Over at Obscene Desserts, my friend John Wood says what needs to be said about Guttenberg:
I just listened on the radio to Guttenberg's response, which was pretty pathetic, not least since he didn't really address any of the specific issues while also trying to play on public sympathies by highlighting that he had written the dissertation while also carrying out another job and being a family man.
Poor baby: it's not like many, many other people don't manage to do the same without resorting (allegedly) to plagiarism. (He has said, however, that he will 'temporarily' refrain from using his academic title.)
Plagiarism on this scale doesn't happen by accident, and is a very big deal among us academic types. It can and should ruin academic careers, and, in a properly-run universe, will severely damage Guttenberg's political career.
Guttenberg is just the latest in a depressingly long line of Germans who have done whatever it took to get (or claim) a doctoral title. German society, as everyone knows, places an absurd emphasis on formal titles. This is not so uncommon in Europe, a place in which people have been jockeying for position at court, in bureaucracies, or in the military for millennia. However, Germany takes it even farther. If you manage to acquire a doctoral title in any discipline, you are legally entitled to change your name to incorporate the "Dr." prefix, and you may also force people to address you that way. You'll get a job more easily, and you'll earn more money.
The desire to get a doctoral title has little or nothing to do with academia: the vast majority of doctoral titles are used to gain leverage in the ordinary working world, not to pursue academic careers. Needless to say, the lickspittle lust for doctoral titles is nowhere stronger than in the legal profession (g), that eternal redoubt of mindless status-worship. If you've got relatively good grades and strong career ambitions, therefore, you'll feel pressure to go on and get a doctoral title. The system in Germany is much more flexible than it is in the U.S. In the States, you'll generally have a committee of at least three professors evaluating your proposal, and they will provide intensive guidance while you write your Ph.D. Generally, you will be expected to remain on-site at the university and to work on your dissertation close to full-time for several years. Your interaction with your main supervisor will be intense and ongoing.
In Germany, by contrast, you have only one "Doktorvater", and that Doktorvater will have almost untrammeled discretion about how much supervision to give his or her charges. Some of them are very hands-on, some pay no attention at all, and some have been willing to sell titles for the right price or the right sex act (g). Only at the end of the process is another professor involved, he or she will be the "second reader" of the finished draft dissertation. The second reader can disagree with the Doktorvater about what grade the work should receive, but rarely does so.
There are cases of abuse, but the most common product of this highly lax system is mediocrity. A student spends a few years noodling around with a thesis idea at university, but then the grad-student sinecure runs out and the student has to take up regular work. Tempted by the delusion of "I'll finish it on evenings and weekends", the student continues worrying away, adding a page here or a paragraph there. Here, it's important to note that (1) very few German students have ever had experience with a full-time job before they graduate from college; and (2) tuition fees are minimal or non-existent in Germany.
The all-but-dissertation person (ABD) soon realizes that actually working all day doing something completely different from their doctoral dissertation makes sustained, meaningful work on it all-nigh impossible. However, ABD has already invested thousands of hours of time in it -- how can they just let all that drift away into nothingness? Plus, since it doesn't cost anything to remain enrolled in the University in some fashion, there are no giant tuition bills lighting a fire under the ABD to get the damn thing done. Eventually, if they really keep at it, they will turn in something to their professor, and the professor will generally let the process come to an end, even if the dissertation is crap. The professor probably likes the ABD student, and also feels it would be a waste of so much human effort to let the matter drop without giving ABD the title she so desperately craves.
This is surely what happened to Guttenberg. In fact, he cited his competing time-commitments in his response to the plagiarism allegations. So, to a certain extent, his situation is the product of a system in which doctoral titles have, all too often, degenerated into mere career-enhancing status tokens. What I'd like to see is the Guttenberg case trigger some long-overdue reforms in German higher education. The "career-doctor" phenomenon is a waste of resources and an invitation to mediocrity.
It works for me
Posted by: dildo | March 20, 2011 at 11:39 AM
The desire to get a doctoral title has little or nothing to do with academia: the vast majority of doctoral titles are used to gain leverage in the ordinary working world, not to pursue academic careers. Needless to say, the lickspittle lust for doctoral titles is nowhere stronger than in the legal profession (g), that eternal redoubt of mindless status-worship. If you've got relatively good grades and strong career ambitions, therefore, you'll feel pressure to go on and get a doctoral title. The system in Germany is much
Posted by: Cheap Supra Thunder Hightop For Sale | March 18, 2011 at 09:32 AM
> I have now unbanned the word "dissertation,"
I couldn't possibly think of something like that, must be my lack of scientific training. Wouldn't it be more conducive to the public good to tell your readers about banned words, so they don't have to bang their heads on the table?
> When you use a banned word, Typepad doesn't tell you,
> because that would sort of defeat the purpose
A spambot that's programmed to write "dissertation" to boost the Google rank of linked websites for that particular term won't help itself by adding "fruit loops", "chlamydia", or "Goofy" instead. It won't add "d1ss3rtation" or "document submitted in support of candidature for a degree" either, because that's not conducive to their master's private good. And no, it won't call you names, nuke your site, or link pictures of Sarah Palin, it just hops off to the next website on its list instead. And contrary to expectations popular among the academe and typepad programmers spammers don't spam thousands of websites on their own, after reading them carefully. They might not have much of a life but at least they know how to buy programs that do the actual spamming so they can down a PBR and scratch their nuts.
So next time we might want to ask our readers to please abbreviate, paraphrase or camouflage the w0:rd we just blocked. We might even ask readers to write, say, banana whenever XYZ is meant. Lest the dreaded bananabots attack, of course. They're unleashed by interested parties whenever sales drop.
Posted by: M. Möhling | February 25, 2011 at 04:57 PM
@dubuc:
As far as I understand things, the problem here at the Austrian universities is that the professors are extremely overwhelmed by the sheer number of students that they have to supervise. I've heard ratios of up to 1 professor to 200 Master/Doctoral candidates! Professors therefore have no time and very little incentive to give dissertations the thoroughness they deserve, or supervise students from the first draft until completion.
A friend of mine just graduated last summer with a Magister degree (he was one of the last under the old system) although he didn't write his "Magisterarbeit" himself. He simply bought it, which I've heard is getting increasingly common in Austria. His professor could have cared less, or probably didn't have the time or motivation to really take his thesis very seriously. So what we have now in Austria is a system where
1. Students are NOT required to physically attend lectures since attendance is NOT taken
2. Students are allowed to defer and repeat exams as many times as they wish without penalty
3. Poor supervision and/or overworked professors mean that students can also purchase their final thesis.
Contrast this to the U.S. where your professor supervises only a handful of students, carefully checks over each draft of your thesis (intensive discussions usually follow), is available for consultation regarding questions and difficulties, then you have to publicly and rigorously defend your thesis before a jury, explaining your research and methodology. Besides that, Master's and doctorate candidates have to teach and grade their professor's classes, as well as tutor their professors students, which is often a requirement for their degree. Under such a system, it's almost impossible, or let's say, extremely difficult to hand in a paper you didn't write yourself.
If you haven't figured out what all of this means by now, let me tell you: a degree from an Austrian university won't be worth the paper it's printed on as soon as the world catches on to the lax standards prevalent in Austrian academia.
But what does all this matter? As far as Austrians are concerned, the most important thing in life is getting that all important title to place before your name. It's great for lauding over fellow human beings.
As long as these societies continue to value perceived status over proven performance, then this antiquated practice of title-glorification will never come to an end.
Posted by: Hepkat | February 25, 2011 at 01:43 PM
[Now that I may write
Yehovadissertation, I'm posting my first comment again, which should go before my “On a lighter note”. Thanks to Typepad's idiotic reverse sorting, it in fact appears “before” my second comment. ;-) It's also the only platform that I know that kills your comment draft when signing in.]@FJM, Andrew: I agree with Mak, there are quite a lot of dissertations "just for the title", but they are usually graded rite (or cum laude). But I also think we should get rid of this perceived requirement in non-academic careers. Perhaps even in medicine. (A bit of education may be necessary here, to make people understand what a “Dr. med.” is compared to a “real Dr.”. Some even write their dissertation parallel to exams and diploma thesis...)
Summa cum laude should be reserved for outstanding scientific work. And this is not possible to do parallel to work, politics and family, as Guttenberg claimed as excuse for his “mistake”. The doktorvater and the commission at Bayreuth University should have easily realised this. Probably, they were afraid of their careers and funding – Guttenbergs party (CSU) is still quite strong in Bavaria. (Happily, not as strong as in former time, when they put any self-respecting dictator to shame.)
Posted by: fj | February 25, 2011 at 09:58 AM
@ Andrew and Hepkat: Great discussion, I could not agree more from own experiences in germany and Austria (in and out of academia).
@ Düsseldorf: That's exactly the way all those (fake) doctors and especially the MDs want you to think. Many years ago, some students (law, history, geography) were overhearing a discussion by med students in Münster. They were discussing the time to invest in writing their doctoral theses'. One of them exclaimed, that he would never use more than six weeks, that was by far enough time.
So much to 'some research work' he allegedly should have done.
regards
Posted by: dubuc | February 25, 2011 at 07:55 AM
Well, let's try again for the last time. Ladies and gentlemen, my much belated post from a few days ago...
I actually find the Germans to be quite laid back when it comes to titles, or at least it seems that way after living in Austria for 14 years. There's simply nothing in Germany that compares to the title hysteria we have in Austria. You'd never believe the things people do with titles here, or the lengths they go through to acquire one.
A few years ago I sued a landlady for the cost of a new boiler I had installed after the old one died. She had a "Doktor" title but I didn't think anything of it, the naive American that I am. On our first day in court, I noticed that the judge, (also a "Frau Doktor") handled the landlady with kid gloves while treating me with the utmost contempt. I explained that the heater died on a very cold weekend and that the landlady wasn't reachable by phone, after which I had no choice but to call a 24-hour plumber to get a new one installed.
"Well, you're a man - why didn't you simply fix the old boiler instead of calling a plumber?", the judge brusquely demanded. I stared at her dumbfounded! There were so many things wrong with that question that I didn't even know how to begin answering. I wondered how the learned judge would have reacted had I answered "well Your Honor, you're a woman - why aren't you home slaving over a hot stove, barefoot and pregnant?" But I decided to hold my tongue.
Anyway, back at my lawyer's office, she accidentally glimpsed a letter I took out of my bag which was addressed to me using the "Magister" title. As if scolding a child, she demanded, "you have a Magister title?!" Yes, I said, I had my American degree officially recognized. "Why didn't you tell me from the beginning that you had an academic title?" Well, I never thought about it - in the U.S. we're not accustomed to using academic titles. "Well, you're not in the United States! Here it's very important to use your academic title, especially in court since you'll have more credibility and judges will treat you more leniently". What about equality before the law?! "You're in Austria! When was the last time you've ever heard of an academic being sent to prison?" With that she officially applied to the court to have my name changed on all court documents, and at our next hearing, the judge was noticeably more receptive to my side of the story. We eventually settled out of court, but that experience taught me a very valuable lesson on how you're seen in Austrian society.
I once met the director of an important state agency. On his desk was written his name: "Herr Direktor Hofrat Dr. XYZ". I asked a friend of mine, "what is this Hofrat"? Well, he said, it's an honorific title issued by the government to important civil servants. "But to which 'Hof' is he a 'Rat'?" I asked. You should have heard the way he was addressed: "Ja, Herr Direktor Hofrat", "Nein, Herr Direktor Hofrat". I thought it would have been hilarious to solemnly genuflect before the Hofrat and kiss his hand, just to spite him, but thought the better of it.
Here in Austria they are very, VERY serious about titles. You are treated completely differently if you introduce yourself with a title as opposed to if you don't - I've tried this experiment many, many times. When you have a title, you're given better treatment, people handle you with more deference, you're able to get away with a lot more, and most hilariously, people will even continue referring to you in the third person using your title in your absence! Just today I was talking to a lady at an office and she kept saying "der Herr Doktor hat gesagt...". Does she personally know this Herr Doktor? No!! She was referring to some stranger that gave her technical support over the phone for some software she uses in the office. But because he was a "Herr Doktor", even when explaining what he said to her several days later, she will still refer to him as "der Herr Doktor".
An Austrian friend of mine who teaches English seminars has a doctorate, which makes very over-qualified in my opinion. I once asked her, "Andrea, since you're not a professor at some university, what on earth are you doing with a doctorate in English?" She laughed and explained to me that I should not confuse this with the same doctorate that I know in the States. In Austria, she continued, after completing your Magister, it's only a short step to getting your doctorate. All you have to do is write a dissertation, any subject will do, and you can take as long as you like. Hand it in to your professor who's too busy to take any personal interest in your work, read it before some commission, and voilá, you have your doctorate, with all the glory that comes with it. No research required. No academic supervision. She later added that all those politicians and most of those walking around with doctor titles took this route, but in the end the degree is largely meaningless. Case in point, if you'd like to actually teach at a university, you have to go through further education to get a "Habilitation" since the doctorate is mostly honorific and has very little research or scientific work associated with it.
Well, now all of Austria's abuzz with the Bologna process. Mainly, people are consumed with the frustrating question of how to address someone with the new Anglo-Saxon titles. So far I've heard "Frau Bachelor", "Herr Master" and the most colorful to date, "Herr Mag. XYZ, MBA". One colleague of mine has the following proudly written on her office door "Frau XYZ, Bakk. phil".
But old school Austrians are determined to hold on to tradition for dear life and will not go down without a spectacular fight. One doctor I recently visited boasted a phalanx of academic titles: "Herr Dozent Univ. Prof. Primarius Dr. med. XYZ". This time I did do a slight bow...it seemed only proper.
Posted by: Hepkat | February 24, 2011 at 11:36 PM
Ok, I have now unbanned the word "dissertation," God help me. (This will lead to a massive flood of spam comments, I guarantee you).
Hepkat, your problem might have had to do with that word appearing in your comment. When you use a banned word, Typepad doesn't tell you, because that would sort of defeat the purpose.
In any case, it's always a good idea to draft a comment in a text file first if it's longer than a few sentences.
I hope this works. If not, I'll try to see if anything else does...
Posted by: Andrew | February 24, 2011 at 10:47 AM
Hepkat, when rejected, typepad will give a false positive anyway (which can be explained, but let's not, because it's not so smart) and put you on a list (of sorts)--close the browser and start afresh. Clear cookies and cache if needed (mostly not). Also, using the preview option too often gets you on that list. Break the comment down in even smaller parts and/or replace some HTML links (if any) with URLs without preceding "http://" and "www" (if www is given)--typepad doesn't like too many of those. Write comments in a text file on you computer, lest they get lost. Some folks think typepad must be doubleplusgood because it isn't free, but that ain't necessarily so.
> Guttenberg
This will amuse some: director Florian Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck on his cousin Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, KT for short:
ich könnte mir vorstellen--not all that dumb, count Donnersmarck. btw: while the left, both regressive and marxist,[1] has done infinitely more to corrupt scientific process, Dr KT's (and his ilk's) lust for cutesy titles can't be condoned either. As he's popular the conservatives(?!) do stick with him, gleefully. Thank God I'm of the paleo persuasion.
@Alex (t.o.o)
I owe you one, but I'm too lazy. To Andrew I even owe lots (of which he doesn't know), but I can't be bothered right know. One fine day a real rain will come again and wash all these, um, misconceptions off the streets.
Posted by: M. Möhling | February 24, 2011 at 12:55 AM
Ok Andrew, something very strange is happening here. I've broken down my post into several smaller posts but only the first one's showing up. All others, no matter how small, get lost. I'm wondering if this one will even make it.
Posted by: Hepkat | February 23, 2011 at 07:30 PM
4 of 4
She later added that all those politicians and most of those walking around with doctor titles took this route, but in the end the degree is largely meaningless. Case in point, if you'd like to actually teach at a university, you have to go through further education to get a "Habilitation" since the doctorate is mostly honorific and has very little research or scientific work associated with it.
Well, now all of Austria's abuzz with the Bologna process. Mainly, people are consumed with the frustrating question of how to address someone with the new Anglo-Saxon titles. So far I've heard "Frau Bachelor", "Herr Master" and the most colorful to date, "Herr Mag. XYZ, MBA". One colleague of mine has the following proudly written on her office door "Frau XYZ, Bakk. phil".
But old school Austrians are determined to hold on to tradition for dear life and will not go down without a spectacular fight. One doctor I recently visited boasted a phalanx of academic titles: "Herr Dozent Univ. Prof. Primarius Dr. med. XYZ". This time I did do a slight bow...it seemed only proper.
Posted by: Hepkat | February 23, 2011 at 07:21 PM
While Germans are traditionally more obsessed with titles, the American conventions are slowly taking place, and people who insist on being adressed as Herr Doktor [Nachname] are more and more being considered old-fashioned and arrogant. The Austrian habit of using titles starting with the ubiquitous Herr Ingenieur is also waning off, most likely from a level that is far below of what it is being made up to be in anecdotes and jokes.
And indeed, it seems to be the field of the Rechtswissenschaften where the PhD is often and openly considered primarily as a career-boosting device, with students of law openly comparing entry salaries offered by well-known Grossbuden to applicants with and without a PhD. Ironically, my earlier web research on whether one could legally require others to adress one via the title didn't come to a definitive conclusion, but it did show that this subject is mainly, if not exclusively, discussed by students of law.
Hence, the infamous phrase "Für Sie immer noch Herr Doktor!" will most likely be heard in a court room, and we still don't know whether it makes sense in the first place. Maybe we should ask a lawyer. One who has a PhD, of course.
Posted by: Doppelfish | February 23, 2011 at 06:58 PM
Hepkat, I think we can, but only short ones. ;-)
Posted by: fj | February 23, 2011 at 10:59 AM
It seems we can't post comments. Andrew?
Posted by: Hepkat | February 23, 2011 at 09:32 AM
It has killed my comment again. Was it too long? Hopefully it is stuck in some moderation queue. But this time, I've kept a local copy around.
Posted by: fj | February 22, 2011 at 09:12 PM
On a lighter note, I liked this tweet by Ali Arbia (Zoon Politikon):
Posted by: fj | February 22, 2011 at 09:02 PM
You forgot to mention the title-loving Austrians. What they do with titles is far beyond anything common in Germany.
I am not so sure that everything you say in the article is correct. The law does not require anybody to address you with the "title". It is not part of the name.
However it is the only "title" you are allowed to add in these documents. The "Dr." is still taken pretty seriously.
One aspect worth mentioning is that certain professions almost require the "Dr.". A phyisician without a "Dr. med." is often not taken seriously. And as a chemist you will have trouble to find a decent job unless you have done your Ph.D.
Where it gets really serious is when you use a "Dr." without having one. Theoretically you can get one year in jail for that.
Posted by: Fabian | February 22, 2011 at 02:44 PM
I can´t agree in all points with you. As German I´m quite fixated on titles. And going to a physician who has no Dr. title still leaves me unsure. I know that a tile has nothing to do with professional knowledge but is a sign that the person has done some research work.
Posted by: Düsseldorf | February 22, 2011 at 01:23 PM
I would like to agree with Andrew, BUT there ist one problem: Doctoral thesis of the type described will generally never be graded "summa cum laude", this grade being reserved for the chose few willing to enter academia. If you are doing the work just for the title, no professor in his right mind will think about giving you such a good grade. But the University of Bayreuth did - which may say a lot more about them than about KT.
To sum um the affair: KT stole and copied, and after being caught he lied.
Posted by: Mak | February 22, 2011 at 10:24 AM
I would see a US-Germany similarity in the following: the German "Dr." is as much an entry ticket to some jobs as a degree from a "top" university is in the US. Neither of them is a guarantee of excellence, but what counts is that they are perceived as such and serve as a badge of "distinction" and therefore, you have to play by the rules.
If you know you're only going to enter a top law firm with a "Dr." title (and it gets worse and worse because more candidates graduate in law every year) what else can you do? In that sense, the PhD has simply become one more indispensable degree.
Posted by: Norbert | February 22, 2011 at 09:39 AM
If you manage to acquire a doctoral title..., you are legally entitled to change your name to incorporate the "Dr." prefix, and you may also force people to address you that way
Well, the first part is more or less right - but I wont call it a name change. Most important: Get a new business card with the "Dr.", and, that's Germany, apply for a new passport with the "Dr." in it.
But forcing people to address you "Dr." - no way. No idea how this rumour ever came up.
Posted by: Lutz | February 22, 2011 at 08:08 AM
...and, once they are in academics, these doctors will break their research up into LPU's. (Least Publishable Unit) so they can publish ten or twenty papers on one subject instead of one nice coherent one...because as we all know "publish or perish."
Posted by: orangeshow | February 22, 2011 at 05:56 AM
I think Martin is wrong and Andrew is right. Any German who knows academics from the US (or from Britain for that matter) or who has worked or studied in the Anglo-Saxon world must come to this conclusion.
Of course, most German academics themselves are not title-obsessed. For them, writing a PhD is a mundane process, a simple requirement of pursuing an academic career. Evidently, they don’t address each other as “Dr. X” or “Prof. Y”, and they typically are rather modest folks who are simply passionate about research in a specific field. Andrew’s point is that the wider society outside academia has a weird obsession with academic titles. No one who is even just rudimentarily familiar with German society can seriously deny this. In my experience, a great deal of PhD candidates in Germany have very little interest in the research they are meant to carry out, and large parts of them indeed finish their dissertations on weekends and holidays after having accepted a lucrative job elsewhere. It would not surprise me if those who pursue a doctorate only to score a few cheap status-points on the job market were the majority of German PhD candidates.
Even if these dissertations are written by the authors stated on the cover, they often are mediocre and destined to end up in some university library’s basement never to be consulted again. Indeed, the libraries unfortunate enough to keep these gratuitous tons of wannabe-academic rubbish make a much larger contribution to storing logistics than to academic progress. As Andrew correctly notes, this is a system of waste (of the time of supervising professors, of paper, and of public money among other things).
The nicest thing one could say about Guttenberg is that he is the victim of a professional culture that values pretention and punishes honesty and academic curiosity. If this continues, German academia in general will give away even more of its already declining international reputation. We can stop this, but only if we make sure that we live in the properly-run universe that Andrew calls for. We could start by realising that a doctorate is an entry-ticket to an academic profession, nothing more – and by ridiculing politicians who attempt to score points by highlighting their academic achievements (if we want to be generous) on their election posters and websites.
Posted by: FJM | February 22, 2011 at 02:16 AM
Andrew,
you should sometimes leave your academic circles. :-)
I agree there are certain areas where academic titles are important: Academic circles, politics and higher management.
As for the rest: Forget titles! Even if you meet one from the above mentioned group in private many wouldn't use the title.
I never ever in my life adressed someone with Dr. or Professor. Not even in my time at the university(!) where I got my "Dipl.-Math.". My professors have always been "Herr Schmitz" or "Frau Kunz" - and nobody did care. Ok, this was mathematics.
As for title obessession: Any amusement coming from an american I find rather amusing myself. In my opinion ther is not really any difference. Only since we Germans adopted some US influence in our corporate world we have (for example):
- junior consultant
- consultant
- senior consultant
- principal consultant
- senior manager
- senior vice president
(Replace consultant for executive, manager, director, nose driller, whatever, ...)
And of course every organised group needs some complicated name that creates a great acronym. But this is a necessity, since what would be the value of beeing one of 300 senior management vice executive directing presidents? But if this is split in 50 smaller groups (with great titles!) one can say I am "big bonzo at FUCOF".
Ok, this is a different level. But the title awareness in the USA is at least as strong as in Germany.
Martin
Posted by: Martin | February 21, 2011 at 05:37 PM