I know Ms. Biden is going to have a meltdown if I don't call her "Dr. Biden" in person, I would probably accommodate. But on Twitter I won't use that title, just like I'll refer to "Rand Paul" versus "Dr. Rand Paul".
Oh, and don't start with "I won't call you a Dr. because you don't have an MD; you're not a "real" Dr." Not one person calling me "Dr." ever asked for a prescription or to diagnose their aches and pains. Generally I think the "Dr. Jill Biden" kerfuffle is petty and overblown. If her ego is that fragile, she's got bigger problems. I think it's mostly progressive Twitter trolls trying to annoy Trumpkins and the like.
