For years, as a public policy practitioner, I'd condemn academics along with the best of them.  What did academics know anyway? And why didn't they ever do the research we needed, intead of the stuff that only they would be able to understand and find interesting?  Now, of course, I'm in training to become an academic, even though I'd never intended to be one, and would still not relish a full-time engagement as one.   Yet, it's still not a comfortable fit.

In two years as a part-time doctoral student in public policy, I have run up, again and again, with the criticism that I'm not sufficiently "analytical", and "theoretical".  At the same time, I' ve read thousands of pages on theory, now, and found some of it somewhat enlightening.  But, as a body of literature, a genre, it still often seems far-removed from the reality of making public policy.  Juxtaposed against this continuing friction between what I read and what I know to be true are two events that make some settling in seem more imminent or more impossible, depending on their outcomes.

First, this Friday, I take my oral comprehensive.  Now, this is a first: this school has never done an oral comp before.  The formal notice says that it has two purposes: a demonstration of sufficient analytical capacity and knowledge of the material, equivalent to what would be expected of a doctoral candidate; and an assessment that the student has a sufficient foundation and ability to proceed t othe dissertation.  I believe I can memorize authors' names well, since I have fewer to memorize .. maybe.. depending on what questions are ruled to be fair and just.  That doesn't in any way indicate the analytical capacity, which I believe they believe is lacking.  And if it is, then I clearly should not be in a doctoral program.

Second, we're finally actually studying the role of theory; the epistemology of knowledge; how theories are built; the nature of research; and so on and so on and so on.  Only now.  Only now is it becoming clear what the analytical processes they are wanting me to use are based on and how they work.  And, truth be told, I'm not finding it very interesting.  Which also makes me wonder if I should be in the doctoral program. 

I have little doubt that I could write an interesting dissertation.  It could be sufficiently grounded in theory and literature to pass muster with the scholars that assess such things.  But what is the result of that? It gets me a PhD.  Some, including my life partner, believe that would give me more credibility when I speak and make suggestions.  I'm not convinced this is true, beyond the academy.  It gives me membership in a club that I don't think I really want to belong to, that shares values that I don't share.

The other result, the only one I truly aspired to, is contributing to a body of knowledge, moving the yardstick up somewhat, in a particular field. Then, today, I found out that even dissertations written at the university I'm studying at aren't can't be found when searching the library's database by keyword or subject.  So, is it really adding to the body of knowledge? Only if one were also to publish extensively on the subject once the dissertation was complete. But given that most journals are peer-reviewed, and blind-reviewed at that, having a PhD isn't required to get published.  In other words, would it be better to do the research, get it into the literature that can be found by a keyword search, and skip the PhD?

These are my questions.  As I read more and more about how knowledge is accumulated, I become more and more frustrated by the constraints, the rules, the narrow passageways one is forced to face in the academy.  Yet, still I persist.   The answers elude me still.  But they won't forever.

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