Defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional

Defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional

The thesis research work is supervised by one or more senior academic staff or researchers and there is a board of examination appointed by the University. Details on the structure of the PhD thesis and the exam are shown in the Table 2: Table Structure of the thesis and its defense in third cycle in Europe Country Kind of thesis Supervisor Defence Of Phd Thesis In Netherlands With Traditional, how to start off in an essay, who owns my old essays, example of boring college essay/10() Defence Of Phd Thesis In Netherlands With Traditional that you are contacting a cheap but professional essay writing service. Defence Of Phd Thesis In Netherlands With Traditional When you only look for a cheap service, you might end up with a fraudulent website. Along with that, the paper you will be getting will be a pure waste of money and time/10()

What’s the point of the PhD thesis? | Nature

Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer.

In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. On the morning of Tom Marshall's PhD defence, he put on the suit he had bought for the occasion and climbed onto the stage in front of a strong audience, including his parents and 6 examiners. He gave a minute-long presentation, then faced an hour of cross-examination about his past 5 years of neuroscience research at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen, defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional, the Netherlands.

A lot was at stake: this oral examination would determine whether he passed or failed. I had enjoyed the whole experience far too much, and ended up talking for a few extra minutes. Marshall's elaborate, public PhD assessment is very different from that faced by Kelsie Long, an Earth-sciences PhD candidate at the Australian National University ANU in Canberra. Her PhD will be assessed solely on her written thesis, which will be mailed off to examiners and returned with comments.

She will do a public presentation of her work later this year, but it won't affect her final result. PhDs are assessed in very different ways around the world. Almost all involve a written thesis, but those come in many forms, defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional. In the United Kingdom, they are usually monographs, long explanations of a student's work; in Scandinavia, science students typically top-and-tail a series of their publications.

The accompanying oral examination — also called a viva voce or defence — can be a public lecture, a private discussion or not happen at all. There is wide variation across disciplines and from one institution to the next. This isn't necessarily a problem in itself, but some researchers worry that the decades-old doctoral assessment system is showing strain.

Time-pressured examiners sometimes lack training and preparation for PhD assessments, which can lead to lack of rigour. Farrar, like other scientists, suspects that the PhD assessment is not keeping up with the times.

Single-author tomes seem outdated when much of research has become a multidisciplinary, team endeavour. Research is becoming more open, but PhD assessments can lack transparency: vivas are sometimes held behind closed doors.

Some PhD theses languish, little-used, on office shelves or in archives. What's more, little attention is given in the PhD assessment to soft skills such as management, entrepreneurship and teamwork, even though these are an essential part of life beyond the PhD, and students are increasingly leading that life outside academia. The council organized a workshop in January this year called Future of the PhD Dissertation, and in March, the Australian Council of Learned Academies ACOLA in Melbourne examined changes to the thesis as part of a review on researcher training.

Some scientists and education experts welcome the attention. Academics agree about one thing regarding the PhD assessment — its aim. The traditional goal is to demonstrate the candidate's ability to conduct independent research on a novel concept and to communicate the results in an accessible way.

Where the academics differ is on how best to achieve that goal. Shirley Tilghman, a molecular biologist and former president of Princeton University in New Jersey, sees merit in the monograph form of the thesis. But should the thesis include academic publications, too? That's the norm at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, where most theses are a compilation of the student's original papers, along with a relatively short discussion, perhaps 50 pages long. The rationale is that publishing should be part of training because it better equips students for academic life and securing jobs.

Some students who complete a monograph end up wishing that they had spent more time on writing papers. James Lewis successfully defended his physics PhD at Imperial College London in Octoberbut he thinks that his one published paper landed him his postdoc at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. But others argue that the pressure to publish could rob PhD students of valuable parts of their studies, such as the time to shape their research path and to think creatively and independently.

Long defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional working at ANU towards a thesis-by-publication: she's written and submitted one paper and has started on defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional second. But she's struggling. What's more, her strategy depends on things at least partly outside her control — on her PhD generating enough complete studies for publication and on a reasonably timely peer-review process.

Completed PhD theses are typically stored in university libraries — but that doesn't mean that they are read or used. Scientists do tend to keep a copy of their theses in their office or lab for use by students and colleagues. Neil Curson, a physicist at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, says that his PhD, written more than 20 years ago, is still consulted by his students when they come into his lab.

Many theses, however, end up collecting dust. Whatever form the thesis takes, it has to be assessed — in most countries, by a panel of experts, and often involving an oral exam. In Israel, the viva is optional and very few students choose to have one; in the Netherlands, it is formal and ceremonial; in the United Kingdom, it's typically a private affair with two or three examiners; and in Australia, it's hardly performed at all.

That's largely because, historically, there defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional enough experts in the country to examine the work in person and it was costly to fly them in, she says. Holbrook and her research team published a study last year that compared the assessment methods used in Australia with those in New Zealand and the United Kingdom T.

Lovat et al. Higher Ed. The review on Australian research training published in March didn't support adding a viva either, but it did recommend a move towards more continuous assessment of a student, rather than waiting until the end of the training.

Some researchers see problems with the viva. It's not uncommon for nerves to get the better of a student, and for them to freeze in front of defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional audience, however small it is.

Examiners could worsen the situation by asking very difficult questions, says David Bogle, a chemical engineer at University College London. This shouldn't be allowed.

Most researchers don't support a global standard for the PhD assessment. A one-size-fits-all approach would be impossible to implement, they say, and the type of assessment — be it continuous appraisal, written thesis or oral exam — should depend on discipline, project, defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional, supervisor and institution.

But many feel that the system could be improved — by making the thesis shorter, for one. Data from ProQuest, which stores 4 million theses, show that the average length of biology, chemistry and physics PhDs soared to nearly pages between and That could be because students are analysing more complex questions, performing longer literature reviews and using increasingly complicated methods that require lengthier explanations see 'The expanding thesis'.

Farrar says that a slimmed-down document would be more appropriate. Defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional could follow the concise format of a research paper, and include a review of the field, then short chapters on methods, analysis and discussion. And the examiners will probably read it all.

That isn't necessarily the case now. Examiners have to find time to review theses in between research, teaching, grant-writing and many other demands. That means an examiner might skim through years of a PhD student's work in just a couple of hours. One way to better reflect the team-based nature of science would defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional to write a joint thesis, an approach defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional has been used in arts and humanities graduate education in the past.

However, this can make it difficult to assign credit. There is another matter to wrestle with — the fact that half of science PhD graduates in the United States are choosing careers outside of academiaaccording to the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates. Increasingly, institutions offer courses to PhD students in skills such as teamwork, management and research ethics, defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional, but these skills aren't usually assessed formally.

The viva would be one opportunity to do so, perhaps by seeing how students react to various scenarios. Alternatively, as the ACOLA review suggested, PhD candidates could accrue credits in transferable skills through professional-development activities that are recorded in a portfolio. Farrar thinks that a change in emphasis could help. Rather than thinking of the thesis and viva as an exam, it should be viewed as the culmination of a long project.

Mewburn stresses that whatever form the assessment takes, it should focus more on the individual than on their work. It's difficult to find figures on how many students fail their PhD if they get to the point of submitting a thesis but, anecdotally, scientists say that few flunk it outright. More often, students are sent away with minor or major corrections that have to be completed before the PhD is awarded.

There are theories that few students fail because universities want to keep their number of graduates high for the rankings. But most researchers dispute this, and point to other reasons, defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional. One is that weak students are likely to have dropped out before they reach the final assessment, defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional.

Furthermore, supervisors and the supporting institutions typically work hard — through regular reviews and assessments — to make sure that a candidate and project are of a sufficient standard before the thesis is submitted. Nerad sees no need to reform the final PhD assessment. For her, the problem lies with the variability of graduate education as a whole. During her tenure as Princeton's president, Tilghman was often asked if there was a perfect way to assess a PhD course. Not many liked her answer — that she could only really evaluate a student at the year reunion.

If they do, you've done a good job. If they haven't, defence of phd thesis in netherlands with traditional, you haven't. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Tweet Facebook LinkedIn Weibo Wechat. Back to the thesis Jul The past, present and future of the PhD thesis Jul The future of the postdoc Apr How not to deal with the PhD glut Oct Education: The PhD factory Apr Seven ages of the PhD Apr Nature special: Future of the PhD.

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Australian Council of Learned Academies: Review of Australia's Research Training System. Reprints and Permissions. Gould, J. Nature26—28

PhD defence Mirja Michalscheck Wageningen University \u0026 Research

, time: 1:42:32

Defending your PhD thesis: the Dutch way | Marian van Bakel

A bid is a fee writers Defence Of Phd Thesis In Netherlands With Traditional offer to clients for each particular order. Experts leave their bids under the posted order, waiting for a client to settle on which writer, among those who Defence Of Phd Thesis In Netherlands With Traditional left their bids, they want to choose. The bidding system is developed based on what is used in /10() Feb 27,  · The Dutch PhD defence is very formal: there is a protocol to be followed, stipulating what happens at every step, what you should say at the beginning and at the end, and how you should address your opponents. For example, professors are addressed as hooggeleerde opponens whereas those who ‘only’ have a PhD are addressed as hooggeachte Estimated Reading Time: 4 mins Jan 06,  · Indeed, these formalities are (nearly) the same at all Dutch universities and if you're a PhD student, the precise rules will most surely be pointed out to you well before the day of the defense. Still, when the time is there, candidates make mistakes, but nobody cares that much: it's mostly fun to spot them when you're in the audience ;-)