Respect
This Professor only has a PhD degree
61–70 of 87 posts
Re: This Professor only has a PhD degree
#62In some states, including California, you can practice law without having any type of law degree -- as long as you pass the Bar Exam. I've always been tempted to study & take it.
Engineering, atleast in Canada, is similar.
You can write a series of tests instead of getting a university degree. Though you still need to do the 4 year engineer in training before you become a PEng.
Re: This Professor only has a PhD degree
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sssh, you don't want the grad students to hear! Without grad students who's gonna do all the prof's grunt work?
Help, I'm trapped in a research paper factory. If you can read this, send help to: Taub Building Technion City Haifa, Israel 32000
I met my wife in Haifa. I know where that building is...
Re: This Professor only has a PhD degree
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right, but it came to UK through US: From the United States, the Ph.D. degree spread to Canada in 1900, and then to the United Kingdom in 1917. (from Wikipedia)
Maybe the name Ph. D., but the Ph. D. itself is older in the USA and in Europe. There were Ph. D. in the 19th century both in Europe and in Universities like Yale or Harvard.
Could you clarify? Humboldt University started granting PhDs in the early 19th century, Yale in 1861, so yes, of course there were PhDs in the 19th century.
Re: This Professor only has a PhD degree
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the time, the PhD was not seen very highly in the department, and in the report on the defence of the PhD Moore famously said: "It is my personal opinion that Mr. Wittgenstein’s thesis is a work of genius; but, be that as it may, it is certainly well up to the standard required for the Cambridge degree of Doctor of Philosophy’ So, it was not seen as an achievement at all!
So, it was not seen as an achievement at all! I don't get that interpretation from that quote at all. To me, the quote is about contrasting the speaker's subjective view with a more objective "standard" requirement for a PhD degree. It's basically saying: "To me, his work as that of a genius. But YMMV. However, even if you don't want to go quite that far, you'll certainly admit that it's great and fulfills the requir…
I think it's more along the lines of: the degree itself is a insignificant and unworthy of his work. It's like giving him a Kindergarten gold star sticker. Which says something about the quality of his work, or of other degree holders, or both.
Re: This Professor only has a PhD degree
#66In some states, including California, you can practice law without having any type of law degree -- as long as you pass the Bar Exam. I've always been tempted to study & take it.
Engineering, atleast in Canada, is similar. You can write a series of tests instead of getting a university degree. Though you still need to do the 4 year engineer in training before you become a PEng.
Source? I'm aware of programs which allow internationally educated engineers to earn equivalency in Canada (ie. without having to re-do their entire degree), and there is certainly a test to write before you may be a member of a province's professional organisation (and thus eligible for a PEng), but that test is about ethics and engineering law.
I've never heard of any system by which someone without any formal engineering education could write a series of tests to become eligible for a PEng, unless that "series of tests" is accompanied by several years of painstaking study and a bachelor's degree at the end ;)
Re: This Professor only has a PhD degree
#67I have an MSc in Computer Science but lack a BSc or A-levels. I was homeless and sleeping rough when my peers were in secondary education, I was living in squats and hitch-hiking around the UK when they were in university. Being self-taught, I applied for the MSc after 15 years experience as it was a source of personal anxiety for me to lead large technical projects in which almost every other person was highly educa…
Mostly I felt that the MSc taught me the language with which to communicate and argue the things I already knew. That's a fascinating story and a great perspective. One thing that's hard to communicate with those who've decided to pass up on higher education is how many different (and different kinds) of tools it gives you in your field. It's not just the theoretical bits, or the formalism, but also the language of t…
This is commonly characterized as "knowing what you don't know." You know what's out there, even if you don't know it, but the power is that when you need to, you can learn it.
Contrast this with not knowing what you don't know. You can't learn it, because you don't even know it exists. I think this is a major benefit of an undergraduate education. You get a broad enough exposure to a field that you know what's out there, so you know what's possible.
Re: This Professor only has a PhD degree
#68Shock! Horror! Gasp! You mean someone can be accomplished in academics without following the Standard Academic Track That Is Designed By Our Benevolent Government And Their Patriotic Comrades In University To Provide Thou With A Most Efficient And Complete Education?!
Re: This Professor only has a PhD degree
#69I get that this reads funny, but I think it's fairly clear what he means...like, reworded it might say: "I essentially have a BSc and MSc, through self-studying, but the only degree I got from an academic institution was my PhD."
The term 'self study' is strange here. He was trained to MSc level by his employer. The army do this all the time. The Chinese government do it very often.
My dad earned 'the equivalent of' an MSc in the air force in the 70's. Those qualifications didn't translate well in to the real world back then.
Re: This Professor only has a PhD degree
#70Barry Mazur, a professor at Harvard, only has a PhD from Princeton. He attended MIT for undergrad and just never graduated.