The Infinite Thesis: Questions
Author(s): Todd Riggs
Questions for Interviews
- What is your general reaction to the situation? Has anything wrong happened?
- What is the source and nature of the misunderstanding that might have occurred? How might it have been prevented?
- What are l's options - are there any formal procedures and/or personnel whose function to help resolve such issues? What about more unofficial routes? Which path do you think she/he should pursue first? What if his/her initial attempts to resolve the issue fail?
- How might this situation change if one of l's friends were to tell him of a very similar - possibly suspiciously similar - situation between Professor Z and a student several years ago? How might he investigate past circumstances?
- Are there any safeguards for students who bring up a problem involving one of their professors?
- How long have these policies (questions 3 and 5) been around?
- Should MIT limit the amount of time a student is allowed to spend on theses, either at the doctoral or Master's level?
- Do you and your colleagues discuss these issues among yourselves?
- Do you have any personal experience of situations like this one?
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The Interviewees
In this report, I refer to the faculty with whom I spoke by replacing their proper names with Professor A, B, C, and D. Their backgrounds range from Associate (Prof. B and D) to Assistant Professor (Prof C, including one non-'tenure-track' researcher (Prof. A) who probably has as much experience sponsoring graduate theses as many a full professor, two of them (B and C received their Ph.D. degrees from MIT. Note that a synopsis of Snyder's findings, at least inasmuch as they relate to this project, is included with the results of the other interviews.
These results, the 'raw data' so to speak, are presented here in very complete form, indeed literally as the words came out of the professors' mouths, to a great degree. For the similarities and commonalities between them, please see Discussion, Synthesis, and Conclusions
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The Hidden Curriculum in a Nutshell
Note that one must keep in mind that this is a distillation of a 200 page work only as it relates to this study, and that many of Snyder's finer points may not necessarily be apparent. At any rate, one of the main conclusions is presented in the Foreword: "I was struck with the importance of a hidden agenda, a hidden curriculum, which determined to a great degree the way in which the various participants played the game, read the cues, and adapted to their immediate education circumstances." (xii)
The basic idea is that in virtually every department there are similar "cognitive dissonances," (p.36), wide contradictions between the formal messages of our undergraduate curriculum and what it actually takes to do well. "Each student figures out" for himself or herself what is actually expected, as opposed to what is formally required." (p.9) A classic example Snyder describes is one that every undergraduate Course 2 certainly encounters today: on the first day of class, the lecturer hands out the syllabus for the term, talking about how the class will emphasize creativity and originality. After this monologue and through the course of the term, the class takes notes at a frenetic pace, becoming "super-sophisticated dictating machines." (p.39) Their mastery of the class is then determined from problem sets and tests which require one to dredge up equations memorized from rote memory and proceed with what amounts to an overblown 'plug and chug' with elaborate algebra.
Explained further, the MIT undergraduate (in Course 2 and elsewhere) is burdened with an overpowering weight of formal assignments intended to cover key topic areas: readings, laboratory experiments and write-ups, papers, problem sets, design projects, tests, etc. For the increasingly encumbered student, each class swiftly moves away from being an exercise in learning about one's chosen field. Instead it becomes a series of discrete tasks to be completed so that one is given a grade; one is then able to check the class off of the list of graduation requirements one's advisor keeps. "The students take No-Doz tablets and, getting five hours sleep a night, just drive themselves from one thing to another" 1 (p.73) The true test of the informal curriculum is how well each student prioritizes the discrete tasks, what one puts his or her full capability into and what is ignored or 'blown off' as inconsequential.
From a professor's perspective, many of the difficulties here are certainly understandable, given the level and variety of activities a successful professor must sustain - the sheer number of people who have legitimate claims on his or her time only grows larger as one climbs higher on the ladder of tenure. Teaching courses, conducting research, applying for grants, advising students, sponsoring theses at all levels, discussing 2.95J projects, membership in professional societies, administrative positions, the list goes on and on; given these constraints, the lectures/problem sets/quizzes/final approach is seen as the only way to teach a class of 300, or even 50, in anything approximating an effective manner.
The real problem in this situation, however, comes when one continues onwards to graduate school here (and elsewhere): unbeknownst to the erstwhile undergraduate, while the formal message remains the same, the informal one changes:
"I think [the students] are so busy doing something all the time, doing a set kind of task, and in courses they are so busy memorizing and taking exams, that we stifle what is a very important quality, which is to be the boss of your subject... I would say that the process of undergraduate learning is much too passive... and for that reason, is very different from what will ultimately be expected of you..."(p.65)
While the student is still told to "be creative and imaginative, to take risks, to strike out boldly and take responsibility for his own education and his own intellectual development," (p.68) no longer is he or she graded or evaluated based solely, or even primarily, on the "capacity to master the body of knowledge" presented in classes, the discrete tasks of undergraduate life. Instead, the thesis is now the focus of one's work, intended to foster independence and creativity, even brilliance, as opposed to just competence or the ability to 'do the job' by completing the discrete tasks assigned.
If I were to have actually interviewed Prof. Snyder, he might have said that much of the main problem here may well be tied up in the fact that Student 1 is still operating according to the hidden curriculum he learned as an undergraduate. The thesis is to 1 just another discrete task, one to grind purposefully away at and which is now completed in his 2 mind. Meanwhile, Z is judging him, perhaps subconsciously, on his ability to stand up for his own research, to "find his own voice and unique talent," using his professional, emotional and intellectual growth as the yardstick (p.73). The thesis, possibly especially the additional work that is being demanded, is the final test of his graduate career, his ability to defend himself as Professor Z's peer. 1 may well be doomed to failure, or more accurately doomed to spend more time on 'the infinite thesis;' he can't even understand the instructions, for he isn't even told them.
Reference
- The Hidden Curriculum, Benson R. Snyder, (New York: Knopf, 1971)
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Cite this page:
"The Infinite Thesis: Questions"
Online Ethics Center for Engineering
6/7/2006
National Academy of Engineering
Accessed: Wednesday, May 23, 2012
<www.onlineethics.org/Resources/Cases/thesis/thesisques.aspx>