PhD, collectivity, neoliberalism
I was checking another of my texts for the collaborative article after last week’s post. This was on the effects of neoliberal policies on our experiences. While the whole world has been affected by the neoliberalization during 80s and 90s, Colombia was a very extreme case. However, reading the text made me think about a more fundamental question: what do we, as aspiring researchers, expect from a PhD program? What should a good doctoral program do in the first place? It’s difficult to answer such a broad question, but I’ll mention what I expected from a doctoral program and the role of neoliberal policies in not getting anything near my expectancies.
Getting a PhD
What makes a doctoral program? It is a simple but very important question. What is the thing that marks the experience of studying a PhD, the difference between someone who has graduated from a doctoral program from someone who hasn’t?
If you ask the first undergraduate student you see on my campus, I guess they would mention the thesis. So, studying a PhD means writing a PhD thesis. Problem solved. Well, except that it isn’t. There are very good doctoral programs that don’t require writing a traditional thesis. In most of them, you write three or four separate research articles (in some cases some of these can be co-authored), and write an introduction that brings together these articles. Then, you graduate. And I really like this, a lot more than writing a traditional thesis. Many good academics received their PhD in this way. Plus, there are other programs that accept different kinds of material instead of a written thesis, e.g. audiovisual products. So, no, you don’t really have to write a thesis to be a PhD. You do write one in most programs, but that isn’t what makes the difference. If I convince a retired academic to supervise my thesis and write a thesis in my home with his guidance, then defend it in front of some other academics, it wouldn’t be the same as studying a PhD. It would teach me a lot about doing research, but I could have learned them in other ways too, for example by writing research articles and dialoguing with the reviewers.
If it isn’t the thesis, then what is it? Maybe, the courses, someone might say. You take courses, you get passing grades. So, studying a PhD is taking PhD level coursework. Well, I would say wrong again. There are very good PhD programs without coursework and grades. You participate in some workshops and do presentations, but you never receive grades and you don’t have obligatory coursework. And, again, many good academics studied in these programs. Plus, in most PhD programs with coursework the classes are mixed with Master’s students. I had classes with PhD students when I was studying my Master’s, and I had classes with Master’s students when I was studying my PhD. It is the same course. So, no, the coursework isn’t what marks the PhD experience.
Maybe teaching, then? There are many brilliant researchers who have never taught a course in their lives, much less during their doctoral studies. Many PhD students never teach. So, no, teaching doesn’t make the difference. You can teach without a PhD, and you can get the degree without teaching.
Am I trying to say everything is a sham and doctoral studies are a hoax? No, I’m not. I do think that doctoral studies offer something unique. You can be a good researcher without it, but it’s very important to have and make things a lot easier. That’s what I believe anyways. It’s the collectivity. It’s being part of an academic community for years, interacting with it, sharing your results with members of this community and commenting on their results. It’s the opportunity to frequently interact with your peers, people just as excited as you about research. It’s the opportunity to ask for guidance from more established members of the community, who were like you once even though some of them may not remember it anymore. I believe that this communal experience is what makes the difference. You may write a thesis or not, you may take courses or not, you may teach or not, these are all secondary. The important thing is being in constant contact with a community of researchers, talking about their intellectual activities, asking for advice, sharing what you’ve just found. It’s being part of a community where you share your excitement, your curiosity, your joy. I think that is what one expects from a PhD.
And, I didn’t get it. And, I guess I am bitter about it because I’ve wanted it for a long time. I’d say that I ended up a researcher alright, and I did have contacts with various other researchers. Some of my professors from Turkey (most of whom were dismissed by the government for signing a peace petition in 2016), some of my friends from Turkey who have been studying all around the world after the crackdown on Turkish universities, people that I’ve met in one place or another. I also participated in some research group activities. And obviously, being married to a researcher makes a huge difference, we’ve been reading each other’s manuscripts and talking about our work since forever even though our research areas aren’t very similar. So, I guess I did alright with the research. And I even got to teach Intro to Political Science two semesters. Teaching to first-year undergraduates in Colombia actually restored part of my hope in humanity. This is to say that not everything has been so bad. I knew individual researchers, I talked to them, I gave advice, I received feedback. And I learned a lot from my thesis advisor. She has been great and taught me a lot, not only about how to do research but also about the social responsibility of academics. And also about how to treat people. The short answer is nicely, but it’s not that easy to implement, I guess this is why it’s always impressive to see it in action. Like I said, not everything was bad. But, I missed out on the collectivity. I wasn’t part of a community. I was an individual talking to other individuals, sometimes collaborating with them, but I didn’t really have that feeling of belonging.
I didn’t get what I expected. There are many reasons for it, but I’ll focus on the role of material conditions. Here is where neoliberalism steps in. It has been a scapegoat for many things, some of which were justified and some others less so. I also blame neoliberalism for the experience I didn’t get.
There are almost no scholarships for PhD students in Colombia. 15 people started in my cohort and according to what I know only two us started with a scholarship. One of them (me) had an external international scholarship, which caused many problems later but it’s not the time to tell about them. There was only one student with a Colombian scholarship. Now, important information: there are no free postgraduate programs in Colombia. Even undergraduate programs are not completely free, but the fees are lower. Studying a PhD in a Colombian public university (it’s a lot more expensive in private universities), as we wrote in the article, meant paying more than 2000 US dollars each semester until we are PhD candidates at the time. Once you are ABD (all but dissertation), the fee went lower, around 750 USD a semester (the minimum salary was around 250 USD). What does this mean? Well, unless you get the Colombian rich family lottery (in which case you probably went to the US for your studies) you have to work while you study. You have to work to pay the rent, your expenses, and the school fees. Plus, you probably have debts from your previous levels of study since Master’s degrees are required for studying a PhD in Colombia and they’re almost equally expensive. As a result, most of the students in my cohort had full-time jobs.
People can only come to classes by asking permission from their bosses or arranging their work schedules when they have a full-time job or multiple part-time jobs. That is why all the obligatory classes of our program were on Thursday. In this way, students can ask for a one-day permit and spend rest of the days working full day. When we were still taking courses, students only came to the building on Thursday. And when the classes finished, they stopped coming altogether because they are busy working full-time jobs, spending time with their families, and studying for qualifications or writing their thesis whenever they can find some time. This meant no graduate student community. Plus, since each stage of studies requires high fees, it takes more time to start a PhD in Colombia compared to most other countries. You have to work to save money, then study while you are also working. As a result, most of our colleagues had care responsibilities (children, elderly family members, etc.). So, imagine this: working a full-time job with two kids while studying a PhD. You’ll never have time to talk about my research. I mean, you are lucky if you have some time to do your research.
I believed that doctoral students are supposed to share the same space and engage in intellectual activities during the day. Maybe I was exaggerating the role of face-to-face interaction. In any case, COVID put an end to that. The campus stayed shut down from March 2020 to September 2021 (no typos). I had an office before that, they gave me one for being one of the very few people who can go regularly. I really liked the office. But it was a ghost building. We were in a transdisciplinary research center, all the affiliated faculty had primary links with some other department. Plus, we weren’t in the main campus. So, it was a couple of PhD researchers (at most), a couple of administrative staff, and a couple of workers. That was it for most of the time. The building had office space but nobody could use it. Most students had day jobs and they studied at nights or on weekends.
Now, there were ‘auxiliary professor’ scholarships at the university. I taught two semesters with that. These were few though, and the selection process wasn’t always the most transparent. Moreover, when you have one of these ‘scholarships’ you get paid four months. If you get the second semester, then you will be paid for another four months. You receive eight salaries during the whole year, and you don’t get health benefits or anything similar because technically these are scholarships. You still pay a part of your school fees, but you get a pretty good discount. It isn’t good enough to live, but combine it with a part-time job and you can live. These ‘scholarships’ didn’t solve the problem, but I guess they helped a couple of students to not drop out from the program.
In the end, when you are not part of an academic collective it is not easy to establish your identity as an academic. Sometimes you feel as an impostor. Well, I do. But material problems require material solutions. That is why doctoral students should be paid decent salaries with health insurance and basic labor rights. And this is the bare minimum. I would also include economic housing options inside or nearby the campus, bicycle or public transportation allowance, and family aid. Most aspiring researchers don’t survive the current system. Any public entity that cares about the future of academia has to be very worried, because this is obviously not sustainable and in countries like Colombia the whole system is very close to collapse.
And finally, I would like to express my solidarity with the striking university workers in the UK.