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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2022
As any recent Ph.D. recipient can attest, the writing of a doctoral dissertation is at times a process fraught with uncertainty and anxiety over the “meaning” of one's work and its implications for the growth of knowledge in the discipline. The dissertation usually marks the first opportunity for a graduate student to exercise a great deal of independence and autonomy on a research project of one's own choosing; and the successful defense of the completed dissertation represents the final phase in a socialization process designed to initiate the newcomer into the sacred “holies” of academic folkways and mores.
From its inception in 1861, when Yale became the first American university to grant the Ph.D. degree, the doctoral degree was viewed as a “research degree” and the writing of a dissertation was justified in terms of making an “original contribution” to the scholar's own discipline. A casual glance through several recent graduate school catalogues indicates that the official rhetoric concerning the dissertation continues to stress the notion of an “original contribution.”
1 Wolfle, Dael, and Kidd, Charles V., “The Future Market for Ph.D.s,” Science, 173 (August 27, 1971), 784.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
2 The Graduate Bulletins of the following schools were examined: Johns Hopkins University; The University of Colorado; The University of Minnesota; The University of Oregon.
3 Graduate Education in the United States (New York, 1960), p. 175.
4 “Factors Affecting the Value of Dissertations,” Social Education 24, December, 1960, pp. 375–377; p. 385.
5 Ibid., 385.
6 Op. Cit., 784.
7 (Washington, D.C., 1966)
8 Ibid., p. 41.
9 Ibid.
10 (National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 1963), p. 11.
11 (National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 1967), p. 7.
12 The following sources were used: American Political Science Review 61, No. 3, September, 1967, pp. 861–874; PS 1 No. 3, Summer, 1968, pp. 64–85; PS 2 No. 3, Summer, 1969, pp. 447–466; PS 3 No. 3, Summer, 1970, pp. 498–521.
13 (Baltimore, 1961).
14 (Washington, D.C., 1968).