Dear Gunnar,

You are right that a person who is not a good designer cannot teach design. I mentioned before that in many cases the doctoral training "disables" designers. I referred to a case when the research training was practically speaking in the area of chemistry and material science.

The problem is in the rigidity of the academic system, in the rigidity in understanding the nature and purpose of doctoral education/training, and the rigid superimposition of criteria from irrelevant fields.

Design professors should be selected on the bases of their design potential. Then they should be put to work on their doctorates. I would suggest mostly in the area of theory, philosophy, and criticism of design. Of course, selected institutions should develop research and training centers in the other areas, like structures and function with the purpose to make advances in all areas that in the long run contribute to design-related knowledge. My proposal is a bit mechanistic right now due to time constraints. But this is a general idea. It is actually implemented for a long time in some cultures and works very well. In this way you can get excellent designers to replicate themselves in the next generation, and you can teach these excellent designers how to reflect, theorize, explicate, and teach their way of thinking to other designers. Teaching by showing is normal; teaching by explaining the way of thinking is the next step forward. 

I sincerely empathize with all good designers who are reluctant to put some time for theoretical training. I also mentioned before that all (well, may be many?) good designers (I cited architects) are also good theorists by the standards of their fields and actually, they are the leading theorists regarding design action theory and design thinking. They create the new aesthetic systems, the new methods of designing, and the new substantive theories. Philosophers of art theorize in a very different way and their theories are interpretative rather than pro-active. Of course, here we get into the conundrum of what is a theory, theory types, standards and criteria, and so on.

An excellent designer with superimposed doctoral training can be a real treasure. It is a pity that so many good designers do not actualize themselves to their full potential both as designers and as professors just because they hate that bookish staff. It is high time that design academia rethink their way of creating new professors. 

The Doctor of Design concept might be closest to this idea. Harvard University Graduate School of Design is working that way, providing some post-professional design training and some research training. The research training is more for developing design thinking sophistication and reflection rather than learning statistics and experimental research designs.

I also want to caution that every proposal has thousands of exceptions. Their be those great designers that will move forward both design and design education without wishing to make a dissertation. That is no problem as long as they make a real change. My problem is when pretty average designers want to sell themselves as design gurus just because they are good job captains. Then the academia starts replicating vocational patterns.

Best wishes,

Lubomir


-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Swanson, Gunnar
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2009 11:46 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: the politics of PhDs in the university; was: What constitutes a PhD ?

Slightly OT but related:

Ken Friedman tells us that the PhD is "a degree that serves as a license to teach research skills and methods - and a degree that has become the de factor license to supervise research students." Many of us who supervise Master of Fine Arts students are acutely aware that, at least in the United States, the MFA is a degree that serves as a license to teach the MFA's subject matter at the university level. How does the de facto license to teach fit into this?

Here in the US at least, students come to a university to study, say, graphic design with the well-founded belief that they will learn to become graphic designers. It is my assumption (based both on direct observation and reasoning based on direct observation) that much of graphic design is best taught by someone who is a much better (by several definitions) graphic designer than the students should be expected to be by the time they get a degree.

Admittedly, my definition would, in my judgment, disqualify a significant portion of those presently teaching graphic design in the US but it is hard to imagine that we could ever get a substantial corps of qualified teachers of design who are also qualified teachers of research. (I teach with Kate LaMere who is one of the handful of Americans with a PhD in design and the design background that might fit both standards. I don't know how many there are but I am willing to bet big money that it's a single digit number and I suspect that it's a small single digit number.)

The obvious retort is "So what? Just have people do whatever job they are actually qualified to do" but that doesn't seem to match the realities "on the ground." Several states in the US have laws that faculty of their public universities possess the highest degrees in their field. Even though the College Art Association insists that the MFA is the terminal degree for studio practice, in university practice the MFA gets lumped in with MA and MS degrees more often than with the PhD or other doctorates. The idea that someone with a masters in design has a "higher" degree in the subject than someone with a doctorate in design is a tough sell.

Ken and Robert disagreed on why "art and design research are 'ridiculed, by traditional university subjects'" but the questions may be more complicated than they seem. 

First, Ken is clearly right. A lot of what is claimed as "research" in art and design is sadly lacking. Even though the same can be said of many fields, it is a problem for teaching and practice as well as for research and status within the university. I'd go farther; in many universities, the phrase is "research and creative activities." I believe that much (most?) of what gets counted under "and creative activities" does not parallel activity that would be particularly worthy as research.

Although I believe that design practice and design research would both benefit from a marriage, I admit to being somewhat nervous by the assumption that PhD or PhD-like research is or should be at the heart of all university studies.

I'll leave it at that for now since I am not prepared to offer even a semblance of a clear path to a solution. Non-PhD doctorates seem to be one possibility but all of the design doctoral programs I'm aware of in the US are PhD programs and there is no political pressure for a DFA or DDes or such.

Gunnar
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