Wo'O Ideafarm can be said to hold a "Ph.D. Lite" from the economics department at the University of Chicago.

He fulfilled all requirements for the Ph.D. other than obtaining approval for his thesis research plan, which he proceeded to complete anyway, years later. In particular, he was examined by the faculty for the fields of Finance (Ph.D. pass), Money and Banking (Ph.D. pass), and International Economic Relations (A.M. pass). His failure to obtain approval for his thesis research plan might have been due to academic politics; his research challenged the monetarist orthodoxy then prevailing in the economics department.