Southampton Solent University made the former X Factor judge a doctor of media for her "outstanding contribution to the entertainment industry".
The singer said she had never been to the city but hoped to get an opportunity to visit the university soon.
The honorary doctorate was presented at a special ceremony in London.
The presentation was made by the university's chancellor in front of an invited audience of staff and students.
Ms Minogue said: "I'm honoured and I'm shocked to receive this degree.
"You start working in the entertainment industry and you don't really stop and look back at what you've done.
"It's nice to be honoured for that and to connect with the students who are studying at the moment because a big part of their studies is having the practical side of working in the industry. You can't learn that from a book."
A spokesman for the university added: "We can quite understand the cynical kind of impression [of the award] but it is not the case.
"We would never give a degree to someone without some connection to the university or the work of the university."
He added that the university specialised in media teaching and had previously awarded honours to people in the industry.
Dan Prendergast, president of the students' union at Southampton Solent University, said: "She is a musical inspiration to many students.
"She has had a long-spanning career and made a big contribution to the music business.
"This is a great opportunity for students to meet someone like this."
Last month, Minogue's sister Kylie received an honorary degree from Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford.
She collected an honorary doctorate of health sciences in recognition of her work promoting breast cancer awareness after contracting the disease.

The existing system, called Greenlight, is to be replaced with a scheme called Steam Direct.
Greenlight lets Steam users pledge support for games that Valve then helps appear on the service.
Steam Direct will let developers get their games onto the service without first having to win over audiences to a title.
In a statement setting out how Steam Direct will work, Valve said developers would be able to publish directly after they completed a sign-up process.
The process will require developers to submit the same sort of information they would need to open a bank account, said Valve.
In addition, it added, developers will have to pay a publishing fee. Valve said it had not yet decided how much this would be, but after consulting developers it said it  could range from $100 (Â£80) to $5000 per title.
Valve said the fee would "decrease the noise in the submission pipeline" which many people interpret to mean is an attempt to discourage unscrupulous developers from submitting bad games as they have done with Greenlight.
Many Steam regulars have complained that a lot of the games Greenlight shows off do not deserve publicity because they are poorly coded and derivative. Steam introduced a small fee of $100 for listing a game on Greenlight in a bid to discourage this practise.
Games that become popular via Steam Direct will be able to recoup some of the fee they paid.
"We want to make sure Steam is a welcoming environment for all developers who are serious about treating customers fairly and making quality gaming experiences," said Valve.
Developer Mike Gale said it was not clear that Steam Direct would stop bad games being published on the service.
Writing on his blog, Mr Gale said it would probably mean far more games reached Steam because "$100 - $5,000 is easier to come by than tens of thousands of votes required to pass the Greenlight system."
He said the top end of the suggested fee was "not unreasonable" and was likely to be far less than many developers paid when creating console games.
Singer Dannii Minogue has been presented with an honorary degree by a Hampshire university.
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Valve is changing the way independent game makers can get their creations onto its Steam service.