But his California Western degree didn't get him far in New York, until a headhunter for a law firm called, looking for a "managing attorney," a job that turned out to be administering the work of the firm rather than practicing law.
Founded a year and a half ago, the company started in mainland China where the appetite for Western university degrees is enormous.
Kaptchuk, 62, has a college degree in religious studies from Columbia University and is one of the few Harvard medical professors without a Western graduate degree.
A generation ago, a foreign native English speaker with a Western university degree could land at the airport and expect to find decent work.
In China, which rates poorly in international higher-education league tables, a western university degree has considerable allure, even if it is earned in Ningbo.
Unlike a Western university degree, whose "value" is transferable across borders, other forms of "capital" were not always transferable, including (some aspects of) work experience, professional/social connections, and the quality of the migrant's family life in the host country.
To a large degree, Western Buddhism de-monasticized Asian practice, so that meditation was more commonly conducted on retreat and at home rather than in a monastic community.
In the overall context of Western history, the degree to which the Mediterranean world during the period of the empire became one single system, one civilization, is a matter of the greatest importance.
According to the inscription on his memorial stone, Usui taught his system of Reiki to over 2000 people during his lifetime, and sixteen of these students continued their training to reach the Shinpiden level, a level equivalent to the Western third, or Master/Teacher, degree.
