9 ms·
This Professor only has a PhD degree
- saadazzz 14y agoI feel like such a loser reading this...
- nokya 14y ago:) ... :( same here.
- Hitchhiker 14y agoLoved the " only " part.
- drucken 14y agoI have a feeling that this was more common in the past. Except, 1993 is not that long ago and University of Durham is one of the best universities in the UK, especially in his chosen subject. There is no way he could have got into that university on a PhD programme without passing rigorous academic tests. Oh, and he did it all with English to a high level. So, indeed, that is quite (art of British understatement) impressive!
- arethuza 14y ago"passing rigorous academic tests" I don't know what this chap did but I would think the "easiest" way to prove that you are up to the level to start a PhD programme (which in the UK at that time were pure research - no class component) would be to have a few publications.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoI think it is worth noting he would have been born in the decade after the Cultural Revolution - so he grew up most likely in abject poverty - and into a society recovering from hideous losses. That is one reason why the work would have been undertaken outside of China. (It's probably no exaggeration to say the exceptionally large numbers of Chinese foreign students from 70s onwards in western universities contributed to Chinas recovery.) Anyway, impressive personally, impressive for the social and family support needed and impressive as part of a society recovering. Plus research into develoent of agriculture outside of Mesopotamia - cool stuff!
- ximeng 14y agoGoogle cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.earthsciences.hku.hk/index.php/people/profile/42&hl=en&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... Impressive to get the equivalent of an MSc while working in a butcher shop.
- jjcm 14y agoTo be fair he was "a technician in Guangzhou Institute of Geography" as well. Still quite a feat.
- petercooper 14y agoSurely many of us HN addicts could have an MSc in rhetoric and logical fallacies by now.
- malcolmmcc 14y agoI get that this reads funny, but I think it's fairly clear what he means...like, reworded it might say: "I essentially have a BSc and MSc, through self-studying, but the only degree I got from an academic institution was my PhD."
- shubb 14y agoThe term 'self study' is strange here. He was trained to MSc level by his employer. The army do this all the time. The Chinese government do it very often.
- craig552uk 14y agoMy dad earned 'the equivalent of' an MSc in the air force in the 70's. Those qualifications didn't translate well in to the real world back then.
- noelwelsh 14y agoI know a few cases of researchers who don't have PhDs, but I've never seen this before. Probably the best known researcher in CS who doesn't hold a PhD is Simon Peyton Jones. He is very well known in the field of programming languages and one of the main implementors of the main Haskell implementation GHC. I think he might have started a PhD in the last few years, but he was appointed a professor at Glasgow without one.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoThere are many many more than that, but we don't typically bother with those details; if the guy/gal knows their stuff, who cares what their degree level is?
- noelwelsh 14y agoSssh, you don't want the grad students to hear! Without grad students who's gonna do all the prof's grunt work?
- raverbashing 14y agoYes After all, how dare someone tell the grad students they can be someone without a PhD. They are almost forgetting how's life outside the academic circles! Now, you're late for CS 201 room 704 on that building across the campus, go and don't forget your TA notes.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoThe PhD gives us time and resources to become a researcher; it is actually a quite useful experience. If we can get the time/resources another way, great! I personally would have been lost on my own; I met people in my program who really set my path. If you are young and inexperienced, it is also getting more difficult to get your foot in the door of a research institution without a PhD from a TOP program. Sure, there are other ways up, but getting the PhD is probably a reasonable way to approach things.
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- oellegaard 14y agoMaybe I should stop my BsC studies, it might be easier to go directly for the PhD :D
- qompiler 14y agoHow will you develop and prove your theories in <field> if you never learned how?
- CurtMonash 14y agoWhen I visited grad schools junior year (1975), I was told I did not need an undergraduate degree. Armed with that knowledge, I held firm in my negotiations about undergrad requirements, and the Dean of the Honors Program later thanked me for bothering to graduate. When I did get to grad school, a couple of professors didn't have PhDs. One was my eventual thesis advisor, which was awkward in that he didn't really seem to empathize with certain stresses I was going through. ;) -------------- Specifics on that include: Undergrad -- Ohio State Grad -- Harvard, mathematics Adviser -- Andy Gleason; I realized he didn't have a PhD in that pre-web era only after I saw his bio for the presidency of the American Mathematical Association
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- derrida 14y agoAs did Wittgenstein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein who was an engineering drop out and wrote the Tractatus whilst a WW1 PoW in Italy, only to be given a PhD as an afterthought by Russell. I have known of an academic in a teaching and research position at a major university who did not complete high-school & was hired based on the merit of their published papers. These are of course the very small minority to the general rule. There are also cases of it working the other-way: PhDs that have made a lifelong contribution to their field without an academic post. Paul Erdős comes to mind... the most prolific mathematician of all time (by number of published papers) was a vagabond. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdos (Interesting fact: both Wittgenstein and Erdős were disciples of the thought of Frank P. Ramsey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_P._Ramsey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_P._Ramsey I am finding it hard to discover which degrees, if any, he had.)
- siglesias 14y agoAnd not just any PhD, a Cambridge PhD, using said Tractatus as the dissertation. Astonishing.
- ot 14y agoAt that time the Ph.D. was something new in European universities; it was basically imported from the US. Many professors didn't welcome the novelty, including one of Wittgenstein's examiners, who wrote in his report: "The Tractatus is a work of genius, but it otherwise satisfies the requirements for a Ph.D." EDIT: I should have said "British" instead of "European", see comments below.
- Van_av_Ordning 14y agoYou have things the wrong way round. The Ph.D. degree originated in Germany.
- ot 14y agoYou are right, but it came to UK through US: From the United States, the Ph.D. degree spread to Canada in 1900, and then to the United Kingdom in 1917. (from Wikipedia)
- wwosik 14y agoI believe that, for once, formally you don't need MA/MSc to get a PhD. Another example could be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Banach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Banach
- arethuza 14y agoI don't think a Masters has ever been a requirement in the UK - I started a PhD without one and that was fairly common (at least in the 80s/90s).
- jdotjdot 14y agoYou often don't need MA/MS to get a PhD. Many PhD programs in the US grant them as a matter of course "along the way" during PhD programs, with them really not mattering so much and students obviously applying to the program without the Master's under their belts already.
- curiousdannii 14y agoPhD by Publication isn't uncommon. I know a number of people who have worked as researchers in NGOs. After a decade of that it can take just a few months to tidy up the work you have already done, submit it to a university, and be awarded the qualification.
- m2mapps 14y agoNot quite the same, but a few years ago I met an HCI professor who had started his career as a male nurse and had worked his way up through the academic system.
- edgar_di 14y agonow you made me feel bad. I have the wall decorated with a Bsc. in engineering, a graduate diploma, and Masters degree in IT and no Job!. a Degree Is Worthless, you get a piece of paper after spending 4+ or more years of your life; Collaborate!.
- rdipasup 14y agoI think we're definitely in a wave of education bubble. Soon enough, paper degrees wouldn't matter. Udemy, Udacity, etc may look like 'for fun' type of schools, but I'm sure they'll democratize institution heavy traditional schools.
- ekurutepe 14y agoThe former german education minister Annette Schavan(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette_Schavan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette_Schavan) also had only a PhD-Degree, which was taken back last year due to plagiarism, leaving her with no academic degrees whatsoever.
- buro9 14y agoI have an MSc in Computer Science but lack a BSc or A-levels. I was homeless and sleeping rough when my peers were in secondary education, I was living in squats and hitch-hiking around the UK when they were in university. Being self-taught, I applied for the MSc after 15 years experience as it was a source of personal anxiety for me to lead large technical projects in which almost every other person was highly educated (MSc or PhD) and those that were not had a BSc. I felt a constant career vertigo in my position, due to not feeling sure in my abilities. During the MSc I struggled with revision technique and exam skills, having never sat any before. But where I was weak at exams I frequently scored above 95% for coursework, research projects and coding tests. Mostly I felt that the MSc taught me the language with which to communicate and argue the things I already knew. When I completed the MSc I reflected that I would've been more competent at a PhD than the MSc. But I didn't know in advance how I would fare at the MSc and that a PhD might interest me. Mostly I was just 'checking boxes' to improve confidence in my existing work, but I found myself very seriously debating whether I wanted to pursue a PhD when I got to the end of the MSc. I really enjoyed the research work in the MSc.
- bane 14y agoMostly I felt that the MSc taught me the language with which to communicate and argue the things I already knew. That's a fascinating story and a great perspective. One thing that's hard to communicate with those who've decided to pass up on higher education is how many different (and different kinds) of tools it gives you in your field. It's not just the theoretical bits, or the formalism, but also the language of the field...something which has a surprising number of uses beyond just talking to a peer. A decade after my undergrad, I'll be working on a problem and remember a handful of possible algorithms from my undergrad days that might apply to it, but have no clue about the particulars (they may have not even been covered). But because I learned the language of the subject, I can usually drive into google for an hour or so and quickly triage the algorithms to find the one I want to relearn. It's easy to look things up when you know what they are called -- and more importantly can understand the instructions! I have a number of friends who decided to focus purely on their development skills and skip school, and they've definitely expressed frustration at finding and understanding the literature, or have spent many hours reinventing the wheel because they didn't realize it had already been built!
- ForFreedom 14y agoHis numbers are there, did somebody call him?
- pud 14y agoIn some states, including California, you can practice law without having any type of law degree -- as long as you pass the Bar Exam. I've always been tempted to study & take it.
- mattzito 14y agoThis is only sort of true - if you don't want to get a law school degree, you have to apprentice for four(?) years with a lawyer or judge who "sponsors" you to the bar, and you have to pass multiple tests. So you can't just walk up, take the bar, pass, and practice.
- chollida1 14y agoEngineering, atleast in Canada, is similar. You can write a series of tests instead of getting a university degree. Though you still need to do the 4 year engineer in training before you become a PEng.
- napoleond 14y agoSource? I'm aware of programs which allow internationally educated engineers to earn equivalency in Canada (ie. without having to re-do their entire degree), and there is certainly a test to write before you may be a member of a province's professional organisation (and thus eligible for a PEng), but that test is about ethics and engineering law. I've never heard of any system by which someone without any formal engineering education could write a series of tests to become eligible for a PEng, unless that "series of tests" is accompanied by several years of painstaking study and a bachelor's degree at the end ;)
- abduhl 14y agoMany states (and provinces I assume) will allow one to sit for EIT or PE exams given you can provide over X years of experience doing professional levels engineering work under the direction of a licensed professional, where X is generally on the range of 15 years.
- papercrane 14y ago
- argumentum 14y agoThe number theorist, Ramanujan, had only one Cambridge degree, "B.A. by Research", which was later renamed as "PhD". It was awarded after he had published important work with two of the greatest English mathematicians, Hardy and Littlewood. If you delve into history, there are innumerable examples of achievement through non-traditional channels. Lincoln didn't have a law degree, for example. In the 20th century, auto-didacticism (teaching yourself) became less common .. here's hoping that that trend is reversed in the 21st.
- arbuge 14y agoMore power to him. He's pretty straightforward about it and probably has unique perspectives on life which the other faculty are lacking. I might have enjoyed my own PhD work more if I had been one of his graduate students instead.
- MaysonL 14y agoThen there's Ed Fredkin, who joined MIT as a full professor with no degree.
- celerity 14y agoI am a math Ph.D. student, and one of my professors went straight to Princeton after 3 years of college without his degree. He impressed a Princeton professor enough to have him offer a position there, which he could apparently do. My professor took the offer, not only because it was fantastic in its own right, but also because he only took math courses as an undergrad, and getting his bachelor's degree would have meant taking a year of humanities -- a nightmare! This isn't that strange. A lot of universities are private institutions, so they can accept whom they please.
- tantalor 14y agoI doubt the public-or-private distinction matters in hiring choices.
- sauravt 14y agoRespect
- moron4hire 14y agoShock! Horror! Gasp! You mean someone can be accomplished in academics without following the Standard Academic Track That Is Designed By Our Benevolent Government And Their Patriotic Comrades In University To Provide Thou With A Most Efficient And Complete Education?!
- broken_symlink 14y agoBarry Mazur, a professor at Harvard, only has a PhD from Princeton. He attended MIT for undergrad and just never graduated.
- ruycer 14y agoIs it possible that he did not had a chance to go to college because he grew up in the midst of the cultural revolution? He seems a middle age man, who could be in his late teens/early twenties in the late 1960's, when for the regime any academic degree was suspicious.
- auctiontheory 14y agoThis is a side effect of the Cultural Revolution, a terrible time for "intellectuals" in China. There must be many others like him.
- mturmon 14y agoThat's what I suspected, thanks for making this observation. I wonder if others can chime in with anecdotes? Certainly I've known several people who were held back by forced labor in the countryside, but later went to grad school in the US. They were a little younger than the professor in the OP, so it didn't affect them as much.
- robomartin 14y agoTis concept is new to me. Are there many universities in the US and Europe that accept students (and grant degrees) into MSc and PhD programs without requiring the prior degrees or is this particular case an anomaly?
- tirrellp 14y agoIve seen something similar to this. My friend has a BS in Chemistry, and the head of the academic NanoTech lab where he worked said, "I really want you in our NanoTech PhD program. Just try it for a couple years. If after 2 years you don't like it, You can walk away and I will grant you a Master's for your trouble"
- fibbery 14y agoI thought this is the way it typically works... students are admitted to PHD programs after a BA/BS, and they get a terminal master's if they drop out but it's definitely not a prerequisite for the program.
- justplay 14y agosalute
- gastke 14y agoWhen I was a student at Berkeley, I had took a linear algebra class with grad student who was admitted to PhD program without any previous degrees granted. He also was a genius and won the Putnam competition IIRC. http://math.cmu.edu/~sevakm/ http://math.cmu.edu/~sevakm/