Why It Takes A Million Years To Earn a PhD

Most people know someone who either has or is working on getting a PhD - a friend or loved one, that tweedy guy at church who is always talking about the Latin roots of words in the scriptures, etc. Most of them will talk about how LONG it takes/took to write the dissertation.

Have you ever wondered why this is?

Allow me to part the curtain for you:

A prospectus is essentially the first chapter/introduction to your dissertation. It's the road map for everything that comes after. The whole dissertation depends on it and it has to be defended and approved before the rest of the work can begin. So suppose Grad Student Joe sends his prospectus to his committee in early February. He waits. And waits. Then he waits some more. He doesn't expect immediate feedback -- but a note saying, "Hey, got your prospectus. I'll get back to you as soon as I can" might be nice. He waits until March. A month is a respectable amount of time to give a group of busy professors, right?

Grad Student Joe sends them all a cordial note asking if they ever received the prospectus, if they've had a chance to look at it at all yet, if they have some suggestions for revision yet. Three or four days go by and GSJ gets a small flurry of emails in return that all say essentially the same thing: "I'll get back to you in April."

The end of March approaches and GSJ gets a note from his committee head who says, "Hey, I need to send you my comments via snail mail. There are so many major revisions necessary that I need to just send you my notes. Oh, and at least one other prof thinks you're in need of major rewrites too."

Why is this a problem? By the time the revision suggestions come in, being as major as they are, it will take at least until the end of the semester for GSJ to get them done and then what happens? The committee vanishes for the summer -- poof -- off to that land where the poor, put-upon dears can rest from teaching three classes a semester. No email, no phone, no work. No way of getting the revisions looked at and approved so work on the actual dissertation can commence.

So rather than spending the summer confidently pressing forward on dissertation chapters, GSJ has to timidly, tentatively write, hoping that whatever he's cooking up isn't wildly off the mark, thanks to the complete lack of timely feedback from a bunch of professors who care infinitely more about their own publishing projects than about helping the students in their care.

What will happen? The committee members will wait until September to look at the revisions and write back saying, "The beginning of the semester is really busy. I'll try to get you some suggestions for MORE revisions by October or so." And so it will go.

Awesome. Long story short? Why does it take so long to earn a PhD? Because the professors who are supposed to help you don't.

Grrrrrr.