A science PhD can be completed within 18 months

I have supervised around 30 PhD students and examined something like 100, in various different countries.

I failed two outright and passed another two with no changes; the rest mostly required minor revisions. As everyone knows, you are in a sense examining the supervisor because if the thesis is weak, it is as much the supervisor’s fault as the student’s – well, usually. In that regard, I should confess that a few of my PhD students dropped out before they got to the submission stage – but largely for domestic reasons.

I suggest that American readers have a stiff drink at this point before reading on. But here is my thesis based on all that personal experience: there is no reason a PhD student in the experimental sciences should not be able to complete after about 15-18 months.

Of course, this does depend a bit on the type of data to be collected and analysed. But what is a PhD thesis, after all? It is not a magnum opus. It is simply the demonstration of a mastery of research skills in a particular area. The question for the examiner is simply whether the student has mastered a particular literature and made a contribution to it.

That said, one important thing my own doctoral supervisor at the University of Oxford taught me was to not start by extensively and exhaustively “reading the literature” – because that got you to think like everyone did and repressed creativity. The other was that you could not fail a PhD which had been, in most part, published in a proper, peer-reviewed journal. When I submitted my thesis, half of the studies in it were published or under review. That was the criterion.

So that is the approach I take with my PhD students. In their first or second term, I get them involved in a study (or two) I am doing – helping to collect and analyse the data. As soon as this is completed, it is written up and submitted to a good journal, whereupon it is scrutinised by editors and reviewers. This means that the student, in effect, has multiple and often very well-qualified supervisors, standing them in good stead for their thesis defence.

Admittedly, almost none of my PhD students have ended up researching the topic they proposed, changing their interests as they progressed. And this can really delay things. But I still stand by my view that 18 months is plenty of time.

Some years ago, I had a clever, ambitious and energetic foreign PhD student. He came only with a first degree from his native (South American) country, but he had won a top scholarship. I have to admit that I did not take to him at first, but we soon bonded. He was smart, efficient and learnt quickly and enthusiastically: surely exactly what you want in a PhD student. We did studies on test anxiety, art preferences and the use of music to boost concentration, relax or change mood. We also did one on the relationship between personality and intelligence, which became the focus of his thesis. 

He wrote up his PhD to my complete satisfaction – with, I might add, about half a dozen of the studies published or in press – within about 18 months. But we had a problem. The university regulations did not allow him to submit until three years had elapsed. No one seemed to know why, but nor was anyone prepared to allow an exception. Two cynics suggested that the powers that be did not want to set a precedent that might lose them student fees.

So we continued to research together, doing studies and publishing them. He submitted the thesis at the first possible date and sailed through the viva with a few cosmetic changes that he fixed in a couple of hours.

He went on to become a successful academic, holding jobs in top universities in the US and UK simultaneously. He has a Google h-index of 88 and three of the papers submitted in his thesis now have more than 750 citations, according to Google Scholar. But, like so many, he ended up disillusioned and now works, very successfully, in business.

Was he exceptionally gifted? In some ways, but mostly he was just motivated, ambitious and pragmatic. I’ve never had another student who quite replicated his level of efficiency but I’ve had half a dozen of a similar general ability, and about four of them completed well within three years.

QED?

When I have recited this story to others, I have got a series of similar objections. The first is an attack on the discipline: “Gosh, psychology must be very simple – or its journals’ standards very lax – because this rate of productivity would be simply impossible in my noble ology, in the arts or the hard sciences. You really don’t understand what we do, do you?”

Bollocks, I respond!

The second objection is that I treat my students as unpaid (and possibly academically abused) research assistants. With that, I happily concur (except the bit in parentheses). The best way to learn research skills is by doing research. They should be collecting data, analysing it and writing it up, not fretting in a garret. Get them in the lab, with a team.

The third objection is that I have fundamentally misunderstood the nature and purpose of a doctorate. Really? For ages, there have been calls to reform the whole PhD process to be more “fit for purpose” – although no one seems to be sure exactly what that is.

For the answer, I refer you to paragraph four above. A PhD is a certificate of research skills.

QED.

Adrian Furnham is professor emeritus at the Norwegian Business School.