Open Ph.D.: An Experiment in Higher Learning | Hacker News Reader

Open Ph.D.: An Experiment in Higher Learning

openphd.wordpress.com

Course work is the least important part of a Ph.D. Most of the work and learning is in the research.

Meh, most of the research will fail. The true learning happens in the surroundings. Most of what you learn will come from the stories and shared experiences of your peers, post-docs, and professors. This is why academies have existed for so long through history.

This is also why I love this approach! The Ph.D. will only be successful if it's possible to replace the surroundings and people of academy with the internet. If she's successful, the success will be self evident. Unfortunately, I still have my doubts about the chances of success.

Most startups will fail too, but the true learning happens through the attempt itself. Having skilled, motivated people working with you (usually on different projects in grad school) enhances the experience, but if you aren't working hard and failing alongside them, then your "experience" will be for naught.

If she's successful, the success will be self evident.

Please elaborate. My understanding is that the great barrier to disruptive innovation in education, higher or lower is that success is not self evident.

In her first blog post she mentions:

"My degree will be in Educational Technology with an emphasis in (what else?) Open Education as the Great Equalizer."

In other words her experiment, if you will, is whether or not it is possible to replace the environment of a university with on-line resources, and she is the subject. She's investigating whether or not it is possible to get an advanced degree on-line by attempting to get an advanced degree on-line. Rather brilliant if you ask me.

Silly of me to miss that. Cute.

Doesn't really solve the validation problem though Unless you place a lot of faith indeed in the PHD process.

I'm not sure what you mean by "most of the research will fail". In my experience most (proper scientific) research succeeds eventually, both in the sense that it (a) gives the authors something to write a paper about and (b) it adds something, however small, to the total accumulated store of human knowledge.

I will say, though, that while reading a paper, or a book, or even going to a lecture, can be useful from time to time, just about everything I learned in my PhD and postdoc was learned from face-to-face conversation with people who knew more than I did. The internet can't replace that.

I'm not sure what you mean by "most of the research will fail".

I've been working toward my Ph.D. for 7 years now. In that time, I've been involved in no fewer than 15 different research projects. Many of those made it a month or two before the results indicated that there was nothing interesting to be learned, and we moved on to the next problem. (The value of negative results is a topic for a different debate.)

What I meant by my statement is that, if you took the research that a graduate student does in a lab at a university, and then had them do the same research in a lab in their basement (or some other isolated environment without peers and mentors), they wouldn't learn nearly as much as they do in the university setting. The specific research being done isn't as important as the setting in which it is done.

Questionable -- they would certainly learn different things if they did it in their basement. For example, so much in university is already set up for you -- constructing your own lab in your basement, calibrating machines, writing custom software to run experiments, etc. would be quite a learning experience. (I'm talking about experimental fields here.)

But more importantly, in universities you are guided away from things that do not work usually without entirely understanding why. Through independent study, you would go down these incorrect paths and have a much richer understanding. Instead of doing things how everyone else does them, you'd gain new perspectives than the status quo, and this would give you a leg up.

Of course, this all presumes that the student is extremely self motivated. Unfortunately, even at the graduate level these students are very rare. This is why some professors are very hands on and others are very hands off -- different students work best at different levels of independence.

I'm about a year away from my Ph.D., and I disagree. A Ph.D. is a merit badge for doing research. Most of what I have learned is from doing my research, with guidance from more experienced people. But there is no substitute for doing the work.

with guidance from more experienced people

I would argue that you could've done some other research project than the one you did, and still learned most of the same lessons. The specific research is unimportant.

You need to be interested in the research you do. Other than that, I agree the specific research you do is not the most important variable. But, it's not just research-related lessons that you learn. What you learn about your area when you do in-depth research can't be learned from taking a course.

From the article: Ph.D.’s in Educational Technology.

The vast majority of PhD's in education are not based on research. They may require a thesis to maintain appearances, but they are basically just putting in time/money to get a certification and an automatic pay raise.

Wow, you're right. Check out, for instance, this so-called doctoral program from the apparently partially-accredited Walden University:

http://www.waldenu.edu/Degree-Programs/Doctorate/18220.htm

130 credit points, of which 30 are a dissertation. This really doesn't deserve to be called a doctorate.

That doesn't mean much. My program requires a minimum of 90 credits, and 30 of those must be research/dissertation credits. You can't tell by looking at the requirements on a form what the expectations are from the professors in that department for what's a passable dissertation.

Nevertheless a more proportionate ratio would be expected. For a simple comparison, my masters degree has 80 credits, 40 of them are in the dissertation.

A very cool experiment, and I hope it goes well. But don't you get funded to do a Ph.D? Isn't this more expensive (i.e. no stipend) than actually going to a school?

I suppose it may be hard to interest a university in some research on open education...

Some Ph.D.'s get funded, but even then the amount is laughable (try living off $20,000/yr in NYC).

$20,000/yr is less than I get from the CSE program at Michigan. Surely you're exaggerating?

NIH predoctoral stipend for FY2009: $20,976 (source: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-07...)

Most other biomedical/chem funding levels are pegged to this level (since the NIH actually has odd restrictions on paying students more than the stipend level).

That's exactly what I'm getting, and living on (though not in NY admittedly). Hardly the -$45,000 claimed by in the article, and either way, it's better than the $0 involved with doing the research independantly.

Except, I would imagine, doing the research independently leaves her more time for part-time work or even a full day job.

My stipend is only $17000. That's up from when I started four years ago at $13500. That covers rent and food, but obviously not books. Of course, Baltimore is far cheaper than New York, but it's still possible to live on.

What are you doing?

Political science (major: international relations, minor: comparative politics). I've talked to some of the students in hard sciences (e.g. bio) and they report stipends of $23000. It's probably just set department-by-department, and mine either happens to be poor or stingy.

It isn't particularly difficult to live off $20,000/yr while going to school in NYC. As long as you don't live in Manhattan, you should be fine.

Why does the going to school bit make it cheaper? Are you eating less? Requiring less shelter?

My point is that you don't need to live in NYC even if you attend school there, so the comment of "try living off $20,000/yr in NYC" is irrelevant.

He might as well have said "try living off $20,000/yr while living in NJ and spending $1000-1500/month on bling bling." Yes, you'll have a hard time making ends meet. So what?

There are locations in Manhattan that are cheaper than locations in NJ (I live in Harlem, for example). Besides that, the expense of NYC is not just housing. Food is more expensive. Transportation is more expensive. Forget about going to the movies ($12.50 for a ticket).

And yes, I have been making ends meet with part time jobs on the side. The issue that I have with funding is that a student going to a university in Indianapolis where everything is cheaper and an apartment can be had for 1/5th of the cost of the NYC area gets the same $20,000 from the NIH. The government would probably get more efficient use of their research dollars if stipends were pegged to cost of living.

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