What Makes a Doctoral Contribution Original?

In the post-World War 2 period, as PhDs developed beyond master's degrees in the Western liberal arts university system, the criterion of originality took primacy over much else in university studies. In this blog, we would like to unpack, more epistemologically than historically, how this arose and where we stand on this topic today.

Until the turn of the century, obtaining a PhD was a truly exceptional achievement. To the extent that it still is today, let us hesitate less to proclaim how it was more than exceptional. It almost qualified a successful candidate as being a genius. The pride, privilege, and mystique many candidates sense during their viva voce presentation at Monarch Switzerland and the questioning by an evaluation committee show how singular the moment still stands today.

In the areas of research offered at The Monarch Global Research Institute (or, MGRI), originality is part of the way programs have been crafted. Originality in PhD research draws from a rich well of accumulated academic scholarship, knowledge management, and societal and public policy. The MGRI's dissertation supervisors have been carefully selected to bring state-of-the-art assistance to identifying originality and seizing its expression during a journey aimed at self-discovery in addition to innovations.

Apart from the glamor, what doctoral studies ultimately bear out is how higher education institutes offer two distinct experiences of apprenticeship. As long as societies structure their economies according to material production and manufacturing, undergraduate programs, with their emphasis on educating the next professional class of engineers, physicians, and lawyers, prepare graduates for technical perfection.

With outsourcing, automation, and financialization, the tools have grown more specific, as have the means to persist with a dream that could also come later in life. Here we move into the other experience of apprenticeship offered, with its focus on the theoretical nature of research.

Until the 1980s, few higher educational institutions were able to sustain research programs that (i) were not subsidized by state ministries or by specific government departments, such as the military; or (ii) were not financed by the private sector, whether through foundations, endowments, or directly by enterprises. As it turns out, the increasingly specialized high-tech branches of industry prompted highly abstract formal and theoretical research even in the liberal arts, with a focus on linguistics, cognitive science, and strategic studies in international relations theory.

Meanwhile, as new just-in-time and outsourcing philosophies accompanied the transformation of the American corporate model, research into organizing these programs into networks took aim at original strategic knowledge in history, law, and political science. Companies launched the transfer of advanced research to universities and institutes of technology. Regardless of their status as public or private, universities rely on a blend of both sources for funding postgraduate training and programs.

Not only did doctoral studies distinguish themselves academically by their status; they initiated a new vision of professional activity aimed toward the higher echelon of what had since become an information society. Originality became linked to the race for patents, but not alone. Strategic thinking for keeping oneself ahead of the competition was drawn to theoretical tools in projections and simulations.

Funding Originality

By definition and commitment, limited funding with a timeline corresponds to the quest for original discoveries, inventions, and innovations. At best, they meet the spirit of doctoral research halfway, for the gift of funding is soon counterbalanced with the demand for results.

Such pressure does not always align with the spirit of research that has been the hallmark of doctoral research. One may wonder why. After all, how else would doctoral research survive were it not for funding from a third source? Funding for access to research technologies? Funding for highly qualified professors and mentors and for facilities at which doctoral students may be integrated in a community setting that maximizes the results of an equation intensified by the proximity of great minds?

Originality is surely not at odds with funding. It is not yet a prize, though. Which is why one must be careful with hints of doctoral arrogance. Where does this semblance of doctoral arrogance emerge? Let arrogance correspond merely to the view from outside. From within, it has more to do with pride. And no doubt with courage.

The Viennese philosopher and logician Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in Culture and Value that "courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration, is the grain of mustard that grows up to be a great tree.” Some may emphasize belief or faith, but let originality emerge from where it has to: from our most demanding adjudicators, our peers.

It takes courage to write a dissertation. Courage to accept objections and cross-examination. And it is through courage that, in the framework of doctoral studies, one confirms originality. That is because originality connects with truth.

Beyond Honesty

Honesty is valued on a personal basis. Originality in doctoral research must be daring. As mentioned in the previous blog, it must aim for the cut. Especially, it must express the inner conviction that if it is true for you, then it is for all of us as well. Truth cannot vary in its value, nor really in its content. Truth is indeed the same for all researchers.

What Makes a Doctoral Contribution Original? Surely the ability to defend the contribution once it is swept up in a torrent of refinement. As the turbulence is unpredictable, it does take courage, disposition, and commitment. As it also does knowledge: of content and epistemological strategy.

The former is simple enough. One must handle a wealth of literature, reams of previous knowledge, and treasures that are both specific and formal. A question is sustainable in its originality by its internal logic, by the way it houses its justification.

As for epistemological strategies, these require inquiry into the history of theoretical science and the way the current international research community experiences the task of linking originality with truth.

The most elementary link appears as a measure. The most original question will require truth more than any other content to vouchsafe its claim. Some aspects of this truth value can be read between the lines. It appears in the question’s transparency, in its crystal-like formation.

Without reason, without rationality, one may never reach the moment of shifting from a problem to a question. Such would be the sufficient cause, which deals with process. As for the necessary cause, this is a way of connecting to the next step, without which even the process comes to a dead end.

An original research question goes one step further: it commits to performativity. It harbors truth on the condition its still non-apparent half will commute. Here we see the form par excellence guiding the question through the rough waters of argumentation. Connecting relations and observing how they create meaning is part and parcel of assessing the nature of the evidence gathered. The task is to organize the latter until it becomes significant. Then, you proceed to draw out recommendations while making explicit the guidelines of derivation. A simultaneous admission of the limitations confronting the results answers to the question of what has effectively been achieved.

Crafting a Contract and Signing It

The originality of a research question attains truth through the transparency of the subordinate clauses that project onto it the semblance of a contract. A question is performative to the extent that it commits to actually doing something. Doing perhaps as little as allowing the question to be answered. Or doing greatly, as in actually discovering a new perspective, indeed a new thought.

Research holds the future of reality under its wings. Originality emerges from the whole. By then, you might just behold the shell of an entire dissertation that is merely waiting for its completion through keyboard and screen. It transforms theory into technically bounded construction, with recommendations expressing an air quite withdrawn from arrogance that readers have only to read in order to appreciate.

Sometimes just reading requires courage. As for originality, it cuts across the grain in creating a new understanding of that which it was meant to answer.