I am writing in response to the the current waive on the drs@mailbase
listserve. This might be my fifth posting of this type since the discussion
on Ph.D. in Design started several years ago. Sorry for the repetition, but
I also get impatient with discussing how many devils can sit on the top of
a needle (a legitimate problem of inquiry in the Middle Ages).

I still can not understand why the venerable community spends so much time
for bickering rather than a productive outlook at the subject. Why the hell
someone needs a Ph.D. in Design, rather than a Doctorate in Design.
Obviously some people suffer for not having Ph.D. degrees. Big deal! We can
create and institute a comparable system of learning/appreciation in
design, call it as we want, and there will be no need to argue on the
Internet for such matters. By the way, Harvard Graduate School of Design
has already made it - the Doctor of Design Program. And may be some other
schools as well.

As a person with two Ph.D. degrees, I simply can not understand designers
who fight to become Ph.D. and who fight to get their inquires during the
design process accepted as high-end research. Maybe they suffer
institutional pressure to get a "terminal degree;" maybe they don't
understand the difference between science and design and feel inferior for
not having a degree that philosophers need in order to substantiate their
presence on the earth. I don't think designers should follow the same path
to make a case for their contribution to the humankind.

In the fields of the professions, the relations of research to doing things
are much more complicated that in the fields of sciences and humanities
(Die Wissenschaften). Further more, while in the areas of the Wissenshaften
the most direct way to develop and actualize ourselvess is to "Wissen," in
the areas of the professions the strategy is to "Mögen." (to be able to do
it). In the sciences, we have the options to study the discipline itself
and the contents or the ontology treated by this discipline. In the areas
of design we can study design by itself and for itself, the world that is
designed, and how to design. Now, here is the difference: the study of how
to do research is a legitimate scholarly area, but the study of how to
organize the world is not research, it is a design endeavor. To claim the
opposite is to equate design and research, which means that we will
dislodge two social institutions, science and design, only to make easier
our argument for getting Ph.D. in Design. I would like to emphasize that
there is no sense to insist that research should have higher social status
than design, and that research degrees should be valued more than the
design degrees.

To research what is the nature of design and to study for becoming a better
designer are two different things, although they might be interrelated at
certain points. My former boss, who was a philosopher, was studying design
quite successfully, but he had never designed anything. Studying design is
a look from outside, it is about the nature of design as a human activity
and about the place of this activity in the sociocultural system. Studying
to become a designer is an inside position and is about how to organize the
world rather than to study the world. If you say that these two are
interrelated, it is OK, but you need to keep in mind that a person can be
the greatest researcher on the world without being able to
dconstruct/organize/reorganize this world, while another person might be
much better constructor without being very good in researching the
underpinnings of the world. If some designers get involved in studying the
world in order to obtain the information necessary for making decisions,
this is because the institutionalized system for knowledge production fails
to support them. What we need is to "request" adequate support, "air
cover," rather than indulge in an area that has a nature of its own.

Let somebody be a Ph.D. in Design (after defending a written theses) and
another person be Doctor in Design (after finishing a course of study and
submitting a design project). Some of you may ask how a Master in Design
will be different from a Doctor of Design? These will have different levels
of qualifications and achievement. This is also very tricky because in the
area of design achievement is not directly related to educational records.
Le Corbusier, Miss van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright did not earn even
bachelor programs in design through conventional university programs. Miss
was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa for his design work. This is a Doctoral
(althogh formulated as a Ph.D.) degree in Design! However, I don't believe
Le Corbusier was ever sad he has not made a doctorate. He might even be
quite scornful to all these doctors that doctor theses.

In this regard, programs that aim at increasing the capabilities of
students to research the nature of design and the nature of the world
subjected to design intervention are research oriented. The appropriate
degrees should be aligned with the degrees in the sciences. The programs
that aim at increasing the capabilities of students to reorganize the world
are design oriented. The appropriate degrees should be B/M/D in DESIGN.
Such distinction and denotation will help to better communicate the
qualifications of a person. However, most important of all, such a way of
thinking will help to better design the course of study so that students
acquire the relevant knowledge and skills. 

My appeal to designers and educators in design is: let's construct two
different systems of education at advance levels in order to promote the
development of the design profession one step further (if this is
necessary). How we will name the degrees is not that important. How we will
argue for the recognition of the degrees as "terminal degrees" by
University administrators (scholars in Philosophy and Physics) is IMPORTANT
for our habilitation/tenure and promotions. However, these are two
different situations.

Thank you for attention, 

Lubomir Popov, Ph.D.







%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%