Maybe they feel like they’ve got a lot more to learn. Maybe there are subjects they never got a chance to dive into as an undergrad. Or maybe they just want people to call them “Doctor.” Every year, plenty of people head back to school part-time to work toward a degree while still clocking in at their day job. It’s just that most of those people don’t have “track down al-Qaeda” as their day job.

    Yep, that’s right — Michael Vickers, the Pentagon’s top intelligence chief has been taking philosophy classes while also working as assistant secretary of defense, which is maybe why it took him 17 years to graduate from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). So now Vickers can add “doctor of philosophy” to his wildly intimidating resume, alongside “CIA paramilitary operations officer,” “Green Beret,” “expert in martial arts, parachuting and weapons,” and “fluent in Czech and Spanish.”

Yeesh. No wonder he’s head of the Pentagon’s “‘take-over-the-world’ plan.”