
The PhD Octopus (1903) - maverick_iceman
https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/octopus.html
======
CurtMonash
Fortunately, what's written there is not true in all places at all times. For
example, I got my PhD in math at Harvard in the 1970s. My PhD adviser, Andy
Gleason, was a terrifically nice guy, yet seemed oddly unsympathetic to the
stresses of the PhD process. I later realized that he didn't have a PhD
himself ... when I noted that absence in his bio as he was elected to be
president of the American Mathematical Society.

And by the way -- while I think he sort of understood what I was working on
(the theorem that came to be known as the Mertens-Neyman result for stochastic
games -- they scooped me by a few months, but I got my degree anyway), I'm
nearly certain that nobody else in the rest of the department did. It didn't
matter. When it came to approving/disapproving theses, our department seemed
quite politics-free.

On the other hand, I heard horror stories from my dorm-mates about other
departments, such as history and Slavic linguistics. Perhaps the "harder"
subjects had better standards of objectivity. Perhaps I was just lucky.

And by the way -- it also was not the case that an undergraduate degree was
needed for admission to grad school. Discovering this fact on my junior year
Spring break grad school trip let me greatly change the negotiating dynamics
around degree requirements at my undergraduate institution. When it as all
over, the dean who had originally given me the most grief politely thanked me
for bothering to get my undergrad degree.

------
lisper
Here's the real problem:

> When the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it.
> Brilliancy and originality by themselves won't save a thesis for the
> doctorate; it must also exhibit a heavy technical apparatus of learning; and
> this our candidate had neglected to bring to bear. So, telling him that he
> was temporarily rejected, we advised him to pad out the thesis properly, and
> return with it next year

This is not much of an exaggeration. Getting a Ph.D. is as much (maybe more)
about demonstrating your ability to shmooze, defer to authority and put up
with bullshit for an extended period of time as it is about learning or doing
good research.

~~~
dpkendal
Did we read the same paragraph? The problem with his first thesis was that,
though he presented a brilliant and original result, he didn’t show that he’d
studied enough prior research.

Nothing to do with schmoozing, everything to do with scholarly integrity.

~~~
lisper
The actual complaint was that the thesis failed to "exhibit a heavy technical
apparatus of learning." I'm not sure exactly how you get from there to "didn’t
show that he’d studied enough prior research".

That extrapolation notwithstanding, what exactly do you think "shmoozing"
means? In academia it does not mean going to your committee's cocktail parties
and letting them win at golf. It means citing their work (i.e. "demonstrating
that you have studied prior research") so that they can then use the fact that
they are highly referenced to advance their own careers.

~~~
derf_
When I was preparing for my oral exam, I was given something like 1,200 pages
of material to read by my committee. I read it.

During the exam, in addition to the expected technical questions, I was asked
things like, "What lab did this work come out of? Who runs that lab?"

In other words, "Do you understand the political and funding environment in
which you're going to be operating if you continue working in this field?"
Fortunately, I had been to a few conferences and met some of these people
(also not an accident on the part of my professors), so I knew the answers to
these questions. But the lesson stuck.

------
tomrod
This is an excellent support to the thought that, once provided with a
standard metric, people tend to focus only on satisfying that metric.

~~~
kazinator
It's kind of understandable. In some professions we have accreditation and
licenses; others sometimes clamor for the same thing. That fellow's Ph. D.
diploma on the wall was the effective equivalent of "licensed practitioner of
teaching the Liberal Arts" or something like that. That's why the employer
insisted on it.

Would we say that a dentist's license had nothing to do with whether they can
do dentistry and cheerfully go to one that doesn't have one?

Fact is that by getting the Ph. D., the guy did prove that he was "good" in
some way; he had the academic "muscle" and that is relevant to the teaching,
even if the subject isn't the same.

You absolutely _cannot_ say that philosophy is irrelevant to literature. That
is to say if we examine the statement _" [w]e wrote again, pointing out that a
Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little anyhow as to one's ability to teach
literature"_ it doesn't really hold up. That fellow simply doesn't cast aside
his philosophy background when he gets up in front of the literature class!
The way we analyze literature all has philosophical underpinnings. Literature
can carry philosphical points of view, and consciously so, even. Fictional
literature has been used to transmit philosophical thought, from Socratic
dialogues of ancient greece to works like the novels of Ayn Rand.

~~~
tomrod
In some areas you absolutely want a strict standard, to your point on
dentists. PhD is an interesting requirement, however, due to the variance in
skillset, experience, and training an individual going through the educational
process receives compared to vocational programs. The degree can substitute
for a license, but it's going to be very noisy. Requiring it leads to less
absolute diversity in a hiring pool (as opposed to categorical diversity)
which may or may not be the goal of the institution. But once you've found a
good hire, who can perform the function of the job to the client's
satisfaction, the vocational or educational background is more or less
unnecessary. To refer to your dentist example: it may take me a lot of
encouragement to trust my Uncle Joe with no dental degree to work on my teeth,
but once he's proven himself the need for institutional acknowledgement of his
ability is trumped by his performance.

Another tangent point to consider: dentists and other vocationalists have
existed long before a licensing board did, and someone, somewhere, got the
first History PhD.

~~~
dhfhduk
I would disagree about professional licensure, and think the same arguments
apply there as in other areas, although maybe in different ways. In fact, I
think the problem in licensed professions is even worse, because assumptions
are never questioned, to avoid being called reckless, and have the weight of
law.

In fact, I think this is a prime problem with healthcare in the US in the
moment.

The problem James outlines is the same with professional fields: we assume
that license X, which often requires degree A, is necessary for competence in
an area, and that competence cannot be achieved in an area in any other way.
As a result, we stop actually paying attention to competency per se, and focus
on licensure, which is not the same. As a result of that, we lose choice: any
other way of meeting a demand is assumed to be illegitimate and unsafe, which
is untrue. Competition is lost, and monopoly is gained.

In your example, for instance, you suggest a hypothetical case where someone
doesn't have a dental degree. But in reality, it's almost certainly not that
that person would have no degree at all, and no experience, it's that they
would have a different sort of degree, with a different sort of experience.

Dentists are maybe a poor example, because if anything, their profession is an
example of one that is being stifled by current practice. I suspect that they
are in a position to learn to do a lot more than they are, and are held back
by professional licensing laws relative to MDs.

The appropriate example isn't "would you hire someone without a dental degree
to treat your cavity?" It's "would you hire a dentist with appropriate
surgical training to do jaw surgery?" Would you hire an optometrist with years
of opthomological surgery training to do LASIK surgery? Would you hire a
psychologist with pharmacology training to prescribe you lithium, or a
psychologist with appropriate training to do TMS treatment of your depression?
Would you trust your pharmacist to pick the right antibiotic for your
infection, that has been precisely characterized by a lab already? What about
a neuroscientist with clinical training to interpret your MRI scan?

Licenses, although well-intended, have become hindrances to lower cost and
better choice. The tail is wagging the dog in professional fields exactly the
way James suggested over a century ago.

------
qntty
See also: [http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2007/04/value-of-
harvard...](http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2007/04/value-of-harvard-
ph-d.html)

------
pnathan
I generally found the professors with a PhD to be more engaged, driven, and
generally capable than those without. just my 2c.

I would guess that the internal qualities that drove them to seek the phd were
the ones that made me prefer them.

~~~
foldr
How long ago was this? These days the only people who are likely to be
teaching you at a university who don't have PhDs are PhD students. And they're
less good at it largely because they don't have years of experience.

~~~
pnathan
I wrapped up my BS in 2006.

A variety of people teaching underclass courses as the instructor of record
were people with Master's degrees. A couple were ABD.

I would hesitate to say that older profs were better; it seemed bimodal:
either they really were significantly better, or they really were not very
good teachers. I _almost_ always preferred the people with deep knowledge and
passion for the subject, regardless of actual quality of teaching, myself.
YMMV.

------
arcanus
In modern times, I've found much the same with jobs and the requirement for a
"B.S. in CS"

(three magical letter holder here)

~~~
chias
Amusingly, I have a "B.A. in CS". Given the subject, most people assume a B.S.
if you just say "bachelors'", but in my particular case, they'd be wrong ;) I
imagine this is somewhat like how you can get a doctorate in nursing.

(just wrapping up my own three magical letters too!)

------
acobster
Tangential question:

> _It seems to me high time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a
> critical eye upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer
> terribly from the Mandarin disease._

Does anyone know what this use of "Mandarin" is supposed to suggest? It sounds
like a sort of Orientalist fear of exotic diseases, but seems like it could
refer to something more specific. Just curious.

~~~
danielvf
The Chinese Imperial Examinations system determined who could hold which rank
of government office based on grueling study and testing on Chinese
literature.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination)

The comparison the article is making is that the selection process is entirely
orthagonal to the job, and the hoops that needed to be jumped through
precluded any actual study of the things that mattered.

This was regarded at the time of the article as a really bad idea both within
and outside China, and ended two years later after 1,700 years of use.

~~~
tomrod
That is the current state of academia, IMHO.

------
bitwize
Drat, I was hoping for a story about an actual cephalopod with a doctorate,
like Octodad or something.

~~~
sebcat
Give it up for Octograd

------
morugin
Note the assumption that intellectual distinction is native. That is an
assumption that is counter to the American assumption that any man can become
anything he wants given the effort and desire. The people who want and try to
earn a phd without the native ability are the problem James is stating the
universities are creating. This is the third class of persons.

The other interesting thing was how the third class of persons obtains a phd
is subjective. "Thus, partiality in the favored cases; in the unfavored, blood
on our hands; and in both a bad conscience,--are the results of our
administration."

Interesting thoughts from a man who has "distinguished intellect"

------
master_yoda_1
Same kind of shit is still going on in silicon valley.

~~~
dnautics
You think it's bad here? If you ever take the DC metro, look out the window at
the Pentagon metro station (but others are often bad too). You will see
exclusively two ad buys over all of the signs. The first is for some large
defense contractor, usually Northrop, advertising weapons systems or IT
services.

The other half of the ads are for "Graduate School" which is some sort of
organization that confers masters and phds. Perfect for the aspiring
bureaucrat that needs to check that qualification off the list.

I had a friend pulled in to one of these "health policy PhD" (she wasn't in
the DC area) and she was excited to be in a degree program with high ranking
bureaucrats in the HHS.

Edit: found a link to the organization, apparently they don't give out masters
and phds... How confusing!
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_School_USA](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_School_USA)

~~~
cafard
I never heard that this school (which used, I think, to be the Department of
Agriculture Graduate School) gave out any degrees.

Having said that, you are correct about Washington, DC. Part of it, I think,
is the rules around government contracting: if I can bill John Doe, B.A., for
$x/hour, I can probably bill Richard Roe, M.S. for $(x+y)/hour or John
O'Nokes, Ph.D. for $(x+y+z)/hour. The government contractors also can offer
tuition reimbursement for their employees, untaxed, if the classes "maintain
and improve" skills for the job then held.

------
samirillian
In the words of Schopenhauer, "nothing in the world is so rare as a good
judge."

------
lewis500
Makes me glad I got my Ph.D.

