Day 17/183: Oh, piss OFF, you exceedingly privileged tosspot

[nanila]

I'm not usually a fan of the articles contributed by members of the academic community to the esteemed publication Nature, but this one really pissed me off.

"Design your own doctoral project" by Jesko Becker.

I warn you, take a deep breath and brace yourself for an onslaught of unabashed, tone-deaf horseshit if you decide to click that link. Reading it made me want to scream. A lot. Because so very few people in the world are in a position to spend months or years, as this author clearly did, doing a vast amount of unpaid labour in order to cook up a doctoral project and then chasing funding for it. You have to already be nicely sorted out for that. This aspirational bullshit is exactly the kind of thing that puts off less privileged members of the academic community (which, M. Becker, is 99.999999% of them) from pursuing doctoral work in the first place, or makes them feel like failures when they can't complete it. Doctoral work is already very badly paid, and even if you are lucky enough to land a funded position, the funding is almost always insufficient to cover the actual duration of projects. Nearly everyone with a PhD that I have ever met in the UK worked at least a couple of months on their doctoral theses without pay. It is an absolutely shite system and it is not to be encouraged. So don't go telling people, "You don't need funding, just follow your dreaaaaams!" People have to pay rent. They have to eat. Some of them have families to care for. They need money to do those things.

It doesn't just take "autonomy, determination and perseverance" to make an unfunded doctoral project happen. It takes MONEY, and not just money for the project. YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM, M. Becker. You are not the solution. Bugger Off.

Comments

[hilarita]

Yes yes yes.
It ignores the structural privilege of being in a field where you can spot an easy topic for a dissertation. And let's face it, one thing masters courses can do is give you a ton of ideas. He also got lucky in his project conception actually being approx 1 PhDsworth of work - not 0.5 or 2.
Often arts PhDs are more your own concept of a project, but your supervisor should be guiding your selection, and making sure that it's in an area that your department can support.
Also, I followed my dream. It left me in debt, and with a major mental illness. Following your dream isn't always the best thing for you to do.
Tosspot. Wanker.

[worlds_of_smoke]

fucking elitists.

[cmcmck]

I couldn't afford to carry on after MA- some of us needed to go out and earn a living!

[oursin]

Well, I sort of did that: however, I was in full-time employment, my topic was related to collections we held in the archives, it was, ahem, thirty years ago when scholarly libraries would actually pony up for staff members to do advanced degrees (and give me study time off), once I had designed my project. It was a different era. I would not go around blithely recommending it in today's climate.

[tree_and_leaf]

It's more do-able in the arts (I basically did), but you still need support from your supervisor (and a supervisor who can support it) - and, while what I did worked well for me in terms of what I'm doing now, I think if I'd been staying in academia, I'd have been better advised to have done something else. And I didn't know, going in, that I wouldn't want to pursue a career in academia. It worked out OK for me, but a lot of that was as much luck as anything else.

And it's terrible advice for the sciences.

[gwendraith]

I can't say I'm well genned up on the ins and outs of PhDs with not being an academic type, but I am very close to three people who have them. My elder son was privileged and got full funding for a work related PhD (artificial knees). My daughter-in-law secured part funding for a work related PhD and was also financially supported by Ben who was on a good salary by that time. My very close friend (like a third son to me) got part funding and supplemented his income by doing part time lecturing. It was definitely harder for him to manage financially than the other two (and his mental health suffered a little) but he's the cleverest person I've ever known and did a wonderful thesis on modern slavery which was widely acclaimed. For my part I proof read it - I wouldn't have the brains or self discipline required to get one of my own :)

[askygoneonfire]

Siiiiiiigh.

The worst, the very worst thing, about arts and hums PhDs (and many social sciences PhDs) is that you *have* to write your own proposal and design your own project. And to do this you have to work unsupported at putting a proposal together (I remember how annoyed and disadvantaged I felt at the funding interview day for my PhD when I discovered other candidates were completing MAs and had been heavily supported by faculty in writing their applications and proposals whilst I had written mine in the evenings after work, all alone, without access to an academic library) and magically find time and resources to do this.

Then, the first year of a arts/hums/socsci PhD is turning it into an appropriately sized project and finding out how you might do it. Anyone who manages to finish in 4 years is always exceptional. You're set up to fail - and you're almost entirely responsible for making it into a project that works rather than applying to work on something which has been evaluated and designed by someone who has the expertise to make it an achieveable prospect.

And this chump is a) writing like he invented this garbage idea because he's in science b) fails to recognise the myriad of crap that comes with it. ARGH

[marymac]

I have spent the last week dealing with REF special circumstances and the Welcome Research Culture Report and aaaaaagh PEOPE LIKE HIM ARE THE REASON I HAD TO READ ALL THIS DEPRESSING STUFF THE WEEK I CAME BACK TO WORK.

[purplecat]

Not directly relevant but...

Do people habitually overrun their PhD funding because of some aspect of human nature - by which I mean you know you have X months to produce a thesis and human nature just means that however large X is, it will take most people X+12 months? or is it actually extra difficult to do a PhD level project in 3 years and we should be habitually looking at 4 years' funding.

My instinct is that for any X between, I don't know, 24 and 1200 months the first is the answer and the problem is requiring people to single-handedly produce this substantial multi-year research project in a way they will never approach again right at the start of their career, rather than having some kind of sensible career structure which involves building up from junior roles in well-defined research projects to senior roles devising and running research projects (with, incidentally, no real need for some further qualification or, if we must have the extra qualification, then allowing submission by papers more universally). Not that I'm volunteering to completely rework the academic career structure from ground up according to what I think is sensible because I can't see any way that would work out well, even if someone would let me.

[fred_mouse]

I think it is human nature to under-estimate the work for a project where one is not familiar with the field (or even if one is). I've worked with quite a number of PhD students. The only one who came in under 3 years was the one doing their second PhD, having effectively finished one and moved on to the next. I have seen a few finish in 3.5 years, with an APA scholarship (3 years) plus a university top up (6 months, only for writing).

On the other hand, it also comes around to having a supervisor who knows how to set the appropriate sized project.

[purplecat]

There are obviously a lot of supervisor pitfalls, but I don't think its just that because the tendency to over-run is so universal.

I mean, I do genuinely believe the PhD thesis is a weird and pointless exercise that we force people to do in the name of training when they'll never have to do anything like it again. The fact that now we're experienced academics we'd all love to be given three years free time just to sink our teeth into a significant project doesn't actually excuse us inflicting it on people without the any experience. I'm not convinced though, that fiddling with the funding timescales would make that much difference to people's experience.

[fred_mouse]

Yes to all of this.

Actually, I think the change for good that I saw was 'thesis by publication' -- the students doing that seemed to get through faster on average. But that was in a very research intensive, easy to get results area, and I have no idea what it is like in other areas. Particularly for not science areas.

On a side note - projects would go faster if ethics wasn't the first hurdle some students have to get over. The ethics application on my abandoned PhD took around 8 months before I was allowed to touch the data, at which point it turned out not to be appropriate for the project (and my already poor enthusiasm ran away entirely)

[purplecat]

My husband has experimented with thesis by publication and found it works well for strong students, who can have 3 or 4 publications at the end of three years but weaker students often don't since they're still learning how to write academically.

Needing to go through ethics is a kind of new concept in CS and projects still (and have for decades) typically overrun by 6-12 months so I don't think its particularly the problem..

[fred_mouse]

Thesis by publication might also work better when there are options for discrete studies that can build.

And yes, I was letting myself get focused on the kind of research I'm familiar with, where ethics is a significant issue. I imaging the CS projects can easily over-run, with specification creep and a whole lot more happening.

[purplecat]

Yes, I think publication by papers is also tricky if a big fieldwork component is involved because although people can and do spin many publications off a good bit of fieldwork, the reality is that getting the data is going to 90% of your time in second year, and there is only so much writing you can do in third year.

[silveradept]

Mr. Becker does make it sound like his own setbacks were minor inconveniences at best, instead of the sort of thing that would sink a project right from the beginning. I had enough trouble and debt from collecting my Masters' so that I could work at the entry level of my preferred work, and I can't imagine what trying to do a doctorate on top of that would be like, while working in some manner to pay the bills that would definitely still be there, even if I was accepted as a doctoral candidate (and so some of those expenses would have been covered.)

I can't imagine shopping it around as long or as much as he did until someone decided it was a worthwhile thing to do.

[iridescent]

You know what - I'm going to save my energies and not click the link.
That is GROWTH right there.