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examiners bring to it.
The meaning of a doctorate
We are going to start with some historical background and present in a
schematic way the meaning of the degree structure of a British university.
A bachelor s degree traditionally meant that the recipient had obtained
a general education (specializing at this level is a relatively recent
nineteenth-century development).
A master s degree is a licence to practise. Originally this meant to
practise theology, that is, to take a living in the Church, but now there
are master s degrees across a whole range of disciplines: business
administration, soil biology, computing, applied linguistics and so on.
The degree marks the possession of advanced knowledge in a specialist
field.
A doctor s degree historically was a licence to teach  meaning to teach
in a university as a member of a faculty. Nowadays this does not mean
that becoming a lecturer is the only reason for taking a doctorate, since
the degree has much wider career connotations outside academia and
many of those with doctorates do not have academic teaching posts.
The concept stems, though, from the need for a faculty member to be
THE NATURE OF THE PhD QUALIFICATION 21
an authority, in full command of the subject right up to the boundaries
of current knowledge, and able to extend them. As the highest degree
that can be awarded, it proclaims that the recipient is worthy of being
listened to as an equal by the appropriate university faculty.
Traditionally the doctorates of British universities have been named for
the particular faculty, for example: DD (Divinity), MD (Medicine), LLD
(Law), DMus (Music), DSc (Science), DLitt (Letters, i.e. Arts). These so-
called  higher doctorates are awarded as a recognition of a substantial
contribution to the discipline by published work. In British universities
the Doctor of Philosophy degree is a comparatively recent concept  an
early twentieth-century import from the United States. Some universities
abbreviate the title to DPhil (e.g., Oxford, Sussex, York) but most use the
designation PhD, which we use throughout this book. Whatever the
abbreviation, the degree is the same. It represents a more restricted
achievement than the higher doctorates since it envisages a limited
amount of academic work (three years or so), but it still embodies the
concept that the holder of the PhD is in command of the field of study and
can make a worthwhile contribution to it.
There are a number of exceptions to these descriptions of the meaning
of the degree titles, since British universities pride themselves on their
independence. Traditionally, once an institution had become a university
there were no laws that specified which degrees could be awarded, by
which institutions, to whom and on what basis, as was the case in Contin-
ental Europe. This has now changed, as the Government has decided to
designate certain Higher Education Colleges as  Teaching Universities ,
without giving them the right to award research degrees.
Historically this independence has allowed, for example, the arts facul-
ties of traditional Scottish universities to use the MA title for their first
degree, but the science faculties use BSc. Traditionally there was no extra
examination for an MA degree at Oxford and Cambridge, only a require-
ment to continue attendance at a college for a further two years. Now-
adays this has been reduced to paying a registration fee after two years and
obtaining the degree without attendance. In medicine the practice is even
stranger: general medical practitioners are given the honorary title of
Doctor although they do not have a doctorate from their universities.
Indeed, on the basis of their university course they are credited with two
bachelor s degrees, although having a licence to practise they exemplify
the concept of a master s degree. There are, of course, good historical
reasons for these anomalies.
22 HOW TO GET A PhD
Becoming a fully professional researcher
Thus the holder of a PhD is someone who is recognized as an authority by
the appropriate faculty and by fellow academics and scientists outside the
university. In modern terms it is useful to think of this as becoming a fully
professional researcher in your field. Let us try to spell out what becoming
a full professional means:
1 At the most basic level it means that you have something to say that
your peers want to listen to.
2 In order to do this you must have a command of what is happening in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]