TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan: Why not have an expiry date for PhDs?

OKONOMOS

Can just one degree, or success in one examination, make a person fit for jobs needing very high skill levels for 37-40 years?

Instead of writing about a research paper this time, I am going to tell you about a novel suggestion about research itself. It comes from Ram Gopal Agarwal, formerly of the World Bank.

The suggestion is this: All PhD degrees must have an expiry date. The reasons for putting in an expiry date are so self-evident that they do not merit reiteration.

We did not get the opportunity to discuss just how long the validity period should be. But I imagine 10 -12 years would do nicely.

So the real question to be answered is how best renewal is to be achieved. Agarwal thinks a strong record of publications should suffice.

But, as they say, this suggestion needs to be treated with caution because there are far too many what can be called farzi journals around, especially in India. I know of 'professors' who, in order to get published before the promotion interview comes around, have started their own journals!

Nor, as I have had occasion to point out before, is peer review a fool-proof solution. With as many as 25,000 journals published every year in all subjects taken together, each with about 12 papers on average, you need 300,000 reviewers each year if each reviewer reads only one paper. Even if each one reads five papers per year, you'd need 60,000 top-class peer reviewers. There's no way anyone can claim that such a large number is indeed available and ready. So how can peer reviewing help if the reviewer himself or herself is third rate?

In the case of economics, an economist called Glen Ellison from MIT in the US says there has been a decline in the number of peer-reviewed papers in top economics journals that are written by economists from the highest-ranked economics departments. The system had become dysfunctional long ago but I imagine the data is only now seeping through. Not just this, top economists from the best departments in the US are publishing less in peer-reviewed journals. So it would seem that the big frogs in the well are doing as they please while insisting that lesser colleagues follow the rules.

So if publications, even in the best peer-reviewed journals, won't deliver foolproof results "" and this is all too evident in economics "" what is the way out for qualifications renewal? The US medical profession offers a good solution.

There, after every ten years, every doctor has to pass an examination which is of the most exacting standards. The idea is to make sure that the person has kept abreast of new developments.

In India, a very minor step in this direction has been taken by those universities (like the JNU) which insist that assistant professors, in order to become associate professors, must undergo an orientation course. But there is no exam at the end of the course. Only attendance is necessary. I wonder how many other universities and institutes like the IITs and the IIMs have even this requirement.

While Agarwal and I were discussing this, someone asked why, if a PhD could 'expire', persons who on the dint of passing just one exam (like the IAS one) should not be required to pass more exams during their career. Imagine, someone who passed the IAS exam in 1972 can float along until one day he reaches the top policymaking posts merely because he didn't, along the way, severely piss off some boss. Indeed, that is the only requirement in government service to reach the top.

Agarwal, because he is very modest, murmurs gently that it is not original an idea. Be that as it may, it is a brilliant idea which needs to be examined very seriously.