Wilfred Cude published The Ph. D. Trap in 1987 and now (at over twice the length) The Ph. D. Trap Revisited in 2001. One major theme of a "revisit" is the changes since the "visit". The verdict here is "no change". This is no surprise. In what other profession, would reform be described as moving graveyards and management as herding cats? We study everything but ourselves. We refuse to look at problems within our own institution for the same reason perhaps that children refuse to look under the bed to confirm whether there is a bogeyman there.
Why should we change? The author focuses on one central feature of the institution - the Ph. D.. As the only recognized credential for researching and teaching in the university, it often traps many students in a frustrating and sometimes futile struggle to enter the academy. The first two chapters document this problem and the last chapter offers some recommendations for solution. The intervening chapters place the problem in its larger chronological, logical, psychological and ontological context. Cude is intelligently aware that the Ph. D. is an element within a system, which can not be understood and reformed without studying and changing the whole system.
Here's the argument. Time-till-completion and attrition rates of the Ph. D. program are notoriously higher than in the programs to acquire the credentials for the other professions. Within Ph. D. programs, the figures are progressively higher for the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. By aping the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities set impossible standards. The social sciences are at an earlier stage of development than the natural sciences, partly because they are younger and partly because they are dealing with more complex systems. This is not rocket science. Rocket science is easy.
