The recent street brouhaha orchestrated by State University PhD holders who have expressed agitations and boohoo towards the state for not being recruited in the just-ended recruitment list has created nothing but a discrepancy of opinions and alarming questions from scholars and non-scholars who are drowning in the well of confusion and doubt as to what could really be happening to the PhD holders of today.
Many have asked questions concerning the quality of the PhDs. Some have questioned if PhD holders are supposed to be job seekers or employers; another group has expressed worries on if a PhD in Cameroon is limited to a teaching certificate.
The majority of the scholars are preoccupied with what message the strike by PhD holders seeking employment can be transmitting to the world vis-à-vis Cameroon State universities.
As an academician, I could not help but assembled this questions with the purpose of accosting and proposing solutions.
Beginning with the question on the quality of PhD certificates, which I think is the mother of all the problems and questions vis-à-vis the PhD holders who demonstrated their grievances against the state, I can opine that the quality of PhDs in some state universities has drastically reduced to a mere piece of paper.
This is true because the duration to write and submit a PhD thesis is 3 years, but the majority of the candidates use 1-3 months to write their thesis.
All they need is a laptop and an internet connection, which will permit them to download already existing works that are similar to theirs, copy portions, and assemble them to form their thesis.
Some are even lucky to find the same topics already written by a student in another Cameroonian university or abroad. In such a case, all they do is edit and submit.
And since most of the universities do not check plagiarism or check it properly, most of this copy work successfully gets validation, and the student defends and is awarded a PhD certificate after 2-3 years.
I spoke with a PhD student some time last year who informed me that he used 3 weeks to write 6 chapters of his thesis.
How could he have written 6 chapters in 3 weeks? It indicates he hasn't been to the field. He confirmed my thoughts concerning the rapidity with which he wrote the PhD.
A glaring example to buttress my point is a PhD defence I attended in one of the state universities.
During this defence, a former rector of the said university, who was a member of the jury as an examiner, embarrassed the candidate with a raw truth by telling her that the work is a complete copy and paste from a student in a South African university and that she just edited some things to reflect her institution and country.
The candidate crushed with this unexpected revelation accepted before everyone that she copied. She could not even deny it because the examiner gave the name, title, and year of publication of the thesis she entirely copied from.
After the shocking revelation, which left the candidate, her supervisor, and her family discombobulated, she was awarded a PhD title with an excellent mark.
This created a pandemonium from people who couldn't do anything but express dissatisfaction with the jury's decision but couldn't change it because the candidate had magically left from Miss to Dr.
Now the impression the authorities in charge of academic authenticity gave to the attendees is that there's no plagiarism check in the university, or they simply ignored it because she either paid or fulfilled a sexual condition.
The above examples attest to the reason we have PhD holders striking for government teaching employment as their only hope.
This attitude is a sharp contrast to what used to be the case before now or what is the case in other countries.
Before now or in other countries, a PhD thesis is written for 3 years, and in these 3 years. The student is required to undergo both primary and secondary research as a source of material for the thesis.
During this era, you will find PhD students organising seminars just to ask questions vis-à-vis their research topics; some seized opportunities during seminars, conferences, and church services to gather questionnaires.
After that, they are required to obtain a research permit, which will permit them to have easy access to at least 6 institutions, villages, or persons that can give them valuable information about their topic.
They come back with rich materials encompassing the information gathered from the exchanges during the interviews.
This fieldwork develops compassion towards the problems identified, and this, which at times touches their emotions, leaves them with no option but to create and implement ideas aimed at solving the problems, and by so doing, they unconsciously create jobs for themselves and the society at large.
In most instances, the persons they interviewed will be interested in them and will offer them a good opportunity after defence because they succeeded in listening and touching their emotions with their brilliant exchanges of facts.
During this era, PhD holders had no interest in government teaching jobs because they had better opportunities outside.
Most of them became legal advisers (those who studied law), while many became consultants to the organisations, companies, and individuals they visited.
Those who could not be recruited by the aforementioned created research centres and consulting firms, while the others established startup businesses, which they used their academic knowledge to grow within a short time.
Due to this intentional nature of PhD holders, we never heard of cases of strikes perpetrated by PhD holders because they were job creators rather than job seekers.
So the main problem is the reduction of the quality of PhDs in most state universities. It should be noted that out of the 528 that were not recruited, just 68 attended the strike action.
One can say confidently that the 68 PhD holders who participated in the strike could be those who didn't go through the actual process of obtaining a PhD.
A supporting reason for the poor quality springs from the fact that most PhD holders had no passion in pursuing their studies; they did further because they failed government public exams into prestigious institutions, they could not find a job after having a degree or master's, or their supervisors pushed them with the phrase
"You are still young, keep studying and get your PhD," and some were promised by these same supervisors that they would ensure they were recruited.
With these promises in mind, they lose focus on societal problems, which are the main engine for an appetite for a solution that can give them a job or constant money.
After understanding these problems plaguing our postgraduate process, which has resulted in the unacceptable situation we are facing, I suggest that PhD students should be given compulsory fieldwork at least at 6 institutions with the report included in the thesis.
Plagiarism should be thoroughly checked, and PhD students should be observed with regards to the impacts they are making in society with their dissertations before awarding them another certificate.
If we can do this, we will prevent PhD holders from shamefully disgracing the state.
Contact KNews on whtapp +237651252410 for advertisement and news coverage
Marks Abaiko, Secretary General - Association of New Generation Authors (ANGA)
Comments