What is a PhD?

What is a PhD?

Even though this is a pretty basic question, a lot of students and academics don’t have a clear answer—and that matters because the way you think of a PhD, what it means and what it’s for, affects how you approach it.

So, when it comes to defining a PhD, I’ll hear things like;

It’s an original contribution to the body of knowledge

This has some truth to it, but I think there’s more to it than simply being original. It also focuses on the output without telling you anything about the process.

It’s about becoming an independent researcher

I really dislike this definition because I don’t think there’s any such thing as an independent researcher. Yes, you need to be able to make your own decisions and conduct your own research, but you need other people. Most professional academics collaborate and consult with others, and you shouldn’t have to figure it all out on your own.

And a few times I’ve even heard people say that;

a PhD means you’re the world’s leading expert in your subject.

And, often, I’ll hear metaphorical definitions, like;

- It’s a driving license for research

- It’s a journey

- A PhD is a marathon not a sprint

But these don’t really tell you very much.

We need a definition that gives us some insight into the process and what’s required, while also differentiating it from other types of qualification.

A PhD as the pinnacle of the education system…

Now at a basic level, we could see a PhD as the highest level academic qualification you can get, and some people, when I ask them about why they decided to do a PhD, they’ll say it’s because they wanted to complete their education.

If we run with this idea, if we view the education system as a pyramid, with a PhD at the top and primary or elementary school at the bottom, once we get past compulsory education as you go from one level to the next, some people leave and those who chose to and who have the grades to qualify move up. It’s only the people who do very well at all the earlier levels who go on to do PhDs.

But there’s a problem with thinking of a PhD this way…

And the problem is that throughout the education system, there’s a certain consistency to the way things are done. There’s a set syllabus, and there’s a set timetable, so everyone on a course does the same thing at the same time and everybody does the same exams at the end.

But in a PhD, there is no set syllabus and no set timetable. You have to develop and manage your own unique project. And there is no standard exam- you have a defence based on you own work.

There are other differences too. In an undergraduate degree, for example, you’re generally dealing with well-established knowledge, and you’re given information in a carefully designed order to help you learn. But in a PhD you’re working at the blurry edge of knowledge, where you have to dive into the tangled mess of academic literature, which isn’t written or structured to help you learn, because it’s written for an expert audience, and to make it more difficult much of it will be contradictory.

In so many ways, the conditions and the requirements of a PhD are not only different to those in the previous levels of the education system, they’re the exact opposite. So even if you did exceptionally well throughout your education up to this point, the skills that got you into a PhD are not the same skills you need to finish one.

My definition of a PhD

So, instead of thinking of a PhD as the top level of the education system, I think of it as the bottom level, the entry level, of the professional academic system.

The purpose of a PhD is to develop and then demonstrate the skills of a professional academic researcher.

You may have no intention of becoming a professional academic researcher, but this is what the system is set up for.

There are a few advantages to defining a PhD this way…

First, it takes some of the pressure off. The PhD is not the completion of your education, it’s not the culmination of your life’s work, it’s just the beginning.

Second, because we’re framing it as an entry-level qualification then it’s not about showing how good you are, it’s about learning. And if you understand a few basic principles then you can design your project to help you develop the skills you need, with the assumption that you’ll make a load of mistakes along the way.

This is another key difference between a PhD and much of the rest of the education system: In a conventional exam, mistakes are penalised and recorded forever in your grades. So having been trained in that system for so long, many PhD students I speak to are terrified of making mistakes.

But in the professional academic system, nobody really cares how many mistakes you make on the way to making a discovery. In fact, mistakes are usually a necessary part of the process.