Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, or Ph.D. (an abbreviation for the Latin "Philosophiæ Doctor"; or alternatively Doctor philosophiæ, D.Phil.), was originally a degree granted by a university to learned individuals who had achieved the approval of their peers and who had demonstrated a long and productive career in the field of philosophy. The appellation of "Doctor" (from Latin: teacher) was usually awarded only when the individual was in middle age. It indicated a life dedicated to learning, to knowledge, and to the spread of knowledge.

The degree was popularized in the 19th century at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin as a degree to be granted to someone who had undertaken original research in the sciences or humanities. From here it spread to the U.S., arriving at Yale University in 1861, and then to the UK in 1921. This displaced the existing Doctor of Philosophy degree in some Universities; for instance, the D.Phil. (higher doctorate in the faculty of philosophy) at the University of St Andrews was discontinued and replaced with the Ph.D. (research doctorate). However, some UK universities such as Oxford, York and Sussex retain the D.Phil. appellation for their research degrees, as does the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

Some ability to carry out original research must be documented by producing a dissertation or thesis, often of substantial length. The degree is often a prerequisite for permanent employment as a university lecturer or as a researcher in some sciences, though this varies on a regional basis. In others such as engineering or geology, a doctoral degree is considered desirable but not essential for employment. In a small but growing number of fields, the doctorate is felt to injure employment prospects by causing 'overqualification' for the job.

Time

The successful completion of a doctoral program typically takes 3 to 7.5 years depending upon the specific field of study, prior experience and/or training, and the progress made by the doctoral candidate in his or her studies. In some fields, such as some specific branches of physics, a doctoral degree is practically essential for employment. In some sciences, a newly-graduated doctoral student is unlikely to find work as a tenure-track professor and must undertake one or a series of postdoctorate positions.

In the British-patterned universities, the Ph.D. program is much shorter because the coursework component is assigned to the masters' and bachelors' degrees, and the Ph.D. course is concerned purely with research for a dissertation. The target time is nominally three years, but some students finish earlier, and many take a few years longer. The actual time depends strongly on the discipline being studied.

Because most British-style bachelors' degrees are much more specialized than in the North American liberal arts system, courses in the fourth-year level, and often at the third-year level, are comparable to those required of graduate students in North America. For this reason, the bachelors' degree, if conferred with a high level of 'honours' (i.e. excellent grades), can allow admission to a Ph.D. program without having to first write a masters' thesis. This route is only possible if the university offers an 'honours year' in the field of study, though this is becoming increasingly common due to the greater funding that universities receive for enrolling doctoral students. In the past, it was more usual to register for a masters' degree which included a year of advanced coursework and a year or two of original research culminating in a short thesis. Registration for a Ph.D. course required the masters' degree to be conferred with sufficiently high honours, and thus a British-style masters' degree is comparable to coursework and oral examinations in North America. The upshot of this system is that, though the Ph.D. course is shorter in the British-style universities (often as little as three years), the time required to obtain a Ph.D. from first matriculation is approximately the same.

Assessment

The doctoral candidate's progress is usually overseen by a thesis advisor, or supervisor, who chairs a thesis committee that supervises the doctoral candidate. In the U.S., doctoral programs typically require a series of required and optional courses at the beginning of the program, but education in the latter portion of the program tends to consist of informal discussions with the thesis advisor and individual research by the student. Many U.S. and Canadian universities separate the program into two portions (doctoral student and doctoral candidate) with a required pre-doctoral examination before allowing a student to be formally admitted to the doctoral program. Alternatively, a student may be admitted to the program, but is still required to complete a comprehensive examination on his or her field before being admitted to candidacy, i.e. the dissertation-writing stage.

If a candidate completes all coursework up to but not including the final dissertation, he or she may use the informal All But Dissertation (ABD) status (United States) or receive a C.Phil. (United Kingdom).

Funding

The funding of students varies from field to field, and many American graduate students in the sciences and engineering work as teaching assistants or research assistants while they are doctoral students, or obtain grants from government research agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Many Ivy League and other well-endowed universities provide funding for the entire duration of the course, or for most of it.

In Australia, Ph.D. students are quite often offered a scholarship to study their Ph.D. The most common of these is the Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scholarship, which provides a living stipend to students of approximately AUD$19,000 a year (tax free). Most universities also offer a similar scholarship that matches the APA amount, but is funded by the university. In recent years, with the tightening of research funding in Australia, these scholarships have become increasingly harder to obtain.

In addition to the more common APA and University scholarships, Australian students also have other sources of funding in their Ph.D. These could include, but are not limited to, scholarships offered by schools, research centres and commercial enterprise. For the latter, the amount is determined between the university and the organisation, but is quite often set at the APA (Industry) rate, roughly AUD$10,000 more than the usual APA rate. Australian students are often also able to tutor undergraduate classes (much like a teaching assistant in the USA) to generate income.

Oral defense

In some countries, a Ph.D. candidate is required to present an oral defense of his or her thesis, known in the UK as a viva (short for viva voce, Latin for "by live voice") before a committee. In France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, and Switzerland, before a degree can be granted, the dissertation has to be defended in what is, using a medieval term, called a disputation: an expert in the field, often from another university, is appointed who will present the dissertation, subject it to a critical examination and discuss it with the author. In the context of the disputation, the critical examiner is termed the opponent, and the author of the dissertation the respondent. The dissertation has to be generally available in its final or at least in a preliminary published form a few weeks before the disputation, which is open to the public; after the opponent is finished, anyone present is allowed to ask critical questions (anyone who does is called an "opponent ex auditorio"—an opponent from the auditorium). The final grade is decided after the disputation in a meeting between the opponent and a grading committee of three or (sometimes) four people. In theory, also the points raised by oppenenti ex auditorio affect the grade. It has happened, that such opponent has caused the committee not to pass the respondent, although this would be extremely extraordinary nowadays.

In the United States a final oral defense before one's dissertation committee is required although it is rare that at this stage the thesis is not accepted. Nonetheless, there are typically several candidates per decade in each college of each major U.S. university who somehow do fail to defend successfully. Most who fail do not complete the process at a subsequent defense. It is a largely unwritten rule in the U.S. that unqualified candidates are eliminated during the coursework or dissertation research phases, and are never permitted to defend, hence the rarity of failing to pass the final defense in most cases. Minor edits are often (most times) required during the defense by committee members, and must be made prior to the final signing of the committee's recommendation paperwork by all committee members. At the end of the defense, the candidate is excused from the room, and the committee votes in secret whether to grant the degree. Upon successfully voting in the affirmative unanimously, the committee then calls the candidate back in to the room by addressing him or her using the honorific Dr. (with their last name) if successful, or Mr. or Ms. (with their last name) if unsuccessful. In some universities, the candidate is considered to become a Doctor of Philosophy at the instant that all committee members vote in the affirmative. In others, the degree must be conferred by the university corporation.

The rare case of not successfully defending is also true in the Netherlands, where the oral defense ("promotie") typically happens after the thesis has already been approved by examiners. The oral defense is ended after a preset amount of time by the University-appointed 'pedel' or custos who is in charge of the protocol and will end the defense with the words "Hora est!" (latin for it is time or the hour has come).

In contrast, examinations viva voce in British universities are by no means a rubber stamp. Whilst many (perhaps most) theses are passed with some minor corrections or revisions required by the examiners, very few are passed with no corrections whatsoever, and indeed a pass-without-correction is considered a particular honour. Moreover, it is not uncommon for British theses to be failed, as well — in which case, either major re-writes are required, followed by a new viva, or else the thesis may be awarded the lesser degree of M.Phil (Master of Philosophy) instead.

Comparative value

A Ph.D. does not confer commensurate advantage in every sphere. For example, many commercial organizations regard a professional Master's degree, such as an MBA, or professional designation, such as CPA, as the highest level of education that is desirable. Traditional views of the value of academic study in commerce are changing Template:Inote but scepticism about the commercial value of a Ph.D. prevails. Medical schools may offer research Ph.D. degrees in conjunction with their M.D. programs, although an M.D. by itself is all that is required to teach medicine.

Criticism

The Ph.D. is often the topic of scholarly debate and criticism, given its almost exclusive concern with research and publication to the alleged neglect of numerous other faculty responsibilities that include teaching, collegial evaluation, collective and individual curricular planning, etc. Solutions have met with varying degrees of success. In the 1960s, the prestigious Carnegie Foundation helped promote and establish the Doctor of Arts degree as an alternative to the Ph.D. The D.A. degree, with its focus on content specialty, curriculum design, and pedagogy, was designed to help prepare expert teachers in various fields. Its well-defined disciplinary focus makes it different from the Ed.D. (Doctor of Education) while still embracing the Ed.D.'s concern for issues in education. The D.A. continues to be offered in many universities across the United States and in other countries, though a few D.A. programs have since been converted to the Ph.D. model. Still, the D.A. has many steadfast supporters. Other solutions include a re-thinking of the Ph.D. in order to address its perceived shortcomings. William Henry Bragg, the noted physicist, was famously known to have said, "whatever you do, don't do a Ph.D.".

Etymology

There are many other doctoral degrees with different designations, e.g. D.A. (Doctor of Arts), D.M.A. (Doctor of Musical Arts), Ed.D. (Doctor of Education), Th.D. (Doctor of Theology), etc. Johns Hopkins University was the first university in the United States to confer doctoral degrees. First Ph.D. in Business was granted by the University of Chicago in 1920s.

In the United Kingdom and other universities in the British Commonwealth, Ph.D.s are distinguishable from the higher doctorates that outrank them (such as D.Litt. (Doctor of Letters) or D.Sc. (Doctor of Science), which are issued by a committee on the basis of a long record of research and publication). They are also distinct from professional doctorates such as those conferred in medicine, education, engineering and jurisprudence (M.D., Ed.D., Eng.D., D.Jur.). In most universities, professional doctorates involve coursework or a much smaller research component, so the Ph.D. is therefore understood to formally outrank them. However at the ancient British Universities (i.e. Oxford and Cambridge) the M.D. is of a far more ancient origin (medieval) than that of the Ph.D (twentieth century). Hence the M.D. outranks the Ph.D. in the hierarchy of the University. This is regardless of the academic rigor of the comparative theses.

In German speaking countries and most eastern European countries, the corresponding degree is simply called "Doctor" and is further distinguished by subject area with a Latin suffix (e.g. "Dr.med." - doctor medicinæ - which is not equal to a Ph.D., "Dr.rer.nat - doctor rerum naturalium (Doctor of Science), "Dr.phil." - doctor philosophiæ. For a full list of these titles, see the German entry for Doktor).

While the Ph.D. is the most common doctoral degree, and even often (mis)understood to be synonymous with the term “doctorate,” the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) recognize numerous doctoral degrees as equivalent, and do not discriminate between them.

Sometimes a university grants an honorary Ph.D. or D.A., or other doctoral degree, with the added designation of honoris causa (Latin for for the sake of honor), or Dr.h.c.

Bibliography

Estelle M Phillips and Derek.S. Pugh How to Get a Ph.D.: A Handbook for Students and Their Supervisors ISBN 033520550X,
MacGillivray, Alex; Potts, Gareth; Raymond, Polly. Secrets of Their Success (London: New Economics Foundation, 2002)