Job Discussion Forums

[kittenkong]

Someone I know has just applied for a job at a UAE university. The post requires a PhD. My contact has a PhD in Applied Linguistics from a good UK university. It was neither a 'distance' nor an 'online' PhD but he did do all the work on it while working overseas. This is of course what a lot of people do. He had regular contact with his supervisor and visited the University when on holiday in the UK.

Now the UAE university has emailed him to say that it needs a letter saying that my contact was in attendance at the UK university for a third of the PhD study time (which would have been over a year). My contact cannot provide this letter as he wasn't there. The UAE university says that this time aspect is a Ministry rule. Without an assurance that he was in attendance for the third of the time time he isn't going to be considered for the job, it looks like.

I'm wondering what comments people might have on this. Has anyone else heard of this rule?

If it is indeed true that a PhD without the time attendance element is unacceptable, then the UAE Ministry is greatly cutting down its pool of possible appointees - limiting itself in effect to a larger proportion of PhD-holding Americans, I would think.

Is the situation the same in other Gulf countries?

Thanks, folks.

[veiledsentiments]

It sounds like they are not accepting distance degrees for PhDs and obviously if he wasn't there on campus for even 1/3 of the time, this is a distance degree under their definition. (I would consider it such too)

Perhaps he could get his university supervisor to write some kind of a letter to UAEU making it sound less 'distant'?

VS

[spicegirl]

The fact is that the traditional style of British PhD is a research degree. As such, the research is carried out wherever necessary, and usually not on the university campus where the degree will be granted. With this type of PhD, there is no 'taught' course - it's assumed that by the time you get to this level of academic research, you will simply need 'support' from your assigned tutor/mentor. Naturally, all research is done by 'distance', unless the source of the research is to be found in the university which will grant the degree - a very rare occurrence, I'd imagine.

This of course goes back to what has already been discussed in another thread about British MAs and PhDs not being teaching qualifications as such.

These days, however, there are some British PhDs which involve part of the course being 'taught' on campus, possibly following the American model. The taught modules are, however, usually just input on research methods, and not on teaching methodology and theory, which have been covered in the RSA or Trinity Diploma and most MAs.

This is a problem which many non-USA qualification holders are facing in the UAE at present. Many institutions of higher ed in the UAE are now seeking accreditation, mostly with USA accreditation boards, who are not taking British and Commonwealth educational backgrounds and qualifications into consideration, as they don't conform to the standards required to teach in similar institutions in the USA.

I imagine a similar situation would occur if a British accreditation board were doing the same job in the UAE, i.e. many teachers with no Trinity or RSA Diplomas would be ineligible to teach on a pre-sessional English course at a university in the UAE, as most UK universities require their EFL/ESP teachers to hold one or the other of these qualifications. British MAs are not generally considered to be teaching qualifications, as they involve no TP, unlike the RSA or Trinity Diplomas which are generally required in order to be accepted on an MA course in the UK.

[veiledsentiments]

This looks like it is going to turn into another of those nightmarish situations for the teachers stuck in a system where common sense is not allowed to enter...

This is the problem with attempting 'accreditation' under one national system - while hiring staff from numerous national systems.

VS

[abufletcher]

So are they going to start insisting on "resident" MAs as well??? I must admit I'm a bit dismayed at this sort of nonsense having just completed a UK-based Ph.D. myself. I did exactly the same thing as any doctoral student at the University of York permenantly residing in the UK -- I just did it in Japan where I actually had the resources to do the research!

I think people are right though that a traditional degree with coursework and qualifying papers/exams from a (respected) US university is more like "on-the-job-training" for future professors. UK degrees still have that aire of "gentleman scholar." Still, there is nothing second-rate about UK universities or the Ph.D.s (D.Phils) they produce in terms of scholarship so it's very frustrating when potential employers make such silly rules.

Personally, if I were asked for the sort of documentation that the OP mentioned, I'd wonder about having my supervisor write up something to the effect that "Mr. Smith was enrolled in our program on the same basis as all other graduate students and produced an outstanding dissertation." Otherwise, as others have states, this ruling effectively eliminates any UK-based Ph.D.s -- as well as most Australian and New Zealand degrees.

[abufletcher]

Another silly thing here is that most US-based doctoral programs with coursework do not actually have many (or any) specifically "doctoral-level" courses. The coursework almost always consists of the same courses available to MA students in the same field. During my sabbatical year I attended a number of graduate courses in my research area (Applied Linguistics/Conversation Analysis) at UCLA and none were particularly more challenging (or focused on doctoral candidates) than most upper division non-graduate courses.

And, in fact I found myself to be a good deal more widely read and informed than my fellow American doctoral students in these courses who tended to only know of research that had been spoon-fed to them by their professors.

[Bindair Dundat]

[abufletcher]

[veiledsentiments]

[DesertStar]

A very accurate account spicegirl. That's exactly how it is in the UAE, the coming few years will show even more invasion of US models. This is not to suggest that it's 'bad'. Most US Ph.D programs offer a more comprehensive training package (Abufletcher your point is well taken, but!).

Evidently, there's more than one Fallujah.

[womblingfree]

[veiledsentiments]

Ah Womblingfree... you are expecting logic? This is the Gulf... a logic-free zone.

VS

[spicegirl]

Hello, Mr Womblingfree,

If you read my post again, you'll see that I was referring to the UAE, not to the USA, a country which presumably recognises British PhDs for what they are, no matter where the research was conducted.

The point I was trying to make was that most research for both British PhDs and British MAs is carried out wherever it's appropriate, and that's often not in the UK. Universities in the UK don't award their degrees depending on where the research was carried out, but on the quality of the research.

The OP was commenting that the university in the UAE which his friend has applied to is insisting that he should have spent one third of his study time at the university in the UK .... if not, the degree is deemed by the UAE authorities to be a 'distance' degree, and as such is not being recognised.

My other point was that this question has also reared its head in the past in the UAE in connection with MAs - a couple of years ago some teachers here were told that their MA (British) was no longer recognised because it was carried out by 'distance' - in many cases this wasn't true, but the research phase of the MA had been conducted outside the UK, and so was considered by the UAE Ministry of Education to be a distance degree.

You and I are not at all in disagreement over the quality of British PhDs.

[abufletcher]

[scot47]

Their country. They make the rules.