Re: OT: Straw Poll - good or bad to put 'BSc' after your name

Kit <kitzyme@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1hfbkt6.4sv3wg1i4vzjoN%pashby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Peter
Ashby <pashby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Paul Russell <prussell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

pressures to pass students are real phenomena,
snip
In Science these days PhD students are simply
cheap labour, it isn't the universities' problem if they can't get jobs
after they finish.

IME as both a supervisor of PhD students and as an external examiner of
PhD students, the above statements are sadly very true. Thus there are
people getting PhDs now who would never have got them 20 years ago.
This is not necessarily because the student hasn't got the potential
(though that is sometimes the case) but because the training is often
less rigorous (usually because they are treated more like a technician)
and there is a much greater reluctance to fail an inadequate candidate.


If a PhD student in your fails then you are less likely to get funding
for PhD students in future. I've even known a supervisor in effect to
write the thesis for the student not only because the supervisor didn't
want it on her 'record' that her student had failed but also because
she felt guilty at using the student as a cheap technician rather than
training him properly.

On another occasion as an external examiner I failed someone for both a
terrible thesis and a total lack of basic knowledge of the subject.
The supervisor and internal examiner tried to pressure me into allowing
a pass because the student's father had died while he was writing up
the thesis. It was also clear to me that the supervisor had used his
student just as a technician and not even discussed with him why he was
doing the experiments.

Eventually we agreed to allow the student 12 months to re-write the
thesis and, trying to be helpful, I spent several hours compiling a
6-page detailed list of what needed to be done to make the thesis
acceptable. Twelve months later the student resubmitted a thesis that
was hardly changed. My suggestions had been totally ignored. Frankly,
I was apalled that his supervisor had allowed him to resubmit it.

Furthermore, the student clearly didn't care because at the start of
the oral exam he asked if we could get it over quickly as he was going
to spend the weekend with friends in Wales. Despite considerable
pressure I failed him again. Possibly a less strong-willed external
might have bowed to the pressure and allowed him through.

Obviously, I can only speak from my own experience, but there is no
doubt in my mind that the PhD degree in England has been debased over
the last 20 years.

Having watched PhD students progress in my time since I gained my PhD
(in New Zealand BTW) I have seen and heard of similar occurrences. The
sanctions on a supervisor for a failed candidate can be quite onerous
indeed. These are intended firstly to give incentive for a proper
project, properly supervised but also for the supervisor not to allow
the candidate to submit if the thesis is not up to scratch. However in
the age of the cheap pair of hands, the desire to simply get the work
done often takes precedence.

Another situation is where a technician has pressured the boss into
allowing them to enroll for a PhD as they are bored. Such people should
be strongly councelled that such a course will often prejudice their
future employment prospects. I've seen it happen, good technician gets
PhD does one postdoc and then 'phut'! when they could have continued as
a technician for a long time.

It has also been my impression that a PhD can be gained from remarkably
few experiments and very little progress. IMHO this could all be stopped
by insisting that to gain a PhD at least one paper containing a majority
of the work should be accepted in a peer reviewed journal. Not as the
Scandinavians do it with journals just full of PhD work but in genuine
journals. But then this would exclude many of the projects put forward
for PhD work these days so it won't happen.

Peter

--
Add my middle initial to email me. It has become attached to a country
.

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