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Is it correct to refer to Bill Clinton as a "graduate" of Oxford? (THES May 16).

I thought that Clinton did not pass his exams. Or, if you accept the more charitable (and no doubt doctor-spun) version, that Nixon's eulogiser was so upset by his country's involvement in Vietnam that he simply could not focus sufficiently on his studies, and in the end decided not to sit exams.

No matter how you look at it, surely if you fail to pass exams, you are not a graduate? Can it be that this deficiency was cured by Oxford's misguided decision, 25 years later, to confer an honorary degree upon the American welfare system's principal demolition engineer? Just asking.

Tom Viles, Cambridge University