You don’t know how it feels for us to care about academia again. Tom Petty received a posthumous Ph.D. in music from the University of Florida, the Associated Press reports, after the school’s board of trustees voted unanimously Friday to honor the greatest entity that ever emerged from the swamp state. Petty, famously a Gainesville native, never attended the university as a student; instead, he worked as a groundskeeper there during his early years as a musician before hitting it big with his merry band of Heartbreakers. True fans will tell you Petty’s formative Southern-rock band Mudcrutch performed all around the Gainesville area at the start of the ’70s. “Tom Petty is widely considered among the most distinctive and influential musicians over the past 50 years,” the university’s provost correctly said in a statement. “His presence remains significant.” Sorry, it’s Dr. Petty now.
