James Meese

Firstly, a brief note and a briefer hello. So this blog won’t be dedicated solely to my research, mainly because I’m currently writing up my thesis, and so I don’t feel the need to document and discuss every aspect of my research. That being said I have a strong interest in cultural policy and intellectual property, and it will come up from time to time, but I also want to use this space to discuss issues around the PhD as a process and qualification, because ever since I started it, I have been thinking about its role and function, both at the university level and in society more generally.

The older face of the research student

And so I want to turn to Skeptic Lawyer’s March 10 post, ‘The new face of the research student’, which I discovered thanks to an approving @thesiswhisperer retweet (who I must say is an otherwise excellent source of advice and guidance), who mentioned the ‘reality gap in PhD policy’. So I read the post, and the first line and the following quote had me agreeing fervently:

In yesterday’s copy of The Australian there was an article about a new book by Frank Larkins, the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) at the University of Melbourne, in which he opines that there should be fewer PhD students, and that they should be full-time, on an increased full scholarship:

“I would opt for fewer research students, pay them better and insist that they be full time and get them through the system,” Professor Larkins said after the launch of his book, Australian Higher Education: Research Policies and Performance 1987-2010 (MUP) (itals [Skeptic Lawyer’s]).

However, I was totally floored when Skeptic Lawyer went onto argue against this stance, because it completely ignored the current trends of PhD students in Australia, and that this viewpoint was not only ‘outdated’, but highlighted the Government’s complete lack of interest in this aspect of the sector (a fair call), and ignorance of the ‘learning journey’ a PhD involves. SL noted some key statistics from the only relevant study of PhD students done seven years ago to back up this stance:

• Doctoral candidates are still perceived as mostly full-time, young and being prepared for work.
• Instead they are more likely to be between their mid thirties to mid forties, than mid twenties;
• They are just as likely to be part-time as fulltime;
• Some come to doctoral study after employment in the workforce;
• They are likely to be undertaking their doctorate in a professional or professionally related field in which they are currently employed (see Pearson & Ford, 1997; Evans & Pearson, 1999; Evans 2002; Usher, 2002; Neumann, 2003).
• The proportion of part-time students has increased dramatically and is approaching 50% (Evans & Pearson, 1999; Pearson & Ford, 1997; Department of Education, Science and Training, 2003).
• Over 60% of doctoral graduates work outside universities, in government, administration, business, industry, media and elsewhere (Australian Research Council and Graduate Careers Council of Australia, 1999).

The thing is I have no problem with these figures. I agree wholeheartedly with Skeptic Lawyer that the proposed reforms would be damaging for a significant proportion of the Australian PhD cohort as it stands. But my question then is: this how we want the PhD to operate? I think there are real dangers if the current (dare I say it, neo-liberal) practice of trading a good wage for ‘flexibility’ is maintained. This is the reality gap in PhD policy. The reality is that this low wage, high stress system works problematically at best for older research students, and nearly obliterates the career options for younger researchers.

There is absolutely no incentive for anyone in their early to mid-20s to actually begin a PhD. If you compare the prospect of an APA scholarship to any number of jobs a graduate fresh from university is eligible for (I mean literally any job from a receptionist to a well-paid graduate position), the option of continuing on to a PhD is a poor choice both financially, and as many people have discovered, emotionally. Unlike most graduate programs, the support structures available in a PhD program are highly variable depending on both the university and the individual supervisors (I’ve been lucky), and the burn-out rate is high. I would argue that the PhD as it currently stands, privileges older graduates, perhaps with some savings behind them, who aren’t necessarily going to go on to work in academia, and the demographics seem to reflect that. The problem is that when PhD programs don’t compete with the options out there, they lose genuinely smart young researchers and thinkers, who then either ignore academia as an option or delay their research ambitions until they have the financial ability to support them.

But are Larkin’s reforms so bad? What if they were enacted?

Fewer Students

It is an open secret that there are no jobs in the academy, and there never were any jobs in the academy. Surely then, limiting students would be an excellent idea? For me, the argument that graduating PhDs don’t necessarily go into the academy doesn’t hold much water. If there are no jobs in the academy, it’s obvious that the remaining doctoral graduates ‘will work outside universities’. If scholarships are low-pay and not attracting younger students, it’s obvious that this will lead to older professionals who are already financially and professionally secure doing a doctorate part-time, who may then return to their original career.  Yet, I think it is worthwhile remembering that one of the key functions of a PhD is to produce scholars who can research and teach in the higher education sector. There is a specific labour market imperative which the PhD operates under, and that shouldn’t be ignored. Medical degrees produce doctors who work in the health system. They also produce graduates who don’t, but not many I’m guessing, and they wouldn’t go on to boast about this as a benefit of the degree. The basic goal of the PhD should be a self-sustaining goal, to produce highly-trained researchers who can work within the higher education system.

Pay them better and do it full-time

Of course, if you have fewer students you can pay them better, and they can work for an actual full-time wage. I can’t argue against this. No-one can argue against this. The PhD is extremely poorly paid for the work that’s involved, and financial redress is needed across the board. PhDs are by no means experts, but they aren’t totally hopeless either. They are graduates and they are worth more than a poverty line scholarship (seriously, look it up, it’s borderline). I realize that scholarships involve covering payment for the degree itself, but that is somewhat difficult to justify in itself considering the bulk of the project is student led, and supervision contact is highly irregular across the board.

While the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations agree with the argument for better pay, they reckon an emphasis on full-time research is unfair, stating that innovation is enhanced by research students staying engaged in the community. These sort of lines re-iterate an ‘ivory tower’ mentality, as if three to five years of dedicated work on a full time project at a university, somehow distances you from government and business. I don’t buy it. People don’t do jobs part-time to stay engaged in the community. They manage to do full-time jobs, and the jobs end up engaging with the community anyway. While as CAPA point out, some issues which impact researchers with young families, disabilities or mental health issues, necessarily demand some form of part-time work, these are issues which can be managed. I just think a stronger emphasis on well-paid, full time research is the key here, and we might see a lowering of the current national rate of which sees 35% of all Australian doctoral students, conducting their work on a part time basis.

Get them through the system

Screw the ‘academic journey’. Oops, did I say that? I can’t speak for other disciplines, but I think it should be entirely possible for a humanities PhD to complete an 80,000 word dissertation in 3 – 5 years. I do think the current funding model is ambitious in expecting PhDs to finish in under three years, and discourages large-scale projects, but if there were fewer students, I can’t see why projects couldn’t be fully funded on a better wage with an expected completion time of 3.5 – 4 years. It just can’t take that long. Just speak to John Birmingham (admittedly, a machine) who pumps out thousands words a day. And discouraging big projects is not necessarily a bad thing. Again, if you take the PhD as the beginning of an academic career (or even a research career, if one wants to move outside the sector), and not just a pleasant intellectual diversion or ultimate goal, it shouldn’t be such a big deal. As the thesis whisperer has explained, examiners expect a well-researched and well-argued document, not someone’s magnum opus. I think this recursive cycle of a particular demographic influencing the structures of a PhD, which then influences the demographic, has seen completion times blow out, and it is understandable in a way. Who is going to work around the clock on a project that is paying them minimum wage? Pay someone a decent wage and they will do the work.

I’m no expert

I think the current structure of the Australian PhD program privileges certain types of students over others, and this has impacts across the board. I’m no expert on higher education research, and smarter people than me (see the thesis whisperer, for example), clearly have problem’s with Larkin’s reforms, and I’d love to see these issues argued out further (especially considering this was written in a rush!). I may be totally wrong, but I guess I just see a lot of missed opportunities. The PhD seems to be geared towards an older cohort of research students who appreciate flexibility and may not end up in the academy at all. I would hate to see this cohort disappear entirely. I just think that as we see ‘places in social sciences, humanities and health (including medicine)…filled by mature students’ (Skeptic Lawyer), we might be losing out on a cohort of younger researchers, who are unable to envisage a future in research straight out of university, simply due to the disjointed nature of the PhD. Isn’t this an unacknowledged loss to the nation in the longer term?  The current balance benefits some, but I think the specificity of the PhD as a degree, or even as a ‘job’, needs to be re-iterated. What if the degree was treated as a genuine career opportunity, rather than simply an intellectual one, for fresh university graduates? I would be interested to see how the ‘economics’ of the PhD play out then.

NB: In the interests of balance here is a post from 2010 and 2011 CAPA presidents respectively and all round awesome post-graduate advocates, Tammi Jonas and John Nowakowski, arguing for a totally different approach.