Academic research. Irrelevant. But, end not near!

When I was in graduate school, there were, at least, three tenured faculty who didn't have doctorates.  Yep, professors without PhDs.  As one professor put it, it was a different world when he first applied to become a university lecturer.

Nearly three decades later, I, too, am ready to echo those words that the world was very different then from what it is now, and it seems like it is changing even more rapidly.  But, not only has a PhD become firmly institutionalized as a requirement to become an academic, it has become a ponzi scheme as much as many other aspects of higher education are.

[There] seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.

Though I am not convinced as Ronald Bailey is about Singularity University as model for the future, I do agree with this:

The production of new knowledge is accelerating exponentially, Nail notes, which means that graduate students dawdling along for years on a Ph.D. will become “fatally irrelevant.” 

In this ponzi scheme, we also require from academics more pointless research than ever before.  This, too, like many aspects of higher education, cannot go on forever.  In a fortnight, I will be at the annual meeting of the professional body in my field, and will attend many sessions.  Many sessions of talks and discussions that will simply be inane and it will be a struggle to even stay awake.

But, research and inquiry does not have to be that way, especially in the humanities and in the social sciences.  With the rapid scientific and technological progress, there is more need now than in the past to understand what it is to be human and how humanity fits into the larger scheme of things.  The larger population outside the academic walls is also keen on insights into such questions.  Yet, research, and PhD theses seem to be about making sure there will be no new insight whatsoever!

A couple of years ago, Joseph Nye, who is a Harvard professor, and former dean of the Kennedy School there, expressed similar sentiments when writing about the academic field of international relations::

Scholars are paying less attention to questions about how their work relates to the policy world, and in many departments a focus on policy can hurt one's career. Advancement comes faster for those who develop mathematical models, new methodologies or theories expressed in jargon that is unintelligible to policymakers.

It is not only policymakers who are eager for scholarly interpretations, the public also is. Instead, we academics continue on with an approach that a graduate school friend of mine always ridiculed as "intellectual masturbation."

Nye adds:

The solutions must come via a reappraisal within the academy itself. Departments should give greater weight to real-world relevance and impact in hiring and promoting young scholars. Journals could place greater weight on relevance in evaluating submissions. Studies of specific regions deserve more attention. Universities could facilitate interest in the world by giving junior faculty members greater incentives to participate in it. That should include greater toleration of unpopular policy positions. One could multiply such useful suggestions, but young people should not hold their breath waiting for them to be implemented. If anything, the trends in academic life seem to be headed in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, even in the nearly three decades that I have been associated with academia, I have not seen anything that even remotely suggests that changes might be coming.  Instead, academia digs even deeper trenches and, as much as those young soldiers in World War I found themselves trapped in the foxholes for weeks not knowing what was going on, young students are used as the metaphorical cannon fodder.  How unfortunate!

Yes, I have strong opinions on academic research. It is a minority opinion, no doubt, and that does not serve me well. Despite the negative feedback from my peers, I am convinced that I am on the correct path, however Quixotic the tilting at the academic windmills might be.

A much younger me, at one of the academic conferences that I attended as a grad student