True. But research does not only involve surveys and mere reading.

There are some who carry out case study business research which involves close observation and in-depth interviews at corporate organisations similar to how consultants/auditors understand deeply about their clients' operations.

I know one PhD graduate who carried out a management "action research" for an MNC and that was his PhD thesis. He provided a solution for that company and he helped the company saved millions of dollars. He is akin to a consultant but he was not paid anything for his contribution to the company at the end of the day.

And some university academics are also involved in consultation activities with industrial practitioners.

So, it really depends on the individual academic of how he/she is involved in the research activities. If the academic is not involved in such research and consultation activities, then he will lose out. I believe that's how many corporate practitioners often misunderstand what academics actually do and they believe that academics only know their stuff "theoretically".

This post has been edited by Blofeld: Mar 12 2013, 02:36 PM

To what extent do you define close observation and in-depth interviews at corporate organisations and consultants/auditors understand deeply about their clients' operation to the practical hand-on in certain industry? This may be subjective but I feel there is a completely different scenario of having to understand and practical hand on.

There are people who are doing Phd for the sake helping or aid in the development /doing some goods to a certain industry. Perhaps, they are attached to do it for their Phd, once done with their Phd, then it is considered done and they are unpaid for that. Coz after all, they need to complete their Phd. That Phd is an industrial Phd whereby their research outcomes are meant for the industry and they r attached and bonded to the industry. However, bear in mind that it often stressful to that extent, as their Phd project are fully funded by that organizations/ industry. I dunno the consequences in case of they can’t complete the Phd on time/ as per expect.

Those involved in consultation activities with industrial practitioners are those already armed with Phd qualification. And hence, they act as a consultant to the industry concerned.

Observation and in-depth interviews as in a researcher actually sits in and observe the work procedures and interviews employees in the organisation. In this scenario, it is considered a "passive" research, then you are right, they are not involved hands-on in making decisions and doing the administrative work.

But then, not only industrial phd students are carrying out action research for organisations, academics are doing that too. In the case of an action research, the researcher is part of the decision making team. And as you said, those who are already armed with the necessary qualifications, such as PhD, are roped in as consultants by the practitioners.

anti qourum sensing

I planned to continue with pHD for better future.
I have been working for nearly 4 years now, I feel this is the right way to go. After phd, I planned to go for lecturing... which i feel would give me more flexibility. Besides, I love to share my knowledge & teaching...

Working now I feel stressed at times, caused I don't really like what I am doing. I am merely working for the $$$...

But, change is not so easy , to shift my gear back to study mode, feels like it going to be a challenge to me

GREAT! What kind of PhD program do you intend to take?

I can imagine that, and I feel sorry for you.

To shift your gears FORWARD to study mode, you must have the Right Attitude, Right Practice, & Right Understanding.

Sorry for my noobness
But I though quorum sensing is usually a good thing? Mind sharing what's the applications of anti-quorum sensing?

One of the bad thing, in case of pathogenic bacteria, quorum sensing is their defensive mechanism against antibiotic and chemical that can kill them. So we have to stop their quorum sensing so that antibiotic can used effectively



This post has been edited by eyeshield: Mar 20 2013, 06:16 PM

Quite a few people are taking up the offer to do their PhDs directly after their degrees. I welcome you guys to join the club with open arms, but I hope you understand the burden you're signing up for - you'll be molding our future generations; either you commit to do a good job, or don't commit at all. I've met a few people already who're just signing up to get a pay raise, and they've all turned out to be horrible lecturers (the students complain about them to me).

I always like your replies with those coloured fonts.

This post has been edited by Blofeld: Mar 20 2013, 06:33 PM

Ahhh, didn't thought of that haha, good one~

Naturally, I can tell by your writing that you are feeling really upset about this. However, I might be missing something here because I’m not sure if I understand what you are saying. But I am not out to disrespect you, because it almost sounded that people who do their PhDs directly after their degrees are horrible lecturers. And I know you would like to resolve this in a way that is fair to the students. Could it be another reason that lead to the student complaints? It would really help me, if you could tell me what the students had complained, so I can understand better.

I do find it upsetting, yes. The government has made it their focus to encourage youths to take up a Masters/PhD with their scholarship programs. However, the criteria for acceptance into these courses are the student's CGPA alone. A CGPA of above 3.0 entitles you to do your Masters, whereas a CGPA of above 3.5 entitles you to do your PhD. The problem with this system however is that due to the financial bonuses associated with furthering one's studies, potential candidates overlook the purpose of research degrees - to expand the horizons of knowledge, and relay that knowledge to the future generation. Add this to the lack of any research competency in the acceptance criteria, and we're breeding lecturers that have poor research skills, who merely teach out of obligation, not passion.

The inability to conduct quality research is a core problem as it directly conflicts with the government's initiative to boost research in local higher institutions of learning. Furthermore, the direct-PhD program lacks certain components, mainly an aptitude test in the general field of study, live training of teaching classes, and most importantly, the 3-year "regular" duration rushes candidates to work on novelty projects - research that only serves the purpose of boosting a university's journal repository. Some supervisors even go to the extent of encouraging their students to publish in paid journals, just so they can complete their research within the regular 3-year time frame. I blame this primarily on our failure to adopt the American approach to awarding PhDs, namely a 5-year course which incorporates a Masters degree and a compulsory written assessment on the general field of study.

As far as student complaints go, students mainly complain about two things - either their lecturers don't know their subject material well enough to teach it, or that their supervisors are unable to adequately supervise them, even at an undergraduate level.

P.S. I am a direct-to-PhD candidate, but I actively advise others not to follow this path. There's no merit in saving on a couple of years of study at the cost of losing out important training in research and teaching.

In this thread alone, I’m sure you find everyone is different, and naturally, people choose to get a PhD for a variety of reasons, including:

• for the prerequisite to becoming a professor
• for future professional opportunities
• for the delay of getting a job
• for the pursuit of knowledge
• for fear of “the real world”
• for the love of research
• for status and acclaim
• for an ego boost

As the PhD students work their way through the settling in process, they will identify their goals and objectives in the big picture and then break things down into several tasks. The research competency can be categorized into Mechanisms and Procedure that are necessary to achieve the objectives of the tasks and the experiments. You can imagine children connecting the dots, dot-to-dot on the dot pictures, where the mechanisms are the dots, and the procedure is the steps the children take to join the dots correctly to complete the big picture.

MECHANISMS
You probably already know that designing a suitable experiment to test a hypothesis takes ingenuity and skill. Whether the experiment requires sophisticated equipment or not, there are a number of features that are common to all well-designed experiments and the students should know about this:

(1) Discrimination between different hypotheses
(2) Replicating the results
(3) Controls of variables
(4) Methods of measurement
(5) Blinding conscious and unconscious bias
(6) Accuracy and precision

PROCEDURE
In order to conduct an experiment to test each hypothesis, the students need to make a list of the things they will need to do to answer each issue. And this list they create will be their experimental procedure. This procedure should include the appropriate methodologies, technologies and equipment. For some types of experiment, a ‘control’ will be required to act as a reference.

(1) Prepare the materials & equipment
(2) Record the data
(3) Record the observations
(4) Analyze the raw data
(5) Draw conclusions

If they don’t yet know what exact area of research they want to pursue, or if their interests are not specific or focused enough, then they probably aren’t ready for PhD programs. If they want to pursue doctorates but are not keen on research, there are some other options available. But telling PhD candidates to write their research interests on papers will generally cause them to think critically about what they want to study and help make their ideas more concrete.

Sometimes we don’t find novelty features and unobviousness in their projects at all. Probably part of the overwhelming nature of the PhD degree is that there are many things to do at once, but if they learn to direct their efforts rather than get sidetracked and try to undertake too many projects at the same time, they can streamline the process and make their life as doctoral students much easier.

One of the things that would help them get through the PhD process more easily would have been a better understanding of what were expected of them. Although the only research they are absolutely required to complete in order to receive the doctorate is their dissertation, there is an implicit (and sometimes explicit) expectation that they must have at least a couple of publications before graduating with their doctorates.

Part of being a successful lecturer is being resourceful, especially when it comes to finding information or learning how to accomplish important things, whether in teaching or doing research. The same applies to the students. One of the Right Practice is to reason your way through a problem. People are confronted by problems every day and everything from coming up with a meaningful keynote presentation at work to a PC malfunctioned at home. How they think their way through those problems is what matters and will largely determine their level of success.

Perhaps the reason there are rubbish lecturers is that they were given rubbish training from rubbish universities by rubbish staff themselves. Easy admission into a postgraduate degree is a factor, as you mentioned. I can only speak from my experience in Australia with Monash University. Most students who have completed their undergraduate degree will be required to show some competency in research/work experience before allowed to enter a postgraduate degree.

I also believe that only elite universities in a given country (?) with world-class pedigree in research, sufficient facilities/funding and a well-structured PhD programme should be allowed to confer PhDs to students. Seriously, PhDs are becoming cheap these days. It is unfair to people who fought hard to enter a world-class grad school and worked thrice as hard and contributed ten times as much to knowledge to graduate with a PhD. It is only these people, these passionate, intelligent people who truly care for their field who deserve to have a PhD and teach future undergraduates.

If you were to do grad school in a prestigious college without a real passion for your field, you will not survive. Monash University makes sure you pass several checkpoints each year and constantly assesses your competency, where the lack thereof will result in you getting kicked out in your first year. The Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences where I'm from is ranked 6th in world and takes its research seriously. They live and breathe high-impact journals. Only novel and high-impact research is undertaken by students and staff alike, which is how it should be in all institutes that award PhDs, the pinnacle of the education system.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the 3-year system. PhD graduates of Monash University (3-year system) are encouraged to do at least one post-doc before allowed to lecture, which I think is a great idea. The people who lecture in my faculty are mostly demi-gods of their field so I think it is unfair to blame the 3-year system.

In short, PhDs should only be awarded by institutes able to carry out internationally-recognised research with a good PhD programme in place. This way, these universities will be compelled to pick only the most passionate, the most intelligent students for their graduate programmes. They will filter out the wannabes by careful assessment of their research competency, by interview and by recommendation. The filtration process will then also continue throughout candidature to root out bad apples. The staff will also be on their toes to produce the best graduates and to do good research, because only world-class staff can produce world-class research and PhD graduates. Perform or get sacked.

This post has been edited by Farmer_C: Mar 21 2013, 02:25 PM

However, it will be an advantage to you in the future whereby the interviewers will be impressed with your performance because you were allowed to directly convert to phd without going through the master level. I guess only the good one will be allowed to direct to phd candidate.
One of my friend supervisor has been boosting about how good is his student because he is able to complete his direct to phd within 2 n half year. The truth fact is this supervisor is aiming for professorship that required his to release one phd student. This has contributed to the difficulty to other students under the same group bcs the supervisor channelled all the grants and focus on the research carried out by this spesific student.

I do not deny that there are multiple reasons to get a PhD, but it's my personal opinion that there's no actual need for one unless you're in the education line. For promotions etc. outside of academia/research, there are plenty of other performance markers. Resorting to a PhD just for the recognition etc. contributes to academic inflation.

As far as research skills go, there's quite a bit to be learned, with simple problem solving being the key one. The core components you mentioned above aren't exactly stressed by all supervisors, particularly the "factory" ones (Bachelors -> Masters -> PhD at the same university with no working experience). My main concern is this - we're responsible for the propagation of knowledge. Poor mastery over the subject matter in combination with a lack of understanding of real-world applications of the field studied results in next-generation supervisors who will conduct closet research of no real impact. The quality of Malaysian research is still world-standard (a result of the publication requirement for graduation), the problem is that it lacks real impact.

The 3-year system is a mainstay for most of the world, but a direct-to-PhD 3-year system is the one I have a bone to pick with. I'm in this program myself, and when interviewed for a position at a local university, I was told that they prefer those who did the Masters to PhD route as the Masters classes fills a knowledge gap between the Bachelors and PhD degrees. My immediate response was "Why offer a course which you yourselves do not wish to hire from?" They were unable to answer me, but I know that their decision to offer the course was motivated by the government's push for postgraduate research. The sad truth here is that university hiring policy directly clashes with it's strategies for improving graduate research.

Now there still will be candidates who can complete the 3-year direct PhD and produce good work, but I'm worried about the no-so-good-ones that are passing as well. As a product of this system, I don't want to be compared unfairly to those who do substandard work. Earning a PhD implies you're an expert in your field, and the lack of QC I've seen recently is a cause for concern. Your suggestion to limit the awarding of PhDs to be from high-tier universities does directly solve this issue, but it also kills off the research arm in most 2nd-tier universities, which is unacceptable given that some of the more interesting projects I've seen recently are from those institutions that were recently awarded university status.

The only requirement for advancing from one's Bachelors to a PhD is a CGPA of above 3.5. This only implies that you're good for studying for exams, and is no real indicator of your actual competency. Blame this on the exam-oriented approach of the Malaysian education system. As a high-CGPA student who has worked in the education line, I can attest to the fact that scoring well in exams means nothing in the real world as our exams are designed to test our ability to replicate information, not synthesize and adapt to given problems. Also, as I have mentioned above, universities themselves are reluctant to hire the direct-to-PhD students. This is probably the biggest vote of no confidence that they have in their own program.

I understand what you're saying. It does suck when you've excelled and earned your testamur through and through and find that someone with sub-standard competency has the exact same certificate. I agree that my suggestion was radical and will probably never be implemented anywhere in the world but it gets you thinking as to what PhD graduates should really be like. Should we really have these pseudo-experts in our education system and trust them with our country's undergraduates?

I hope I can understand the predicament you were in. We all have preferences & priorities. Moreover, there will always be some things that we will consider to be better than others. Most of us have opinions about what other people should do to take responsibility to do a good job, to get out of a difficult situation, or to make their life better.

Nevertheless, I’m sure you want the best for the people you care about most. But they can’t always see the benefits or the way of life that will come from your experience. In the end, they might not be the best things for yourself, let alone another. So let others do what they think is right for themselves. They maybe bad choices but that’s how people learn. Let them make their mistakes. And focus on learning from your own. Allow another to be, and they’ll want to be around you, charmed by your positive qualities.

It is not often a person is made to be accepted for who they are, when it comes to conflict. Most people shy away from conflict because they hate fighting. Sometimes, we get overwhelmed with all this and we want to stop. And you’ll probably end up feeling frustrated and resentful towards your “horrible” colleagues and some direct-to-PhD students. Conflict needs to be managed before it becomes a destructive force to both mental and physical.

Do you know that a lot can be learned from martial arts when it comes to handling conflict? T’ai chi & Aikido are by far the most useful and effective responses to an attack; they create a win-win situation. Martial artists understand the importance of taking action early. If they detect conflict in the air, they don’t become aggressive or avoid it. They stay calm and assertive. They take time to understand the real cause of the situation. They see the other person’s point of view. And they find an acceptable way forward. Simply put, they compromise!

However, make no mistake as compromise isn’t about lowering your standards or giving up your values for others. It’s about reducing your fruitless demands or changing your opinion to reach an amicable agreement. Compromise is wrong when it means sacrificing a principle. We all have standards. And if our minimum level isn’t met, it’s going to lead to disharmony. So strike the right balance! Take time to think the problem through and plan a constructive way to handle the situation. Go on, help yourself but don’t compromise yourself.

We shouldn't. Fact is, education policies are dictated by politicians, and those advising them are educators. What I've seen is that it's rare for the good ones to get to such an advisory post, as they end up having to deal with a whole ton of internal politics before they can reach a position good enough to make considerable impact on our educational policy. UM's Prof. Gauth is one of those quality few.

In all honesty, I moved on long ago. Although I take the issue close to heart, don't confuse it as me being bitter. I've earned my keep through publications and community service, and I'm happily past my 3-year mark without any regret. My intentions are only to make clear the details of the system to those potential candidates. Had I known what I know today, I would've opted to skip the fast-track program. My only hope is that someone comes across this post and it contributes to him/her making an informed decision.