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The author is absolutely correct that the ability to pass the PhD qualifying exam should not define them as a person or their self worth. A PhD is just a differ

The author is absolutely correct that the ability to pass the PhD qualifying exam should not define them as a person or their self worth. A PhD is just a different career choice not very dissimilar to becoming a musician. But the qualifying exam sounded like it did its job the way it was supposed to! The author was given multiple opportunities to pass a fairly clear bar of academic competence to hold the highest and thus the most difficult to attain qualification in the world, and they failed every time. From how it’s written I see no indication of prejudice due to their gender or ethnicity, or of any wrong doing. They were just not good enough at doing what was expected of them at this stage. Arguments such as “they asked questions outside of my topic” sound moot because that’s the expectation here! You’re supposed to have a reasonable breadth of knowledge in your field! And now if someone asked a question you had never thought about, that’s unfair? For a PhD qualifying exam? I’m not blaming the author for any of this though, the pattern and idea that a PhD should be achievable by anyone regardless of their intellectual abilities has been taking root for a long time coming. The professors don’t want to fight it because this is the only way they get free cheap labor, except when they lament about in the drop in abilities in the new generation. I also don’t completely buy into the narrative that educated families make a difference in your PhD performance. The only corollary is succeeding in a PhD typically correlated with how _stable_ your personal life is. Privilege in socioeconomic terms that provides safety nets and support systems absolutely do make a large difference and should be afforded to all the candidates. But even if your dad had a PhD, unless it’s in the exact same topic, nobody’s getting help practicing for their quals. it’s saddening but was inevitable that institutions would just do away with important requirements than fight with such appeals but given my general disdain for present day academia, I’m excited to see where the whole system goes as more such nails are driven into its coffin.

wahern 4y ago
Yeah, it's one thing for a kid unfamiliar with rigorous academic culture to be shell shocked during undergraduate school. I certainly was, and it was a long slog for me with plenty of scars and a below average academic record to show for it. (And as not a member of a favored minority group, the system was much more merciless--you don't get the benefit of white privilege at those elite levels unless you can at least walk and talk the part, and from those heights there's nary a difference between poor black or latino kids and poor white kids in terms of how they come across, and plenty of minority students who could play the part much better than I ever could.) But by the time you hit graduate school the rules of the game are clear; even if you're still not proficient in understanding how you're supposed to approach and regurgitate the material, the expectations should be abundantly clear, as well as the dilemmas academia faces which motivate those rules. Perhaps the problem here is that her undergraduate program had already been watered down too much, which is particularly shameful for a program in the hard sciences. My studies were on the other half of campus--liberal arts and then the law, the requirements of which are in some ways more inscrutable, but admittedly often less rigorous, at least in undergraduate. FWIW, I often don't do well with scholarly vocabulary, either. I often like to do deep dives into historical material, and the vocabulary shifts over time, even over the course of a decade or less. So while I was often much more well read than any other student, I'd often use terms with more archaic definitions in mind, which could make me sound like an imbecile. (Ditto regarding concepts as the textbook delineations are always fuzzier for me having read various primary sources which progressed across time to give a concept it's modern shape. I understood that modern shape, but it takes so much more effort to articulate clearly as you're struggling to suppress and mask out the inherent complexity.) I'm also a stutterer, which means I often sound like an imbecile from the first moment someone hears me stutter.
light_hue_1 4y ago
My guess is that you don't have a PhD and didn't go through such a qualifying exam. > I also don’t completely buy into the narrative that educated families make a difference in your PhD performance. Your parents or people around you having a PhD makes a massive difference! Because they can tell you what to do if your advisor doesn't. Most students who still need to deal with this system (most departments moved decades ago to written exams or to largely proforma quals) don't know that you need to: 1. Pick a committee based on their likelihood to pass you, not on their closeness to your field. The world is sadly full of assholes who want to prove a point. 2. Choose people who your don't want to screw over your advisor for some reason. It's important to ask your advisor "Oh, by chance, does X happen to hate your guts?" Because.. academic politics are nasty. 3. Choose an advisor with some pull, so that they can keep people in line. All of these fields are so complicated with so many intricacies that if I want to fail any student, no matter how brilliant they are, rest assured I can easily ask questions that will lead to failure. This includes students who are much smarter than me. I have guided many of my own students through this system. If you think your chances of success depend only on your ability and not your insider knowledge, well, you're wrong. Also, on behalf of this poor student. This is not her failure. It is the failure of her advisor. Who was negligent for creating the conditions that lead to failure. Her advisor should have rehearsed her talk, her group should have grilled the student on related questions, and if the committee was asking totally inappropriate unrelated questions her advisor should have stepped in.
- exmadscientist 4y ago
  > Most students who still need to deal with this system don't know that you need to... In my program everyone knew these things. Because we talked to each other. Our individual backgrounds didn't matter so much because we were really in it together in many ways. I didn't pass my prelim (what most people call "qual", I think) because my parents taught me (they didn't) or my advisor was competent (he was, but he was also even more distracted). I passed because the previous years of students told us how to do it, and we told each other. > if I want to fail any student, no matter how brilliant they are, rest assured I can This I agree with. > This is not her failure. It is the failure of her advisor. Who was negligent And this I strongly agree with. We all knew in my program that if someone failed their prelim or orals, it was because their advisor dropped the ball. Badly. (At least, it would have been bad if it had ever actually happened....)
causi 4y ago
The author was given multiple opportunities to pass a fairly clear bar of academic competence to hold the highest and thus the most difficult to attain qualification in the world, and they failed every time. Exactly. If everyone could attain a PhD there would be no point to having a PhD because it wouldn't tell other people anything about your level of knowledge and competence.
armchairhacker 4y ago
Qualifying exams are somewhat arbitrary. In some universities they are serious and a large portion of the students fail; in some they are basically a formality and everyone already knows each other and if the student isn't ready the examiners just delay. Also what constitutes "academic competence" is up to the examiners who may be biased. But IMO this is not a major issue, because I do think for the most part academia still maintains high and fair standards: a majority of examiners have good judgement, and a vast majority of universities will not give a PhD to someone who is not PhD worthy. The fundamental issue with quals, though, is that they are just a really bad way of gauging academic knowledge. Professors should be able to and already do tell if a student is PhD worthy based on everything they've accomplished in grad school: the papers they've published and their thesis. Also, some people do really bad thinking and speaking under pressure, and while that makes them terrible presenters, I don't think it makes them unworthy of a PhD: you can be a terrible presenter but still write great papers and be able to thoroughly communicate your expertise in casual conversation. To me it seems like the one-hour qualifying exam is just an unnecessary stress: at best it reaffirms what the student and advisor already knew, and in the cases I've heard where it doesn't it often turns out there was a serious problem somewhere in the PhD process (you could argue that the qual's purpose is to detect that problem, but then it just becomes a formality again).
- etrautmann 4y ago
  What? Quals come well before the thesis and sometimes years before first author publications depending on the field.
  - tsbischof 4y ago
    Exactly, the PhD is a kind of participation trophy at some point. Quals are the last simple way to decide that someone will not get a PhD.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  You make many valid points and I want to address some of them here: 1. My belief of what a qualifying exam is that it’s almost the only time an external expert, someone not the advisor, gets an opportunity to gauge the readiness of the student for a PhD. You are correct that a competent unbiased advisor will already know if the student is ready for a PhD but the two adjectives in this sentence make the case for why independent external evaluation is needed in such a case. I worked with advisors who eventually became antagonistic to my interests and I depended on the quals and viva exams to make sure they don’t screw me over. I also lived through multiple generations of PhD students going through this lab via many universities and grad programs, and every program with lax quals only enabled advisors to have outsized influence on the students future (either for better or worse). So hopefully I have made the case for why external evaluation is necessary. With that convinced, let’s then ask how best can external evaluators gauge a PhD student? Written work might not work since you can never tell how much help they had. In fact I feel you can never trust anything that is “take home” Because at the graduate level it’s hard to evaluate an individuals’ contribution to a piece of research. Which only becomes harder in the more collaborative environments of today! So I’ll be curious what you think the solution here is if viva exams are not equitable. 2. You are correct that some people don’t do well under the time pressure of things like quals. But unless there’s a viable solution for problem 1 above, i feel this is an acceptable compromise. This is not an exam where it’s determined you get basic rights, it’s an exam to choose elite members of a society that should be meritoriously selective. And as grueling tests go this seems the lightest! Just an hour of grilling by 4 people in closed doors, and you get Multiple chances and infinite time to prepare! How much simpler can it get? Further, how sure are we that this skill doesn’t indirectly transfer to their future career? You are correct that phds can be productive without ever talking to another human being but doesn’t mean this skill isn’t important or helpful. This is like asking the navy seals training to become less strenuous because it could exclude people and maybe because carrying logs doesn’t directly apply to their future career! I’d argue it does tangentially help and given the lack of alternative testing methods this seems perfectly acceptable.

wahern 4y ago

Yeah, it's one thing for a kid unfamiliar with rigorous academic culture to be shell shocked during undergraduate school. I certainly was, and it was a long slog for me with plenty of scars and a below average academic record to show for it. (And as not a member of a favored minority group, the system was much more merciless--you don't get the benefit of white privilege at those elite levels unless you can at least walk and talk the part, and from those heights there's nary a difference between poor black or latino kids and poor white kids in terms of how they come across, and plenty of minority students who could play the part much better than I ever could.) But by the time you hit graduate school the rules of the game are clear; even if you're still not proficient in understanding how you're supposed to approach and regurgitate the material, the expectations should be abundantly clear, as well as the dilemmas academia faces which motivate those rules. Perhaps the problem here is that her undergraduate program had already been watered down too much, which is particularly shameful for a program in the hard sciences. My studies were on the other half of campus--liberal arts and then the law, the requirements of which are in some ways more inscrutable, but admittedly often less rigorous, at least in undergraduate. FWIW, I often don't do well with scholarly vocabulary, either. I often like to do deep dives into historical material, and the vocabulary shifts over time, even over the course of a decade or less. So while I was often much more well read than any other student, I'd often use terms with more archaic definitions in mind, which could make me sound like an imbecile. (Ditto regarding concepts as the textbook delineations are always fuzzier for me having read various primary sources which progressed across time to give a concept it's modern shape. I understood that modern shape, but it takes so much more effort to articulate clearly as you're struggling to suppress and mask out the inherent complexity.) I'm also a stutterer, which means I often sound like an imbecile from the first moment someone hears me stutter.

light_hue_1 4y ago

My guess is that you don't have a PhD and didn't go through such a qualifying exam. > I also don’t completely buy into the narrative that educated families make a difference in your PhD performance. Your parents or people around you having a PhD makes a massive difference! Because they can tell you what to do if your advisor doesn't. Most students who still need to deal with this system (most departments moved decades ago to written exams or to largely proforma quals) don't know that you need to: 1. Pick a committee based on their likelihood to pass you, not on their closeness to your field. The world is sadly full of assholes who want to prove a point. 2. Choose people who your don't want to screw over your advisor for some reason. It's important to ask your advisor "Oh, by chance, does X happen to hate your guts?" Because.. academic politics are nasty. 3. Choose an advisor with some pull, so that they can keep people in line. All of these fields are so complicated with so many intricacies that if I want to fail any student, no matter how brilliant they are, rest assured I can easily ask questions that will lead to failure. This includes students who are much smarter than me. I have guided many of my own students through this system. If you think your chances of success depend only on your ability and not your insider knowledge, well, you're wrong. Also, on behalf of this poor student. This is not her failure. It is the failure of her advisor. Who was negligent for creating the conditions that lead to failure. Her advisor should have rehearsed her talk, her group should have grilled the student on related questions, and if the committee was asking totally inappropriate unrelated questions her advisor should have stepped in.

exmadscientist 4y ago
> Most students who still need to deal with this system don't know that you need to... In my program everyone knew these things. Because we talked to each other. Our individual backgrounds didn't matter so much because we were really in it together in many ways. I didn't pass my prelim (what most people call "qual", I think) because my parents taught me (they didn't) or my advisor was competent (he was, but he was also even more distracted). I passed because the previous years of students told us how to do it, and we told each other. > if I want to fail any student, no matter how brilliant they are, rest assured I can This I agree with. > This is not her failure. It is the failure of her advisor. Who was negligent And this I strongly agree with. We all knew in my program that if someone failed their prelim or orals, it was because their advisor dropped the ball. Badly. (At least, it would have been bad if it had ever actually happened....)

causi 4y ago

The author was given multiple opportunities to pass a fairly clear bar of academic competence to hold the highest and thus the most difficult to attain qualification in the world, and they failed every time. Exactly. If everyone could attain a PhD there would be no point to having a PhD because it wouldn't tell other people anything about your level of knowledge and competence.

armchairhacker 4y ago

Qualifying exams are somewhat arbitrary. In some universities they are serious and a large portion of the students fail; in some they are basically a formality and everyone already knows each other and if the student isn't ready the examiners just delay. Also what constitutes "academic competence" is up to the examiners who may be biased. But IMO this is not a major issue, because I do think for the most part academia still maintains high and fair standards: a majority of examiners have good judgement, and a vast majority of universities will not give a PhD to someone who is not PhD worthy. The fundamental issue with quals, though, is that they are just a really bad way of gauging academic knowledge. Professors should be able to and already do tell if a student is PhD worthy based on everything they've accomplished in grad school: the papers they've published and their thesis. Also, some people do really bad thinking and speaking under pressure, and while that makes them terrible presenters, I don't think it makes them unworthy of a PhD: you can be a terrible presenter but still write great papers and be able to thoroughly communicate your expertise in casual conversation. To me it seems like the one-hour qualifying exam is just an unnecessary stress: at best it reaffirms what the student and advisor already knew, and in the cases I've heard where it doesn't it often turns out there was a serious problem somewhere in the PhD process (you could argue that the qual's purpose is to detect that problem, but then it just becomes a formality again).

etrautmann 4y ago
What? Quals come well before the thesis and sometimes years before first author publications depending on the field.
- tsbischof 4y ago
  Exactly, the PhD is a kind of participation trophy at some point. Quals are the last simple way to decide that someone will not get a PhD.
ramraj07 4y ago
You make many valid points and I want to address some of them here: 1. My belief of what a qualifying exam is that it’s almost the only time an external expert, someone not the advisor, gets an opportunity to gauge the readiness of the student for a PhD. You are correct that a competent unbiased advisor will already know if the student is ready for a PhD but the two adjectives in this sentence make the case for why independent external evaluation is needed in such a case. I worked with advisors who eventually became antagonistic to my interests and I depended on the quals and viva exams to make sure they don’t screw me over. I also lived through multiple generations of PhD students going through this lab via many universities and grad programs, and every program with lax quals only enabled advisors to have outsized influence on the students future (either for better or worse). So hopefully I have made the case for why external evaluation is necessary. With that convinced, let’s then ask how best can external evaluators gauge a PhD student? Written work might not work since you can never tell how much help they had. In fact I feel you can never trust anything that is “take home” Because at the graduate level it’s hard to evaluate an individuals’ contribution to a piece of research. Which only becomes harder in the more collaborative environments of today! So I’ll be curious what you think the solution here is if viva exams are not equitable. 2. You are correct that some people don’t do well under the time pressure of things like quals. But unless there’s a viable solution for problem 1 above, i feel this is an acceptable compromise. This is not an exam where it’s determined you get basic rights, it’s an exam to choose elite members of a society that should be meritoriously selective. And as grueling tests go this seems the lightest! Just an hour of grilling by 4 people in closed doors, and you get Multiple chances and infinite time to prepare! How much simpler can it get? Further, how sure are we that this skill doesn’t indirectly transfer to their future career? You are correct that phds can be productive without ever talking to another human being but doesn’t mean this skill isn’t important or helpful. This is like asking the navy seals training to become less strenuous because it could exclude people and maybe because carrying logs doesn’t directly apply to their future career! I’d argue it does tangentially help and given the lack of alternative testing methods this seems perfectly acceptable.