3 ms·

The quietest part of the Physics library at the university I went to was where the PhD tomes went to never be read ever again. Some unfortunate professor type o

The quietest part of the Physics library at the university I went to was where the PhD tomes went to never be read ever again. Some unfortunate professor type of person had to read these turgid things once but that was about it, no wider audience. Why write for one to two people? That is what happens to most 'thesis' efforts, nobody reads them. Ever. I doubt anyone on here has plans to read a thesis or two by teatime, or to stock up on a few for some holiday reading. Real, valuable information is on the internet, peer reviewed by people in things like 'comment' threads and endorsed by 'links'. None of those tomes of dead tree in the Physics library made it to the internet, they are lost rather than 'search engine optimised'. I did some work helping Msc and PhD students many aeons ago and I felt that people hid in academia at that time because there was a recession and few initials after the name were better than a spell of unemployment for those with daddies that could afford it.

rjtobin 11y ago
Typically the thesis is based on a series of peer-reviewed papers submitted by the PhD student during grad school. These papers are actually read by people (at least for PhD students in good programs who will need to submit to good journals). The thesis is just proof to your thesis committee that you can write a comprehensive treatment of your area, and to put all of your results in one place for their convenience. It doesn't matter if only a few people read it. It is a little strange to store them all in a library somewhere, given that they won't really be read again, but I suspect this is just a carry-over from a different time when this made sense (eg. before Google made it so easy to find all of someone's papers). The above is based on experiences in STEM, probably things are different for liberal arts people.

rjtobin 11y ago

Typically the thesis is based on a series of peer-reviewed papers submitted by the PhD student during grad school. These papers are actually read by people (at least for PhD students in good programs who will need to submit to good journals). The thesis is just proof to your thesis committee that you can write a comprehensive treatment of your area, and to put all of your results in one place for their convenience. It doesn't matter if only a few people read it. It is a little strange to store them all in a library somewhere, given that they won't really be read again, but I suspect this is just a carry-over from a different time when this made sense (eg. before Google made it so easy to find all of someone's papers). The above is based on experiences in STEM, probably things are different for liberal arts people.