Solo Session: Dissecting Ph.D.: The History Behind its Initials

Hello students and graduates! 

This episode is about the historical appearance of Ph.D. where I explain a few theories, discussions and protests between teachers who were masters of arts and scholarly innovators who wanted to make a radical turnover upon the university system implemented since the Middle Ages, the official acceptation as research and single degree at university, and the current popularity in every university in the world.

I left a side note to apologise those who heard and shared the pilot session about some technical inconveniences in regards to the construction of my socials and my gmail account for PhD Lounge.

Aside from that, I hope that you will stay tuned and entertained while hearing this new episode. Thank you all for listening, it has been a pleasure!
#PhDLounge #latenight #interviews #PhDlife

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Episode 2 script: Dissecting Ph.D.: The History behind the Initials.

Hello students and graduates! Before I introduce you to the following session, I want to say that there have been some updates in relation to my accounts for the PhD Lounge podcast. I deeply apologize for misleading you to wrong accounts as mentioned on the Introduction episode, as I was not expecting that there were some warning signs when trying to put special characters or dots. With this in mind hereafter, I want to thank those who listened and shared the pilot session and, once again, I am sorry for this confusion with the account creation. Therefore, for gmail: luisphdlounge@gmail.com, for social media: Facebook: @phdpodlounge, Instagram: @phdlmf, Twitter: @phdloungecast, and my website: phdlounge-podcast.com. Many thanks and let’s move on to the new episode.

Hello students and graduates! Welcome to PhD Lounge, the podcast of late-night interviews with PhD students about their research subjects. I am your host Luis and I want first and foremost to thank all the listeners who had time to listen to the pilot session of PhD Lounge where I gave an introduction about myself and the decision of studying for a PhD and making this podcast as a hobby respectively. Its reception was positive and I hope that such positivity, with commitment and work of course, will continue throughout further episodes. And if you want to provide feedback on what I should improve in the future, drop me an email at luisphdlounge@gmail.com, as feedback will always be a grateful gesture from you while I am writing, recording and editing content about PhD.

I also want to share with you that I started the PhD on the 1st of July, and to kick off my long journey, I have a probation period lasting 9 months, meaning from July until the end of March, I have plenty of tasks to do in order to be engaged with my research. Some of those are writing a 1000 word abstract, literature review, one chapter, table of contents, a 300 word summary of my project, seminars and workshops attendance, and many other bullet points I must complete, having thus the mindset, heart and soul to pursue the goal of becoming a teacher of Ancient Art History afterwards. At the moment, I have been collecting various sources related to the concepts of hybridity and third space in an overall and ancient world contexts. And some of the sources I encountered while researching online were decent and worth to read some paragraphs on hybridising the cultures of the Greeks and the Romans with the Near Eastern ones that made unique places and self-identities, or the dynamics of third geographical encounters through negotiations between Greco-Roman client kingdoms, the Parthians, Syrian and Mesopotamian inhabitants.

In this session and as you are looking over and wondering about its title, I want to explore the definition of Ph.D., rather knowing its history behind the initials, what do they mean, who were the pioneers that brought this idea into university and how it became so popular since its foundation until today. By the end of this episode, you and I will have a brief knowledge of its history to explain later to anyone else who has interest in its origins as well as studying for it whichever the subject field. So therefore, let’s have a historical time travelling on the origins of Ph.D!

The acronym PhD stands for the Latin words Philosophiae doctore, translated as Doctor or Doctorate of Philosophy, the highest degree attributed by all universities to all students who have conducted original and specific research in a field or subject through a written thesis that contributes to the existing academic knowledge. The word “philosophy” or “philosophiae” stems from two ancient Greek words: Philos (love) and Sophia (wisdom), translating into English, it means “love of wisdom”, literally meaning a student who studies for a PhD is attracted to and seeks new and more knowledge to shape the knowledge that has been learnt before. As for the word Doctor, it is a title conferred by a panel of researchers specialized in a field where students receive it upon graduation once they have completed a long period of written research with the guidance of their supervisors, the respective submission and finally the oral defence in front of a panel of jurists.

The origins of the PhD or Doctor of Philosophy are not accurate as there are different sources saying that it might have started in the early Middle Ages, when the first universities were founded between the late 10th century and early 12th century, while others state that it started in Germany between the late 18th century and early 19th century with its recognition as the highest academic research degree by German scholars. I will break this confusion into parts and tell what the different sources provide to us.

In the early Middle Ages, PhD was an unknown acronym among the experts of that time, it was said that they were doctorates who taught Law, Medicine and Theology at general schools. Those general schools were located in North Africa, at the cities of Fez, Morocco, and Cairo, Egypt, where according to modern scholarship, they were the first universities founded in the 9th and 10th centuries, way before the famous European universities of Bologna, Oxford, Paris or Cambridge. However, due the lack of evidence, the argument of the first doctoral teaching at those North African universities cannot be accurately asserted. This might have to do with the overvaluation of the Masters ot magister degree which was the highest at some European universities that were acknowledged by the popes and the Holy Roman Emperors as legal institutions. The title Masters was awarded to students who passed their apprenticeship in arts, law, Latin, medicine, philosophy and theology, being able to teach afterwards once they have obtained the licentia docendi, the licence to teach. The University of Paris is said to be the first institution ever to award the doctoral qualification in 1150 for students that were going to teach law, medicine and theology at a European university. Aside from this instance, the masters title was still popular at many universities during the Middle Ages until it started to decline by the hands of humanists and reformists in Germanic states during the Renaissance and Reformation periods between the 15th and 17th centuries. Cities like Munich, Vienna, Leiden and Utrecht in today’s Germany, Austria and Netherlands respectively, started to adopt the doctorate of philosophy as the highest academic degree at their universities as a symbol of academic growth and status prestige. This movement happened because on the one hand, Germanic states were suffering a big religious change with the emergence of Protestantism, and hence revolutionary changes in different sectors were coming through. And on the other hand, Germanic students who studied in Italy wanted to make a radical turnover against the masters of arts who were lecturing at Germanic universities, saying that the teachers were teaching to students overrated subjects, Latin language in an incorrect way, outdated philosophy, in this case the Aristotelian, and even they were called as “barbarians” or lecturers from the “Dark Ages”. 

After a period of intensive struggle, protests and accusations between masters of arts and humanists and reformists, the jurists, poets and theologians who studied in Italy during the Renaissance and Reformation had started to see some development in the acknowledgement of the Doctor of Philosophy title and studies, depreciating the masters of arts degree. The title nonetheless followed a standard by order of precedence; which meant to even more stigmatise the masters of arts as inferior scholars. The first group of scholars that received the title Doctor of Philosophy were the Theologians, next the jurists, then the medics or physicists, philosophers, poets, and any other worthy field of subject in the view of those already called doctors. As for the masters of arts, those were the last to obtain the title. 

Resistance from the magistri of arts, however, also had their showtime. For instance, Veit Amerbach, German poet and teacher of philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt, made a protest in the second half of the 16th century when he wrote poems, manuscripts, and books to avenge the masters of arts, as well as destroying any documents related to doctor of philosophy studies. Amerbach with this wanted equality and dignity for the title of masters with the doctoral one where he reclaimed that the magistri of arts ought to have the same ceremonial title award, academic podium or cathedra, and the same level of treatment amongst lecturers while teaching students. As a point of curiosity, one of Amerbach’s famous books in regards to his academic avenge is Oratio de doctoratu philosophico, a book of philology where he argued for equality and dignity to the title of Master and the obtention of equal privileges for it, because in his viewpoint, Master was the same as Doctor in terms of knowledge and erudition.

Between the second half of the 16th century and early 17th century, there were other attempts of conspiring against the doctors of philosophy where the masters of arts changed intentionally their title to other ones such as summus philosophiae gradus, pro suprema in Philosophia Laurea, or ad summos in philosophia honores. They even violated the statutes of German universities like Heidelberg, in 1570, Helmstedt, 1576, and Erfurt, 1634, and the Swiss university of Basel, in 1632, reclaiming equality in the level of academic treatment while proclaiming the sentence: masters of arts and doctors of philosophy. Likewise, they also falsified their matriculation while putting the title doctor instead of masters so that they could have equal academic status and give lessons to students.

Despite the resistance, the desire of Amerbach along with other magistri went in vain and the masters of arts continued to be dethroned by the Doctors of Philosophy when being rejected in many universities while the doctors were obtaining multiple chairs and a professionalization in their jobs as teachers through salary increment, status and other academic benefits.

The official attribution of the PhD degree would finally shed light when the Prussian minister of education Karl von Zedlitz in 1771 proclaimed the PhD as the highest degree in every Prussian university. Jena, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Basel, Bamberg and Tübingen are some of the universities that accepted and incorporated the PhD as the highest degree. However, those and some others also adopted the Masters of Arts as a double degree, literally the abbreviated M. Art and Phil. Dr.. First, although Zedlitz acknowledged the PhD as the highest degree, he championed this double degree as a matter of proliferation of the doctor of philosophy. And second, universities in general had statutes where it is indicated that the master's degree was the highest since their foundation during the Middle Ages. Despite the recognition of the PhD, confusion remained between scholars for being an nonstatutory degree in several Prussian universities, and this infuriated more the doctors of philosophy as they were not allowed to be called as doctors, but as masters instead as a form of academic humiliation and insult. This would last at least until the first half of the 19th century.

Nevertheless, things would change in a positive way for the PhD degree throughout this century, as new requirements and assessments changed the program when granting the title doctor of philosophy. Prussia, once again, became the center of this new academic framework. Between the year 1807 and 1808, the Prussian ministry had received 13 proposals to found an institution in Berlin with the objective to revolutionize and impulse Prussian education against a conservative and aristocratic system that was putting Prussia into a crisis through different sectors, with the educational one being harshly affected because of the low level of literacy Prussian citizens had. In 1809, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Prussian minister of education, seized the proposals and one year later, in 1810, he founded the University of Berlin, currently known as Humboldt University, with four faculties: Medicine, Philosophy, Law and Theology. An interesting fact here is that the University of Berlin was built without financial support from the Prussian government. When the University of Berlin was founded, Humboldt quoted this: I believe that I can rightly claim that the teaching system in this state has received new impetus from me, and that although I have only been in office for a year, many signs of my administrative work will remain. Something which affects me personally more directly than anything else is the establishment of a new university here in Berlin.

From this year onwards, the education system in Prussian universities, and eventually in universities across the world, had a whole new level, as Humboldt holistically envisioned a unification between teaching and research which would lead students to develop and find other ways of encountering new research never discussed before. Furthermore, he also said that university studies should differ from elementary and secondary teaching system, because for Humboldt, university teachers are those who have close contact and academic support with the student through suggestions and discussions around the conducting research to find solutions that the student must encounter by himself, whereas university students should be regarded as independent researchers who undertakes original research. In one of his letters concerning education, Humboldt wrote to Georg Nicolovious, Prussian senior ministry officer: “Education is a matter for the nation and we are preparing (admittedly with great caution) to diminish the powers of the State and win the nation over to our own interests”.

This would also affect the PhD degree as the doctorate of philosophy was finally the highest and as well a single degree above the masters of arts, with the latter being the second degree in university, and students had to follow new requirements and assessments in order to obtain the title. At the University of Berlin, the statutes indicated that all candidates to Doctor of Philosophy must pass an entry examination which is evaluated by a panel of jurists. This would be like the actual research proposal PhD candidates do beforehand in order to be admitted into doctoral studies. If successful, the candidate has to be matriculated for three years, attend classes, provide a curriculum vitae and atestimonium morum or testimony of morals for police and law enforcement reasons. Next, they have to write a dissertation with a topic of their own with the supervisor’s advice as well as a signed statement by the student to prove his authorship and legitimacy throughout the research, and finally the oral defence in front of a panel of jurists.  The dissertation was no longer a proof of erudition but rather an oath to academic independent research, a work that proves research knowledge, originality and academic commitment to be read and reviewed by teachers and researchers. The issue with the dissertation within university is not new and there is an historical background that I want to cover in a future episode.

While the new PhD research degree was becoming popular across Prussia thanks to the so-called Humboldtian higher education reform, other universities in Europe and overseas also adopted this new system of PhD as an independent research degree. In Europe, France introduced the PhD research degree, as part of the Napoleonic education system reform in the following of the French Revolution, in the same year the University of Berlin was founded, where the first universities to adopt it were the Universities Pierre et Marie Currie, in 1810, and Sorbonne University in Paris, in 1811, introducing PhD degrees in science, mechanics and astronomy. Then the Netherlands in 1815, the universities of Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland in 1833 and 1875 respectively in medicine and law subjects. In the UK, Oxford University was the first university to introduce the PhD degree after several attempts and postponements made during the second half of the 19th century, then in 1903 with the proposal of a research doctorate with the acronym Dr. Phil. during the Allied Colonial Universities Conference, and a third proposal in 1917 during World War I where the University senate of Oxford approved its official introduction in 1919. Proposal discussions at Cambridge University to introduce the PhD also happened in the late 19th century, 1894, but its official introduction was in 1921, the same year University College London admitted PhD students in the fields of Chemistry, Divinity, Arts, Engineering and Science. In Russia, there was the Doctor of Sciences degree established in 1819, abolished in 1917 and re-introduced in 1934 by the USSR Council of the People’s Commissars with a degree equivalent to the PhD research degree known as Candidate of Sciences or Kandidat Nauk. This degree, the highest in Russian higher education system, was spread and adopted by many Eastern European universities in countries such as Ukraine, Bulgaria and Belarus.

In countries outside of Europe, the United States also adopted the German model of the PhD through the arrival of American students who studied the doctorate research degree at German universities between late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, American universities developed their own concept of PhD through budgeted departments that would support scientific research based on specialized departments of knowledge and through the ranks of the lecturers. To some extent, American universities would only seek the elite professors to teach at their universities. Nonetheless, celebration on introducing the PhD research degree was notable, with Yale University being the first to adopt and award the doctor of Philosophy in 1861 in the field of classics and physics, and between the 1870s and 1880s John Hopkins, Chicago, Harvard and Columbia universities were the next institutions to introduce it. In 1897, Canada absorbed the culture of the PhD research via the Americans, with the University of Toronto, founded in 1827, to be the first institution to award a PhD in physics, although some scholars mention the year 1900 when Canada had introduced it as the highest degree and the first award in that field at that university to physicist Sir John McLennan.

After the second World War, the Humboldtian model of PhD research degree expanded exponentially to many countries around the world and within different fields like education, history of art, sports, veterinary, botanics, biochemistry or astrophysics, and thanks to its popularity and the large growth of new research fields, a demand for more professionalized professors in various fields became higher to support future doctors of philosophy.

Today, studying a PhD in the 21st century continues to be a historical fashion while enrolling and holding the doctorate of philosophy studies after several years of research. A 2017 graph chart by OCED shows that 25% in average of students are enrolled in a PhD, whereas a 2018 table graph depicts a rate over 100% of doctoral holders who are employed.

As a concluding remark, the advent of the title and studies of Doctor of Philosophy became a long altercation of erudition between scholars since the universities were founded in the Middle Ages with the Masters of Arts mentioned as top degree in their statutes. PhD became later the top requirement for those who enjoy absorbing more knowledge, but also for those who want to lecture at university. Before Humboldt’s model, PhD was a mere title attribution of scholars who reached a high level of academic knowledge to fight against the masters of arts and a conservative education system that was resisting new discoveries and updates. The year 1810 was the wind of change in PhD studies as the knowledge of students were tested through written evidence that to some extent ought to convince a panel of jurists and no longer through word of mouth. Thanks to Humboldt’s model, there are more students enrolling and graduating every year as doctors of philosophy today through other ways of doing research with different methodologies and creation of various theories and arguments.

And with that, it is time to finish this session. I hope that I have covered the essential details about the history of the PhD studies while providing some facts regarding how the initials emerged and its popularity with the few sources that I found on e-books and articles about PhD. If I have missed some relevant information, please send your feedback to my email: luisphdlounge@gmail.com, and I will have the pleasure to overview it in the next session. Once again, I apologize for the confusion with the creation of the accounts, hoping that everything from now on will be fine.

Whilst you listen this episode whether through Anchor FM, Spotify, Soundcloud, Google Podcasts or other podcast platforms of your preference, please consider sharing it on your socials and with your friends as it will help me to continue to produce more content about PhD as well as trying to approach PhD students to have a drink and chat about their research in a near future. You can use the #s phdlounge, latenight and interviews to search and share the podcast. Consider also to follow my socials FB: @phdpodlounge, Instagram: @phdlmf, and Twitter: @phdloungecast. And my website as well: phdlounge-podcast.com

 Thank you all for listening, it has been a pleasure!

References: 

Ag Nuddin, J. (2021). The PhD Formula, P + H + D PHD. The PhD Formula, P + H + D PHD., 5(1), 25–33. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317416264_The_PhD_Formula_P_H_D_PHD

Bogle, I; (2018) 100 Years of the PhD in the UK. In: Proceedings of Vitae Researcher Development International Conference 2018, Birmingham, UK. Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Limited 

CCA/CAC. (2021). Degrees of Success The Expert Panel on the Labour Market Transition of PhD Graduates (No. 978–1-926522-85–2). https://www.cca-reports.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Degrees-of-Success_FullReport_EN.pdf

Clark, W. (2006). Academic charisma and the origins of the research university. Chicago and London. Chicago University Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Hall, S. (2019, May 10). The History of the Doctoral Degree. The Classroom | Empowering Students in Their College Journey. https://www.theclassroom.com/history-phd-degree-5257288.html

Moskaleva, A. (2014, June 23). NeuWrite West -- A Brief History of the PhD. NeuWrite West. http://www.neuwritewest.org/blog/2014/6/23/a-brief-history-of-the-phd

OECD iLibrary | Education at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators. (2019). [Dataset], pp. 252 & 255. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance-2019_f8d7880d-en

Short History — Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. (2016, May 18). Short History of Wilhelm Von Humboldt. https://www.hu-berlin.de/en/about/history/huben_html

UK Essays. (2015, January 1). Philosophy - love of wisdom. UKEssays.Com. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/philosophy/philosophia.php

UNESCO. (1993). Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Prospects - Quarterly Review of Education, Thinkers on Education 2, 3–4(87–88), 1–10.