Programska knjižica - Hrvatsko filozofsko društvo

examining process. The career of a doctoral student between admission and
submission is formally divided into three stages; to proceed from one stage to
the next she has to submit written work and the supervisor recommends the
promotion on a form.
Within the last decade, this progression has been greatly elaborated. At
both the intermediate stages, the student’s written work must now be assessed
by two people not the supervisor; they also interview the student and send written
reports to the graduate studies committee.
Any supervisor worth his salt will advise a student to consult specialist
colleagues when appropriate; there has never been any bar to this. Moreover,
there are few matters in life on which it is not worth having a second opinion.
Here, however, we have bureaucratic overkill. The present system has four
drawbacks, two for the student and two for the teachers.
Firstly, students see themselves as undergoing three examinations instead
of one, and so suffer more nervous tension. Second, there are few topics on
which five or more academics will entirely agree, so that the student often
receives conflicting advice.
For the teachers, the amount of examining everyone has to do is multiplied,
whereas – I repeat – examining is a form of administration and so should
be minimized to leave time and energy for teaching and research. But the last
drawback is the worst. The traditional relationship between teacher and pupil
is replaced by an impersonal mechanism. The teacher’s responsibility for the
student is removed; in fact, no individual now takes responsibility: if anything
goes wrong it is just system failure and nobody takes the blame. Nor, if all goes
well, does anyone deserve credit: why should a student be grateful to a supervisor
who is just doing his job along prescribed lines?
The supervisor has even effectively lost the power to decide when a thesis
is ready for submission. For this it is the higher powers, the agencies of government,
who are responsible. To their undying shame, the British Academy,
which for a while acted like a research council (though an exceptionally poor
one) for the humanities, decided 33 in 1991 to recommend to the government,
which of course accepted, 34 that students should finish their doctorates in three
or at most four years of graduate study. The motive behind this was power, not
saving money. Scientists, who begin their research careers in a far more tightly
controlled environment, are normally set a piece of work for the doctorate,
33
Strictly, the proposal came from a Joint Working Group of the British Academy and the
CVCP.
34
In 1988 the government had proposed a target for theses to be submitted in 4 years.
210