Dear Keith,

The Z-factor of supervisors and examiners is certainly an issue.

It appears in two versions. The first version is a Russell able to recognize a Wittgenstein. The second version is the case in the two sad stories I told in my post.

Several people send off-list notes with similar stories, and I know many more. The damage being wrought by incompetent PhD graduates who move on to incompetent supervision in our field is immense. One story I didn't relate goes back to the "Picasso's PhD" debate that Chris and I nurtured on the old DRS list in the run-up to La Clusaz.

In response to a comment on incompetent thesis projects, Beryl Graham challenged me to provide examples of what I had labeled "good, bad, and ugly" theses. After I gave four good examples with praise for authors and citations for those who wanted to read them, I took a pause before returning with the bad. In the interval, I got a series of pleas from people whyo asked me not to name the authors or their schools. The justification was to avoid damaging the careers of young scholars just starting out -- and to avoid embarassing the schools that sent them out into the world. I agreed, reluctantly, as that would have needlessly shifted to tone of the debate, but in doing so, I predicted that some of these people would go on to wreak havoc with their own students. In those days, and in years since, a PhD was a license to get a job as a research supervisor at ary and design schools that could not attract serious researchers. Serious researchers want to work in a mature or reasonably mature research community, something typically lacking in art and design school. This leaves vacant positions open to anyone who will fill a niche, and since art and design school committees generally can't evaluate the quality of research, they choose what seems interesting among people who hold a PhD. I gave examples problems in the work of the unqualified graduate, predicting that this person would go on to a career in the art and design sector spreading the kinds of ignorance and misinformation evident in the thesis.

Only a few years later, I got a letter from a scholar who had the great misfortune to have become a doctoral student who was failing, victimized by the bad supervision of the person I did not name in the debate. The student seemed quite promising to me, so I suggested a few good contacts who could help as advisors. I won't tell the story in any detail, or everyone will know who it is I am describing, but I will say that the student was both a fully qualified designer and craft maker as well as a promising researcher, and thus infer both the student and the dismally bad supervisor. With a little help and some good supervision advice on a second try, this student did an excellent job. The student has gone on to a brilliant research career, continuing to make marvelous artifacts while addressing some of the most challenging conceptual issues in our field. It is a long way from failed doctoral student to a position as a respected scholar and a leader in our field. Several subscribers to this list know who it is I am describing, and we are all beneficiaries of this person's work. This individual is also playing a lively role in convening conferences, editing journals, and contributing to the growth of the field as a whole.

I'll say again what I said in the original debate. We all pay a price, a steep price, when incompetent graduates achieve positions where they damage others through incompetent supervision. The distance between failed doctoral student and a brilliant career in research and teaching is long and short. It is long in dramatic narrative and it is long in the six or seven years it took to move from starting a doctoral project to rising swiftly on the strength of excellent work. It could have been a very short story, though, as short as the two-minute decision that someone made to assign this outstanding student to an incompetent supervisor hired by a school that does not know the difference between an incompetent PhD thesis and a good one.

Behind that incompetent supervisor stands an art and design school that fancies itself at the cutting edge of research. A couple of well-intentioned but silly artist-scholars created a PhD program that is a recipe for these kinds of results. This art and design school is part of a legally constituted university, and the nature of UK university law means that they have the right to award the PhD.

In many ways, great and small, this story is being repeated around the world.

The Z-factor cuts both ways. I was myself the beneficiary of a Z-factor supervisor, though it was for my master's work and not my doctorate. My master's committee chair -- a former university president -- described my thesis work writing, "I am not sure whether this is the work of a genius or a charlatan, but it deserves a master's degree." Nearly four decades later, I'm still not sure whether that thesis was the work of a genius or a charlatan, but I'm grateful for the Z-factor. I'll allow, as well, that this was a philosophical and conceptual thesis rather than an empirical inquiry.

In contrast, my PhD was an empirical inquiry into aspects of the human, social world. I'm still grateful for the fact that my PhD supervisor explained why I could not write my PhD thesis in blank verse.

The Z-factor is as the Z-factor does. It takes a Russell to recognize a Wittgenstein. It takes two silly supervisors to imagine that a silly candidate deserves a PhD.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

--

On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:43:51 +1100, Keith Russell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Dear Chris
>
>which then gets us to the other part of this problem - supervisors/examiners.
>
>If Bertrand Russell hadn't been around Witgenstein would had simply flunked.
>
>what of the Z-factor?
>
>cheers
>
>keith russell
>OZ Newcastle