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Public PhD thesis defense at WU

Public PhD thesis defense at WU. Innovations in the rules and codes of conduct Assessments of quality of thesis and defense. Innovations in the by-laws. Lean and mean, but more enclosures with additional explanation and examples Earlier submission: 15 weeks before ceremony

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Public PhD thesis defense at WU

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  1. Public PhD thesis defense at WU Innovations in the rules and codes of conduct Assessments of quality of thesis and defense

  2. Innovations in the by-laws • Lean and mean, but more enclosures with additional explanation and examples • Earlier submission: 15 weeks before ceremony • Propositions have to be submitted together with reading version of the thesis • Thesis either in English or Dutch • Propositions in the same language as the thesis • Defense in English, unless there is a written request to do it in Dutch (e.g. when thesis and propositions are in Dutch) • Supervisory team requires approval (where possible) at the start of the PhD trajectory • Approval of thesis and propositions by promotor is an ADVICE to the Academic Board

  3. More important changes in the by-laws • Theses can be rejected on the basis of unsatisfactory general introduction or discussion • Procedures will be streamlined and standardized by standard forms • New clauses against nepotism • Options to appeal or complain • Lower requirement for English (TOEFL 575 or equivalent)

  4. Moreover, ….. * Exploring fast track trajectories between BSc and PhD * Committees will be checked using the expertise of the Wageningen Professor in the Committee

  5. FOPs • Promotors do not know the rules and act accordingly • Promotors or candidates disavow rules and act accordingly • Incomplete files (so no access to the defense) • Incomplete theses (so no processing) • Propositions are late and poor

  6. Poor quality of propositions • “Open doors” or facts • Related to politics or religion • Not debatable in a scientific manner • Citations or sayings • Not original • Not concise

  7. Major issues in codes of conduct • Communication on composition of committee, submission of thesis and propositions is done by promotor and NOT by the candidate • Acknowledgements should become succinct, business-like and objective, like in a journal paper • Assessment needs to be formulated unambiguously and read - on behalf of the entire committee - before handing over the degree

  8. Assessment of thesis (relative values within WU) • Unsatisfactory (no degree or degree elsewhere; <1%) • Unsatisfactory (ceremony delayed, thesis rewritten; about 5-10%) Of the theses that can be defended: • Satisfactory (20%; a very unpopular assessment) • Good (top 80%) • Very good (top 10%) • Excellent (top 2%; cum laude)

  9. Assessment of defense (relative values within WU) • Unsatisfactory (about 0-1%; no consequences) • Satisfactory (20%; assessment occurs more often than for thesis) • Good (top 80%) • Very good (top 10%) • Excellent (top 2%; cum laude)

  10. Some figures Total number of defenses 2007/2008: 242 Official and final assessments (in %) Thesis Defense Adequate 4 Adequate 13 Good 65 Good 46 Very good 28 Very good 37 Excellent 3 Excellent 4 % cases with different assessments for thesis and defense: 41%

  11. Conclusions and suggestions • There is upward pressure while assessing the theses • Too many theses are assessed as very good; too few are assessed as satisfactory • The variation in the assessment on the defense is larger • Thesis and its defense are judged rather independently, although there is a tendency to qualify the thesis as good and to compensate that downwards or upwards by giving lower or higher qualifications for the defense.

  12. Questions • Is there a difference between the average score of the reading committee and the final assessment for the thesis? • Are there cases where the candidate really fails during the defense because the thesis did not reflect his own skills?

  13. Answers to these questions: • There is good consistency between initial assessment and final assessment of the thesis • There is less but reasonable agreement between initial thesis assessment and assessment of quality of defense • In 7% of the cases, the initial assessment was considerably higher than the final assessment (almost always foreign candidates) • There were slightly more cases (15%) in which the opposite was true

  14. More conclusions • In about 20% of the cases the original assessment of the thesis by the opponents was considerably higher than the assessment of the defense • In about 20% of the cases the original assessment of the thesis by the opponents was considerably lower than the assessment of the defense Cf. the 41% from table based on a different data set

  15. Overall conclusions • Foreign opponents often assess the theses higher than their Dutch counterparts because Dutch assessments are relative to the Wageningen standard • Use the full scale both for the thesis and its defense • This one-year data set does not indicate any other flaws in the system

  16. Thank you very much for your attention

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