There seems to be a fair amount of agreement that a PhD is a research degree and that a PhD should be granted as the result of a contribution to knowledge and that the contribution needs to be explained in a manner. The pressure to grant a PhD for other than research/analytical contribution to knowledge seems to be attributable to ignorance or jealousy. I'm wondering about another explanation (or another source of ignorance.)
This is related to Fil's comments in favor of non-PhD, practice-based doctorates. Most people (at lest here in the US) believe that there are two kinds of doctors--people with MD degrees (AKA "real doctors") and those with PhD degrees. Most people will tell you about someone getting "an honorary PhD" when the honorary degree is almost invariably another sort of doctorate (usually one the university does not grant on a non-honorary basis. Stephen Colbert makes a big deal about having an honorary DFA. I don't think anyone in the US grants an earned DFA.)
Despite the fact that people at universities should know better, the same attitude is prevalent. The Master of Fine Arts is the terminal degree in graphic design practice. I get addressed as "Dr Swanson" by administrators and staff who are not part of the School of Art and Design. (That's not the practice in the School of Art and Design because it is dominated by people with MFA degrees. The art historians have PhD degrees and the art education people split between PhD and EdD degrees but studio artists have the power.) It is assumed by many that anyone with a tenured teaching position must have a PhD. It's very common that university teaching jobs require a PhD degree even though they are primarily teaching positions and in areas without a research concentration.
The PhD and other degrees are not generally seen as different; they are seen as unequal. In many (most?) universities (at least from what I've seen in the US), the people with PhD degrees are the "real" doctors. Even though an MFA is the terminal degree in a variety of practice fields, a PhD is the de facto requirement for administrative positions in most universities. It is also often the requirement for being taken seriously.
Lubomir has it right when he says " the whole issue with the Ph.D. in design stems from the award and promotion culture in academia." If the PhD is limited to being a research degree (I don't have a dog in that fight) then other degrees have to gain similar respect.
I heard a discussion on the radio a couple of days ago where an advocate for more science in psychology practice was objecting to PsyD degrees instead of the PhD. His claim was that psychologists need to be more scientific in their approaches and that the PhD teaches how to be scientists. But if the PhD teaches how to be a scientist and researcher and the PsyD spends the same time and effort on the practice of psychology, wouldn't the latter likely be better and more thorough training for a practitioner? I have no idea whether he was right about the comparative quality of PsychD and PhD degrees but his attitude was clearly that the PhD was "real" therefore whatever a PhD entailed was superior.
The School of Communication here at East Carolina University has several people hired to teach video production. They are filmmakers with MFA degrees. They figured out that getting tenured and promoted was going to be impossible. (Some communication research people suggested that they should each make several films a year and then write articles about them as a starting point, for example. Making a film is, from some comm faculty's perspective, a trivial aside.) They are in the process of moving their program to the School of Art and Design for various reasons including general compatibility issues.
If a university wants to teach filmmaking, it may make sense to have students spend some of their time with film researchers but I hope it goes without saying that they need to learn to make films from people who are good at making films (as opposed to people who are good at conducting film-related research.) The attitude toward degrees and worthwhile activities of the School of Communication at ECU is not unlike the attitude of many universities as a whole.
It does not surprise me that some people see it as an easier project to broaden the definition of the PhD than to broaden entrenched assumptions that include the PhD being the only "real" professorial degree.
Gunnar
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