Saturday, December 13, 2003
Tightly Wound comments on PhDs
Tightly Wound: December 2003 Archives: "This amuses me because the more academics and universities get up in arms to defend their economic and classroom practices the more they expose the prejudices which contribute quite a bit to the problems they're having--and the biggest problem appears to be their unfounded belief in their own unquestionable position as the great unwashed's intellectual superiors.
Let me clarify--I am more than willing to accede that someone with a PhD in a particular subject has more knowledge of that subject than I, but that doesn't translate into any sort of overall superiority of intellect, particularly since in the humanities a PhD is obtained after focusing research to such a narrow degree that a professor effectively corralls him or herself into a tiny academic space and becomes the master of that domain, trading ideas and papers with the other hundred or so people in the same domain. In short, a PhD can be seen as a one-way ticket to stagnation, and it's the rare professor I've come across who successfully combats the research rut. "
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Ditto
Let me clarify--I am more than willing to accede that someone with a PhD in a particular subject has more knowledge of that subject than I, but that doesn't translate into any sort of overall superiority of intellect, particularly since in the humanities a PhD is obtained after focusing research to such a narrow degree that a professor effectively corralls him or herself into a tiny academic space and becomes the master of that domain, trading ideas and papers with the other hundred or so people in the same domain. In short, a PhD can be seen as a one-way ticket to stagnation, and it's the rare professor I've come across who successfully combats the research rut. "
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Ditto
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