Doctoral students like me considered dreamers A reader commentary by Sasan Abdi-Herrle Higher starting pay and better career

development are seen as good reasons to earn a doctorate. By contrast, those who want to get deep into the subject are looked at askant. I am a political scientist and am earning my Ph.D. because I enjoy it. I do not believe in a financial advantage: anything more I eventually one day might earn, I now earn less. After my Master I was certain that should not be the end of my studies. I enjoyed academic work too much. It was too much fun for me, reading line by line the current state of research to develop a thesis, and in doing so always gaining new perspectives. Just as early, too, it was clear to me that academic work cannot be an end in itself. I am not a nerd. When I have free time and no pressure, I more willingly go out and drink a beer, instead of digesting the newest political communication research findings. Doctoral study is thus for me an ideal formal framework. It is a great challenge, but it prescribes for me no clearly defined goal. It requires constancy, discipline, precision, and a high level of self-organization. Sometimes it bothers me; mostly, however, I enjoy it. Not that my relation to doctoral study is totally unproblematic, but in the end my work on the dissertation is one thing above all else: the meaningful incitement to a daily engagement with scientific subject matter. What disturbs me in the discussion surrounding the sense or nonsense of doctoral study is that for the most part the gratification of academic work as motivation plays no role at all. Instead it is always only about money. An example: my mother recently read some statistic on starting pay for doctors in various disciplines and asked me, why hadnt I studied law? Then I would earn far more with the title doctor. For a moment I was shocked. My mother pleading for radical utility optimization? On the other hand, the question is not absurd. In the media more than anywhere else, the discussion of the doctoral title is first and foremost about the degree to which it enables higher starting pay and better development opportunities. In this conversation the doctoral title falls victim to its Zeitgeist: where there are costs, it is taken as self-evident that there must be a measurable utility, too. The person who earns a doctorate, because she is looking for that challenge in either delving deep into the subject or producing scientific results, is considered either an idealist dreamer or an idiot. I have had this experience consistently. Even academic peers look at me unbelievingly when I explain to them that for me it is about the academic challenge and diving deep into the subject matter. And that it is with this motivation that I have endured the low points in my studies, too. But to sacrifice years of my life and continue to live the more or less precarious life of a student without rich parents? For many it is unimaginable. Yes, the opinion of the majority has an effect. In recent times I have observed myself engaging in selfdelusion about the tight situation I am in. Social scientists call this phenomenon the social desirability

bias. In this light, the problem becomes apparent: the economization of the doctor title has in no small measure been responsible for the suffering of its reputation in the last years. Because if the doctor title serves only to further professional development, it is hardly astonishing that economic logic is employed in the equation. Plagiarize a little bit? Cite somewhat imprecisely? Employ a partial understanding the current state of research and twist what is understood? Play empirical tricks and games? Hire a ghostwriter? All these practices are consistent with a particular ethics, one in which doctoral study is understood primarily as a burdensome means to an economic end and should be completed as efficiently as possible. This is why an interjection is necessary: another way is possible, namely with gratification! Then the much-discussed issue of quality would be a non-issue.
This article appeared in ZeitOnline on February 18, 2014 and was written by Sasan Abdi-Herrle. Translated from the German by Dave Herr. Original available at http://www.zeit.de/studium/hochschule/2014-02/promotionherausforderung-spass