Trust him he's a doctor... and a professor... and an engineer Things get even funnier when Dr Schinkler decides to send his wife down to pick up the rolls: she is, of course, no longer a person in her own right, but elevated to "Frau Dr Schinkler" by virtue of her husband's intellect (whether a simple Mr Schinkler would become Herr Dr Schinkler due to his wife's academic exploits is a question no one seems to have asked themselves in linguistically unreconstructed Germany). Incidentally, an important characteristic of German academic titles is that they don't cancel out or supersede other titles, but are simply added to them: ie whereas Mr Smith becomes Dr Smith in English, he goes from Herr Schmidt to Herr Doktor Schmidt in German. If he then proceeds to a professorship, he becomes Herr Professor Doktor Schmidt rather than just Prof Schmidt. Further academic qualifications simply accumulate, ending in the kind of multiplication ad absurdum of "Prof Dr Prof med," a favourite of German satirists. Back in the UK, I remember a friend of mine having cards printed with "MA OXON" after his name once we'd finished university and getting laughed at so hard that he consigned the whole lot to the waste paper bin; meanwhile, last week, I spotted a lonely-hearts advert in the weekly paper Zeit in which somebody introduced themselves as Professor Doktor. While there are plenty of Germans who would find that odd, the fact that there are people out there hoping to increase their chances of finding a soulmate by using academic titles speaks volumes. In fact, the competitive advantage of having letters to your name in all areas of German society has led to a shadowy system of post-graduate studies in which both no-name "colleges" with suspiciously flash advertising and, more worryingly, proper universities offer fast-tracks to titles. Every month it seems, a professor at some ailing alma mater is found to have accepted PhD students who, quite coincidentally, made generous donations to the department... On closer inspection, it usually turns out that the PhD dissertations are by-the-numbers clones of the professor's earlier work, and suddenly, whole swathes of German PhDs seem to have about as much worth as a made-up Masters. The cachet of an academic title means that even quite respectable institutions are bombarded by - and happy to accept - candidates obsessed with getting a PhD, despite a clear lack of ability or, quite simply, time. Desperate would-be Doktors try to write theses after full working days, exhausting themselves at a Herculean task that, in other countries, is considered more or less a full-time job. In a classic case of this kind, the political shooting star Karl von und zu Guttenberg, having decided that two aristocratic particles were not quite enough by way of ornamental nomenclature, decided to try and become a Dr too, and eventually resorted to copying and pasting his entire dissertation from a variety of sources. More revealing than his blatant plagiarism was the blasé way in which he tried to dismiss his actions as unimportant, and even Chancellor Merkel, herself a respected scientist, attempted to trivialise the whole matter by commenting that she had chosen Guttenberg to be "defence minister, not a research assistant." Nevertheless, now that Annette Schavan too - embarrassingly enough, the education minister - has been forced to resign after irregularities in her thesis were uncovered, Merkel has abandoned her flippant attitude and agreed to a full government investigation with a view to setting national postgraduate standards. And quite rightly so. If Germans are going to continue to display, polish, and be blinded by academic titles, then they should at least actually mean something. Whatever the case, I personally am happy enough with a simple "Herr Melican," which sounds wildly respectful to the ears of an Englishman previously irked by his bank addressing him as "Brian" in sales calls. Then again, I would love to be able to say: "Trust me, I'm a Doktor!," even if that particular gag, sadly enough, doesn't work in German. Read our other guest columns