Instead of selling PhDs in a snap through online for-profit outfits – the way we do in the States – the Germans take the cumbersome “doctorate consultant” route:
… The consultants demand anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 euros to help aspiring doctorate holders with all the formalities and contacts needed to be accepted into a Ph.D. program – and more.
It’s the “more” that can cause problems, however. Doctorate consultants specialize in providing assistance in labor-intensive areas such as research and writing – tasks Ph.D. aspirants are normally expected to master on their own.
… [The firm] ACAD Write …employs around 250 staff and serves a customer base of 1,500. “Our clients are mostly managers, lawyers and others in the medical profession, who have little time. We help them optimize their time to earn a Ph.D….”
Well, the Germans will figure out that there’s a better, cheaper, quicker way to do it, and these firms will go under.
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It’s strange to think of a long, totally simulacral academic career, isn’t it? You buy all of your undergraduate papers; someone writes your doctoral thesis; firms like DesignWrite do all your publications; you outsource your grading to India… What am I forgetting? Is there any degree or activity associated with being an academic you can’t now just buy, or fob off on someone else, or onto some machine? Teaching? Teaching is showing films, having guest lecturers, organizing the kids into in-class discussion groups, having them present papers… And, if you really can’t avoid actually physically being in a room and talking, there’s always reading off of PowerPoints.
We don’t know who will write the definitive book about academia for our century. But we know what its title will be: She’s Not There.
February 19th, 2011 at 1:16PM
I wouldn’t be surprised if football season tickets have to be purchased in person, and in cash.
February 19th, 2011 at 2:43PM
Did I ever mention how I was paid when I was a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Warsaw 15 or so years ago? You went to this little office in which sat – all alone – a little old lady, surrounded by stacks of cash held together by rubber bands. Just all of them sitting on her desk. With little identifying pieces of paper on them. You pointed to yours, she gave it to you.
February 19th, 2011 at 6:48PM
“Deutsche Qualitaetsarbeit” (Means German Quality – like Mercedes or BMW): A “doctoral consultant” gives you not only get a fine, multicolored diploma, but also a real thesis, which has an ISBN Nr. and a nice place on the shelves of various libraries.
The main problem, however, is that the ghostwriter has not much incentive to deliver real quality good: For the same reason as drug pushers seldom deliver uncut drugs, ghostwriters have no incentive to deliver a really well researched work. In most cases, it will be a lot cut and paste.
In most cases, when the “Herr Doktor” does not become that prominent, this is sufficient. In the rare cases, where the person becomes a celebrity, this is risky (like …in the case of Dr. zu Guttenberg..).
BTW: A group of volunteers wants to help the authorities at the University of Bayreuth to find the original sources of G’s dissertation: http://de.guttenplag.wikia.com Right now they found problematic passages on about 68% of the pages..)
February 20th, 2011 at 7:02AM
“Is there any degree or activity associated with being an academic you can’t now just buy, or fob off on someone else, or onto some machine?”
Committee work 🙂
February 20th, 2011 at 8:23AM
GTWMA: Funny!
But there must be some way… You send your assistant? …
February 21st, 2011 at 7:42AM
Unsure about the German system, but they may have legal restrictions that only give public universities the right to grant doctoral degrees, as in France. This reduces the opportunities for diploma mills…
February 21st, 2011 at 7:52AM
Hadn’t thought of that, DM. Good point.