Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Hooray for the Clark Doctrine!

General Wesley Clark waded into the controversy involving Rush Limbaugh with a now-notorious appearance on Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC last week. Carlson and Clark had a feisty exchange, and the General actually advocated the jaw-dropping notion of the government rating political discourse. Missed in all the hubbub over the government speech-rating proposal was an enticing implicit poltical deal, something one might call the "Clark Doctrine." The good General summarized his battle plan:

"There‘s no reason for the American taxpayer to pay for Rush to assault the character of men and women who serve in the armed forces for their political views."

Apparently, the General wants Limbaugh's show dropped from being broadcast over Armed Forces Radio and Rush dropped into a live volcano. That last part may not be an accurate transcription of the conversation as things got heated between Tucker and our soldier-scholar.

Granted, the Reagan and Truman Doctrines had more substance to them, but this, one must admit, has interesting possibilities. If the good General wants no taxpayer money used by people (I assume not just Rush) to "assault the character of the men and women who serve in the armed forces", then one must presume we may apply this doctrine to American academia, our valued public institutions of higher learning. If citizens employed in our public colleges -- and compensated with public dollars for their work -- are discovered to have "assaulted the character" of our military, may tax money be pulled from them as well?

No fooling? Hmm, I'm liking this doctrine General. You get Rush, we get to empty out about 40% of the faculty lounges across the country. It's a deal. Heck, Rush might even go for it too.

Source




Failure of the PhD

A comment from another skeptical Australian

THE PhD is a dinosaur from a previous age of elite education.  It has failed at least one generation of research scholars and continues to fail the overwhelming majority of currently enrolled candidates. A radical rethink would be justified.

I’d like to stir the possum [be provocative] and canvass two options: enrolments could be slashed by at least 50 per cent with a doubling of scholarship and research support funding; alternatively, the degree could head in the opposite direction with an overhaul to take into account the employment prospects of those two thirds of students who will never find full-time employment within the university sector.

There is endless corridor chatter about shady practices surrounding the offering of higher degree research at Australian universities, but very few seem to want to speak out about the degraded state of the PhD itself. There is good reason for this.  It is called self-interest. 

At the top of the pile is an allocation system where universities receive competitive funding for PhD enrolments and successful completions.  Witness the trend in recent years towards advertising campaigns for research degree places around scholarship times, as universities attempt to trump and outbid one another for precious enrolments. This is reckless stuff and a possible breach of trust.  The ads do not mention that around 70 per cent of all enrolling PhDs will never secure research-related jobs in their fields of specialisation.

Down at the coalface, Gollum-like supervisors are endlessly suspicious of their colleagues’ intentions as they rake off workload points for the advice they offer to their students.  Such is the obsession with enrolments and candidacy that extra financial incentives are being offered for supervisions at a number of Australian universities. Given the circumstances, few would blame PhD supervisors for working the system in the manner they do.  Competitiveness is the name of the game and, like the bulk of Australian academics, PhD supervisors are afflicted by endemic workplace insecurity. 

The contemporary PhD suffers from a split personality.  The major and historic functions of the degree were to credential aspiring academics.  The problem is that only around a third of all successful contemporary PhD candidates will end up working in their specialist fields.

The PhD has been caught up in the movement towards mass education, but the degree itself has remained elitist and virtually unchanged for around fifty years.  Training in research methods is the exception and most universities provide a high standard here.  There is little evidence to suggest that other forms of training are being implemented.

Four years ago, DEST released a report into what it euphemistically called “generic capabilities”. The phrase was catchy corporate-speak, and there the debate seemed to end: “When workplace-related skills are discussed, a variety of terms is applied (such as generic skills, transferable skills, and graduate attributes, to select but a few). This report uses the term generic capabilities to mark off the skills and attributes that have a direct link to postgraduate research students’ employability, whatever their research topic and/or discipline base.”

The substantive matter was lost: “The past decade in Australia has seen increased debate and scrutiny by government, employers and universities themselves on the readiness of graduates to enter the workplace. This report is concerned with strategies and practices Australian universities have developed to address the issue of employability in relation to postgraduate research students. In the domain of research graduates, employability is conceived as including entry to the workplace and also career enhancement and change.”

Four years on, the PhD continues to fail its most important people: the best new research minds in the country.

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