Book Reviews and Studies

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Notes

1. See Valerie Strauss, “As Many Dropouts as Degrees: Poor PhD Completion Rate Prods Group to Evaluate What's Lacking”, Washington Post 18 April 2006. Available at: ⟨http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp‐co/hotcontent/index.html?section=/education⟩ Retrieved 21 April 2007. As international competition for graduate students and the related institutional ranking issues heats up, so does the need to keep U.S. doctoral programs competitive and effective. Debra W. Stewart, President of the U.S. Council of Graduate Schools, stated, “‘We will ultimately look at this [decline in international applications] as an early warning signal that focused our attention on a problem we had for some time been ignoring,’… ” and, “‘We must aggressively attract talent from around the world but take seriously the need to develop our domestic talent pool’”. For a view from the other (individual and human‐cost) side of the issue, see Barbara E. Lovitts, Leaving the Ivory Tower: The Causes and Consequences of the Departure From Doctoral Study, Lanham [MD]: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001).

2. For a stark consideration of the “hidden‐in‐plain‐sight” motivating reason for reducing the time towards the “Bologna Ph.D.” degree, see Chris Lorenz, “Will the Universities Survive the European Integration? Higher Education Policies in the EU and in the Netherlands before and after the Bologna Declaration” Available at: ⟨http://www.ii.umich.edu/ces‐euc/PDFs/2007%20Papers/Lorenz‐Will%20the%20universities%20survive%20European%20Integration.pdf⟩ Retrieved 22 April 2007. He argues therein that Europe has always been, since the Enlightenment, a cradle of knowledge generation, so what, he asks, does the often vaulted term now mean for EU policymakers? He states:

The notion of ‘knowledge economy’ basically does not mean the restructuring of the economy according to scientific knowledge. To the contrary, it means that the domain of knowledge production is economized: homo academicus is now modeled after homo economicus. In comparison to the traditional Enlightenment‐view the relationship between science and economy is actually put on its head: the economy is no longer represented as the domain in which science demonstrates its applied ‘success’ – based on its truth – but the economy is represented as the domain that determines whether ‘intellectual production’ is ‘scientific’ or not. So basically the notion of ‘knowledge economy’ presents the economy as the legitimation of science instead of the other way around. (p. 2, emphases in original)

In the Netherlands, Lorenz argues that pressures towards such increasing economization, privatization, institutional mission fusion and managerialization in the university sector as foreseen by the Bologna Process are already in full swing. As concerns the possible reform of the Ph.D. degree under Bologna, he points to the present Dutch example:

The third indication of the impending fusion of universities and professional schools in the Netherlands is the introduction of a so‐called ‘professional’ PhD‐degree, which is unlike the traditional PhD‐degree not based on a normal doctoral dissertation, but based on “professional experience”. This kind of PhD‐degree also represents a silent and as yet unnoticed revolution in Dutch academia, because policy makers are putting an end to another well entrenched academic practice: the autonomy of the professorate to determine academic degrees. According to the Ministry of Education “society” (or better: “knowledge society”) in the Netherlands is just ‘demanding’ more PhD's, and therefore the Ministry is simply ‘responding’ to ‘societies demands’ by producing more doctoral degrees! Therefore it is now a policy objective to increase the percentage of PhD's carrying teaching staff at the professional schools from 3% – the present situation – to 20% – the future situation within 6 years. In the managerial cosmos it is just as simple as that, because ‘objective’ professional criteria are just regarded as potential ‘impediments’ for policy goals and not as the very basis of the academic system. (pp. 16–17)

In the reviewer's mind this worrisome trend practically mandates that all Ph.D. graduates worldwide be taught to discover and engage the research/writing process critically in their own matured authorial voices (even when they will have less time to learn and advisers to teach), implying an ever‐greater need for the reviewed text and others like it.

3. The writer finds that the Ph.D. student in social sciences might be epistemologically placed either with the scientist if his work is of the quantitative sort, or with the humanist if his work veers toward the qualitative. In both cases an identity crisis often follows.

4. This reviewer well recalls being quite intimidated by the densely worded, lawyerly Ph.D. degree procedure manual given to him in his first term of study in the Communication Department in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at The Ohio State University, which, unfortunately, was (is) very typical of large stateside Ph.D. institutions. Wise advice given was to generally ignore the hefty whole and to focus only upon the specific steps needing to be followed when the time required.

5. Discourse and Social Change, London: Polity Press, 1992, p. 73.

6. “Who Needs ‘Identity’?” in S. Hall and P. du Gay (Eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity, London: Sage, 1996, pp. 1–17.

7. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London: Routledge, 1990.

8. See Joel Waldfogel, “Roach College, U.S.A.: What Ph.D. Students Really Have to Fear” (in “The Dismal Science: The Search for Better Economic Policy” Slate 29 May 2006. Available at: ⟨http://www.slate.com/id/2142489/⟩ Retrieved 22 April 2007) in which, outlining a Stanford University study on the employment outcomes of Ph.D. graduates in economics, he states that, “despite their elite credentials when hired, more than a third of the econ Ph.D.s in [Paul] Oyer's study had not published anything ten years after graduation. The other two‐thirds had published an average of 6.2 articles”. The key to higher academic publishing rates in quality journals and thus later career success was a first job at a top fifty department, a factor often driven by the fates of the hiring market upon graduation, and not by the individual quality of the candidate. This reviewer's findings in his own field of communication studies (which often has a pragmatic teaching/employment focus) is that most Ph.D.s there publish even less often.

9. An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 3rd edition, London: Edward Arnold, 2004.

10. After a number of allusions made herein, the reviewer feels the call to give credit were it is surely due. The adviser who selflessly and artfully guided him through the minefield that is Ph.D. training towards the beachhead of a socially productive, individually enriching scholarly life was Professor Josina M. Makau (now of California State University, Monterey Bay, USA). He trusts the book reviewed can aid other professors, himself included, to do as much and as well as she did for the doctoral students under her guidance.