The case for abolishing Ph.D Dissertations
The 100,000 word Ph.D Dissertation should be abolished.
Here’s the case for it.
In 2017, I contacted a director at the National Endowment for the Humanities, about The Public Scholar Award. The award funds researchers trying to reach broader audiences, but disqualifies people trying to turn their Ph.D dissertations into popular books.
I told the director that my project included “some material from my dissertation — the parts that have broad appeal — although most of the project was not based on my dissertation.” Would that disqualify me?
“In my experience,” the director replied, “it is very rare that portions of a dissertation would be suitable for this program.”
“Rare” apparently needed a modifier, “very”. It is very rare that a broad audience should be asked to read any portion of any dissertation written in 2017.
An industry insider confirmed the director’s suspicions to me over lunch in 2019. “The vast majority of dissertations currently for sale on Amazon.com do not sell even a single copy. Not one. This was said to me by someone selling academic dissertations on the internet.
Dissertation Embargos
And — even more absurdly —in addition to the funders and readers — many dissertation writers themselves agree. Many embargo their dissertations, making it virtually impossible for anyone to read them until years after they are written.
“I turned to Twitter,” explained Alexandra Gold, who completed her PhD in English at Boston University in 2018 and was looking for advice on whether or not she should “embargo” her dissertation. “Most respondents [on Twitter] agreed that embargoing was the way to go… [my] trusted department mentors…advised me to embargo for the maximum amount of time possible, which I did.”
Too bad Proquest doesn’t allow students to embargo their dissertations forever.
So, if the funders, readers and writers all agree that no one should ever read a dissertation — why are they written?
The Mental Health Crisis
Meanwhile, the graduate student mental health crisis has worsened. A widely cited 2018 study found that graduate students were six times more likely than the general public to struggle with mental-health issues such as depression and anxiety. Similarly, in the UK, 29% of Ph.D candidates listed their mental health as concerning — while nearly half had sought help for anxiety or depression caused by their PhD study. Ironically, the phenomenon is well-documented by the same people managing the anxious and depressed people being surveyed.
And I cannot pretend to write about this subject dispassionately: I personally retreated into depression during my fourth year as a Ph.d Candidate, as I was toiling away writing something no one would read — waking up to the realization that a tenure track job was a pipe dream. And that was before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Job Market Collapse
Now — at the time of writing in June 2020 — the academic job market has collapsed. Almost every college and university in the US has frozen hiring. Most have announced pay cuts, furloughs and layoffs. Ohio University is cutting 40% of its faculty. Missouri Western reduced its faculty by 30%, while the University of Massachusetts at Boston isn’t “reappointing” lecturers. Well thanks for being so darn nice about it, even during these challenging times! And at least five colleges and universities have already announced plans to shut down owing to financial difficulties brought on by the pandemic, a trend that has been accelerating for years. Commentators like Scott Galloway are expecting hundreds of US-based colleges and universities to go under in the very near future.
And even for those lucky enough to find something in academia, the prospects are often bleak. Many eke out a living as adjunct instructors, getting paid per class taught with no benefits, job security or opportunities for promotion. If I had a dime for every blog post I’ve read about an adjunct on food stamps, I’d have at least $2.70 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27). I’m not saying I’d be rich or anything, but I’d almost have enough money to get guacamole at Chipotle.
All of this is to say that the dissertation system is broken, in urgent need of massive reconstruction.
Solutions
If dissertations need to be abolished, was is to replace them? Don’t we still need expert teachers and writers? We do. That’s why we need to teach ph.d students how to write and teach.
As for the writing, most people in the United States read a language called English, not academese. Purge dissertations of jargon. Stop using verbs along with their passives in the same sentence. Stop repeating and re-repeating verbs with a re-prefix. Abandon and re-abandon shudder quotes. Stop using “prepositions” as “metaphors.” Stop moving towards, between and beyond abstractions of abstractions of metaphysical concepts you invented by turning a noun into an adjective. Stop run on sentences. Learn classic prose. This will require universities to hire great writers to whip ph.d students in shape. Fortunately, starving writers are plentiful, and cheap to hire.
Also, for the lord’s sake, tighten up the prose. No one wants to read 100,000 words. The brain evolved to listen and watch, not to read. I can’t even make it through most 280-character tweets. Start with 1,000 words. Do a lot of research on those 1,000 words. Spend 6-months doing the research — and write 1,000 words. And make sure they are crisp, sharp and novel. Try to publish your 1,000 words. If you cannot find anyone to publish it — keep working on your 1,000 words. You’ve got a few more years to keep trying. If, three years go by, and you still can’t find anyone to publish it — then post it to a very prestigious website called Medium or upload it as a PDF to Academia.edu [full disclosure: I am an employee of Academia.edu].
The 100,000 word count incentivizes bad writing. I remember when I hit 100,000 words — I took a pause to edit. That’s of course the key to writing — it’s the editing. “I don’t like to write,” the brilliant writer William Zinsser once wrote, “I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into electricity”.
So I started deleting unnecessary words. I got down to 20,000 words! And then I checked the word count and I was like, Oh NO! I’m down to 20,000 words! I had to figure out how to write another 400,000 words — so that — after the editing — I’d be down to 100,000. The word count requirement is my-blowingly stupid.
This process will be painful for ph.d candidates, but ultimately good for their career prospects. Good writers are needed across every industry.
Also, teach graduate students how to teach. Ph.d candidates are totally unqualified to teach. In 2013, when I stepped into a room of 15 Princeton cheery-eyed undergraduates eagerly hoping to learn something about Middle East history, I declined to confess that I had not spent even a single minute learning how to teach. Not one. How is that possible? Good educators, good teachers, good lecturers are in need everywhere.
Instead, I learned to sound academic.
Also, I learned to lick as many peoples’ asses as possible. “Your work is so interesting. I love your discursive approach to the spatial and temporal re-mapping of post-structuralist hybridities. Now, does your department have any Visiting Assistant Professorships open next fall?”
If you think the current dissertation system is working, find me someone who has actually read a dissertation. Talk to ph.d students and ask them about their mental health, and the job market. And tell me the system isn’t broken. It’s time to abolish the 100,000 word Ph.d dissertation.
If you enjoyed this piece, I upload comedy videos about the Middle East to youtube here! Also, I share free high resolution maps and original historical sources from the Middle East here, and the rest of my academic work can be found here.
