PhD degree in the comparative perspective

Doctor of Philosophy abbreviated as PhD is the terminal degree of tertiary level of education in the academic domain. It is assumed that a PhD degree holder should add new findings on a topic that was not unearthed before; even modest or incremental findings might be acceptable if that add new knowledge on the subject. You cannot do it just in a few months. There are distinct stages or phases in the PhD programme that a student should sequentially pursue; although there may be variation in a few cases. Reputed universities in the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, the UK, and China follow a rigid norm. There may be minor case-specific variation for students with outstanding academic distinction. The admission process is quite rigorous; in most of the cases relative grade [given in percentile rank] is essential along with candidates’ performance in the previous academic tiers. The letter of recommendation and the statement of purpose are given due weights in the admission process. An admitted student should meet the residence requirement during which the students should pursue at least 27 credits hours [3 credit hours in each course i,e, three courses in each semester]. The summer semester with approximately 3 months duration is not considered a regular semester in the USA and Canada; PhD students fulfill the comprehensive requirements during summer after they finish the course work.

Students attain the ABD [All But Dissertation] status after completion of all the course requirements and the requirements of the comprehensive examination. Students are assigned a supervisor to whom he works on the thesis; also enroll as PhD students to teach courses as instructors on basic subjects. The department also constitutes a committee often with a senior member of faculty from another university. The students should get the defense of his thesis vetted by all the members of the committee. Generally, four years is the minimum requirement to finish a PhD degree in the USA and Canada; 5 years is optimum. In a nutshell, these are the requirements of a PhD student’s in-depth exploration of a subject; course work, comprehensive exams, selection of research topics with focus, and defense of the thesis before the committee. Those who have pursued PhD programmes in the Western world understand the rigorous complexities of this arduous undertaking.

Many students from Bangladesh pursue their PhD degrees in those countries and after completion of the degree seek teaching jobs as assistant professors. You are not eligible to get a teaching job in an American university without a PhD degree from a reputed university.

This article can give some hints on the strength or weaknesses of PhD programmes in Bangladesh and in some neighboring countries in comparison to the Western world. First; the cohort in Bangladesh is very heterogeneous. There is a tendency for many non-academic professionals along with continuing students to enroll in the PhD programmes. Secondly, a PhD degree is designed either for research or teaching in universities or both. A PhD student gets the practical exposure of teaching and learns the skills of effective teaching in foreign countries during his ABD status. It appears that the whole exercise of earning a PhD degree by a non-academic professional is the addition of an adjective before the name that ultimately belittles the achievement of professional sanctity. Thirdly; the explicit deficiency in the whole exercise is in the area of coursework. All PhD students write their thesis without understanding the theoretical rigor and thus lack utter knowledge in the literature review in many instances. Indeed, it is very difficult to focus on a specific topic for a dissertation without comprehensive knowledge on the subject; a student acquires during his course work in the western world. PhD degree in most instances is devoid of any coursework and beyond the ambit of residence requirement akin to the PhD earned in the western world. Mere consultation with a supervisor cannot ensure the purity of such an honest endeavor. Fourthly, the duration-- seldom follows the sequence that PhD students strictly follow in the western world. Fifthly, many supervisors are not adequately equipped to honestly perform their jobs because of their lack of expertise, or universities in many cases could not offer advanced-level courses because of the dearth of professors with publications in reputed journals. Sixthly, plagiarism is often detected in the submitted thesis. There are instances of the high court ruling in a few cases.

Once, the High Court ordered the University Grants Commission to submit an investigative report in three months on the fairness of conferring PhD in Bangladesh universities. The High Court issued a rule asking the authority to scrutinize or audit a dissertation by an information technology specialist in a particular case where “a ‘doctorate’ degree in 2015 through a PhD dissertation mostly copied from another ‘student’s work’ at BRAC University,” with resemblances to 17 journals, articles and research papers previously published. “The court expressed its concern asking where we stand as a nation if we need to adopt illegal means to secure a higher educational degree. Dhaka University was known as the Oxford of the East and it does not even rank in the first 100 universities globally. This is very unfortunate”

University Grants Commission [UGC] in a recent report mentioned that 641 individuals received PhD degrees [including M.Phil] from the public universities in Bangladesh in 2020. This represents a 175 percent increase from 2019. The number of terminal degrees offered by the public universities during 2018, 2017, 2016 was 400, 441, and 474 respectively. However, there is a serious question on the quality of those degrees; unfortunately, these are seldom published in international journals with acceptable impact factors so that the contributions are acknowledged in the international world. One should not consider PhD as a one-shot game for adornment but it should be considered as a quiver with lots of arrows.

The writer is the Treasurer and Professor at the School of Business and Economics, United International University. He may be contacted at obaidur@ eco.uiu.ac.bd