by Writerbob

Created on: April 05, 2007   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

By now, the entire gamut of explanation has been run in answer to this question. We have the Latin translation, functional definitions, structural explanations. What is missing from the conversation is, in the most pragmatic terms, an experiential description of the people who hold PhD's. The following attempts to fill in this blank.

A PhD holder is:

A Doctor of Philosophy (who may or may not have a poster of Rasputin with a beard down to his knee). This supposedly indicates that the holder of the degree has a complete mastery of the philosophic underpinnings of their particular academic discipline. In layman's terms, they can explain the "why" instead of the "what". Real-life experience contraindicates this, as many PhD's only have a command of a tiny subset of information within their field.

A Professor - one who professes the "truth" about their given subject. But this truth is a very subjective species, so that often a conference of PhD's will make no headway in agreeing about even minor aspects of their discipline.

A Leader - This contention is easily dismissed almost on the face of the claim. There are innumerable stories of people being hired by corporations to fill leadership roles based upon their academic credentials, only to see them fail miserably as their pristine, academic knowledge was no match for the shifting sands of reality - best dealt with from the folk psychological level rather than the abstract, academic view.

So where does the attainment of a PhD lead the recipient. Like Ourobouros, the Hindu Serpent-God that continually creates reality by swallowing its own tail, PhD's marginalize themselves from the working world with their lofty academic achievements, and must inevitably return to the source from which they sprang - the university. Without the positions in higher academia, PhD's would be found scattered everywhere - in mail rooms, in taxi cabs, as servers at restaurants. Rather than being the sine qua non of preparation for the economic exchange of work, reaching the level of PhD instead makes one completely unsuitable for the realities of day-to-day employment.

So what is a PhD? It is a trap, it is a ruse; it promises everything, yet for many who spend a decade in quest of receiving the assignation, it is a hollow, Pyrrhic victory.

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