At the start of this year, the first PhD student that I have co-supervised graduated. Not only was I delighted that he had done fantastically well, but it was also a special experience to witness a PhD ceremony from that perspective. Of course, I once defended my own dissertation, and I have been an opponent at another defence, but now for the first time I got to look on proudly.
I enjoyed all the academic frills too: the gowns with their different designs for different institutions, the beadle with the rattling rod, and the formal reading aloud of the result. We don’t have a lot of nice traditions in the Netherlands, but our PhD defences are terrific.
If there’s one thing that didn’t bother me for a moment, it was that I wasn’t allowed to wear a gown
I’ve been told that by our foreign visitors as well. If there is one thing that didn’t bother me for a moment while I enjoyed it all, it was that I didn’t wear an academic gown, and wasn’t allowed to do so.
But according to the Young Academy, this is a highly undesirable custom. In their manifesto, Everyone a Professor! the young academics argue for a change of policy so that ‘all assistant, associate and full professors are allowed to wear a gown, use the title Professor […] and bestow a doctoral degree on their own supervisees.’ Utrecht University has already established this policy and at Groningen there’s a petition going round the staff to achieve the same change.
I hope WUR won’t follow their example. The arguments for these changes are explained at length in the document but the message it leaves me with is: it’s not fair, assistant and associate professors do a lot of work and deserve a prominent place in the proceedings. It’s true about the work, of course, but I still felt the whole piece has a very whinging tone. Everyone in the room who is from the academic world knows perfectly well how hard the co-supervisors have worked, and everyone from outside academia couldn’t care less about it.
To me, whinging about not getting enough attention at a ceremony that is not about you ill befits the dignified status I associate with wearing an academic gown. Because a PhD ceremony is about one person, and that’s the person getting the PhD.
