He's Dead, Jim

[Winston Smith]

I'm intrigued when celebrities go back for an academic degree that they clearly don't need, they just want. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Shaquille O'Neal also come to mind.

In the context of your post you likely were considering “need” in terms of employment requirements, such as “needing” a PhD for a teaching job at a major university, as compared to “wanting” a PhD to impress your friends and confound your enemies.  But is what any individual thinks he “needs” really anyone else’s business, any more than what one “wants”?  It seems wholly subjective and thus wholly outside the realm of authoritative scrutiny.

I’m always leery of this need/want distinction and those who make it because statists and their ilk frequently preface their confiscatory schemes with such nonsense as “Who needs a 30-round magazine?” or “Who needs a Cadillac health plan?”  If somebody (famous or not) wants an education or just wants a magic piece of paper to put on the wall, why should anyone else care, much less decide if he really “needs” it? 

If we are going to scrutinize things, let’s see who is concerned for all the working class kids who think they are going to get good jobs and move up the food chain if they get an expensive education, only to discover that all the jobs in their field have left the country or that employers are only hiring H-1B visa foreigners for the same work at dirt cheap wages.