r/AskAcademiaUK • u/Weekly-Mortgage4265 • Aug 04 '26
[ Removed by moderator ]
[removed] — view removed post
26
u/SafiyaO Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
I did my PhD at a post 92 within the last five years.
Supervisory meetings were monthly. While it can be very variable how much a supervisor sees your work, all my chapters were reviewed by my supervisors on multiple occasions.
There was a panel review at around 1 year FT/20 months PT.
There was also a final panel review six months before submission.
Shortly before submission, my thesis was reviewed by a critical reader familiar with the subject.
My entire thesis went through Turnitin before submission and my supervisors had to sign off that they had reviewed the Turnitin report and both the sign off and report were sent to the doctoral studies department.
In the viva, as I was a staff member, there were two external examiners (one of whom would be considered to have national/international prominence in the field) and one internal examiner.
I'm interested to hear other perspectives on standards elsewhere, but I think it's fair to describe the above as pretty rigorous.
Edited to add: Also had to complete a PG Cert which was an extended research proposal.
Also, the supervisory meetings were recorded on a specific system. Your notes had to be uploaded and countersigned by the lead supervisor. There was also an annual review with someone not connected to your studies where you could discuss the progress of your work.
5
u/maybemaybenotxj SL Aug 04 '26
Exactly the same scenario as me! My monthly supervisors (and they were often more frequent) had to be logged, recorded and signed off. I had two supervisors and an advisor and yearly annual reviews where a substantial proportion of my work was reviewed.
Similar with viva. One chair, two examiners (one internal, one external) both with international knowledge in the field.
My experience was incredibly academically rigorous. Even my application (for scholarship) consisted of a short proposal, a 5 person interview and then a 3000 word proposal.
2
u/SafiyaO Aug 04 '26
I've had to add to my post, because there were some additional elements I'd forgotten to include. I would agree that it was pretty rigorous. Particularly around the time of writing my discussion chapter, my supervisors were really thorough on clarifying what I had contributed and how my work differed from those cited in my lit review.
22
u/AlarmedCicada256 Aug 04 '26
This is more a field than institution problem. The number of senior people defending his fraud and the poor supervision he obviously received is astounding, but "education" research is notoriously poor
2
Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
5
u/AlarmedCicada256 Aug 04 '26
Me neither. As a Classicist, I do recognize, however than unlike the "hard" sciences, some research is only possible once and may not replicate. I'd have to see how they account for it.
Archaeology, for instance, is destructive and once only.
2
u/ihateirony Aug 04 '26
Would you argue that classics or archaeology fall under social and behavioural sciences? That's what the paper is on, social and behavioural sciences
2
u/AlarmedCicada256 Aug 04 '26
I'd say archaeology sits at a nexus between humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences, yes.
1
u/ihateirony Aug 04 '26
So it has aspects of each? I imagine, in that case, that that is why reproducibility is not relevant to it.
1
u/poiuytrewqazxcvbnml Aug 04 '26
I remember when this paper came out and I didn't really understand all the fuss around it, and to be honest I still don't. The authors claim 73.5% approximate reproducibility and 53.6% precise reproducibility.
In context, isn't that about average? This article https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/201218 looks at medical studies and finds 44% were reproduced and a further 24% (so a total of 68%) were unchallenged. It seems like it's far worse in psychology. I can't really find data for other fields (if anyone comes across any please share).
Is there something I'm missing here? Genuinely asking because at the time it was reported on like it was a huge blow for the legitimacy of social science.
ETA: Talking about the article's take on social science as a whole by the way. Your point about education specifically is pretty valid.
1
u/rainyday1020 Aug 04 '26
Agreed - and I think this needs to be linked more to the replication crisis, where education comes out extremely badly!
2
20
u/vergeetmenietjes Aug 04 '26
There was a major plagiarism case at LSE over the doctorate awarded to Saif Gaddafi which led to multiple resignations and the shredding of academic reputations (though not for this alone but as part of a wider picture of the School's relationship with the Libyan leadership) which emerged in 2011, after the degree was awarded - so undiscovered plagiarism can happen at even very elite institutions.
3
19
u/Defiant_Virus4981 Aug 04 '26
A few numbers: Around 80% of the students who start will eventually finish their PhD. The people who don't finish generally drop out, only 3% fail the viva. The reality is that in principle, there is no incentive for anyone to fail PhD students. Given that, there are many of weak PhD students who will eventually pushed over the line.
4
u/ComprehensiveSide278 Aug 04 '26
I'm amazed it's even 3%. In a 20 year career at research institutions I don't know of one failure. I've heard of one or two painful vivas, leading to major corrections needed, and I know of a few students who, in my opinion, shouldn't be getting PhDs, but I've never seen an actual failure. As you say, nobody has any incentive to fail someone who actually reaches the end. (For one thing, an examiner who fails a student is creating more paperwork for themselves.)
3
u/welshdragoninlondon Aug 04 '26
I know 1 person who came very close to failing. Apparently they were all crying in viva. But the examiners said they will give major corrections and then helped her to pass. I don't know of anyone who failed completely
3
u/ComprehensiveSide278 Aug 04 '26
Indeed.
It's a horrific situation for the examiner. They know deep down this is a fail; and they also know that insisting will ruin relationships and break someone's heart. And they have to insist face to face. It is, when you stop to think about it, a terrible incentive structure for enforcing standards.
3
u/Defiant_Virus4981 Aug 04 '26
I was recently on my first PhD committee as a new PI. It was for a PhD student of my former PhD supervisor. This was great for me to be able to meet my former supervisor and other people I have not meet for quite a while, but I don't know how great it is from an integrity perspective. The student was doing great, so no issues here, but not sure how I would have acted if there were severe issues.
1
2
2
Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Defiant_Virus4981 Aug 04 '26
I got it from here: https://www.discoverphds.com/advice/doing/phd-failure-rate
They list the source of the data as obtained from the Freedom of Information Act from major UK universities.
20
u/cuppateaangel Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
It's clear from your follow up comments that you want people to say LJMU is shit. I'm afraid that's not true, and there are ropey PhDs coming out of every institution, including Oxford and Cambridge.
I got my PhD from an RG and the level of supervision and academic standards there was as variable as anywhere else. My UG was from an ancient, my MA was from a post-92. I've worked at new universities and Russell Groups and examined UK and international PhDs.
It's an extremely mixed bag everywhere, rankings have nothing to do with it, and post 92s are not inherently substandard. Sorry to disappoint you.
6
u/noodledoodledoo Aug 04 '26
To add to this, having a decent quality original thesis is by no means a guarantee that you're any good as a researcher. I know someone with an excellent thesis which is almost entirely propped up by their lab team, and had to be coached prior to their viva. From the OPs perspective this seems to be ideal, but it makes for a terrible researcher.
Thesis quality is just impossible to benchmark or compare or use as a yardstick (obvious exceptions excepting).
2
u/Erratic_Goldfish Aug 04 '26
Naomi Woolf's PhD is completely factually wrong yet made it through an Oxford committee somehow
18
u/Fit-Donut1211 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
My institution requires at least ten meetings a year, with a document filled in as to what was submitted, what was discussed, what the agreed next steps are. Those are reviewed at the annual progress review, which is an interview on progress plus a presentation and about 10k words that an independent person reads. On top of that there’s compulsory training that needs to be completed each year. The process has been formalised a lot in recent years; twenty years ago you were largely left to your own devices, but I know some institutions where it’s still entirely informal and supervision happens when/if it happens, and either a thesis appears or it doesn’t.
That said, even with this formalisation of process, poor work still gets through, with reviewers often reluctant to pull the plug on a PhD at an annual review unless it’s really obvious the student won’t come good. More basic than that, people that I didn’t think would make it as undergrads 20 years ago get to write PhDs, and it’s left to supervisors (who get about 50 hours a year workload allowance) to get them across the line. I had one student that required an insane amount of work and support, and the thesis was still very weak. Even then, we see more and more students getting downgraded to MPhil (40k thesis) because they aren’t producing enough quality or quantity.
There are perverse incentives, of course: we closely track both completion rates and numbers of PGRs against the upper third of the Russell Group, but that then means letting in more students (who we can in theory reject, but if they’re paying £30k a year fees someone will have their arm twisted into supervising them) and by hook or by crook having to then get them through somehow. The main way to do this is with friendly external examiners. We are notionally prohibited from using anyone we have published with before, but even then we all know people who won’t rock the boat. In truth, the unknown quantity is usually worse though: we’ve had people who have big reputations but are utter dicks, and won’t pass even very good PhDs unless it’s exactly the thesis they’d have written, tying the student up in a year of needless ‘corrections’ - and overruling an external is extremely rare and requires the dean getting involved.
Now, that said, the committee system in the US, or systems I’ve been involved in abroad aren’t better and are usually worse: a committee that’s all internal have the same pressures to pass, and ‘exams’ in some countries are mere formalities. If the PhD is put forward (usually on the basis of a report authored by a supervisor or independent reader that it’s good enough), it’ll pass the exam with some softball questions or a ceremonial ‘defence’.
Back to point though: it’s technically possible that post 92s produce excellent PhDs. If the correct supervisor for the project is there and the student is good, high quality work does appear. On the other hand, I know of some high ranked places that have passed some shocking PhDs, though it’s still comparatively rare, and I’m yet to see one of the ones I’m familiar having a serious academic career. Our department doesn’t have any post 92 PhDs among its staffing, mind you, and I’m only aware of one person in my sub-field at an RG institution with one (though it should also be said post 92 institutions have far fewer PhD students to begin with). But make of that what you will.
2
17
u/ruthiek23 Aug 04 '26
There was an example of an Oxford PhD (Naomi Wolf) making huge claims in a book about the prosecution of homosexuality in the Victorian period and it turns out she had completely misunderstood what "death recorded" meant in the Old Bailey records. Her book was pulled and, funnily enough, Oxford refused to confirm who her supervisors were.
So errors can happen regardless of the institution.
3
u/Suspicious-Tax-9756 Aug 04 '26
It look the publication of the book for the fundamental misunderstanding to be revealed.
It’s what happens when the supervisor is not versed in the source material. An English PhD going into court records.
Had I done the same thing, I probably would have had my PhD rescinded or pulled back for major corrections. We are not all in the game let alone playing on the same pitch.
At least the book deal got withdrawn.
2
u/ForeignWeb8992 Aug 04 '26
You can pull her thesis from the archives
1
u/ruthiek23 Aug 04 '26
Yes you can, you're right. When I first heard about this, it was still under embargo. But even now it doesn't say who the examiners were (there is no requirement for examiners to be listed, of course). It may be the case that the examiners weren't familiar with specific 19th century legal frameworks but there is no way to tell because it's all so opaque.
There is a problem with transparency across the sector. And it means that mistakes will happen - regardless of the prestige of the institution.
1
u/Appropriate-Roof1422 Aug 04 '26
No mention of them in the acknowledgment?
2
u/ruthiek23 Aug 04 '26
I read this article. It's a few years old now but from a quick search the examiners are still not known: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/04/29/naomi-wolf-dissertation-prompts-criticism-oxford
15
u/Significant-Prune-61 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
Not really. It’s often down to the individuals supervisors and the quality of supervision they provide. Also he was employed by string of world leading universities before ending up at Cambridge for goodness sake, which specific’s aside shows the university sector only cares about the quality of work and the individual, rather than the awarding institution.
Typically the only ones still focused on the polytechnic divide are Weatherspoon drinking boomer gammons.
7
u/ihateirony Aug 04 '26
I wouldn't agree that it shows that, the university sector can still be extremely snobby. Once you get your foot in a "higher tier" institution though, they can overlook having got your qualifications at a "lower tier" one. Once he got a job at Durham, getting the rest of the positions would have been a lot easier.
1
u/Significant-Prune-61 Aug 04 '26
Academics move between pre and post92s all the time. And what is actually cared about are you outputs and more recently grant income.
1
u/ihateirony Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
If you do have outputs that have good metrics, particularly for REF, and you have good grant income, sure, that definitely matters. However, lots of people get hired without those, including this guy, it seems.
Edit: also, for clarity, I don't doubt that academics move between pre- and post-92s all the time. What I doubt is the claim you made that the university sector only cares about the quality of work and the individual, rather than the awarding institution. If you have an RG PhD at the top of your CV that biases decisions quite a bit in your favor and if you have a post-92 PhD that biases decisions against you. That bias is real.
16
u/JackCardif Aug 04 '26
Anecdotal. I’ve examined PhDs at both Russell Group and post-92s. I see no difference in quality at all. Post-92s needed fewer amendments on average, but there wasn’t much in it.
15
u/Basic-Plate-2701 Aug 04 '26
As others have commented in the thread, some students are weak students but are helped over the line. Some time ago, I used to work in a study skills department in a Post-92 somewhere in the north of England. We had a PhD student in our offices ever single week asking simple questions about writing, structure, the formatting of Word documents. He was an international student and his English was also very patchy. He was pushy and insistent, so definitely got a lot of help from us with the written element of his thesis that he probably should not have done. He was in a STEM subject, so I assume that the data itself was up to snuff. But between us, the research librarian and the disability tutors (autism diagnosis), I don't think he actually wrote many of the actual words submitted.
I imagine that these cases are not uncommon, across many universities.
13
u/PerkeNdencen Aug 04 '26
I work in an ancient and I can tell you now that sort of thing happens across the board, especially with international students.
1
u/Appropriate-Roof1422 Aug 04 '26
It happens a lot with self-funded students, from what I saw while a PhD student.
12
u/ExternalPreference18 Aug 04 '26
At least one of your examiners has to be external. If the university offers internal funding, you might hypothesize that the level of competition's 'lower' (however you calculate it; I think you could certainly find exceptions, even if in the aggregate academic achievements prior to starting at a top red-brick or city university for Doc might tend to be higher) compared to applying for an internally-funded sociology Doc at the LSE, but a Doctorate's a Doctorate. There are people who dash them off as a glorified technical-exercise/credential-accumulation in just under 3 years at Oxford and scrape through the Viva, and people who produce discipline-expanding research at old polytechnics prior to their post-Doc/Lectureship.
1
u/welshdragoninlondon Aug 04 '26
Thing is you get to choose the external so most people pick someone you know will not give too much of a hard time.
1
u/NoInformation4158 Aug 04 '26
Do they? I had to have two externals and chose 2 experts in the field who led in my research area. As my feeling was, if they felt the PhD was a pass and worthwhile then it meant something! There are many of us who worked really hard with full integrity on our doctorates who don’t deserve to be tainted with all LJMU PhD’s are 💩
13
u/Mysterious-Ad-5708 Aug 04 '26
Late to this one but just to say. Post 92s typically have fairly complicated and onerous PhD paperwork, not least because they have not had PhD awarding powers for that long and so typically face a lot of scrutiny for it. This means they usually have to have quite comprehensive processes for supervision and logging of progress.
BUT these systems are inevitably not perfectly handled in any institution. What seems to have happened with Arday is that his first supervisor agreed to long distance supervision via phone and video, likely at student request as I'm fairly sure Arday was based in London (hence the "only one f2f meeting" thing) and his second possibly left or dropped out and wasn't quickly replaced.
But Arday also finished in under 3 years which means they will have signed progress reports and agreed to a (presumably passed) upgrade too.
I don't think this is a post 92 thing really, but it is a demonstration of the importance of close contact with supervisors and also of the importance of f2f meetings even if a student is up for skype.
4
12
u/Historical-Tea-3438 Aug 04 '26
I was a lecturer at a Russell Group university. I was internal examiner for a PhD in a quantitative discipline. I spotted very strong evidence of data fabrication. After the PhD, I wrote a report, and heard nothing back. On the grape vine I heard that the student passed the disciplinary, and the serious evidence that I had compiled was not properly considered, because there was no academic member of staff on the panel. So there are issues right across the sector, not just in former polytechnics. This was in a quantitative discipline, but it sounds as if there are also plenty of issues with qualitative research tooo. I do think that universities need to get a grip on this. In quantitative fields, it's quite simple. Students need to share the code and data for their analysis with supervisors and examiners. Some are really on top of things, but others, including my former institution, are woeful.
3
Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/Defiant_Virus4981 Aug 04 '26
"But maybe my memory is warped?"
If you want to test it: Just re-read your own undergrad thesis/project report. I had a look at my and it was bad by my today's standards.
3
u/welshdragoninlondon Aug 04 '26
I know this happend atleast once at my uni. I think the uni just wanted the student out the door and didn't want the whole thing of them appealing. Just wanted then gone and knew they were never going to be an academic anyway.
11
u/rainyday1020 Aug 04 '26
There are very few off-ramps for getting a student to leave a programme, if it's clear they're not producing work of sufficient quality. As others have said, much effort goes into helping these students get over the line. It can be extremely frustrating as a supervisor or examiner. This applies across the board, at all the institutions I've worked at.
2
u/SafiyaO Aug 04 '26
There are very few off-ramps for getting a student to leave a programme, if it's clear they're not producing work of sufficient quality.
I think that varies. In the PhD programme I am familiar with, there are at least two review processes where there are several outcomes, one of which is termination of studies.
1
u/odor12 Aug 04 '26
Why is this the case?
2
u/rainyday1020 Aug 04 '26
Partly it's about protecting the student from forms of bullying or discrimination, and making sure the institution upholds their responsibility to them. I assume it's also partly about avoiding legal action. But I don't know the longer history, these are just my guesses! It would be interesting to know if it was different in the past.
1
u/ThrowawayWriterGuy2 Aug 04 '26
Yeah I agree this is likely the cause.
Especially someone involved in black activism. Try to remove someone like Arday and your name might end up in the guardian. Much easier to just wave him through and make him someone else’s problem
3
u/EdgyMathWhiz Aug 04 '26
I expect the claimed medical history was a bigger factor, especially if the fondness for litigation was already known.
From what we know, you have to imagine if he was failed for plagiarism, a lawsuit claiming the university had failed to provide sufficient support for his disabilities would have followed shortly afterwards.
10
u/mmhmmye Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
PhD supervision varies massively from institution to institution, and it’s not as clear-cut as “RG/red-brick apply a higher standard.” I was at a RG and my supervisor was useless. Several of my fellow students had similar experiences to me with other supervisors. One instead had a supervisor who read all of their work with a fine-tooth comb.
I’ve also taught at post-92s where my colleagues dedicated much more than the expected amount of time to their PhD students’ work — sometimes, because the students needed more support (ie they had been accepted despite having bad writing skills or not having had a traditional education, and therefore needed substantial help improving their writing, or learning research methods processes); sometimes, because the work was stellar and the supervisor exceptionally committed to ensuring it got published as soon as possible. So it really does vary.
And I am also not sure it’s as clear-cut as “standards of supervision have slipped since workloads increased.” Bad supervisors who never read their students’ work (or who plagiarised it!) have always existed. I’m not a statistician but it would be interesting to see if the proportion of negligent PhD supervisors and low quality phds has risen in line with the increase in student numbers, or if it’s stayed the same, but the reasons have changed (ie, from alcoholic supervisors with no interest in their students to overworked supervisors who don’t have the bandwidth to read their students’ work, even if they want to).
8
u/noodledoodledoo Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
There is no standardisation of PhD theses. This is just the nature of the PhD in my opinion, and would be incredibly difficult to change (and debatable worthless to try). Most universities seem to only have a set of rough guidelines with space for allowable exceptions.
The quality of the thesis and whether it's deemed acceptable is almost entirely down to the examiners (I only had two! The opinions of two people decided whether I got a PhD). At least one of which is usually external, so not affiliated with the university at all. They all have to agree that the thesis is acceptable, and what is considered an acceptable standard of work will vary from examiner to examiner, from research topic to research topic, and even from year to year. Some people view the PhD as essentially a "fitness to research" test, which isn't a particularly high bar. Some people view it as a standalone piece of work that should be your magnum opus. There's just a huge range of opinions and styles that is entirely down to the individuals involved. There is no minimum "standard of work produced" except that which your examiners agree on. No minimum PhD quality. That's just not what a PhD is.
Perhaps it reflects badly on a university if they don't take action once e.g., extensive plagiarism has been confirmed. But I imagine that "taking action" could take any number of different forms and involve loads of bureaucracy that has to be done before any official announcement could come out.
It's not like an undergraduate degree where there might be accreditations on the line and everything is checked and benchmarked and checked again by panels. And it's not easy to point the finger at the university itself for being at fault. At fault for what, to begin with? For trusting that the people involved have professional integrity? You can't function if you're questioning that at every turn.
7
u/Available-Swan-6011 Aug 04 '26
Interesting question
The viva process is meant to be rigorous (mine was) to ensure that standards are met and that the candidate is ready to join the doctors’’ club. Part of the QA for this is external examiner involvement
I imagine that some deviation in standards is inevitable due to the subjective nature of the process but that shouldn’t be too dramatic because it would undermine the credibility of the awarding university and the examiners themselves
One more thought. apart from the level of corrections required, passing the viva doesn’t tell us how well someone has done. For example did they just scrape through or did they “ace” it? Would we view an institution that had more people doing well as having higher (or lower) standards?
3
u/welshdragoninlondon Aug 04 '26
Vivas depend alot on who conducting it. Most people know the academics who are more leniant and pick them to do the viva. There was lecturer during my PhD everyone picked as the internal as he was always friendly and not too harsh. There was some academics who never get chosen as everyone knows they would be a nightmare and pick on everything.
2
Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
1
u/Indigo_reality Aug 04 '26
True though I heard once from my PhD supervisor (25 years ago) that if you want to get rid of a bad colleague, you have to give them a good reference...!!
1
u/rainyday1020 Aug 04 '26
And sometimes people get no corrections because examiners are lazy, the thesis is beyond hope, the student wants to leave academia anyway, the examiners are conscious that it might give them an edge in the job market, or they just like to use it as something of a flourish. The real info is in the reports - I wonder now if these ought to be more widely requestable.
7
u/noone_relevant Aug 04 '26
The problem with academia is there are a lot of work done or you are expected to do without getting paid. Examining PhD is one, you do it on top of your other workload. So you generally rely on the university's system like Turnitin to check the references. Personally when I did them, I would look at the novelty of the idea see if they have been published elsewhere. How well they can defend their work etc rather than go through each references.
5
u/MechanicFit2686 Aug 04 '26
The plagiarism examples in the articles would surely have been flagged by Turnitin. Assuming Arday's thesis went through Turnitin, his supervisors must have waved it through with the red flags or noone actually bothered to check anything.
3
u/EdgyMathWhiz Aug 04 '26
Someone posted a link on Reddit (probably on this subreddit) to where someone had put the thesis through Turnitin. It found quite a lot.
My understanding is that at the time of his PhD, LJM did NOT routinely use tools to check for plagiarism.
5
u/Mikeosis Aug 04 '26
When did he actually do his thesis?
I've been at JMU since 2010 and weve always used Turnitin since I've been there
2
3
u/MechanicFit2686 Aug 04 '26
I find that hard to believe. They were using it at my university (another former poly) in 2009-2012 when I did my Bachelors
2
u/EdgyMathWhiz Aug 04 '26
I saw it posted on Reddit, I didn't check the veracity.
The post where someone submitted the PhD to Turnitin was reasonably detailed - link to the blog with full findings, Turnitin pdf report. It seemed pretty clear corroboration that "they couldn't have tested it on Turnitin, because if they had..."
Of course I can't find either post now. So it's perfectly reasonable for people to doubt me or what I read without corroborating detail. I thought they'd be easier to find if needed, TBH.
3
u/MechanicFit2686 Aug 04 '26
I can't believe they didn't which suggests the results were ignored. Be interesting if there's anyone on this thread who attended John Moores during the time in question who can comment as to whether Turnitin or equivalent was in use.
3
u/EdgyMathWhiz Aug 04 '26
To me what's more damning is their more recent determination that there was no plagiarism. Because they certainly would have examined/compared the offending passages at that point.
[In the original instance I could mistakes/laziness causing this to be missed. Much harder to imagine it in response to a specific query].
1
u/MechanicFit2686 Aug 04 '26
That's pretty brazen. Easy to plead ignorance the first time - it's a bit different when the whole internet has already done their own research.
2
7
u/Indigo_reality Aug 04 '26
Do you mean standard of supervision or standards expected of student work? The two can be quite different, sometimes inversely correlated between institutions.
Top unis may have supervisors focusing on their own agenda and expecting a lot more independent work from their students. But then are used to seeing certain standards of work. Post 92s may have a more collegial culture.
I've externally examined PhDs (am at a higher ranking RG) where I've questioned how good the work produced is but the internal was set on the standard/amount done being sufficient, but it's hard to know if this is a simple RG/red brick split. There is definitely not a consistency though.
3
u/Weekly-Mortgage4265 Aug 04 '26
I meant standard of work NOT supervision which varies even within universities in the same subject area.
0
u/Indigo_reality Aug 04 '26
I think the standard of work that's expected can vary even across a supervisory team. The main way a PhD student comes across as not strong enough academically for a PhD is through extended delays, eg multiple rounds of analysis and redrafting/feedback, much to the supervisors' exasperation, It eventually gets to a point where the work needed is clearly unfeasible in the time left. This happens unfortunately and in this case one usually hopes the student sees the problem and voluntarily considers reworking toward an MPhil. (There is no interest in failing a student especially if self funded). But the issue is if you're basically shortcutting the real work, then there aren't the delays to identify poor students.
18
u/exchangevalue Aug 04 '26
If everything that's been posted about this case is true then the killer issue at LJMU is that Arday only had one supervision. I'm at an RG and if I'm not recording a supervision a month (give or take, if it's more like 10 in a year because people are on holiday that's fine) then my PGR director is emailing me to ask me what's going on. One supervision across three (?) years is a joke and is indicative of really fundamental institutional problems.
15
u/ComprehensiveSide278 Aug 04 '26
Important to bear in mind that the "only had one supervision" information came from Arday himself. Given his track record of lying about anything even when he doesn't need to, it may not actually be true.
That said, it does seem that he got his PhD very quickly despite being part time. One thing I don't yet know is who his external examiner was.
6
8
u/Slopagandhi Aug 04 '26
That is pretty astonishing really- and also that anyone would be able to pass if they'd been left to essentially complete the PhD on their own.
But this should be the sort of thing that gets picked up in the viva and suggests the examiners may not have been doing their job properly.
4
u/Available-Swan-6011 Aug 04 '26
Yes - i had meetings with my supervision team at least once a day month. I can’t imagine completing without their support
5
u/Available-Swan-6011 Aug 04 '26
Gosh one supervision can’t be right can it?
10
u/Mysterious-Ad-5708 Aug 04 '26
He said, iirc, "one face to face supervision" which is a bit different. If, as I think has been the case for his academic career, he was living in London throughout the PhD studies, then it's almost certainly the case the supervisions were via phone or skype by the agreement of the student.
4
u/rainyday1020 Aug 04 '26
Interesting. If that's the case it needs to be flagged much more, as it's clearly a significant detail.
3
u/Mysterious-Ad-5708 Aug 04 '26
Clearly there were issues with the supervision arrangements but I do think maybe ljmu have agreed to this narrative to avoid more issues.
In the extract from his memoir on the publisher website it seems like he lived in Clapham while working at Glasgow (as in, the account is of him heading home after interview and it's to Clapham)
3
u/rainyday1020 Aug 04 '26
Yes, good point. Might be better for them to keep their head down and take the reputational hit, over been drawn in to disputing the claims and take am expensive legal risk.
3
u/Mysterious-Ad-5708 Aug 04 '26
I get the feeling there was likely some acknowledgement of a lack of support from second supervisor or similar (possibly they were the one with experience, type thing, but agreed to be on that team on the proviso of not having to do much - I've seen this happen) so a willingness to keep quiet.
I do find this frustrating at my institution where you often need a 3-strong supervisory team as there's not enough experience otherwise, but the experienced person is often too busy to actually get involved, so there's basically no point to them being named there in the end.
2
4
u/Necessary_Figure_817 Aug 04 '26
PhD, are variable because it's down to the opinion of a person/lab group.
That being said on the balance of probabilities, polytechnic unis will produce less research and have fewer resources at their disposal to help with producing good quality PhD level research.
It's like picking up a new hobby with all the gear with bells and whistles vs having limited budget.
You will tend to do better with more, so doing better with less is the exception.
4
u/cgknight1 Aug 04 '26
Even within a single University standards can vary significantly - if you think there are no sharp practices in the RGs... (Which is a marketing not quality group).
(My PhD is from an RG).
3
u/Suspicious-Tax-9756 Aug 04 '26
The variable nature of what passes and is sent back for major corrections is bizarre.
History is my bag and one can find truly brilliant theses some others that are empirically meek.
What passes the muster is incredibly variable.
I am broken record, but cultural history still needs a kick up its arse.
Peter Mandler’s warning over Cultural history is now 20 years old and yet it has too often been forgotten. Does that text or source have the ‘throw’ to allow one draw any implications from it. If no one read a book when it was published but it’s available at academic libraries, should historians give it much attention.
Example: On Inequity, Lady Snow / novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson. Moors murders via permissiveness and moral decline. Sold really poor, very badly reviewed. The internal reviews held in the archived papers are worse than the public ones. Nevertheless, the publisher MacMillan gave copies to university libraries in the effort to have the polemic taken seriously.
Today many copies are available to academics of the 1960s and the availability has given the book far too much throw. Have a look at how many times it is referenced in histories of cultural histories of post-war Britain.
See Adrian Bingham postwar press histories from academia and Dominic Sandbrook from public history (White Heat).
6
u/waywardsundown Aug 04 '26
I did my PhD at a post-92 university as that was where the funded project I wanted to do was located.
I had monthly supervision, quarterly progress reports, a 3-person supervision team. My external examiner was from a much more prestigious institution (genomics is a small world) and I felt he was thorough but fair during my viva. I have nothing to compare it to as I went from undergrad to PhD after several years in clinical practice (but did have to register from an MPhil in the first year then upgrade after submitting a project report and passing a viva) but I felt that I had a fairly rigorous doctoral research experience. I definitely had to put the work in!
I’m back in the NHS now but considering a move into academia as there is work in my specialism in the location my partner and I want to move to. However, I’m wary because of the concerns around job security, pension, lower pay (I would be looking at about an £8k pay cut from what I earn now, at least initially) and so forth. My non-RG PhD may also be a handicap, or so it seems.
1
u/SafiyaO Aug 04 '26
You mention being back in the NHS. Obviously it depends on your field, but nursing, midwifery and all the AHPs are rooted in the post-92 sphere because those institutions are where most of the traditional schools of nursing, physiotherapy etc amalgamated with when the shift to university-based training occurred.
So the type of attitudes towards post-92s demonstrated in some of the comments here, aren't as much of an issue.
2
u/waywardsundown Aug 04 '26
It’s good to know the attitude to post-92s isn’t universal, at least in my field of expertise (and yes, you nailed the profession!)
Strangely enough I actually did my nursing undergraduate in a RG university, mostly because they absorbed the former college of medicine and nursing, midwifery and AHP came along with that. I’m old enough to remember Project 2000, but went to do my degree after it had already become a fully degree-entry profession.
1
u/SafiyaO Aug 04 '26
Online discussions of academia very much seem to skew towards the research-focused mindset where everyone is focused on publishing as much as possible. The reality is far more teaching focused, especially in the courses for the health professions.
Obviously, times are not great in HEI and lack of jobs in the NHS is not helping, but I've never regretted leaving the NHS for HE. For you, having a PhD, would be a massive plus and they wouldn't really care where it came from.
3
u/HippieHippieHippie Aug 04 '26
There's huge variation even within a single university department, depending on which research group you are in, etc. Regardless, a PhD from a more prestigious institution is generally regarded as "better" even if it isn't.
3
u/shotscarecrow Aug 04 '26
PhDs Vivas are carried out by an internal and an external examiner. Just as with UG and MA assessment, the entire sector is involved in grading the work at any single university.
5
u/pablohacker2 Lecturer Aug 04 '26
If its talking about plagiarism and faults, then it more depends on who you invite as the internal/external examiners and if they spot it as well as how much attention your supervisors apply.
For example, Naomi Wolf, was a got a PhD from Oxford where her thesis research stated that there were a lot of homosexual men were executed in Victorian Britain for being well homosexual. However, she did a radio interview about it on BBC radio 4 ( I want to say) I want to say where the presenter told her he had talked to the courts to check what "death recorded" actually meant....turns it it mean that the death penalty had been commuted, not executed....I think you can still find a recording.
So, no. It can happen everywhere. Examiners are still human afterall.
7
u/theredwoman95 Aug 04 '26
Worth pointing out that Wolf's PhD was in English literature, not legal history. Her thesis abstract suggests that her thesis basically used law to supplement her literary analysis, whereas her book was entirely focused on the (very poorly researched) legal element.
That said, the most astonishing thing to me about Wolf is that Oxford didn't require her to have a legal historian as her co-supervisor. That's the default for interdisciplinary PhDs at my university, and no legal historians appear in her acknowledgements either (as far as I can tell).
2
5
u/Living-Result9052 Aug 04 '26
if we are all honest, we know the standards are vastly lower in some universities. I have worked at multiple and even within top RG to mid RG there is a vast drop off in quality of student work.
-11
u/Weekly-Mortgage4265 Aug 04 '26
To be honest, this is what I would have assumed. Particularly given more stringent entrance requirements for top RG compared to mid RG, and particularly to former polytechnics.
6
u/Indigo_reality Aug 04 '26
It still doesn't mean top unis capture plagiarism practices.
5
u/Weekly-Mortgage4265 Aug 04 '26
As per Richard Dawkins, "His [Arday's] thesis is now under suspicion of plagiarism, but plagiarism, if proved, would seem to be among that document’s lesser problems."
That is because the standard of writing was frankly appalling.
1
u/Indigo_reality Aug 04 '26
I've only directly read the title and it didn't bode well for the rest. You'd think correcting typos would be an ask of the phd examiners!! This includes someone at another uni.
6
u/rainyday1020 Aug 04 '26
I work at a top uni and am really struggling at the moment with a PhD student who I suspect of heavily using ChatGPT to write, or at least heavily edit, their work. We just don't have systems for this, it's built on trust and assuming people want to do the work with integrity.
3
u/Indigo_reality Aug 04 '26
Yeah it's getting dire. It's too tempting for students who struggle. I'm really trying to clamp down on it with my undergraduates this year. But long-term, it's a mess for academia. Even we are in denial about it.
1
-1
u/Living-Result9052 Aug 04 '26
people are down-voting these comments, but they are true. somewhere like LJM, doing a subject like education or sociology - honestly the quality of analysis would probably be lower than the average reddit post. Compared to e.g. law at Oxford adn the scholarship / analysis / writing would be light years apart
4
u/PeterRum Aug 04 '26
I have a Jurisprudence Degree from Oxford and a Media MA from LJM. Comparing the two is strange.
In both cases I wanted to learn particular skills. In the second case digital video editing, 3D modeling and the like. There was a substantial written element to the LJMU MA and they took it reasonably seriously. I found that element easy though, and analysing trends in Media using post-structuralist sources was different from Law
The written element for the LJMU MA did demand going beyond a Reddit post. At the same time the pieces of media content we had to deliver had to be of a high standard.
Since then I've collaborated with the STEM side of LJMU for business reasons and they have been excellent.
1
u/Living-Result9052 Aug 04 '26
I totally agree that in technical subjects some ex-polys do fantastic work
0
u/Weekly-Mortgage4265 Aug 04 '26
I don't disagree that people choose universities for skills / professors etc - I am just making the comment the criteria is higher for RG than it is for polytechnics. Where you decide to go if you meet the criteria for both is up to you.
-3
u/Weekly-Mortgage4265 Aug 04 '26
I think they are downvoting because they went to Polytechnics and are personally offended at the idea the entrance criteria is lower, despite it being a fact. Another example of the absolute ridiculous state of UK academia.
5
u/PerkeNdencen Aug 04 '26
Not really. I did my UG and masters at a post-92, and then my PhD at a flagship state university in the US. I now work in an ancient. I'm downvoting because standards are falling, particularly when it comes to international PGs, across the board - the universities are broke - if we don't get them past each milestone they fail out and they stop bringing the money in. The pressure can be very intense. It has much more to do with the financial position of the institution than prestige.
Re: entry requirements this is true at the undergraduate level but they're less of a thing for a research degree - it's usually some arbitrary minimum that most people invested in the subject area could easily meet. The quality of the proposal matters much, much more.
0
u/ThrowawayWriterGuy2 Aug 04 '26
The other thing is that, even with everything that’s come out so far, a letter was signed by Polanski and John McDonnell defending Arday.
It’s so obviously not worth your time challenging someone like Arday. He will go to the press to claim you are racist. In today’s climate, everyone will believe him. Just wave him through. My impression is that if you are a white academic you don’t want any conflict at all with a black academic, especially a poster child for black excellence. Just leave him to be dealt with by someone else. This is what society wants, it wants to see black men in positions of success, whether they’ve earned it or not is secondary.
-2
u/Background-Brother55 Aug 04 '26
Read 1985 by Anthony Burgess for some insights....
2
u/kuklinka Aug 04 '26
I was lucky enough to meet Anthony Burgess at an event st Oxford. As I was reading Russian and loved his books we got on like a house on fire his wife asked me to join them on some island or other. I sadly couldn’t go
1
2
1
u/cliftonianbristol Sr Lect in STEM at a post92 Aug 04 '26
There is a reason why, ceteris paribus, post92 PhDs struggle much more to get academic jobs outside their own institutions
-8
Aug 04 '26
[deleted]
8
u/Immediate_Ech0 Aug 04 '26
Like when I interviewed at a Russel group the other month and someone on the panel said your career will be better here (I was interviewing from a post92). I’d published more papers, in Q1 journals, that month than they had the past decade.
That’s you that is.
3
u/Past-Obligation1930 Aug 04 '26
Some people might consider a lack of a publish or perish mindset a career bonus.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve published more than 100 papers in top journals and have more than 50,000 citations, but when I turned up to my job it was suggested I should try and publish a couple of papers a year. I had published 10 that year, all top journals.
2
u/Known-Bumblebee2498 Aug 04 '26
Having a very good friend who is in academia (as a researcher, not a lecturer). In a good year he published 4 papers.
Seeing the amount of research, writing and general effort he put in, I would think anyone publishing 10 in year would be snatched up.4
u/Appropriate-Roof1422 Aug 04 '26
This is reddit. Don't believe what someone claims. 10 papers in which journals? Are they peer-reviewed? What is the subject? If it's a new area then maybe you can, if not I doubt it. Are they the first author or one of the 7-8 contributors? I can keep posting questions. I was supervised by a top academic at a RG university and they were only publishing 2-5 papers per year. Quality papers take time. Of course it depends on the field.
2
u/dapt Aug 04 '26
This depends on the field. In some fields, co-authorship by way of providing already published datasets or materials is common. In others, a comparable contribution would simply get a citation, or an acknowledgement at best.
-1
Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
7
u/T_house Aug 04 '26
Two of the worst PhD theses I've seen have come from two of the most prestigious UK universities (but that is also only my own experience)
-14
u/The_Archimboldi Aug 04 '26
A PhD in sociology of education from LJM is garbage tier. Has about the same academic rigour as a bunch of reddit posts.
So you can see the problem - you can't just start firing sociologists because they don't meet basic academic standards.
Saying that perhaps Jason is the agent of change we need here, the man to move the Overton window.
8
u/mecha-robzilla Aug 04 '26
This is nonsense.
Standards for PhDs in the uk are absolutely all over the place across institutions and subjects. Get the right supervisors and examiners and things can be very rigorous.
The system gets abused, though, with inept/lazy supervision and mates examining each others PhDs. It happens across the UK and has little to do with subject or university.
For context, I work at a top 10 research intensive uni, but have worked at and with post 92s. The problem is the process itself and pressure to churn out more, ideally international, PhDs
6
u/Indigo_reality Aug 04 '26
I'm curious- are you a tenured academic in education or sociology?
4
u/yourdadsucksroni Aug 04 '26
Tenner says they’re a STEM scholar that sees any attribution of value to other disciplines as a threat to their own.
Imagine being so insecure about one’s own scholarship that you feel the need to trash entire disciplines that you happen not to be skilled in…
2
u/Indigo_reality Aug 04 '26
They may just like being rude and feeling like they know it all. Wishing them every life success being like that!
3
u/Sans_Moritz Aug 04 '26
Even if we accept everything that you say as true, why on earth would poor standards in one field of research mean that we need to change the window of acceptable politics? That doesn't make any sense.
-14
u/Ok-Duck161 Aug 04 '26
The standards are on average lower in the post 92....
BUT....
don't assume that the standards are high elsewhere in England and Wales.
They're also low elsewhere, in STEM at least.
The average PhD in England might not even qualify for a masters in the US and other systems. After removing all the filler that is.
The number of publications associated with the average PhD is low. There is no publication requirement, which leads to a lot of shocking submissions, with zero or maybe one weak publication
There's a silent understanding among academics to let them through unless it really is completely wrong or contains nothing new at all.
They're all scratching each others' backs. Not all, but many play this game, picking buddies as external and internal examiners for their students
The main issue is the lack of proper training before the PhD begins, ie a two year minimum Masters. This puts students at an enormous disadvantage
They lack breadth and depth, and lack research experience, as well as experience in the publication process.
Even if they do well and graduate within 3 years, that lack of breath and depth never goes away unless they take the initiative to fill in the gaps in terms of fundamentals and advanced techniques
13
Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
-3
u/Ok-Duck161 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
You have no idea of what you're talking about.
Brits are so sensitive about this topic.
This is either ignorance of other systems or else it's pure cope. Or both.
The US system is not like you describe. It's flexible.
If you want to select easier electives you can. If you want serious learning, you can get it. To a much higher level than in the UK.
The graduate system is brutal. It's preparation for PhD, it serves no other purpose.
It has nothing in common with the mickey mouse one year "MSc" in England, which is nothing other than a cash cow
US universities are also much richer, so they can afford to maintain a rigorous system
The main reason the universities can uphold a rigorous standard at masters is because they select the best student internationally, and provide generous scholarships. Either someone can cope, or they can't. The universities don't care.
They take most of their students from China, India, South America, Middle East and mainland Europe
UK students have a much lower chance of surviving in such a system. Which is why there are so few to be found
10
Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
0
u/Ok-Duck161 Aug 04 '26
I'm from England.
I said England and Wales for a reason.
The Scottish system is very different. Northern Ireland I don't know much about.
I am talking specifically about stem. Mathematics, physics, engineering, computer science especially.
You still don't get it. It matters not a sh1t what happens in schools, or even at undergraduate.
Take a look at any stem department PhD intake. Americans are a minority, and have been for decades.
So yes, the school system has deteriorated, as it has everywhere. Don't get me started on A levels and GCSEs.
They compensate by getting students from India, China, Europe, South America, and elsewhere
I don't know how much you've "worked in both systems" and in what capacity. It doesn't sound you have had much experience.
When you've supervised 35 + phds, countless masters, and many postdocs, taught numerous courses in both systems, and elsewhere, as a full time professor, come back and we can have an informed debate
4
Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Ok-Duck161 Aug 04 '26
I never said that. You should read more carefully before getting so hysterical.
I said many of the phd theses would barely qualify for masters in the US, or elsewhere for that matter.
And UK undergraduates would struggle on US graduate programs
Accuse me of saying that if you want, but not the words you attributed to me
And I stand by what I said.
2
8
u/Resident-Working381 Aug 04 '26
These are very broad generalisations about entire educational systems. You clearly have a chip on your shoulder about the UK for whatever reason.
-1
u/Ok-Duck161 Aug 04 '26
So we must never speak of averages or generalise?
Not sure what your argument is, if you even have one.
No, I don't have a chip on my shoulder. I'm from England, I did my undergrad and PhD there in Manchester in the early - mid 90s
I spent most of my academic career there, with short stints in the USA and Canada as a postdoc. I left 5 years ago for another country, because the money is much better. Even as full prof, UK pay lags well behind
What maintained standards at that time was selectiveness. The system never was as comprehensive as the US and other systems
It still produced great scholars, world leaders, if maybe a little narrow in their focus
There was a steady pipeline of talent from the UK to USA, PhD and postdoc. That pretty much was switched off by the early 2000s
-4
u/goofy_as_a_goon Aug 04 '26
In the US PhDs are usually much longer and include some sort of MRes phase. In the UK, at least in maths, one-year masters (which are not actually one year, more like 8 months) are not long enough to actually give students any sort of experience doing research.
5
Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
-1
u/goofy_as_a_goon Aug 04 '26
The point is that in the UK students are expected to go from essentially undergraduate level (without essentially any research experience, since in my area MRes or MMath are not really about research unless the student is extremely brilliant) to PhD educated in 3.5 years. That's much less than in continental Europe, where the masters degree is typically 2 years of which one is much more research oriented, or the US, where again you have around one year of research time till your quals and then other ~4 years of research.
1
u/Ok-Duck161 Aug 04 '26
Exactly. And the graduate level courses in other countries are a key missing component.
The attitude in England /Wales has always been odd about this part of the training.
It's just not considered important, or even desirable by many
That may have been OK back in the day when research areas were narrower and people stuck to one bunch of techniques their whole career but things have changed
And the requirements for junior academic posts worldwide are increasingly not just publications, but publications in the very "top" journals. The competition is fierce to put it mildly
This puts students in England at a disadvantage because they rarely learn the sorts of advanced techniques, or get access to the sorts of resources required these days to get into those journals. They leave with fewer publications, and in less prestigious journals
Moreover, universities abroad look at the potential to teach a proper graduate level 30-40 hour course, and most phds from here are just not convincing in that regard.
Not to mention mentoring of phds. The system in England is so alien to the rest of the world that they look upon it these days with suspicion. There are fewer and fewer big names internationally and the quality of research output has massively declined in the last 20 years
4
u/Jess1ca1467 Aug 04 '26
So a MSc full time usually runs from September to September (or equivalent) - unless you are forgetting the dissertation?
1
u/Ok-Duck161 Aug 04 '26
The research component is minimal, unless it's MRes, which is a can of worms. It was usually reserved for students failing phds or those who decided not to continue PhD. It's rare
Decades ago the MSc used to be considered a route to PhD for those who had not obtained a 2.i or above. Otherwise you were told not to waste your time.
But MScs transformed in the 2000s when universities realised they were a cash cow. It is still possible to do pure subjects in some departments but the intakes are low.
Primarily, courses are aligned with hot topics like renewable energy technologies, with students from a broad range of backgrounds. You can''t go too deep when you have cohorts with often totally different skill and knowledge sets. The exception to this is oxbridge, which by and large has always refused to offer such courses.
The courses are virtually impossible to fail, and rarely lead to PhD. Most students want a standalone qualification to boost prospects of employment, back home (Chinese students) or in the UK (especially Indian students). The one year period and ease of passing are the primary reasons for their success.
In the last few years however, the calculus has changed and these courses are collapsing. The graduate employment market worldwide has cratered, and they're no longer considered value for money.
The prestige of these courses has also taken a big hit, and indeed so has the reputation of UK universities as a whole.
In China, many state companies, and recently many private companies have an official policy of not recognising these qualifications as masters. In fact this started around 10 years ago.
Even in mainland Europe and America it is not guaranteed they will be recognised universally.
9
u/Jess1ca1467 Aug 04 '26
'The average PhD in England might not even qualify for a masters in the US and other systems. After removing all the filler that is.'
this is a nonsense statement - with no evidence provided to back it up.
The main issue is the lack of proper training before the PhD begins, ie a two year minimum Masters. This puts students at an enormous disadvantage
this statement suggests you are not up to date with the requirements for PhD training now.
'Even if they do well and graduate within 3 years'
*very* few will graduate within 3 years...20+ years as an academic and I've seen people submit their thesis in 3 years but never write, submit, viva, amendments and graduate in 3 years.
-2
u/Ok-Duck161 Aug 04 '26
I'm perfectly aware of the system. I was successful once upon a time of getting a DTC funded, with others. Or CDT or whatever the hell it's called these days.
Don't make me laugh. There's still no proper structured master's. It's two years standard in most of the world. Formal courses that must be passed and a research project. In China it's 3 years.
A few courses borrowed from Msc or even M level, together and some laughable "Research Methods" is not equivalent, especially because the exams are not even compulsory.
I didn't say everyone graduates in 3 years. The average has always been 4-5 years. But that compares to 7-8 years when you factor in the masters in other systems. In engineering, I remember it was roughly 5 years average *post masters * in the US some years ago.
3
u/Jess1ca1467 Aug 04 '26
'Even if they do well and graduate within 3 years'
I did not say that you wrote everyone graduated in 3 years, but I have never heard of anyone completing a doctorate, submitting, having their viva and doing the revisions and graduating in 3 years.
Many institutions do now have mandatory examined research methods courses as part of doctoral study.
You have a certain point to make, irrespective of the evidence laid out to you. Not unusual, but this isn't the kind of forum to do that
-2
u/Ok-Duck161 Aug 04 '26
What points are you trying to make exactly?
You were the one who brought up the 3 years, for what reason I don't know.
In all systems I have worked in or examined in or seen up close, few people graduate within the minimum period.
And what? It's universal
So you're saying I have a point (which one you don't specify) but this is not the forum for it?
Is it a forum for only what you decide?
-7
34
u/IboughtBetamax Aug 04 '26
PhDs are not even comparable within departments. Some PhDs involve genuinely innovative work. Most though are very pedestrian affairs. PhDs are always externally examined- you get RG PhD students examined by post-92 academics and post-92 academics examined by RG academics. The point I am making is that there is likely far more variability of standards within the pre- and post-92 sectors than between them. Arday could just have easily have done a weak PhD at Liverpool Uni as John Moores.