Dear Luke,
Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking about the conversation on doctoral education. While I appreciate your notes, Ali Ilhan made a different and valid point. This thread began with Ali's request for information on post-doctoral hiring patterns. That’s an interesting request, and it is quite reasonable given Ali’s interest in the sociology of professions, the design profession among them.
You responded with an equally interesting post on a related but different topic. You asked about the purpose of the PhD.
It seems to me that you misread Ali’s reply. Ali isn't saying that the doctoral education system is broken _because_ the majority of PhD graduates do not find jobs.
He is saying that the doctoral system is broken, simply broken. His argument is that the graduate education system today exhibits a range of problems. He discusses several of the many problems. The massive oversupply of graduated doctors in proportion to available jobs is only one problem among many.
In some places, large numbers of doctoral students are a benefit for current academic staff. Doctoral students provide jobs for doctoral supervisors. In other places, doctoral students provide positive cash flow to schools and universities.
Some universities no longer treat doctoral supervision as part of the teaching workload or the service workload in the former equation that used to propose “two days teaching, two days research, one day service.” Instead, to generate income and save money, doctoral supervision is treated as part of the supervisor’s own research. By moving PhD supervision out of teaching and service into research, those universities effectively get three or four days of teaching while forcing research into the evenings and weekends. For younger academics and people with families, this destroys their opportunity to do research or to publish.
But many of the worst results involve problems for PhD students who never develop the skill to create new knowledge. I know Ali well, and I know you well. You and Ali both agree on the importance of creating new knowledge through research as a unique part of PhD education. Ali is raising a different problem.
There is a significant relationship between the issues that Ali brought up and the points you raise. Ali’s comments do indeed suggest that “the purpose of doctoral education is socialization, i.e., educating certain people with certain socially useful values and skills.” He doesn’t suggest this as the ONLY purpose of doctoral education. It is one among several.
Socialisation is an important goal of all professional education: law, medicine, engineering, and research in the different disciplines. — and the PhD degree is part of the education for professional researchers.
One aspect of a good doctoral program is socialisation into research culture.
Among the socially useful values and skills that we expect PhD students to learn are skills in how to undertake research and the values associated with effective, ethical research.
One must be able to do research to create new knowledge.
Problematic or deficient doctoral programs do not help people learn how to create new knowledge. To create new knowledge, people must learn how to conduct responsible inquiry, how to ask questions and test the answers. They require a range of methodological skills and thinking skills to sort out valid, meaningful, or correct propositions from interesting hypotheses.
Many hypotheses are worth investigating. Most turn out to be mistakes, false starts, invalid propositions, incorrect propositions, or even meaningless propositions. Until we test or inquire, we can’t tell. Learning how to do this is among the skills one should gain in earning a PhD. This is how PhD students learn to ask fruitful questions and create new knowledge.
The other day, I posted an essay on mentoring researchers by physician and Nobel laureate Robert Lefkowitz. This appears in Lefkowitz’s (2021: 249-261) book on a life in research. Two things interest me about the essay. One is the fact that mentoring doctoral students and post-doctoral research fellows is a serious and engaging project, yet often playful. The other is that it presumes that PhD students and PhD graduates gain the range of skills that enable them to create the new knowledge you describe as the key feature of a doctoral degree. Without those skills, they cannot do the research leading to new knowledge. Mentoring — like good doctoral supervision — involves socialisation into research culture.
I agree with you when you write that the “unique feature of PhD education — creating new knowledge — is valuable in itself.” This requires the ability to create new knowledge. This is something different to and more than proposing bold hypotheses. This requires moving from hypotheses and untested ideas to ideas that one can show to be workable.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Visiting Professor | Faculty of Engineering | Lund University ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
Reference
Lefkowitz, Robert, M.D. with Randy Hall. 2021. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm. The Adrenaline-Fueled Adventures of an Accidental Scientist. New York: Pegasus Books.
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Luke Feast wrote:
—snip—
My apologies for not making myself clear. I interpreted your post as arguing that:
If some PhD graduates are not hired as professors. Then, doctoral education is broken.
As I see it, this argument assumes that the purpose of doctoral education is socialization, i.e., educating certain people with certain socially useful values and skills.
In my post, I was trying to offer a different perspective on the purpose of the PhD qua education. I was trying to suggest that the unique feature of PhD education—creating new knowledge—is valuable in itself.
—snip—
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