Academic speed

I have just finished reading Gordon Brown's biography, in which it is stated that the current Chancellor took some ten years to complete his PhD on the Labour socialist movement in Scotland. That's right: ten years to write his thesis and thus be awarded the title of Doctor of Philosophy.

The length of a PhD has always been a subject that has fascinated me for it reveals something very curious about the academic world and the individuals contained within it. Specifically, I think that the academic world shapes those within it instead of vice versa for reasons that I will come to in a short while.

If PhDs can take such an extraordinary amount of time, then the natural question to ask is: is the work contained within them of any real worth? Of course, it is not possible to give an answer to that question for many reasons: what does something have to be if it is to have 'worth'? which subject area are we considering? what are the alternatives available for an individual? et cetera. But the first two questions, far from being rhetorical, do provide us with a starting point.

First, the question of subject area. Gordon Brown took as his subject matter something that would be of interest to those that enjoy politics, specifically the Labour movement and its origins. As a thesis, it would be required to be original work, bringing together many sources, making its own conclusions in a manner that could roughly be termed as "academic"; which is to say reasonably impregnable by the average person. If, on the other hand, Gordon Brown set out with the objective of writing a book on the topic of the Labour socialist movement in Scotland then his content would have differed somewhat, as would his approach to the time demands associated with writing a book. In that case, there would have been a publisher demanding copy of the book as well as an expectation from those that require books for their own research/book writing that his work would appear sooner rather than later. Thus the timeline associated with the thesis-cum-book would be drastically less, say eighteen months, perhaps two years.

The scenario described starts with a thesis and turns it into a book but it is as likely to work in the other direction: say I have an interest in Franz Kafka. If I decide to write a boigraphy of Kafka as the manifestation of my preoccupation with him, if it were to be of a good enough standard then, quite aside from its being a book, with suitable editing and additions, the copy for the book could be turned into a thesis to be considered for the awarding of a PhD. Now, I am not sure what rules govern such possibilities, which is to say whether or not a book can be considered as a thesis (I assume that a thesis can be considered worthy book material with a bit of editing and style change), but in principle the idea remains the same: a work of great detail that contributes something new and original to the debate can equally be considered, if pitched at the right level, as either a book or a potential thesis.

At this point, the second question of worth becomes pertinent: if a thesis takes ten years to write, then of what use is it to the sphere of debate to which it contributes? If a person starts out with the intention of contributing to their chosen field, at which point their chosen topic must surely seem relevant and of some importance, ten years of toil must seem like a long time for that work to remain relevant and important. In other words: is the work worth the wait?

It is a question I have often thought about mathematics and the research involved there: if a student is given a project and a thesis title, the quickest they can reasonably hope to complete their work is three years; in that time, does everyone that may have an interest in the research wait until the answers or otherwise have been determined? Of course, those waiting will have plenty of other research interests but the fact remains that certain areas will remain untouched until either research students, their supervisors or members of the relevant academic community decide to consider the areas in question.

The 'answer' to the above questions, insofar as there can be one, is that the academic world does not move at the pace of the industrial or publishing worlds. The investment involved stretches over longer periods of time - not the immediate returns that may preoccupy a publisher or factory-owner for example. The one place in which the worlds of academia and industry do meet are those in which 'research' and 'product development' are often at odds with one another (I am thinking explicitly of the tobacco industry, as well as pharmaceutical companies etc.) In such cases, the scientists are obliged by contract to perform their research in order to find and test new products and their potential effects; it rarely pays in such cases to have to wait 10, 15 years for results to come back: budgets simply won't last that long.

In academia, however, the ideas are prominent in their own right: they are not dependent (in general) on some patent or industrial application in order for their existence to be acknowledged. Thus ideas can gestate for periods of time that in other realms would seem extraordinary. The question of how industry, government and politics has started to interfere in the academic research sphere is an interesting, related topic, but one that will be considered another day.