These Real Psychology Profs Would NEVER Hire Frasier & Offer Other Career Advice

The ongoing "Frasier" reboot brings the prodigal Bostonian back to the East Coast after a lengthy stint in Seattle and two decades in Chicago. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) decamps to Boston to guest-lecture at Harvard University, thanks to a hook-up from his friend, Professor Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst), as well as to reconnect with his adult son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), who works as a firefighter.

As soon as Frasier delivers his lecture, the head of the department of psychology, Olivia Finch (Toks Olagundoye) offers him a full-time role as a professor. Olivia is chomping at the bit to hire Frasier, noting in the pilot that his minor celebrity "would draw more students, which would mean more funding."

For real-life psychiatrists, Frasier's hasty recruitment by one of the best schools in the world is highly unlikely. Moreover, many agree that Frasier — whom his brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) once referred to pejoratively as a "pop psychiatrist" — is underqualified. In a piece for Vulture, all eight of the Ivy League's department of psychology chairs concurred that Frasier lacked the necessary published research and scholarly credentials to waltz into a teaching gig at Harvard.

"Brilliant as he is, Dr. Crane's expertise isn't in the design and conduct of research studies, but in the practice of psychotherapy and the hosting of radio and television shows," said the real-life Harvard chair Matthew Nock. He and his fellow department heads offered other career paths for Frasier, but it's also possible they didn't take into account his academic bona fides earned on "Cheers."

Long before Dr. Frasier Crane began doling out advice on KACL, he was a barfly on "Cheers." Kelsey Grammer originated the character in the sitcom's 3rd season in 1984, when he was introduced as Diane's (Shelley Long) psychiatrist-turned-boyfriend. It is also established on "Cheers" that Frasier was educated at Harvard and Oxford, where he almost certainly engaged in rigorous research. "Frasier Crane boasts a remarkable academic pedigree," said Felix Thoemmes, the chair of Cornell's psychology department, in the same Vulture interview. "So it seems plausible that his alma mater, Harvard, would offer him a job."

Still, by the time the "Frasier" reboot premiered earlier in October, the titular character was years removed from academia or even private practice. For Matthew Nock and other academics, Frasier's resume is enough to grant him other academic roles, even if he isn't destined for a tenure track.

"While we wouldn't hire him to be a tenured professor," Nock continued, "he might be a welcome addition as a clinical supervisor for some of our PhD students who are learning to administer psychological treatments for those diagnosed with psychopathology."

The University of Pennsylvania's Sarah Jaffee agreed that Frasier wouldn't be able to rest on his radio and TV-hosting laurels. She also noted that psychology and psychiatry are two different practices with different forms of scholarship, and Frasier may only be equipped for the latter. "Believe it or not, that MD might take him a long way in a medical school," she said, "but it won't make him the chair of a PhD-granting department."