What’s in a PhD? Back when I was in grad school in the late 80s at Oregon State University, the idea of working on a PhD(s) was really about pushing the boundaries of current knowledge into a very, very narrow areas. This means that the person is effectively the sole expert (for a few years) in that very, very narrow space.

All those who went through that rigour, the anxieties, the doubts, the mental crises, the massive amounts of work that needed to be put in knowing that the bulk of it will not ever likely to be practical – which is not a prerequisite, but does throw a spanner in the works.

Some of those work could become significantly important breakthroughs. However, those are very, very tiny in terms of overall percentage of all PhDs. For that matter, not all Nobel prize winners have PhDs.

With that baseline, it is intriguing to read about “practical PhDs” being awarded by Southeast University in Nanjing, China – and all of them in engineering. Of course, it would be engineering (yeah, I’m biased).

Engineers invent new things and build the world. Engineers or anyone with an engineering mindset, helped create the majority of what we experience and live with around the world. This goes back thousands of years, including those who built the pyramids in Egypt, those of the Mayans, the great wall of China, the architecture of Babylon, cities and towns in the Indus valley and so on including the engineers who worked on the NASA Voyager 1 and 2 which are currently the furthest away from Earth, into interstellar space (outside the Sun’s heliosphere). Engineers built those.

Engineering is about solving problems. Finding practical means including inventing new ways. Engineering has rigour and discipline. It has repeatability and predictability, and is a whole lot of fun!

The practical PhDs from Southeast University is for those who work with industry to solve real problems in the now. Those individuals could have done it successfully without the promise of a PhD; but I guess that label is good to have.

So what value does such practical PhDs offer? Likewise a PhD (in any field) offering anything other than proving to oneself that one can indeed break new grounds and redefine the boundaries. Checking off personal goals – which is a huge deal, no denying – is a real driver (here’s looking at you Veena). Persistence in the face of what could be deemed insurmountable obstacles (funding, time, life) with the reward of a recognition of success. There is intrinsic value in that.

Is there anything else, I wonder? In the grand scheme of things, I would posit, nothing much more.

I do wish PhDComics was there in the late 80s.