Comments on: Disciplinary evolution in French universities

By: Michael Metcalf Bishop

Michael Metcalf Bishop — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:14:42 +0000

btw, I think survey measures of subjective well-being are really interesting, but I find people often mis/over-interpret them.

By: Michael Metcalf Bishop

Michael Metcalf Bishop — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:11:41 +0000

Eli, my tip for presenting this data (which I think is great!) is that you consider labeling the lines/points directly rather than using a legend. It often makes graphs much easier to read.

Other things that jump to mind:
The variation in graduation rate across different disciplines is probably worth exploring. Seeing enrollment/graduates as a percentage of the 18-25 year old age cohort would be nice. I’d like to know the average labor market outcomes and subjective well-being for people finishing the different courses of study, even though these numbers would hide the, perhaps more important, variation within each category.

By: Michael Metcalf Bishop

Michael Metcalf Bishop — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:02:13 +0000

Kyle, I want to see if I understand your comment. Would you predict that within a discipline, French doctoral students (and faculty?) will exhibit more variation in their methodological approach and less variation in subject matter?

By: Kyle

Kyle — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:12:23 +0000

Thanks for the explanation. That’s a fascinating way to organize doctoral studies. After reading your reply, I poked around a bit more on the Paris 8 website, looking specifically at the écoles doctorales. It appears that organizing programs this way refocuses (or has the potential to refocus) students’ attention on the objects of study, rather than questions of disciplinary boundaries, whereas in the U.S., at least in the field of communication, there’s always the possibility that loyalty to one method over another predetermines some of the questions researchers ask. Of course, I’m generalizing here, both about the U.S. system and the French system, but on the surface at least, I like the logic that seems to shape the French approach.

(If I had the time, money, and general inclination — which I don’t, really, but if I did — I would take a serious look at the doctoral school focusing on théorie et pratique du sens. Sounds like fun!)

Thanks again, and I’ll be following the blog with interest.

By: eli

eli — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:22:38 +0000

Hi Kyle, nice to hear from you. This is something I find a little confusing too, but basically the way it seems to work is that, at least in public universities, doctoral schools (écoles doctorales) are somewhat separate organizationally from regular academic departments (which give undergrad and master’s degrees). At Paris-8, for instance, a philosophy Ph.D. would be obtained through a philosophy section of an interdisciplinary doctoral school called Pratiques et Théories du Sens. You have to have a kind of second doctorate (a Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) to advise phd students in France, which only senior faculty normally have, but pretty much all the senior faculty of the regular philosophy department are associated with this doctoral school. So socially and intellectually it seems like pretty much one unit; it’s only organizationally separate. (Also, though this verges on the level of trivial detail, the doctoral seminar room is in a different building and is much less decrepit than the rest of the philosophy spaces.)

At Paris-1, on the other hand, there’s a separate école doctorale just for philosophy. My guess is that other disciplines are at least similar to one of these two examples, but I haven’t really checked. I would assume that at the grandes écoles, or at least EHESS, it’s a totally other system too… anyway, I’ll let you know if I find out more!

best, Eli

By: Kyle

Kyle — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:28:00 +0000

I’ve been reading your blog with interest, but there’s a point I was hoping you could clarify for me. How are doctoral programs organized in France? In the U.S. system (as you’re well aware, of course), doctoral programs are attached to departments. My PhD, for instance, is from the communication arts department at the University of Wisconsin.

But I was looking at the liste des doctorats at the Université Paris VIII — http://recherche.univ-paris8.fr/red_list_doc.php — and clicking through different links. For instance, I looked at the doctorat sciences de l’information et de la communication (since it’s close to my own discipline), which pulls up a list of names of enseignants chercheurs, not a department. When I click on the different names, the research centers to which the enseignants chercheurs are affiliated come up, but again, not a department.

In some ways, my question is rather tangential to the rest of your posts, but I’d be very interested to know how the system works in France.

Thanks!