Doctoral dissertations are the strangest genre because they’re both the record of a process of learning and its final product. PhD candidates are so overwhelmed by the effort made throughout the years that they don’t seem to notice this particularity until, precisely, the time of the ‘viva’ (or ‘defence,’ as we call it in Spain echoing old Inquisitional tribunals…). Once the questions from the examining board pour down on the poor candidate, s/he realises that it would be perfect if only s/he could start again all over, now that the main mistakes are highlighted. But, then, part of the game is that you can’t start all over and correct those mistakes you see in hindsight with all clarity.
This leads to a peculiar situation: if an examining board has enough ill-will against the candidate (or his/her supervisor…) any PhD dissertation can be failed, which seldom happens, if ever, in Spain –quite the opposite. I’m aware that in Britain PhD candidates can be sent back home to reform their dissertations and are allowed to re-submit them a few months later. This is unthinkable here, as it would be an appalling embarrassment for the supervisor. A peculiar idea of honour, then, turns defences into very strange exercises, as a dissertation can be awarded the highest mark regardless of the intensity and even aggressiveness of the criticisms it may receive. No wonder foreign members of examining boards are puzzled by our grading scale (remember the French diva?).
As a member of a few tribunals so far, I do worry about our very typical ‘cum laude’ hyperinflation. I’ve fought hard to keep up standards on examining boards that intended to reward candidates in excess of their merits, as I think that the all-too common automatic ‘cum laude’ diminishes the merits of real ‘cum laudes.’ This, ironically, might make me unwelcome to other examining boards, for I may gain the wrong reputation… We need to understand that if universities allow for a wider range of marks, these should be used, included ‘Aprobado’ (C) and ‘Notable’ (B). I do realise that the supervisor is a key element in the ‘cum laude’ hyperinflation, as his/her colleagues would not want to question their professionalism by awarding one of his/her dissertations a low mark. Yet, it’s funny how we never think this way of plain exams, which the best university teachers can fail with no qualms about his/her own reputation (again, quite the opposite). In the same way, although a doctorate is our own honours program, we need to understand that the impact of falling standards will soon be felt and we’ll have indeed dissertations that only merit a simple ‘pass,’ regardless of the efforts of the supervisor.
Knowing that this blog is, somehow, autobiographical, I’m sure readers will suspect that I’m referring here to a particular dissertation. Well, yes, last Friday I was part of a PhD examining board and, yes, criticism was quite thorough, despite which the candidate got a ‘cum laude’ (A+). I awarded this mark with all my heart for I did see that the candidate, a hard-working person whose academic capacities I know well, understood our criticisms and would make most of them in order to publish a better version of his dissertation. Also because his failings were connected to his ambition to do innovative research in his field, which is, after all, the point of a dissertation. Well done!!
I just hope my own doctoral students do so well and that if they receive a ‘cum laude’ it is justified on the same grounds. I’m ready to help but I’m also ready for the time one of mine might deserve just a ‘pass’ despite my efforts. Sooner or later, it’ll happen to any of us.

This entry is prompted by a suggestion from one of my senior colleagues, recommending that we invite EU (= non-Spanish) researchers to the examining boards of our doctoral students. At UAB we do have something called ‘Doctorado con mención europea’ (European Doctorate), which entails quite a complicated system of validation for dissertations: a three-month stay abroad for the candidate (self-financed!) tutored by a local researcher; two reports once the dissertation is completed by two other non-Spanish researchers and a fourth EU specialist, invited to the board. The four non-Spanish EU specialists get nothing for their pains (well, one gets invited to Barcelona…), which makes finding them a matter of appealing to friendship or flattery. Although the internet suggests this scheme is active all over Europe, still today, after asking repeatedly the corresponding administrators, I can’t say whether this is a UAB, Spanish or European validation system. No one seems to know…

Here’s a sample of my experience with European doctorates. I tried to set up an exchange with a British university I won’t name. I send one of my doctoral students to study with a specialist, who is, indeed, very willing to help (because she knows me, not because she’d heard about the European Doctorate) and I get one of theirs to tutor. Sending my student is no problem at all, but the student I was supposed to tutor at UAB was told by this British university that a) they’re not aware that the European Doctorate exists and b) the stay at UAB would not be considered part of the study time for his dissertation. When he asked whether I could be an external examiner on his board (with the full support of his supervisor), the answer was that foreign specialists are only invited for linguistic reasons (i.e. if the dissertation deals with a foreign language). So much for reciprocity.

This might be unusual, or pure bad luck, but I witnessed recently yet another example of European miscommunication that left me reeling. A colleague invited to the examining board of a doctoral student who had fulfilled the expensive, demanding requirements for a European Doctorate two non-Spanish EU specialists (French, I think). I have no idea why but one of them decided it was the right time and place to teach a lesson in European assessment strategies and, after quite an ugly debate, awarded the candidate a lower mark than she deserved. Why? Because, in her own words, this is what the dissertation really deserved using a European grading scale. This clearly hinted that we, Spaniards, overvalue our PhD dissertations -which might be the case?- but also that we are NOT European. By the way: there’s no such thing as a European grading scale for PhD dissertations, although in view of this incident we might urgently need one, as national grading traditions clearly differ from each other.

My two examples might just be examples of very bad luck but I worry that by calling foreign specialists to our examining boards here in Spain we’re sending out the wrong message: that we need them to validate what we do, for we are not good enough. I have seen websites by other British universities with the same rules we use for European Doctorates but I wonder who is invited to their boards (German and French specialists?). Are we going to build yet another hierarchical system by which the aim of reciprocity results in having a jet set of top European specialists (German, British, French…) validating what their less efficient neighbours do? Am I simply too pessimistic, as usual?

I have heard many voices explaining that the cost of the MAs we established barely 5 years ago is too high for the Catalan university to maintain. I could not quite understand this as our now dying MA ‘Advanced English Studies: Literature and Culture’ (slashed for having less than 10 students) cost more or less the same in terms of teaching resources as our old Doctoral courses. A friend in the Philosophy Department, where they seem to have more alert minds but whose MA has been also slashed, nonetheless, has explained to me why this is happening. Here it is, for your benefit. Apologies to those who already know for my usual thickness.

MAs are taught by doctors, of course, which means that the more senior staff may use up to 25% of their teaching time for them. This absorption of resources by the second cycle leaves the first cycle, the new BAs, with fewer resources provided by senior teachers. The result? Associates are hired to teach anything and everything, particularly considering, in my own Department, the sudden increase in numbers in the first year, due to the establishment of combined degrees with other ‘philologies’. Our staff this year comprises one third senior teachers (tenured or under contracts lasting at least 4 years), two thirds associates, most of them on a yearly, provisional basis linked to the deployment of the Bologna-style BAs, some already doctors.

Now, take our now declining MA (we’re in the fourth, final year). It is very cheap if you consider that it only requires 8 teachers teaching 5 ECTS credits each (24 teaching hours), plus dissertation supervision value at an extra 5 hours (maximum 0.5 dissertations each teacher, so far). If you look at it this way, and consider that the number of students we’ve been teaching was the same as in the old Doctoral programme (around 7-8 new ones every year), the cost has not really increased. Now, if you put the 8 subjects we teach together, this amounts to 2 full time teachers (here we teach 4 semestral subjects each per year), or 2.5 associates (they teach 3 semestral subjects a year). Dismantle the MA and you have magically made room for 8 other semestral groups in the BA taught by senior teachers (54 hours each, by the way). At least two of the 5 associates we employ now in the Literature section (with only 6 seniors…) can be ‘released.’

What irks is that the Generalitat is not openly acknowledging this. Instead, we’re told that the MAs have intrinsic problems due to low registration figures (regardless, by the way, of the nature of each of them) because we don’t know how to offer attractive, market-oriented degrees. Of course, an MA degree is a requirement to enter a Doctoral programme and with fewer MAs in Catalonia, we’ll necessarily have fewer Doctoral students which, I suspect, is very much another unacknowledged ultimate aim. Fewer doctors also mean fewer accreditations and fewer employable university teachers, which will help reduce the size of the staff at PUBLIC universities in Catalonia. The rich, as a friend reminded me, do not care about this, as they send their kids to private or foreign universities, anyway.

Think, think… I personally feel as a dinosaur on the verge on extinction – Angloliteraturus redundantis.

I’m more and more baffled by what is happening in Spain and here at home, in Catalonia, regarding the European convergence in higher education. We have ended up with 4-year BAs and 1-year MAs, instead of the more desirable 3+2 scheme, and now, before most of the new BAs (Grados/Graus) have even produced their first graduates, we’re being asked to modify and, in the worst cases ordered to shut down, MAs which have been running for under 4 years. This is madness, particularly if we think that, simultaneously, the tuition fees have sharply gone up making it even more difficult for any of the Bologna-style MAs to survive (and much less attract foreign students). And also, that we face very tough competition from the new MA required to teach in secondary schools. And also… (the list goes on).

Anyway, I have already written about this and before I start sounding like a broken record, let me consider what is new. The novelty these days is that we’re been asked to reform the surviving MA degrees to fashion them as a second cycle degree, a continuation from a BA, rather than a specialised degree. In a way, this would mean going back to the old Licenciatura system which I myself followed and which consisted of a 5 year degree with two cycles (3+2), followed by 1 or 2 years of doctoral courses. In the new proposed scheme, the numbers would be 4 BA + 1 MA +1 PhD courses (yes = 6, as of old), as we’ll probably have to reintroduce teaching at doctoral level to make sure MA graduates can minimally face the challenge of writing a PhD dissertation. Running in circles, I call this. And losing, in the meantime, much of the original intellectual energy of the old-fashioned Spanish degrees. I don’t believe I’m writing this but that’s what I feel right now.

What irks most is that all these decisions are being taken by politicians sitting somewhere at remote Generalitat offices here in Barcelona or even further away in Madrid. The tiny Literature section to which I belong in the English Department at UAB had managed more or less well before Bologna happened, as we used to teach our Licenciatura subjects and a one-year doctoral programme, which attracted between 6 and 10 people each year, most of them finishing their equivalent MA dissertations satisfactorily. Suddenly, the same figures no longer seem good enough for the MA, which is ridiculous as, logically, the market for post-grad degrees in English Literature has not increased. Why should it?

I do believe our MA is good enough, considering our circumstances (we’re a second language Department, an understaffed section and divided into many fields as each of us has to cover at least one for all of English Literature and Cultural Studies). If the product cannot find its niche it’s clearly NOT our fault but the fault of those who pushed us onto a market that we needn’t/couldn’t enter in the first place. We used to be happier, now we’re a frustrated bunch, tired of the whole Bologna nightmare.

There are plans to fuse with the other Department MA, as we should have done from the beginning, to guarantee survival. Yet, this is, as the main opponent against the merger claims, absurd from an academic point of view as MA degrees should be designed to offer specialisation not for simply furthering the general education offered by the BA. I can only say to this that this absurdity doesn’t spring from any of us in the Department but from the remote politicians. These incompetent bureaucrats believe that training less than 10 post-grad students is too expensive but do not see that admitting up to 140 students in an undergrad class (official UAB figures) might be even more expensive in the long run for the nation they seem to care about, ehem, as this reduces dramatically our time for research.

These are indeed bad times for teaching, Literature or anything else.

This post was lost during the updating of the UAB’s blog software, somebody may have read a longer version. Here I go again…

This week I’m done assessing MA dissertations for three different MA degrees and now’s the time to consider what the new European convergence plans for higher education, which we know as plain ‘Bolonia,’ have brought about. Not much that is good.

In my time as a student, ehem, mid 1980s to mid 1990s, it took 11 years for someone to complete a PhD in Spain: 5 for the ‘Licenciatura,’ 2 for doctoral courses, 1 for the equivalent of the MA dissertation (100 pages), 3 for the PhD dissertation (around 500). That was too much, no doubt. The 2002 reform reduced the ‘Licenciatura’ to 4 years and the doctoral courses to 1, so that the total amount of years to get a PhD went down to 9. Now it’s down to 8 years: 4 for the ‘Grado,’ 1 for the MA including the dissertation (35-50 pages) and 3 for the PhD dissertation (350). This, of course, includes learning English in our case to a level high enough for international conferences and publication.

It’s easy to see that time has been dramatically compressed at the MA level, which means in practice that in our UAB MA, Advanced English Studies: Literature and Culture, students have a maximum of 15 months to complete assignments for 8 different teachers and to write the dissertation. Yes, they may submit the dissertation in September rather than June, and yes, it’s short, but this hardly helps.

We start the process of tutoring the dissertations as soon as possible with a research seminar given by all members of staff between November-December leading to a proposal submitted after Christmas. There is a constant follow-up with intermediate submissions of work in progress. Yet, this cannot make up for a new problem that we didn’t have with the doctoral courses.

In the old system, students who enrolled in these courses aimed at completing a doctoral dissertation. Many gave up after writing the shorter dissertation, which was, anyway, twice as long as the current MA affair and researched over at least 1 year. Only students graduating with average Bs and As attempted the feat of getting a PhD. Now our public is different: they may just want the MA and never considered writing a PhD dissertation at all. The MA dissertation is hard enough for them but, then, ours is a research MA.

Why not filter the students and be more demanding, you may be wondering? Well, let’s be frank: we need as many students as possible to guarantee the survival of our MAs all over Catalonia, just in case Generalitat considers that they’re too expensive in terms of teaching resources. The result? Frustrated students and, at best, with a few honourable exceptions, half-baked pieces or nothing at all.

Delaying the submission of the MA dissertation to a second year means that students pay a staggering 900 euros for re-registration (600 plus a 40% surcharge). I’m beginning to believe universities are banking on this unlikelihood to complete the MA dissertation in time to get some extra money. Our suggestion that students may submit their work either in September or in February, counting as part of the same academic year, has been discounted with the excuse that our computers cannot do it.

Bureaucratic matters apart, the fact is that you in the same way you can’t hurry love, as the song claims, you can’t hurry learning (much less thinking, that undervalued activity). The production of good Literature dissertations takes time, as it takes plenty of reading and that is time-consuming. We have, of course, the additional problem that some ‘clever’ politician decided to implement first the introduction of the MAs and then that of the new BAs (the four-year ‘grados’). Also, that many of the most committed students are taking the new MA in teacher training for secondary schools which has been made compulsory for those who wish to teach in Generalitat schools. Thank you very much!!

If anyone knows of a fool-proof method to write excellent dissertations within a 15 month MA (in a foreign language, remember), do let me know…