Life as a scholar without PhD is hard

Sometime back, the Commission for University Education (CUE) developed the troubling habit of issuing ‘headline grabbing’ directives to universities.

While the directives sold newspapers, most times they achieved nothing else. One prominent threat proclaimed that from 2018, only academics with PhDs will be allowed to teach in the university. Of course, this will not happen.

Our PhD production line is an ordeal, and has not matched our alacrity in launching new universities. As such, the shortage of highly skilled PhDs in our universities is still very severe. Slightly more than a third of university lecturers in Kenya have a PhD degree.

Were the CUE to make good its threat, learning in universities will screech to a noisy halt. We need an average of 2,700 PhDs graduating from universities continuously for 10 years for us to match the badly needed demand. We graduate a paltry 210 doctoral students every year.  

In his characteristic finger-wagging action to universities, Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi warned of imminent casualisation of labour in the universities. According to him, this is the only remedy of prompting ‘deadwood scholars’ to rise and complete their PhDs. Recalling his days as a university don, the CS lamented how a number of his colleagues, comforted by the security of permanent employment, were simply lounging with no intention to completing their PhDs.  

Never mind that the Government has scarcely invested sufficiently enough in research and graduate studies to justify the demands it is asking of university faculty.  

In the context of the ongoing debates, some colleagues have attempted to interrogate the role of a PhD degree in academia. In particular, Prof Maurice Amutabi, a senior scholar by any standards, penned an opinion piece late last year in which he argued that PhDs are overrated, and are not as useful as widely thought for a successful career in academia.

He cited prominent local scholars like author Ngugi wa Thion’go, geographer Prof Francis Fredrick Ojany, and the urologist Prof George Magoha, who have all made great careers in the university with one or at most, two degrees. Regionally, he named Okot P’Bitek, Taban Liyong, Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi and Wole Soyinka, as scholars who never held PhDs. Amutabi argues that rather than insist on PhDs, local universities should instead focus on teaching quality.

Amutabi weaves a persuasive argument but one which gives a false, transitory comfort. It is not a smooth ride for local scholars without PhDs.

Stellar contributions

While I agree with Amutabi that a number of scholars have risen to the pinnacle of academia without a PhD degree, this is the exception and not the rule. In actual fact, the names he supplied comprised of highly creative and gifted individuals, mostly in the 70s and 80s, who were recognised for their stellar contributions to their particular field. 

These kinds of professorships were, and still are, very rare and trying to find a general formula for their success in current academic environment is horrifyingly difficult. Importantly, these individuals were not recognised for their teaching career, but their creative and intellectual genius. From personal experience, the gifted writer Ngugi wa Thiongo is not an incredibly inspiring teacher. Extensive teaching profiles do not count much in academia.

As such, awards of professorships to these individuals were mostly recognition of scholarly contribution that equal the efforts and scope of a possible doctoral study. If Prof Amutabi were frank, he would agree that a precarious, if not frustrating existence punctuates the everyday lives of scholars without a doctorate degree in Kenyan universities. 

In a world where knowledge is the new ‘fuel’, doctoral education is considered of paramount significance. This now applies to all disciplines, including medicine and engineering which in the past, would be spared the demands of a doctorate degree. The PhD is now the most desirable qualification for teaching in the university.

For those without one, the academic environment can be a little hostile, and individuals and university structures will routinely deploy both subtle and obvious codes to call attention to the absence of a PhD. Exclusion from teaching and supervision of graduate students, and being asked to leave when issues considered beyond one’s level such as doctoral defense sittings, are the most obvious.

The insistence by some scholars on using academic titles is a common form of symbolic violence against non-PhD dons. Less obvious are the tactful omission from crucial decision-making fora, or being left out of important committees and on the odd occasions when one is invited, they are assigned the less cerebral errands or the clerical work of drafting minutes. In many instances, there is a subtle, unstated rule that for particular discussions and debates in academic meetings, those without PhDs are mere spectators. While most possess great ideas, and even extremely high intelligence, they rarely make the influence that equals their experience and contribution.

Without a PhD, one’s academic career will never reach its apex. Prof Amutabi would not be the Vice Chancellor of Lukenya University had he not wrestled a PhD in Illinois. Teaching in a university without a PhD means occupying a disempowering, marginal position where one’s academic career remains stagnated. Further, to be without a doctorate in a university is to inhabit what anthropologists call a ‘liminal’ state. You never seem to arrive although you think you left. You are caught in an ever present in-between, always carrying a niggling burden of unfinished business. As one of my mentors once advised, to start in an academic career and not finalise to a PhD is to be a willing victim to an academic false start.

Unbeknown to many scholars, a lack of a PhD in many instances is interpreted as a deficiency in research expertise and a general lack of passion for knowledge. Hence, it is extremely rare for non-PhD holders to enjoy the succulent fruits of academia which are mostly in a research profile.

Tenured scholar

The PhD remains the most common irreducible minimum for research institutions and research funding agencies that wish to fund research projects. In many instances, it is even more rewarding to be a PhD student than a tenured scholar without a PhD. Since knowledge is transnational, it is often those scholars who have a doctorate that enjoy these networks.

These scholars make life-long research collaborations and build useful global networks that fortify their symbolic and actual capital. Very often, because of the generous monetary flows accompanying international research networks, scholars with PhDs are shielded from heavy dependence on salary, while those without it have little options beyond the paycheck and intermittent bonuses arising from labour unions’ crusades. It is a restricted, vulnerable world without a PhD.

But not possessing a PhD is not exactly suggestive of one’s intelligence. Local realities are tough for PhD study. Scholarships are rare, and those who get them must be thankful, respectful and humble. But in truth, the PhD remains the most compelling demonstration of one’s love for science and research. Do not wait for the state to push, get that PhD this year.

- The writer teaches Media Studies at Moi University