[The Proposition] ‘The requirement for PhD propositions outside of science is fundamentally elitist of the candidate and the university.’

For PhD candidates, their thesis propositions are an opportunity to publicly express their professional and personal convictions about science and society. In this feature they explain their most thought-provoking proposition. This time it’s Ben Auxier, who obtained a PhD in Plant Sciences on 14 April.

‘I think it is reasonable to ask PhD candidates to come up with propositions related to their thesis and their area of study, but the requirement to have two propositions on societally related issues confuses me.

Why is it that only PhD candidates have the privilege to present their thoughts in the thesis, while MSc or BSc students are not given the same opportunity? Is it due to the fallacious assumption that PhD candidates are inherently smarter, so their opinions carry more weight?

It might be true that the training we received during our PhD studies enables us to provide more insightful thoughts within a specific scientific domain than a non-expert. But we have not taken any additional courses on analysing or debating the broader societal issues than students holding other degrees. When asked for societally related propositions, we are no more capable than anyone else. It’s great that the university allows us the opportunity to express our thoughts on a broader level in our thesis, but this shouldn’t be a mandatory requirement. I’ve seen some colleagues submit propositions on topics that they are not well-versed in and cannot even convince themselves of. They write the propositions solely to meet the requirement. Actually, my original proposition — “This requirement is embarrassing” — got rejected.’

Also read:

[The Proposition] ‘Change in attitude regarding the environment starts with the education of the youngest generations.’

Limelight

[The proposition] ‘The Dutch school system would benefit from switching from numerical scores to binary assessments’