Assessing PhD Assessments

A (total!) eclipse, travel, and hackathons have slowed down my blogging. That together with, for the first time, being asked to do the technical review of a book for a friend. All relevant experience and service, if anyone ask me! But I am ready to come back to Setting Physics to Stun!

This time I want to visit the topic of how adequate PhD assessment is. This topic is a little more academic than general scientific management, but I had some interactions with friends on the topic which it got me thinking. Also, in my (quantum) industry, I am frequently questioned by junior students on whether they should pursue a PhD to seek a scientific career in the field. So maybe this is a good chance to address these questions a bit.

The topic was brought to me by reading a Nature Editorial “Bring the PhD assessment to the twenty-first century” which was followed up by a poll. When I brought this up to colleagues that work in academia, I feel like they did not fully appreciate the issue being raised. Their claim was that “the market - both academic and private - seems to be happy with the process” given that rarely a person with a PhD - in physics, at least - find themselves unemployed. Fair statement. The editorial article itself highlights that not all PhD training is stuck in the past. But it strikes me as true that innovation and discovery in the field of education is struggling to find its way into the doctorate process (and generally in higher education at research institutions, given that successful postdocs and grad students - again, at least in physics - tend to be discouraged from engaging with teaching research too deeply).

To try and ground this conversation, and hopefully help junior students understand what the commitment to do a PhD entails, let’s at least try to formalize a definition of the purpose of a PhD program:

The British Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education states that a doctorate student should demonstrate the creation and interpretation of new knowledge that extends the forefront of the discipline and merits publication.

This definition may vary slightly from place to place, but makes it clear why a PhD experience can be relevant in industries of promising but not yet mature technologies (quantum tech, gene therapy, arguably AI before 2023): the path to commercialization and productization of the tech requires it to finish evolving, often requiring multiple knowledge breakthroughs at the forefront – what a PhD trains for.

The editorial cites a couple of relevant references, a looong thesis and a short-but-not-so-recent article. I confess the thesis was too much of a commitment for me to study, but the article may help us itemize some concrete examples about what parts of the PhD assessment process do not have uniform clarity throughout the community:

• How to determine a PhD committee? Should the student have a say? Should it be formed by experts only?
• What matters most: the thesis write-up or the defense oral presentation? (Both are typically required. Neither is typically sufficient)
• What is the purpose of the oral presentation? What should be its length? Is it just a rite of passage? Should it be private or public?

The list goes on.

Again, many, if not most, of these questions are decidedly addressed in the regulations and administrative rules of specific programs at different universities. So, for new students, perhaps these bring you some suggestions of questions to ask once you get accepted in a program. The broader questions are: (i) why there is no more common agreement across different institutions about how these should be organized? And (ii) how different choices for the above impact the experience and learning of the students?

I hope this brings up some relevant perspectives on scientific management on what says respect to the scientists themselves, and helps them analyze the culture of the organizations they decide to join.

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