While most colleges and universities now issue English diplomas, some prominent holdouts — including Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania — still use Latin.
In 1961, when Harvard switched to English diplomas, about 4,000 students protested in the "diploma riots," and criticized the new documents as "Y.M.C.A. certificates".
In English, the diploma project calls for mastery of spelling and grammar, communication skills, writing, research and logic, as well as the ability to read and interpret technical material, to view media critically and to understand and analyze literature.
Born and raised in Jordan, Hani spent two years at Prince Faisal College, The Defense Language Institute in the US and graduated with an English Language Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language.
Aron had a heavy Yiddish accent, a rudimentary grasp of written English, and no diploma.
But it didn't take him long to realize that immigrating and prospering were two different things; he'd landed in a region with high unemployment, and he had limited English and no diploma.
After saving for a year, I studied for a Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults (Delta).
In South Korea, English proficiency and a diploma from a top American university are such important status markers that some deliberately sprinkle their Korean conversation with English phrases.
With my newly minted diploma in English literature, my German, French and Spanish pocket dictionaries and my made-in-Scotland tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, I considered myself an apprentice global citizen.
