“I co-supervise a student, who surprised us at lunchtime last week by saying: ‘I just don’t care anymore. What ever changes you suggest, I’ll do. I want this thing out of my life”’. Whenever I hear this sentiment I am relieved because I know the student has reached an important stage in the PhD process: Detachment …” (more)
[HT: Eoin O'Dell]
[The Thesis Whisperer, 17 May]
“A few years ago, when I was still teaching at Yale, I was approached by a student who was interested in going to graduate school. She had her eye on Columbia; did I know someone there she could talk with? I did, an old professor of mine. But when I wrote to arrange the introduction, he refused to even meet with her. ”I won’t talk to students about graduate school anymore,” he explained. “Going to grad school’s a suicide mission’ …” (more)
[HT: Stephen Schwartz]
[William Deresiewicz, The Nation, 4 May]
“More than 10 years ago the government recognised the need to invest in high-quality research as a key driver for economic and social development. The universities argued successfully to be the main location for State investment in RD as opposed to establishing independent research institutes …” (more)
[Conor O'Carroll, Irish Times, 28 April]
“The system of PhD education in the United States and many other countries is broken and unsustainable, and needs to be reconceived. In many fields, it creates only a cruel fantasy of future employment that promotes the self-interest of faculty members at the expense of students …” (more)
[Mark Taylor, Nature News, 20 April]
“Even though I haven’t been working on this PhD overly long (only since the 1st of October 2010) I have already started writing one of my chapters. It probably will not be the first one, since I am the kind of researcher that does things out of order and always ends up with an end product looking very different in structure from what I had in mind …” (more)
[A Trinity Tale, 4 April]
“It’s safe to say I have definitely entered another level of commitment to my PhD. It’s becoming an obsession. I find myself getting up early, not exactly the very early ‘substanceless blue’ pre-dawn in which Plath wrote many of her ‘Ariel’ poems, but around 7 / 8am I will pour my first cup of tea and settle down to my humming laptop in the early morning silence …” (more)
[The Plath Diaries, 16 March]
“Should you ever choose to live in Germany, you will sooner or later come across a person on whose business card you will see that they are ‘Dr Dr’ something or other. It is not even that rare a phenomenon …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 11 March]
“Apologies for my bloggy-absence, I suppose it’s fair to say I’ve been having a few down days in relation to the PhD. These feelings are, of course, the nature of the beast. If you google ‘PhD and loneliness’, hundreds of news articles, blogs and the like appear …” (more)
[The Plath Diaries, 9 March]
“Increasing the number of graduates with doctoral degrees has been a key element of State policy in the past few years. Does it matter whether we are producing a lot of PhDs? Many have argued no …” (more)
[Karlin Lillington, Irish Times, 4 February]
“Releasing the results of a survey of PhD students, Alan Kelly, reveals that the majority of PhD students will stay in the education cycle rather than contribute to the so-called ‘Knowledge economy’ …” (more)
[Alan Kelly, Labour Party Blog, 31 January]
“Well now, there’s The Economist with this year’s ‘Doctorates are a Waste of Time’ article. This piece falls in line with 2009’s New York Times article about the awful academic job market, helpfully illustrated with photos of glum-looking PhDs who either can’t find a job or settled for an academic job – the horror! – in the Deep South …” (more)
[Daniel J Ennis, Inside Higher Ed, 24 January]
“Well, I had my viva on Monday and thankfully was passed! I am so relieved to have it over, one of the major challenges of PhD life so far for me, has been self motivation. I have been trying to cram as much as I can into my days but worry that it isn’t enough …” (more)
[The Plath Diaries, 21 January]
“On the evening before All Saints’ Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis was simply a position one wanted to argue …” (more)
[HT: Shane O'Mara]
[Economist, 16 December]
“It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that for those considering PhD study in Ireland in social science or in areas such as neuroscience that these will be the only show in town for the next few years …” (more)
[Liam Delaney, Geary Behavioural Economics Blog, 21 December]
“… University structures dedicated to doctoral education should be developing ways that strengthen the research environment rather than simply creating more taught courses for doctoral candidates, the European Association of Universities (EUA) warned this week …” (more)
[O’Malley and Dobie, University World News, 24 October]
“… In terms of Professionalising the PhD, what I have learned so far is that UK and Irish Universities expect a lot more from their students than just the qualification. It is really important – and I think this is something vital to take into consideration if you are thinking about doing a PhD – for the Universities to train their students in research methods, teaching and other skills like communication, computer literacy, organisation. In my opinion, training students up with these kinds of qualifications can only be beneficial in the grand scheme of things …” (more)
[The Plath Diaries, 4 October]
“PhD students are competing for fewer and fewer jobs, and one professor believes the academic marketplace is turning into a Ponzi scheme …” (more)
[HT: Declan Jordan]
[Public Radio International, 1 September]
“They walk into my office every spring, dressed in new suits (the men) or dressy pantsuits (the women). They are prospective graduate students, and they’re nervous. We engage in a few pleasantries, and then I ask them what they want to do with their PhDs. They all reply that they want a tenure-track job at a research university. I then ask them what they know of the academic job market in my discipline (social psychology) …” (more)
[Monica J Harris, Inside Higher Ed, 18 August]
“… One of the hugest problems with taking an Arts subject to degree level is that the qualification leaves you qualified for everything and nothing. The spectrum is so wide, it’s almost intimidating. I have spent many nights since 2007, sitting up wracking my brains, asking myself ‘where did it all go wrong’-type questions before I relaxed and realised that going back to University was the career path I wanted to take …” (more)
[The Plath Diaries, 25 July]
“… We need to rethink PhD training. As tenure disappears and PhD enrollments continue to rise, we have to accept the fact that PhD candidates need to be trained to work outside of academia and that our knowledge-based economy needs PhD-trained knowledge workers in all sectors – not just in higher ed. What should this include? …” (more)
[Mary Churchill, Inside Higher Ed, 25 July]
