Friends,

Chris's comments make good sense to me. All data gathering and
editorial work is a pain. Developing and editing reference collations
such as this is truly difficult and painful. Having done it several
times, and consulted to other projects, my hat is off to Gavin Melles.

It would be truly interesting to know about doctoral programs in
design -- all kinds of design -- and I welcome any reliable
information. That said, I gather that Gavin is working on a way to
gather more information without going crazy.

Suggestions are valuable -- I don't think Gavin intended a political
statement or a power play, but rather a way to develop and share
useful information without suffering from information overload. No
one on this list actually knows how many different kinds of doctoral
programs exist that might fit the label of a research doctorate or
professional doctorate in design. I certainly don't, and repeated
queries to different education ministries and to the EU suggests that
no one else knows, either. The fact that there are several thousand
accredited universities worldwide with authorization to award several
dozen different kinds of doctorates in design indicates the scope of
this task.

Gavin is trying to bring a little structured information to a list
that represents 1,310 people who work in a fraction of these many
universities and in some sectors of doctoral education. (By
comparison, Design Research News has over 8,000 subscribers, and
there are still thousands of universities where no one subscribes to
DRN.)

This did not seem like a power move to me, but an attempt to manage
the workload while making the information accessible to all of us.

For my part, I appreciate Gavin's work on this. What started with a
query from Alireza Adjari has turned into an informative series of
notes. Thanks to you all for your contributions. I know more than I
did when Alireza asked, and I feel that Gavin's contribution adds to
the mix.

Ken

--

Prof. Ken Friedman
Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language
Norwegian School of Management
Oslo

Center for Design Research
Denmark's Design School
Copenhagen

+47 46.41.06.76 Tlf NSM
+47 33.40.10.95 Tlf Privat

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