Is a PhD degree for prestige alone?
A few months ago, a friend of mine—a graduate of Dhaka University—messaged me saying that he needed to discuss something important. I called him later on, and after we caught up with each other, he sought my advice regarding his son's undergraduate studies. I shared my opinions on some ideas that he had been mulling over, and he seemed to be happy with the perspective I offered. When our conversation was coming to an end, he told me that he needed my guidance on another important issue: he wanted to do a PhD.
I was bewildered as I knew that a doctoral degree was not needed in his profession. I told him that people in academia acquired a PhD for pursuing research to produce knowledge. But my friend gave me a different reason for his desire to get a doctoral degree. He told me that he was a member of various professional bodies and sat on various boards. He lamented that most of his colleagues (directors and members of advisory bodies and boards) were prefixed by the awe-inspiring title of "Dr" even though he believed he was more eligible than them for this honour. What I gathered from our conversation was that his "Dr colleagues" had only earned the PhD degree but were actually far removed from research, scholarship or publication. Since they were not much different from him in experience and expertise, my friend argued as to why he couldn't also be prefixed by the honorific of "Dr."
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I gave him my view on research degrees and doctoral level education. But I don't think I was able to convince him.
Back in 2007, I returned from the UK after completing a PhD in comparative literature at the University of Portsmouth, and started teaching at the Department of English in Dhaka University. I was approached by friends who sought my advice on pursuing doctoral studies. Some of them were in academia, and their interest in doctoral training made perfect sense.
PhD holders are supposed to make good use of their training, undertake meaningful research projects, and thus benefit the wider community. Unfortunately, in this regard, the scenario in our country is dismal and disheartening. In most cases, the thesis that a PhD pursuer produces remains their only contribution, whose readers as well as impact, as I mentioned earlier, are limited. Many PhD holders in Bangladesh get their degree only for the prefix of "Dr" and for prestige and social recognition.
One of them was my senior and a graduate from a different department at Dhaka University. He told me that most of his siblings were PhD holders. In his profession, he often bumped into colleagues with doctoral degrees. He wanted to be on a par with them and so believed that the honour of a doctorate degree had become a social necessity for him.
I tried to make him understand that doctoral training might not mean much to his career in a real sense. However, the social need of a doctorate degree for him outweighed the reasoning that I was trying to bring to the table. In the end, we went our separate ways, unconvinced by each other's counterarguments.
The rationale that they put forward for their intention of pursuing a research degree is not a rare one. Many people in our country pursue a doctoral degree mainly for social recognition or simply for going with the flow.
There are PhD holders who never forget to put the prefix "Dr" before their names, even in social exchanges. The day they are awarded the doctorate degree, they change all their social media profiles and unmistakably add the magical title of "Dr" to their names. All such longing for praise and glory is perhaps tolerable, but what is surprising is that most of these PhD holders have produced little or no research since the day they earned their research degree.
In my opinion, a scholar should undertake a PhD project under the supervision of an academic mainly to learn how to conduct structured research. During the period of their doctoral studies, they go through a rigorous training regimen via which they become familiar with the accepted standards, norms and ethics of research. Once they are awarded the PhD degree, it is assumed that they will thereon be capable of conducting research independently without the guidance of a supervisor. It is expected that the PhD holder will make optimal use of the training they have received and continue to make original contributions to human knowledge. However, if, after getting the degree, the awardee does not continue to conduct research, they can be blamed for wasting the training and human capital. I am aware of the constraints on research in Bangladesh, but can we justify embarking on PhD studies only to achieve a decorative title and with no commitment to research?
Unfortunately, there are innumerable PhD graduates in Bangladesh and beyond who are affiliated with universities or industries, but have never produced any meaningful research. If their PhD thesis remains the only landmark scholarly work in their lives, I have serious doubt about the constancy and efficacy of their contribution to human knowledge.
Besides, how many people even read an unpublished PhD thesis? Generally, there are about five people who primarily read doctoral work: the researcher, their supervisor, and three examiners. If we exclude the researcher, the other four people who read it do so as part of their professional duty. They comment on it (often harshly) and help the awarding university decide whether or not to confer the PhD degree on the researcher. Later, after the degree is awarded, if the thesis is stored in the awarding university's repository, some future researchers might open its pages. If we add all of them up, we can safely say that the impact that an unpublished PhD thesis makes on the learning community is not very significant.
PhD holders are supposed to make good use of their training, undertake meaningful research projects, and thus benefit the wider community. Unfortunately, in this regard, the scenario in our country is dismal and disheartening. In most cases, the thesis that a PhD pursuer produces remains their only contribution, whose readers as well as impact, as I mentioned earlier, are limited. Many PhD holders in Bangladesh get their degree only for the prefix of "Dr" and for prestige and social recognition.
In my opinion, pursuing a PhD degree for the wrong reasons is not a minor problem. The number of PhD holders is on the rise, but the quality and intensity of research and knowledge production are not. As most PhD holders are delinked from research and scholarship, we do not have enough people to represent Bangladesh intellectually and to tell the world what we stand for as a nation. In the absence of serious researchers among us, others will (mis)represent us and we will be at risk of being eliminated in academic discourse.
Md Mahmudul Hasan, PhD is professor of English at the International Islamic University Malaysia. He can be reached at mmhasan@iium.edu.my.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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