If you are like me, you know hundreds of people with PhD's, and if so you also realize that merely possessing such a title or certificate is no guarantee that someone is right about much of anything, including perhaps their own area of scientific endeavor. Further, as the coordinator for a think tank which operates online I now realize after interacting with individuals who have doctorate degrees that after about 10 years, unless they've been working in that field constantly and soaking up all the new information available, that degree isn't worth much anymore.
Perhaps this is why I like to make another statement; why not have PhD's which expire, or could be renewed by the same institution or another institution of higher learning upon completion of catching up on all the new material, discoveries, and scientific works that have come along in the past decade. That's only fair. After all, if someone has been a CEO of the large company, but then went into semi retirement for 10 years, they may not have the skills anymore to operate in the new and ever-changing environment due to regulatory changes and new innovations in the industry.
We should not let academics off the hook, nor should we allow them to stand on a pedestal claiming they are smarter than everyone else because they have a PhD. Further, those who have older PhD's and have not worked in the field in quite some time, are probably not the one you would need to look to for advice on that particular area of expertise. Is it unfair to take people's PhD's away from them after 10 years? I'm not suggesting that, however I am suggesting that after a decade they should change their PhD to "PhDx" - and that would warn all of us that their PhD is somewhat old, and has now expired.
They still get the credit for all their hard work in earning that degree. They will still be known as someone that endured that educational process, except now we know the context, and the value of their insight on the topic. You see, the rest of us have a right to know if we are actually dealing with an expert in the field who is up on the latest and greatest information. Why do I think this?
Well, because I've gotten some really bad advice from folks who have PhD's in their specific area of science, and I've had folks with PhD's that are over a decade old who could not answer my questions, and didn't know about recent innovations in their own field, yet I a novice in their field did. I found this to be quite alarming, and I'm quite concerned about actually. I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment