Wednesday, February 13, 2013

The Dissertation Can No Longer Be Defended

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (13 Feb 2013) discusses this topical issue:

Some excerpts:
  • The economic realities of academic publishing, coupled with exciting interpretive and methodological possibilities inherent in new media and digital humanities, mean that the day of the dissertation as a narrowly focused proto-book are nearly over.
  • It takes too long. It's too isolating.
  • It's a hazing ritual passed down from another era, retained because the Ph.D.'s before us had to do it.
  • The majority of dissertations, produced in paper and ink, ignore the interactive possibilities of a new-media culture. And book-length monographs don't always reflect students' career goals or let them demonstrate skills transferable beyond the borders of academe.
  • ...allow students to write three or four publishable articles instead of one book-length text. 
  • The economic realities of academic publishing... mean that the day of the dissertation as a narrowly focused proto-book are nearly over.

1 comment:

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