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16#
发表于 2013-8-13 16:43
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Few people fail a Ph.D. as in “get tossed out of the program.” Many many people give up before the end. Many a person with a non-professional masters’ degree is a Ph.D. dropout, if you scratch the surface.
Social science and humanities Ph.D. candidates tend to take longer than exact sciences and mathematics Ph.D.s. I personally think this is because logical arguments made with natural language (in social sciences) and heuristic interpretations (in the humanities) are a lot harder to evaluate convincingly, whereas the mathematical and experimental stuff either works or it doesn’t or if it only partially works, it is clear where those borders end. As a result, it is a lot harder to build a strong case for a thesis in a qualitative subject, and it requires a lot more analysis of evidence and contrary hypotheses, which takes a lot more time.
None of this means that the quantitative stuff: math, physics, etc. is easy, but it is easier to show whether your contribution to the field is a) correct, and b) original.
When I taught, I was surprised to find that teaching the qualitative parts of topics was much much harder to do than teach the quantitative parts. As a learner, quantitative stuff is sometimes more intimidating, because if you are incorrect or wrong, it is more apparent. But as an instructor, figuring out how to get across effective qualitative analysis is much harder to do, because it’s harder to explain why “this way is right, this way isn’t” (or, more likely, “this way is better; this way is worse”). |
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