How are Students Really selected for a PhD? The Impact of the Thesis and Solving the Country's Problems
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Akhondzadeh, Shahin
Psychiatric Research Center, Roozbeh Psychiatric Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, Email:s.akhond@yahoo.com
Introduction :
Currently, about 150,000 PhD students are studying in the country, in other words, 150,000 theses. The question in our minds is how much of the world's or country's problems these 150,000 theses solve (1). It should be specifically mentioned that the output of theses is generally not a direct answer to a problem. Especially in basic sciences, the output of theses is usually small pieces of a scientific puzzle and does not have a specific implication. What is specific about the method of selecting postgraduate students in Iran is that the student is not recruited based on the professor's grant, so the thesis is not designed to answer the question of the grant-giving organization. In other words, the research question is the question in the mind of the researcher and professor, rather than solving the problem of the organization or industry that has provided a grant to solve it. Therefore, as long as the method of recruiting postgraduate students is solely based on the government's credibility, we should not expect the research output in Iran to be anything other than what we have now. On the other hand, by spending government funds to attract postgraduate students, the professor's opinion is never taken into account in selecting students accurately. Worst of all, a reasonable and correct number is not recruited. Ultimately, many more students than the country needs are recruited, and those students are of low quality.
If a professor selects his student based on the grant he has received, he selects a student who has the ability to implement the project approved by the grant (2). In this form of selecting students, the possibility of selecting weak students is greatly reduced.
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