2006 July 7

Summary 3: The PhD Degree

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Friends,

Our second week examined the issue of the PhD. These 1,500 words will
review several key issues.

1) Purposes of the PhD

The PhD degree has several purposes. Several of these purposes
distinguish the PhD from other kinds of degrees.

The PhD is a research degree and a license for those who practice and
teach research.

The special role of the PhD as a teaching license determines several
aspects of the criteria for a PhD. This license covers several kinds of
teaching. First, it establishes the expertise of the graduated doctor to
teach the content of a specific subject field. Second, it establishes
the expertise of the graduated doctor to teach the research methods of
that field. Third, it establishes the ability of the graduated doctor to
conduct independent research. Fourth, it establishes the ability of the
graduated doctor to supervise research and train researchers.

Each of these key purposes determines central criteria for the PhD.
Other aspects of any specific PhD program may entail other criteria. A
summary does not permit a full discussion of the PhD. The relevant
issues are those that affect the PhD in relation to practice-led
research.

2) A special aspect of the PhD

The role of the PhD as a license to teach research methods and train
research students establishes criteria for the PhD that may serve no
purpose in any other research project. We must demonstrate skills to
earn a PhD that we may never use again in our own research. We require
these skills for our future students.

I once spent two weeks with a master chef who prepared magnificent
meals for a conference while he ate tuna sandwiches. I asked him why. He
told me that cooking was an art form for him, but he did not want to eat
food after working with it all day. He tasted most recipes twice; first,
when another chef taught him to cook it so that he would know how it
should taste; second, when he prepared it to make sure that it tasted
the same way. He had the equivalent of a photographic memory for tastes,
so tasting became a tool in his work. While he only ate tuna sandwiches
for the two weeks that I watched him cook, the “twice only, never
again” principles may have been a slight exaggeration. However, the
principle was clear.

Some of the skills we learn to earn a PhD are like the recipes in my
friend’s repertoire. We master them so that we can cook with them for
our students. We may never eat them again ourselves.

The point for us is clear. If we cannot work with these skills, we are
not properly prepared to teach research methods or to train research
students. As research teachers and supervisors, our own research needs
comes second to the needs our students have.

As long as the PhD is a license to teach and supervise, the PhD has
specific criteria that may affect no other research we ever do.

3) Criteria for the PhD

These conditions establish the criteria for earning a PhD. Since a PhD
is a research degree, the candidate must demonstrate that he or she is
prepared to undertake and complete unsupervised research by
demonstrating the ability to make an original contribution to the
knowledge of the field.

Because the PhD is a license to teach and supervise research, the
candidate must demonstrate research skills that will eventually qualify
her or him to teach research methods and research methodology before
moving on to teach and supervise research students.

This entails many skills. Gordon Rugg and Marian Petre (2004: 6-7)
offer a useful partial list of skills in their excellent book on earning
a PhD: [Use of academic language] “correct use of technical terms;
attention to detail in punctuation, grammar, etc.; attention to use of
typographic design … to make the text accessible; ability to structure
and convey a clear and coherent argument, including attention to the use
of ‘signposting’ devices such as headings to make the structure
accessible; writing in a suitable academic ‘voice’; [Knowledge of
background literature] seminal texts correctly cited, with evidence that
you have read them and evaluated them critically; references accurate
reflecting the growth of the literature from the seminal texts to the
present day; identification of key recent texts on which your own PhD is
based, showing both how these contribute to your thesis and how your
thesis is different from them; relevant texts and concepts from other
disciplines cited; organization of all of the cited literature into a
coherent, critical structure, showing both that you can make sense of
the literature – identifying conceptual relationships and themes,
recognizing gaps – and that you understand what is important;
[Research methods] knowledge of the main research methods used in your
discipline, including data collection, record keeping, and data
analysis; knowledge of what constitutes ‘evidence’ in your
disciplines, and of what is acceptable as a knowledge claim; detailed
knowledge – and competent application of – at least one method;
critical analysis of one of the standard methods in your discipline
showing that you understand both its strengths and its limitations;
[Theory] understanding of key theoretical strands and theoretical
concepts in your discipline; understanding how theory shapes your
research question; ability to contribute something useful to the
theoretical debate in your area; [Miscellaneous] ability to do all the
above yourself, rather than simply doing what your supervisor tells you;
awareness of where your work fits in relation to the discipline, and
what it contributes to the discipline; mature overview of the
discipline.”

If a candidate cannot demonstrate most of these skills, he or she
cannot teach and supervise research students. It is likely that he or
she cannot conduct research without these skills.

Therefore, demonstrating these skills establishes the basis for
awarding or denying the PhD.

4) A useful proposition

Donna Carty’s excellent summary offers a wonderful idea that more of
us should use in supervising. The nature of the PhD as a license
requires the candidate to demonstrate solid skills – Rugg and Petre
compare these to carpentry and cabinet making. That generally entails a
standard, grind-it-out project. There is more to research, however, and
the interesting idea is encouraging students to pursue a high-potential
and possible high-risk personal research project at the same time.

This proposal also clarifies the distinction between the wide latitude
available to us when we choose our own research with full freedom, and
the necessary qualities and skill we must demonstrate to pass our
licensing exam.

5) A problematic proposition

While no one was willing to challenge the criteria I propose, one note
suggested that these criteria are matters of personal preference and
taste rather than common standards across most fields.

When I asked for specific substitute criteria, there was no reply.
Instead, a post to a parallel thread suggested that normative technical
research skills or formal criteria are irrelevant if one can
nevertheless persuade an institution to award the PhD.

This argument proposes political and pragmatic grounds for degree
awards. Here, I use the term pragmatic in a narrow sense rather than
using it as Dewey or Peirce might. This sense of pragmatism seems to
argue that a PhD award is little more than a negotiated outcome. In
effect, [the argument is that] negotiating a PhD from an institution
that has the right to award one is, in itself, a reasonable criterion.

This criterion renders [awarding] the PhD something like awarding the
rights to an oil field or unclaimed farmland. The qualities do not rest
in the demonstrated work that earns the degree. The quality of the PhD
rests in the political right to grant the degree. This raises a second
political question. The authorization that gives an institution the
right to award a PhD is a public good. It reflects the claims and goals
of any given society acting through the educational system and a
national structure of rules and standards governing legitimate degree
awards. If there are no stated standards based on common criteria, then
a PhD would soon have no legitimate transferable value.

The failure to establish common values would effectively mean that the
PhD itself has no consistent meaning. That is odd, since only a
consistent meaning makes the degree valuable. I presume most candidates
want a PhD precisely because it has a widely recognized legitimate
meaning. As a criterion, therefore, politics begs the question.

6) PhD research is a specific subset of all research

PhD research involves a subset of all possible kinds of research. It is
a subset because the PhD serves to train researchers in the skills they
will use in independent research. It is specific because it entails
demonstrating skills that graduated doctors will need in teaching,
supervising, and training the next generation of researchers.

Best regards,

Ken

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

Swinburne Design 
Swinburne University of Technology 
Melbourne, Australia 

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Reference

Rugg, Gordon, and Marian Petre. 2004. The Unwritten Rules of PhD
Research. Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press.