The idea of industrializing PhD studies came to me when I was attending a seminar recently.
A bit about the seminar before I discuss the idea ... I attended a seminar on pursuing a PhD and a career in research at a university in Kuala Lumpur over the weekend. I was there since my friend was speaking. Experienced researchers with PhD's were speaking to undergrad and post-grad students on the pluses and pains of doing a PhD. They spoke about their PhD experience. There were both profundities and comic relief - with repeat references to phdcomics.com. What the experienced researchers said was ...
1) Be sure you want to do a PhD - a lot of people start off because prefixing their name with "Dr" is so cool. But along the way they realize that it is a lot of hard work. You have to have an enduring passion for the subject and for doing research. You should also have a good graduate education in a related field - doing your PhD in Shakespeare studies after finishing your Masters in Physics is not a good idea. PhD graduation rates are very low.
2) A PhD neither guarantees a job nor a higher pay. In fact, quite the opposite. Most employers may find you overqualified. Several Ivy League universities are unable to find jobs for a majority of their PhD students.
3) It usually takes 7 years to do a PhD. During the time, be in touch with family, make friends, have an active social life and have intellectual peers which will ensure there is no intellectual or social loneliness.
4) The stages are - define the problem, do literature survey, collect, analyze, postulate, write the thesis, defend and graduate.
5) While it is a lot of hard work, frustration and loneliness, when you graduate and become a Dr it feels well worth it.
Which made me ask the question ..."Why cannot PhD research be industrialized? Why put people through loneliness and hardship? Why make them do research in an area that they randomly choose? Why waste time and effort in doing research that no one wants or cares about?
My wisdom on this; from bridges to cars to clothes we have progressed as a civilization because we have industrialized our crafts. Where one expert craftsman was doing most things on on his/her own, along came someone and said - "if we ask potential customers what they want, then have a team to do work with some guys coordinating work and bring in tools we can do things better, faster, cheaper. And no more lonely craftsmen toiling away alone". Yes, the master craftsman is wistful of a bygone era where she could define the problem, design the solution, build it and feel good about it. But society benefits from industrialization because time, money and effort is channelled to solve problems that affect large numbers of people.
By the same token, why not industrialize the PhD study. For instance, make universities set up portals where people from all walks of life state what problems they want the university to solve. These problems are picked up by the university and allotted to groups of PhD students who work in teams. The univ supports them by assigning people to do administrative and clerical tasks so the PhD students focus on research and problem solving. This way we could graduate PhDs in a shorter time, they will not feel lonely since they work as a team, the clerical support ensures they do not have to contend with word processing and they produce something that the world is waiting for.
What do you think?
A bit about the seminar before I discuss the idea ... I attended a seminar on pursuing a PhD and a career in research at a university in Kuala Lumpur over the weekend. I was there since my friend was speaking. Experienced researchers with PhD's were speaking to undergrad and post-grad students on the pluses and pains of doing a PhD. They spoke about their PhD experience. There were both profundities and comic relief - with repeat references to phdcomics.com. What the experienced researchers said was ...
1) Be sure you want to do a PhD - a lot of people start off because prefixing their name with "Dr" is so cool. But along the way they realize that it is a lot of hard work. You have to have an enduring passion for the subject and for doing research. You should also have a good graduate education in a related field - doing your PhD in Shakespeare studies after finishing your Masters in Physics is not a good idea. PhD graduation rates are very low.
2) A PhD neither guarantees a job nor a higher pay. In fact, quite the opposite. Most employers may find you overqualified. Several Ivy League universities are unable to find jobs for a majority of their PhD students.
3) It usually takes 7 years to do a PhD. During the time, be in touch with family, make friends, have an active social life and have intellectual peers which will ensure there is no intellectual or social loneliness.
4) The stages are - define the problem, do literature survey, collect, analyze, postulate, write the thesis, defend and graduate.
5) While it is a lot of hard work, frustration and loneliness, when you graduate and become a Dr it feels well worth it.
Which made me ask the question ..."Why cannot PhD research be industrialized? Why put people through loneliness and hardship? Why make them do research in an area that they randomly choose? Why waste time and effort in doing research that no one wants or cares about?
My wisdom on this; from bridges to cars to clothes we have progressed as a civilization because we have industrialized our crafts. Where one expert craftsman was doing most things on on his/her own, along came someone and said - "if we ask potential customers what they want, then have a team to do work with some guys coordinating work and bring in tools we can do things better, faster, cheaper. And no more lonely craftsmen toiling away alone". Yes, the master craftsman is wistful of a bygone era where she could define the problem, design the solution, build it and feel good about it. But society benefits from industrialization because time, money and effort is channelled to solve problems that affect large numbers of people.
By the same token, why not industrialize the PhD study. For instance, make universities set up portals where people from all walks of life state what problems they want the university to solve. These problems are picked up by the university and allotted to groups of PhD students who work in teams. The univ supports them by assigning people to do administrative and clerical tasks so the PhD students focus on research and problem solving. This way we could graduate PhDs in a shorter time, they will not feel lonely since they work as a team, the clerical support ensures they do not have to contend with word processing and they produce something that the world is waiting for.
What do you think?
Interesting!! I totally agree with all the five or six points that PhDs made during the seminar. However, I do not think PHD process can be industrialized. There are a set of tools/techniques or in other words BoK that a PhD student has to gain before working on a problem and as correctly mentioned by some of the Dr.s' you work on a problem that excites you. In the Information systems academics,there is an ongoing debate about the rigor vs. relevance of research. And although, I do agree that having a pool of problems from the industry will contribute to the relevance of the research output, rigor is also important. Just my two cents..
ReplyDeleteA PhD student
Can we create another Mozart? Can we create a new Picasso? Can we create one more Pele? Answer is No. Anyway, these are arts. Lets move to something more ordinary, Can we create the most talented Surgeon? Can we create the best Manager? Can we create Google? Can we create Microsoft? The answer is again NO. Most of the things of very good quality cannot be industrialized or done in a mechanical way.
ReplyDeleteThere are PhDs which are done in a mechanical way, but they are not worth.
A good PhD is not about getting degree at the end of N years. There is something more. First year is just about getting into the groove; then there are ups and downs; sometimes nothing good for 6 months, sometimes 3-4 papers in one year. It is the whole process which makes a PhD. End doesn't justifies the mean is very appropriate here :)
Research is similar to art, and at least I feel that a good PhD cannot be industrialized.
In the US, one part of the PhD is fairly industrialized. This is the coursework which may last between a year or two. At this time the focus is on equipping oneself with the requisite research skills in an efficient manner. Once this stage is over, the objective is not about efficiency at all, and there I think the value of industrialization ends. Once you have crossed this threshold, in your automobile industry analogy, you move from the assembly line to making custom cars which possibly rely on the skills and tastes of master craftsmen. In the academic world, the PhD candidate now carves his little piece in the world doing something that matters greatly to her. Sure having a set of burning problems that the 'industry' cares about today is only one starting point. The PageRank was not a solution to an industry problem.
ReplyDeleteMany schools offer a DBA or a professional PhD. The value offering of a DBA makes a lot of sense to a different set of people. People who generally are torn by a real-world industry problem that usually they have been pained by. The process then is a little more routinized to help them solve this particular problem with sufficient rigor. It is foreseeable that the DBA can be industrialized, with a set of "best practices" surrounding efficient coursework, rapid idea generation, appropriate levels of analysis, contextual robustness checks and done! But the more traditional PhD process, the objective of which is innovation rather than automation, my creativity limits the potential for industrialization
Kiron
To assent to the idea that we can /should industrialize the phd study process is like saying that if we get more mid-wivies a pregnant woman can deliver the child faster and without hardships!
ReplyDeleteThe point is that there are certain processes like child birth, and in the case of phd program, one's intellectual growth, are such that it inhibits any and all forms of industrialization.
the points you mentioned for doing a Phd is worth a thought. But doing Phd has to be original effort,individual interest and real data analysis. As you rightly said ,one has to be passionate about the subject.Phd in mass production is not the right approach.let the master craftsmen prosper and be dirrentiated from mass produced products. there are certain things which should be done for their essence not for money or job prospects.
ReplyDeleteMohan, I will speak for business management PhDs. Working alone is a not a problem. I think the drop out rate is high because after joining the program many people realize (or the department realizes) that they are not cut out for research. Usually it is the lack of conceptualization of interesting research problems that gets people fired.
ReplyDeleteBtw I disagree with the speaker's point about money. Our salaries in academia are good. Check, for example, marketing PhD's salaries here http://www.docsig.org/
You will see several "Who Went Where" surveys as you scroll down.
Leave the mind unfettered - and let the researchers do what they believe is an area that requires further probing/finding. What was it that Ford was supposed to have said? "If I ask people what they want, they'd want a faster horse"
ReplyDeleteWhat you might want, to me, sounds like process optimization - i.e. if you let them free to decide the problem area, then it is entirely possible to figure out ways to make the process more efficient so a PhD student spends less time doing non-value activities and more time focusing on the problem. I agree with you in that I don't believe in 'pain for the sake of it' - but I see the two as separate issues.