Wednesday, September 19, 2007
PhDs by publication - compare and see points of intersection with THES debate on Article-Based PhDs
(Document started on 11 Jan 2003.) This is a WWW document maintained by Steve Draper, installed at http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/resources/phd.html. You may copy it. How to refer to it.
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PhDs by publication
Contents (click to jump to a section)
- Introduction
- Symptoms
- First principles
- Second principles
- Reference cases, real and imagined
- One candidate's experience
- Conclusions
- Further points (Aug 2007)
- References
By Stephen W. Draper, Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow.
Introduction
Rather recently, many universities have introduced a new mode for awarding a PhD -- "by publication". The idea is, that a researcher who has published at least as much as would go in a conventional PhD should be able to apply for the award of a PhD. I have recently acted as external examiner for two of these at two different universities, and naturally have also looked at my own university's regulations on this. This document presents my resulting personal opinions on the issue.What seems clear is that the idea or spirit behind all of these is essentially the same, but the regulations are presently (in these early days) markedly different. Furthermore, reflection on the issues suggests that perhaps all universities should reconsider their regulations as it is easy to imagine and indeed often to find actual cases they cannot at present cover sensibly.
Symptoms
A simple first symptom of the divergence in regulations is to look at the required length of the accompanying document the candidate writes especially for the submission (called such things as "context document" or "critical essay" or "explanatory essay"). The four universities I have encountered required:- 2-5 thousand words
- 10-15 thousand words
- 10-25 thousand words
- No limit in the regulations, but the first candidate was more or less forced to write 30,000 words.
A closer look comparing different university's regulations reveals a second more fundamental area of variance and a real, unresolved, latent difficulty: there is not only no consensus on length, there is no real agreement on purpose or format. The confounding issue is whether the accompanying document is meant to be an application form, i.e. a bureaucratic document, written as a communication to the examiners, directly arguing about the worth of the submission (even though there is nothing comparable to this in a conventional PhD submission), or whether it is meant to be an academic document that goes in the library as a communication written for other scholars.
One of the underlying causes of this confusion within and between attempts to write regulations for this new mode of PhD constitutes the third problem. It applies much more widely than to this topic, but has particular importance here. It is apparent that in drafting the regulations the authors were thinking about what the examiners would need and find convenient, and were not thinking about what would be lodged in the library as the permanent contribution to knowledge by the candidate for other scholars round the world. I interpret this in turn as a case of specifying one possible process (in fact an arbitrary and probably non-optimal selection of one) when the actually important thing is to specify the properties of the end product, and to use the examiners to make a judgement and certification on whether those properties were achieved in each case. This is particularly important for a higher degree in research (in contrast, say, to a road driving test); and particularly important for a new mode where the people drafting the regulations have no experience of the ways the intention might in fact be satisfied. In the light of this failing, I will next discuss the issues from first principles. We do not know if the regulation authors failed to consider first principles, but their failure to state them has demonstrably led to bad regulations; and, I shall argue, has furthermore left their universities unable to cope with cases they almost certainly would wish to cope with. In fact universities seem not to publish anything about the purpose of PhDs by publication. This can only slow the evolution of regulations to better forms, while leaving candidates at the mercy of divergent interpretations by examiners and supervisors.
First principles
What does the university really want, academically, from this new mode of PhD?- Comparability: Does the work presented satisfy all the essential criteria of a conventional PhD, though by different superficial means?
- Will there be a permanent library record, accessible by scholars round the world, in some way of comparable utility for those scholars to conventional PhDs?
Here I offer one way of expressing the essential properties of a conventional PhD. The regulations in each university, and the forms examiners must use, express these in various slightly different ways, as you may verify for yourself. However I perceive there as being very widespread consensus in the academic community (at least in the UK and USA) as to the real essential requirements.
- It must constitute a contribution to knowledge. That is, it must be original (offering something not offered before), though that might be very different in different cases e.g. new empirical work, new deductive work e.g . a mathematical proof, new arguments, etc.
- It must show awareness of, and give the reader a lot of support in forming their own judgement on this, where it stands in relation to other published work: what its nearest neighbours in the literature are, in what ways it is distinctive (original, different, ....). Thus a literature review and a critical self-evaluation are more or less essential in fulfilling this requirement.
- It should be a "thesis" i.e. a single coherent argument, with all the components (empirical work, research design, literature review, critical self-evaluation) all subordinated to, related to, and serving to support, this single argument.
- There is no bar whatsoever on re-using the candidate's work in both publications and in a PhD; but they mustn't use same work in more than one degree submission.
We might note in passing that there is an implicit divergence in aim between the new mode of PhD by publication on the one hand, and on the other the new tendency to require explicit coursework training on research for PhDs and the "new route" PhDs by coursework. The former is about judging by results alone, while the latter are tending towards judging by training not research contribution.
Second principles
What does this mean in practice for an examiner asked to make the judgement about a submission for a PhD by publication? There are probably three main implied issues: quantity, quality, and integration over a large scope of work.
- Quantity. An average conventional PhD may result in one journal paper (though many result in none). A researcher keen to push publications might get three out of a PhD. Some PhDs are turned into one book. So any PhD by publication that submits more than three papers has easily satisfied the quantity implicit criterion.
- Quality. If the publications were peer-refereed then an examiner would be in a very poor position to argue against them of being of adequate quality for a PhD. To do so would be to show the examiner as preferring their personal opinions to those of the candidate's peers.
If the publications are in several different journals (or other refereed outlets) then that is a further good point, as it reduces the possibility of the work being accepted only by some small clique, or any possibility of cronyism.
If the publication outlets are of dubious quality or respectability, or are not peer-reviewed (e.g. they are books), then the examiners must judge each more carefully. However they cannot ask, under current typical regulations, for a rewrite if they feel the work is good but its reporting flawed. - Scale, scope, integration. If quantity and quality are satisfied, the only remaining issue is whether the candidate is capable of taking a view wider than that required in a single paper: of relating and integrating the body of work as a whole. In my view, that is the main purpose of the accompanying specially written essay. However if a book has been submitted as part of the published work, this is probably not an issue -- yet the regulations do not allow for this. Where a book is submitted, the essay is either unnecessary or else might often be much shorter. In one of the PhDs I examined, the candidate mentioned that someone had already asked him if his book (part of his submission) was in fact a book from a PhD. It seems clear to me that current regulations show no awareness of the kind of submissions that have already in fact been made in some places.
Reference cases, real and imagined
In my view, more thought should be given to the range of submissions that might appear. In this section I will sketch some cases that could be used to indicate the range that should be considered. The response should be to change university regulations. This might be to change the regulations for PhD by publication; but it might instead or in addition be to introduce additional modes for awarding a PhD. At one extreme there might be a proliferation of modes; at the other, a single general set of criteria and more onus on examiners to deal with each case separately and the power to make rather different demands on candidates. Here are four kinds of case, the first in three variants.1a. "Dear sir, I have been awarded the Nobel prize, and, as the citation mentioned, largely on the basis of my paper [ref]. I therefore hereby apply for a PhD by publication." Any university that turned this down would lay itself open to ridicule on the front pages of newspapers. Why should such a researcher have to write a 25,000 word essay when the argument, giving overwhelming reasons for the award, can be expressed in one sentence?
You might say that this is very rare, and that in such rare cases the university might immediately and reasonably respond by awarding an honorary DSc or some such. However essentially similar cases may be less dramatic, but still compelling.
1b. "Dear sir, my paper [ref] has become the most cited paper in the area of X in the last 5 years, and is widely regarded as having created a new field of research. I therefore hereby apply for a PhD by publication."
1c. This is a real case. David Huffman invented in 1952 what was soon called "Huffman coding" as his final year undergraduate project. (Try typing "huffman coding" into a search engine, or look here or here. Huffman coding has a variable codeword length, allowing text compression; but despite this, no codeword is a prefix of any other, so simple unambiguous decoding is still straightforward.) It became adopted in engineering practice, and taught in undergraduate texts. Should he have been eligible for a PhD by publication without further work?
These three scenarios raise several issues. Impact on a field is not a relevant criterion for a conventional PhD because impact cannot have emerged when it is submitted, but it is clearly of possible relevance to a PhD by publication. If the impact is clear and large, is it appropriate to demand a large essay, when the compelling argument for impact can be made in a sentence or a page? And if there is impact, then the need for critical self-appraisal seems of little importance since others have clearly done this. Do we want a PhD by publication that would not be automatically awarded to the most important research contributors? Should we insist on candidates jumping through academic hoops, even in cases where that has no value at all for their contribution to knowledge?
2. A conventional PhD is often turned into a book. If a published book is submitted, should this be eligible by itself? It seems clear that it should be, without any accompanying essay (contrary to many current regulations). On the other hand if but only if the examiners demand it, it should be open to them to demand after all an accompanying essay to cover any academic deficiencies they perceive, particularly if the book were aimed at an audience that wasn't essentially academic. This seems a clear argument that the minimum size of the accompanying essay should be zero, that a single book should be quite enough in quantity, but that it might (or might not) require a substantial accompanying essay or commentary.
3. A set of articles published in refereed journals, plus an essay providing a critical overview discussing their relationship to an overall theme or research programme. This seems the only case current regulations clearly envisage. Such a case does NOT really need any argument about why this constitutes a PhD: that would be clearly carried implicitly by the set of academic documents submitted, which would also make a coherent submission to the library.
4. A set of papers that have been published, but which are not academic (enough) in nature. I have heard secondhand of a case of this being submitted. (Secondhand i.e. I spoke to someone directly involved in such a case.) This is quite likely to occur in fields such as marketing, business, or perhaps school teaching, where there are many publications for practitioners. The examiners might feel in many such cases that there were a significant set of publications, there was useful empirical work, there were novel ideas and a contribution to knowledge, there was impact on the field -- but the writing reporting it was not academic e.g. it was not self-critical, or did not adequately relate the work to other published literature. One reasonable response to this type of case might be to allow another new mode for a PhD, where the candidate had to write a full thesis (say 80,000 words) but did not have to satisfy the time and fee requirements (i.e. take at least 3 years etc.). Such candidates would have already done all the practical work, and had all the ideas: they would just need to do much MORE writing than the currently foreseen "explanatory essay".
One candidate's experience
Chronology
- Enrolled.
- Successfully completed viva 18 months later.
- Summary document of 30,000 words was required (supporting books and journal papers 300,000 words).
- "Summary" document structured as conventional PhD thesis.
Reflection
Although my summary document was based on 5 written books and 16 journal papers I was required to write it as a conventional thesis - I guess because we are a new University, legislation plays a part and managers do not like being exposed.
Conclusions
Here I will summarise my suggestions for change. Even if you completely disagree with them, that alone shows that current regulations do not express your views and communicate them to the candidates and examiners, and so that the regulations need substantial change.In the light of the above considerations, I myself now think regulations for awarding PhDs by publication need to be made much more flexible. Furthermore they should consider more carefully and explicitly the two functions of producing a document for the library, and perhaps a separate and additional document for the examiners. These reflect the two actual needs: producing academic content for scholars to use later, and producing an argument about why this particular set of documents should be taken as adequate for a PhD award, allowing arguments such as impact evidence that do not themselves belong in an academic document but which will certainly and rightly influence examiners, and which necessarily have no precedent in the process for awarding conventional PhDs.
Both these documents should be allowed to be almost any length (though of course example cases with example lengths would be very useful). Thus both the Nobel prize case and the prototypical four articles plus substantial critical essay linking them into a unified research theme would require only a one-sentence covering letter, while other cases might usefully have a longer document addressed to the examiners. For the accompanying academic document, both the case of huge impact factor and the case of a book being submitted might require zero length, while at the other extreme research published non-academically would require a full thesis-length document.
At least some universities only offer this route to employees, not to outside candidates. This doesn't seem sensible. Firstly, it creates the impression that this is a fix and lower standards will be applied for "our" people. Secondly, and on the contrary, all of the examples I've seen so far are far above the average PhD in terms of research contributions to their field: it can only add to a university's reputation by raising the average standard of their PhDs.
On the other hand, someone suggested to me they'd like to get a second doctorate by this route. This, in contrast, seems to me to be something that should be barred by the regulations but usually isn't. Any practising researcher is likely to generate enough publications for a PhD every few years: it doesn't make much sense to award strings of doctorates to the same person. The point of a PhD by publication, it seems to me, is to give formal university recognition for research to those without any.
More than in any other area in universities, PhDs by research should surely be about recognising attainment: about judging the outcome and product, regardless of the means and process by which it was arrived at. The regulations should reflect this, and allow a wider range of cases.
Further points (Aug 2007)
A few somewhat different points have emerged.
References
A few example University Regulations for PhDs by publication. (These were put together 11 January 2003.)
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--
Hazem Azmy
School of Theatre Studies,
University of Warwick
http://hazemazmy.8m.net/home.html
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______________________
"The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land." - HUGO OF ST. VICTOR
Friday, July 20, 2007
Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole - Book Review
The Times Higher Education Supplement
20 July 2007
Why shop till we drop?
Keith Tester
Published: 20 July 2007
Title: Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole | |
Author: Benjamin R. Barber | |
Reviewer: Keith Tester | |
Publisher: Norton | |
ISBN: 9780393049619 | |
Pages: 406 | |
Price: £16.99 |
Title: Consuming Life | |
Author: Zygmunt Bauman | |
Reviewer: Keith Tester | |
Publisher: Polity Press | |
ISBN: 9780745639796 and 40020 | |
Pages: 160 | |
Price: £50.00 and £14.99 |
Rampant consumerism blights all our lives, Keith Tester discovers.
The high-street clothing chain Primark sells copies of the latest catwalk styles at pocket-money prices, and its lines seem to change every week. If the bargain is not grasped today, it has probably disappeared for ever. Primark is about the immediate now; buy now, pay now without worrying about the credit card bill (or the workers who make these suspiciously cheap garments) and wear now because the jacket will be ludicrously out of date next week. A branch opened at London's Marble Arch in April. Queues stretched for miles, people were hurt and doors knocked off their hinges in the mad rush to get the style bargain of the moment. Some shoppers came to London especially to be there, and news coverage was immense. Some of the shoppers may have been a paid claque, but if Benjamin R. Barber and Zygmunt Bauman are right, what happened at Primark highlights some of the most profound issues in contemporary culture.
Barber argues that because all the needs of the sufficiently affluent have now been met, capitalism can reproduce itself only with the stimulation of immediate consumer wants for unnecessary products. The best way of achieving this is by infantilising consumers and making them live in and for the now, like children. Infantilisation is literal in that marketers are increasingly focusing their attention on children, but it is also metaphorical.
According to Barber, consumers are infantilised by "capitalist consumerism" that nurtures "a culture of impetuous consumption necessary to selling puerile goods in a developed world that has few genuine needs". "I want" replaces "I need" (and there is no place here for a "we"; after all, you might take what I want, just as the Primark shoppers know that there are not enough jackets to go around). "Want" satisfaction is about now, whereas "needs" satisfaction is long term. What Barber calls the "infantilist ethos" inverts the Protestant ethic that he sees as the heroic founding principle of American capitalism, and it stresses the easy over the hard, the simple over the complex, and the fast over the slow. "As the Protestant ethos once shaped a culture conducive to work and investment, the infantilist ethos today shapes a culture conducive to laxity, shopping and spending".
Bauman reaches similar conclusions, albeit from a different direction. Whereas Barber convinces by marshalling a body of evidence that is overwhelming, Bauman adopts a strategy that encourages dialogue through the development of an ideal type of consumer society, pulling a diverse range of empirical material into a coherent picture that might then be used to cast light on how we live today. His methodology is Weberian. Consumerism is "a type of social arrangement that results from recycling mundane, permanent and so to speak 'regime-neutral' human wants, desires and longings into the principal propelling and operating force of society". Yet consumerism can operate in this way only if "wants, desires and longings" are always left unsatisfied. It cannot possibly allow for a moment in which the consumer can be fulfilled. Primark needs its shoppers to return to the store once they realise that what they have just so joyously purchased will be stigmatised as out of date when next week's stock arrives.
This explains why new styles and products are so desirable. They come with the promise that they will bring about satisfaction, if only for a week. Consequently, Bauman argues, consumerism is founded on a lie. What it promises is impossible for consumers to enjoy: "The realm of hypocrisy stretching between popular beliefs and the realities of consumers' lives is a necessary condition of a properly functioning society of consumers." The hypocrisy is disguised by the felicity with which the now-discredited purchases can be discarded and, as Bauman observes, waste disposal is a growth area of consumer capitalism. Consumers rarely have to pay for delivery, but are happy to pay to get rid of what is no longer desired: "It is getting rid that now conditions happiness; and happiness, as everyone would agree, needs to be paid for." Primark once again makes the point. It produces the quickly obsolete, and consumers fight for the privilege of disposing of the soon-to-be-waste because what they have bought only has value now.
Barber's and Bauman's sights are trained on targets much larger than shopping, however. Both use consumerism as a point of entry into a fully blown civilisational critique that encompasses relationships, politics and values. According to Barber, infantilisation means that men and women are prevented from growing up and remain stuck in a state of narcissism in which satisfaction is sought through a marketplace attitude towards goods and people. This causes a pathological reaction in which the self is subsumed into what is out there, and it becomes inadequate (after all, if brands or some people are so popular, they must deliver to others what they promise - the problem must be with me). Consumerism puts at the core of contemporary civilisation the lie that systemic deceits are individual failings. For Bauman, it is in this way that contemporary society turns around Freud's argument that civilisation is only possible through the external repression and deferral of immediate desire. On the contrary; this is a form of civilisation that is able to let desire run rife so long as it is channelled into shopping for goods or other people, and as long as the individual feels himself to be the cause of all failure.
Is there any way out of living this lie? Here Barber and Bauman move apart. Barber turns tentatively to pockets of value that have managed to remain immune to infantilisation, such as religion (although he does not make enough of the infantilisation of religion that is called fundamentalism), and he ends with the announcement that: "We need democratic sovereignty to moderate market anarchy and market monopoly." However, Barber notes that he has no formula that might bring this situation about. Indeed, the logic of his book is that it can never happen because infantilisation leads to men and women who are not attuned to the long-haul politics of democracy. Consequently Bauman's approach might be more useful. He does not give comforting answers. Rather he writes books that usually end with a paradox, and this one is no exception. The concern with being up to date is beginning to run more quickly than the human ability to be up to date, and this can only result in the worst irresponsibility.
Barber and Bauman have written books that are engaged and important antidotes to the platitudes of the times. They know that while consumerism can be pleasurable, it can never be the basis for a responsible and honest human being in the world. These two books can be hard and complex, and they ought to be read slowly because only then will their nuances appear. They encourage the very human virtues they seek to recover from a world otherwise only concerned with the easy, the simple and the fast.
Keith Tester is professor of cultural sociology, Portsmouth University.
--
Hazem Azmy
School of Theatre Studies, University of Warwick
http://hazemazmy.8m.net/home.html
http://hazemazmy.8m.net/cyberbabel.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aitheatre/
______________________
"The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land." - HUGO OF ST. VICTOR
Thursday, September 28, 2006
The UK Elephant in the Room
Anyone noticed the real elephant in the room? David Runciman Published: 29 September 2006 | |
Forget Iraq, the legitimacy of a government built on little electoral support is the biggest political issue, says David Runciman. Tony Blair went into his final Labour Party conference as one of the undisputed titans of British electoral history - deliverer to his party of three resounding parliamentary majorities in succession. The fact that he is in effect being driven from office within 18 months of the third of these victories strikes many of his supporters as not merely bizarre but almost inexplicable. Yet it is only inexplicable if one assumes that one decisive parliamentary majority is as good as any other. The truth is that Blair's third victory was different, not just from his first two, but from any other of recent times. It was achieved on a bare minimum of popular support, just over 35 per cent of just over 61 per cent of the electorate. So if you put 100 random adults in a room, you would find that only 21 of them voted Labour in 2005. This, not Iraq, is the "elephant in the room" of British politics. Before the most recent election, there was serious talk at the highest levels of Government about a possible "crisis of legitimacy" if a substantial parliamentary majority was achieved on the basis of minimal voter enthusiasm. But when this happened, all such talk was forgotten in the excitement of watching what the Tories would do next and trying to decide how to respond. However, the fact remains that the support of barely one fifth of the adult population is a very slender basis on which to seek to exercise the awesome discretionary powers of a British prime minister possessed of a sizeable majority in the Commons. Moreover, these are powers that Blair has not merely wished to employ to the full, but to which he has sought to add by claiming the further right to preordain the moment of his departure. It is this that has produced his personal crisis of legitimacy. Nevertheless, for all its peculiarity, the predicament of the British Government is hardly unprecedented. Indeed, trying to govern on the basis of limited numbers of actual votes was the steady state of politics throughout the 19th century. This was the case even after successive reforms of the franchise, when governments had to sustain themselves on the electoral support of relatively small pluralities of the adult population (post-1884, 40 per cent of adult males and all women were still disenfranchised). In these circumstances, it was understood that governmental legitimacy depended on not overstating the significance of mere electoral success.JGovernments also had to rest their authority on the constant endeavour to fashion coalitions of the willing in Cabinet and in Parliament. The allocation of seats after a general election could only ever be the starting point, not the decisive end point, of such attempts. This solution to its crisis of legitimacy is not available to the current Labour Government, even if it wanted it (and the aborted coup against Blair suggests that some members do) - you cannot play 19th-century politics in 21st-century circumstances, when the tiniest hint of party discord gets splashed across the 24-hour media and the privacy the Victorian elite needed to fashion and refashion governing coalitions beyond the prying eyes of the electorate has long since disappeared. It would be wrong to overstate the gentlemanly detachment of mid to late 19th-century politicians - their world was much closer to the hypocritical populism laid bare in Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels than to the liberal fantasies of John Stuart Mill, who wished Parliament to become a crucible of enlightened and independent opinion. But even in Trollope's world, the fuel of parliamentary infighting was the universal recognition that general elections were not everything - and it is that understanding that is now gone. In its absence, the only plausible alternative to Labour's current predicament is reform of the electoral system to produce governing coalitions that better reflect the distribution of votes. But it is striking that, for all the weakness of his position, none of Blair's opponents is pushing for this. Neither Gordon Brown nor Tory leader David Cameron wishes to replace the system that produced Blair; they merely wish to replace him at its helm. The Liberal Democrats, traditional champions of proportional representation, see that the present system offers them the prospect of holding the balance of power after the next election in a hung Parliament, and they do not want to do anything to rock the boat before then. So the roots of Labour's crisis of legitimacy will remain unspoken at their conference, while the attempts of those such as MP Clare Short to ventilate the issue will continue to be passed over with disdain. Meanwhile, the parliamentary plotters will carry on plotting behind the scenes, as though there still were a "behind the scenes", and as though independent-minded parliamentarians still determined the government's legitimacy. In the end, something will have to give: 19th-century politics in the 21st century simply does not work. David Runciman is a politics lecturer at Cambridge University and author of The Politics of Good Intentions, published by Princeton University Press, £18.95. |
--
Hazem Azmy
Theatre Studies, University of Warwick
http://hazemazmy.8m.net/home.html
http://hazemazmy.8m.net/cyberbabel.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aitheatre/
______________________
"I think it would be a very good idea!" - MOHANDAS GANDHI, in reply to a reporter's question "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
Sunday, September 24, 2006
UK Universities' "War on Terror"?
Should we give peas a chance? Maria Misra The Times Higher Education Supplement 22 September 2006 | |
Is the Oxbridge interview the new weapon in the War against Terror, ponders Maria Misra The revelation that one of the recent plane bomb suspects had been head of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University has once again put university recruitment procedures under the spotlight, although for rather more exciting reasons than usual. For, according to Anthony Glees, director of the Centre for Intelligence and Security at Brunel University, campuses are now "more of a security threat than mosques". Universities, he claims, know too little about those they admit. His rather bizarre solution is a return to face-to-face interviews with all applicants. These will presumably be conducted by academics adept in the mysterious art of diagnosing a person's political proclivities by their dress and demeanour. This version of the interview is a strange throwback to the ethos of Imperial Britain, where the cult of the interview predominated. The reason was simple: recruiters were just as concerned with candidates' "character" as with their abilities; and it was impossible to determine whether someone was a "chap" merely by glancing at his qualifications. Chappishness was measured by all sorts of intangibles that only the trained eye and ear could detect. Thus applicants for Oxbridge, the officer class and the colonial services faced a battery of social tests, thinly disguised as interviews. In the colonies, horsemanship was a key part of one's final interview. A similar outlook underpinned Oxbridge fellowship interviews, where, until fairly recently, dining was a compulsory element in the whole process, and peas tended to feature rather prominently on the menu. The rather dubious origins of the Oxbridge admissions interview have cast a long shadow, and for many years the interview was in rather bad odour, thought to privilege the poised and sweet-tongued over the rougher diamonds from the state sector. Meanwhile, academic research confirmed long-held suspicions about the subjective nature of interviews. It seems that, even when bolstered by psychometric testing, interviews amount to little more than "gut feeling". Despite all this, Oxbridge colleges maintained the interview as an essential part of the admissions process. However, in recent years interviewing has become rather easier to defend. In an age when so many have impeccable paper qualifications, interviews have become an extremely useful means of differentiating the excellent from the merely good. Interviewing has been professionalised and standardised, with training now compulsory. The old-style, amateurish Oxbridge interview of yore is only a hazy memory. Interviews are now generally combined with challenging oral comprehension passages. These have proved useful in assessing candidates and are more reliable than their submitted written material. Nevertheless the Oxbridge interview will continue to be controversial, and every year academics quake with trepidation that a transcript of one of their interviews will appear in the Daily Mail, as it did a few years ago for one unfortunate Cambridge don caught in a journalistic sting. But now when I am challenged to defend it I can deploy the killer argument provided by Professor Glees and explain that the Oxbridge admissions interview is, in fact, the new frontline in the War against Terror. Maria Misra is a lecturer in modern history at Oxford University. |
--
Hazem Azmy
Theatre Studies, University of Warwick
http://hazemazmy.8m.net/home.html
http://hazemazmy.8m.net/cyberbabel.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aitheatre/
______________________
"I think it would be a very good idea!" - MOHANDAS GANDHI, in reply to a reporter's question "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
Thursday, November 17, 2005
The food you eat may change your genes for life (New Scientist Magazine)
The food you eat may change your genes for life
- 17 November 2005
- NewScientist.com news service
- Alison Motluk
IT SOUNDS like science fiction: simply swallowing a pill, or eating a specific food supplement, could permanently change your behaviour for the better, or reverse diseases such as schizophrenia, Huntington's or cancer.
Yet such treatments are looking increasingly plausible. In the latest development, normal rats have been made to behave differently just by injecting them with a specific amino acid. The change to their behaviour was permanent. The amino acid altered the way the rat's genes were expressed, raising the idea that drugs or dietary supplements might permanently halt the genetic effects that predispose people to mental or physical illness.
It is not yet clear whether such interventions could work in humans. But there is good reason to believe they could, as evidence mounts that a range of simple nutrients might have such effects.
Two years ago, researchers led by Randy Jirtle of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, showed that the activity of a mouse's genes can be influenced by food supplements eaten by its mother just prior to, or during, very early pregnancy ( New Scientist, 9 August 2003, p 14). Then last year, Moshe Szyf, Michael Meaney and colleagues at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, showed that mothers could influence the way a rat's genes are expressed after it has been born. If a rat is not licked, groomed and nursed enough by its mother, chemical tags known as methyl groups are added to the DNA of a particular gene.
The affected gene codes for the glucocorticoid receptor gene, expressed in the hippocampus of the brain. The gene helps mediate the animal's response to stress, and in poorly raised rats, the methylation damped down the gene's activity. Such pups produced higher levels of stress hormones and were less confident exploring new environments. The effect lasted for life ( Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 847).
Now the team has shown that a food supplement can have the same effect on well-reared rats at 90 days old - well into adulthood. The researchers injected L-methionine, a common amino acid and food supplement, into the brains of well-reared rats. The amino acid methylated the glucocorticoid gene, and the animals' behaviour changed. "They were almost exactly like the poorly raised group," says Szyf, who announced his findings at a small meeting on environmental epigenomics earlier this month in Durham, North Carolina.
Though the experiment impaired well-adjusted animals, the opposite should be possible, and Szyf has already shown that a chemical called TSA that is designed to strip away methyl groups can turn a badly raised rat into a more normal one.
No one is envisaging injecting supplements into people's brains, but Szyf says his study shows how important subtle nutrients and supplements can be. "Food has a dramatic effect," he says. "But it can go both ways," he cautions. Methionine, for instance, the supplement he used to make healthy rats stressed, is widely available in capsule form online or in health-food stores - and the molecules are small enough to get into the brain via the bloodstream.
Rob Waterland from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who attended the meeting, says Szyf's ideas are creating a buzz, as they suggest that methylation can influence our DNA well into adulthood. A huge number of diseases are caused by changes to how our DNA is expressed, and this opens up new ways of thinking about how to prevent and treat them, he says.
But Waterland points out there is still much work to be done. Substances like methionine and TSA are, he says, a "sledgehammer approach", in that they are likely to demethylate lots of genes, and we don't even know which they will affect. But he speculates that techniques such as "RNA-directed DNA methylation", so far tested only in plants but theoretically possible in mammals, may allow us to target such methylation much more precisely.
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Hazem Azmy
Saturday, November 05, 2005
www.AskPhilosophers.org: A Site that puts the talents and knowledge of philosophers at the service of the general public
Log on to discuss why we are here The Times Higher Education Supplement | |
Have you ever wanted to know what wasn't art, or the difference between ethics and morality, or if, assuming there is no afterlife, it's irrational to fear death? Now members of the public with a desire to have such profound questions answered can turn to a website launched last month by professional philosophers. The idea behind AskPhilosophers.org, hosted by Amherst College in the US, is to put the skills and knowledge of philosophers at the service of the public. Already signed up are Simon Blackburn and Peter Lipton, both of Cambridge University; Roger Crisp, fellow and tutor in philosophy at St Anne's College, Oxford University; and Gabriel Segal, head of the philosophy department at King's College London. Professor Lipton, head of Cambridge University's department of history and philosophy of science, said the project created a "philosophers' commune". "It's very important that philosophers get out more. It's a profession, and we have highly technical literature - but we are asking questions that lots of people are interested in," he said. "I find it refreshing to answer questions that are non-academic." The tricky part was writing clearly enough for a general audience while not boring the other philosophers on the panel, Professor Lipton said. "It's a challenge, but it really is fun. I'm addicted." The site was set up last month by Alexander George, chairman of Amherst's philosophy faculty. So far, the 36 panellists have answered 380 questions. Of more than 1,100 questions submitted since the site's launch, some 360 were posted, and they drew almost 500 responses. Questions run the gamut of existential angst: why are people sometimes mean; why is stupidity not painful; and is happiness possible? Art, life and death: sample of postings on AskPhilosophers.org Q: Assuming there is no afterlife, is it irrational to fear death? A: It's irrational to fear what death will feel like if you know it won't feel like anything; but it doesn't follow that it is irrational to fear death. It's not irrational to look forward to the pleasures of living, and if we know that death will take these away, the fear of losing those pleasures doesn't seem irrational either. Peter Lipton, head of department of history and philosophy of science, Cambridge University A: There are no good arguments meeting that description. Gabriel Segal A: Lots of things: the orange in front of me, the bus outside my window, George Bush, the number four, Palo Duro Canyon and so on. What makes something not art calls for a definition of art. Once we knew what the definition was, we could determine what did not fall into the category. I suspect this is not the best way to go. Aaron Meskin, lecturer in philosophy, Leeds University A: A distinction is sometimes drawn between ethics as concerning all the values or goods that might be instantiated in a person's life (wellbeing, friendship, virtue of character, aesthetic qualities and so on), and morality as the narrower domain of moral obligation only (right and wrong, what is forbidden and permitted and so on). Roger Crisp, Uehiro fellow and tutor in philosophy at St Anne's College, Oxford University A: I do not see anything wrong with using education as a means to an end, such as when I suffer through a dreary course on car mechanics so that I can learn how to fix my own engine. Having said this, I don't think education is always merely a means to an end. Not only can it be fulfilling to learn certain things even if this knowledge is put to no practical use, but the very process of educating oneself can be fulfilling independently of any value practical or otherwise in the things learnt. Joseph G. Moore |
Hazem Azmy
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
The world's top arts and humanities universities
2005 rank | 2004 rank | Institution | Country | Peer score |
1 | 1 | Harvard University | US | 100 |
2 | 2 | Oxford University | UK | 84.7 |
3 | 5 | Cambridge University | UK | 81.2 |
4 | 3 | University of California, Berkeley | US | 77.8 |
5 | 4 | Yale University | US | 77.4 |
6 | 7 | Beijing University | China | 70.9 |
7 | 6 | Princeton University | US | 69.2 |
8 | 49 | Melbourne University | Australia | 60 |
9 | 10 | London School of Economics | UK | 58.7 |
10 | 30 | Australian National University | Australia | 56.7 |
11 | 8 | Columbia University | US | 56.5 |
12 | 12 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | US | 53.5 |
13 | 11 | Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne | France | 52.9 |
14 | - | La Sapienza University, Rome | Italy | 51.6 |
15 | 32 | McGill University | Canada | 50.9 |
16 | 9 | Tokyo University | Japan | 50.5 |
17 | 14 | University of Texas at Austin | US | 50.2 |
18= | 23 | Copenhagen University | Denmark | 47.7 |
18= | 15 | Kyoto University | Japan | 47.7 |
20 | 25 | Natl Autonomous Univ of Mexico | Mexico | 46.9 |
21= | 39 | University College London | UK | 46.7 |
21= | 40 | Queen Mary, University of London | UK | 46.7 |
23= | - | La Trobe University | Australia | 45.7 |
23= | - | Monash University | Australia | 45.7 |
25= | - | Auckland University | New Zealand | 45.4 |
25= | 33 | Georgetown University | US | 45.4 |
27= | 45 | Tor Vergata University, Rome | Italy | 44.9 |
27= | 20 | Edinburgh University | UK | 44.9 |
29= | - | University of Technology, Sydney | Australia | 44.7 |
29= | 36 | Helsinki University | Finland | 44.7 |
29= | 16 | Oslo University | Norway | 44.7 |
29= | 18 | School of Oriental and African Studies | UK | 44.7 |
33 | 28 | University of Chicago | US | 44.1 |
34= | 47 | University of British Columbia | Canada | 43.9 |
34= | 13 | University of Michigan | US | 43.9 |
36= | - | Macquarie University | Australia | 42.6 |
36= | - | Sydney University | Australia | 42.6 |
36= | - | Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Israel | 42.6 |
39= | - | Calcutta University | India | 42.3 |
39= | 22 | Sussex University | UK | 42.3 |
41= | 24 | Heidelberg University | Germany | 41.5 |
41= | 19 | Pennsylvania University | US | 41.5 |
41= | 27 | University of California, Los Angeles | US | 41.5 |
44 | - | Brown University | US | 40.9 |
45= | - | University of Western Australia | Australia | 40.1 |
45= | 31 | Chinese University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong | 40.1 |
45= | - | Malaya University | Malaysia | 40.1 |
48= | - | Pontifical Catholic University of Chile | Chile | 39.2 |
48= | - | Massachusetts University | US | 39.2 |
50 | - | Johns Hopkins University | US | 38.3 |
51 | - | Seoul National University | South Korea | 37.7 |
52= | - | University of New South Wales | Australia | 37.4 |
52= | 29 | Hong Kong University | Hong Kong | 37.4 |
54= | - | University of Florence | Italy | 36.7 |
54= | 46 | Virginia University | US | 36.7 |
56= | - | RMIT University | Australia | 36.5 |
56= | 34 | Vienna University | Austria | 36.5 |
56= | 35 | Tsing Hua University | China | 36.5 |
56= | - | Frankfurt University | Germany | 36.5 |
56= | - | Athens University | Greece | 36.5 |
56= | - | Gadjah Mada University | Indonesia | 36.5 |
56= | - | Bologna University | Italy | 36.5 |
56= | - | Hiroshima University | Japan | 36.5 |
56= | - | Hitotsubashi University | Japan | 36.5 |
56= | 37 | Amsterdam University | Netherlands | 36.5 |
56= | - | Lomonosov Moscow State University | Russia | 36.5 |
56= | 17 | National University of Singapore | Singapore | 36.5 |
56= | 38 | Autonomous University of Madrid | Spain | 36.5 |
56= | 41 | St Andrews University | UK | 36.5 |
56= | 42 | Utah University | US | 36.5 |
56= | 43 | New York University | US | 36.5 |
56= | 44 | Michigan State University | US | 36.5 |
73 | - | Duke University | US | 34.3 |
74= | - | Tecnológico de Monterrey | Mexico | 33.8 |
74= | - | Erasmus University Rotterdam | Netherlands | 33.8 |
74= | - | Pontifical Catholic University of Peru | Peru | 33.8 |
74= | - | Novosibirsk State University | Russia | 33.8 |
78 | - | Boston University | US | 32.8 |
79= | - | Concordia University | Canada | 32.5 |
79= | - | Hamburg University | Germany | 32.5 |
79= | - | Delft University of Technology | Netherlands | 32.5 |
79= | - | Manchester University and Umist | UK | 32.5 |
79= | 26 | University of Wisconsin - Madison | US | 32.5 |
79= | - | University of Illinois | US | 32.5 |
79= | - | University of New Mexico | US | 32.5 |
79= | - | Purdue University | US | 32.5 |
87 | - | Delhi University | India | 31.8 |
88 | - | Tulane University | US | 31.4 |
89= | - | Queensland University | Australia | 30.7 |
89= | - | Hong Kong University Sci and Technol | Hong Kong | 30.7 |
89= | - | Waseda University | Japan | 30.7 |
89= | 21 | Nanyang Technological University | Singapore | 30.7 |
89= | - | Korea University | South Korea | 30.7 |
89= | - | Colombo University | Sri Lanka | 30.7 |
95= | - | Pontifical Catholic University-Rio | Brazil | 29.5 |
95= | - | University of Toronto | Canada | 29.5 |
95= | - | Bristol University | UK | 29.5 |
95= | - | York University | UK | 29.5 |
95= | - | Rochester University | US | 29.5 |
100 | - | Freiburg University | Germany | 29.2 |
Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement, and QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd, published October 21 2005
NB: In 2004, there was only enough data to produce a Top 50, hence the rankings in column 2.
Hazem Azmy
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