Hi

What do people think of the Open University?

A Prof there has offered to supervise my PhD.

Are they like a 'real University'. Is the same weight etc given to an OU PhD?

N

Yep, I think so. There's some people on here that did their Masters there.

Hm. I do not know. In my field where you get your doctorate from is certainly very important and the OU is not one of the best places. I guess depends on the field? I still have to see significant work produced from the OU which is not 'reader' for their own students.Not great on scholarship.

Recently colleagues who were running a master affiliated with another university had to break their relation and go with the OU and it wasn't a great day at the office for them and it was definitely felt it was being downgraded.

BUT there are fields in which the OU is good I guess - just not mine.

Hi there pm133 - I think that because the arts are a 'soft' areas, the parameters of scholarly rigour can be looser than in the science and sometimes there is an enormous difference in PhD standards. It is very sad but in some places PhDs are ticking the box exercises that produce work that gives a minuscule contribution to knowledge, if any. I do not want to name and shame, but if you have a look in any subject you will see that books published tend to be from a relatively small pool of universities. This is not to say that things can change, even one person in a department can then lift the whole place up but it is a true fact in the arts that there is a hierarchy in where you study, and in what is expected from you and in the piece of work that you will be asked to produce.

Do you know the essay by economics Akerlof on selling lemons (bad used cars)? When the parameters in a field are difficult to quantify some characteristics ( ie.in Akerlof's case provenance and price) will take a greater importance than others in establishing quality.

This is particularly evident in fine art courses. Why everyone wants to go to Royal College of Art and nobody to Trilla's School of Painting? Art is art, innit? Well.. no...

Akerlof, George A., ‘The Market for “Lemons”: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol.84, no.3 (1970), pp.488–500.

If you want a full ref :D

Trilla: I would respectfully disagree that the 'hard' sciences are somehow more difficult, or have greater rigour than the humanities or social sciences. Without wish to enter fully into a epistemological or ontological debate, I would say that if anything, humanities and social science would be, if not harder, than certainly less straight forward, and therefore presents more of a challenge to the student, until we get to the very cutting edge of the hard sciences.

I fail to see how a PhD from say, Wolverhampton, Brooks, Manchester Met, or even one of the Russell group (the usual exception of Oxbridge notwithstanding) would be considered 'better' than an OU PhD. Surely it depends on the subject, the supervisor and the researcher? Or have you some information about the OU PhD that are denied to the rest of us?

Chilax, Chaotic1328, I do not make the rules - left to me come the revolution we shall all have one state university and that shall be free.

I am just reporting on the state of affairs in my own field, and trying to give an explanation within the practice of quality control in the arts. I never said the sciences were harder but that there are more definite parameters which may level the playing field of doctorates.

You are approaching this subject and writing with your emotions - sentences like "Or have you some information about the OU PhD that are denied to the rest of us?" smack of chip on shoulder and are not really conducive to civilised debate - I have given you most of the the information I have in my previous post (lack of publications in the field, lack of scholarship, colleagues who run a master felt downgraded when they changed affiliation from a RG university to OU which are, I feel pertinent), I have begun to use economics theory - Akerlof - to explain the reason why that may be.

Iam happy to chat about this if it's an honest change of opinions and experiences.

What evidence have you got to support PhDs at the OU, and, mind, I said from the beginning that in other areas* it may be different.

*I think there is a good sociology department for instance.

I did my Masters with the OU and found it to be excellent, and it certainly hasn't been looked down on by anyone. If anything, I have been told that OU study is good for demonstrating qualities such as self-discipline and motivation, since so much of it is done at a distance and to fit around other demands on the students' time. Additionally, there's not a hard and fast divide between OU academic staff and other universities - lots of academics do OU work as an additional job, so it's simply not true to say the staff are less scholarly - they're often the same people.

Interestingly, I was interviewed for a job with the OU, and they tore me apart for the marking sample I turned in for their consideration (which was done to the standards required at a brick university).

Your post is hardly the epitome of civilized debate. I have no chip on my shoulder on this matter, as I have no connections whatsoever with the OU, and my Master's is from a Russell group, and so is my intended PhD.

I am just surprised that you could single out the OU and said that their PhD are considered less worthy than others, with one single reference, the other 'information' are merely your opinions unless you cite the evidence. The factors you mentioned, even if valid, can be applied to most UK higher education institutions, so why pick out the OU, and say that their PhDs are considered worth less than others?

Also, far from it for me to criticise a post-doc, but you cited one writer to support your wholesale damning of what is, as far as I know, a fine institution. Surely that is sloppy scholarship, even with the kindest of interpretations?

Given that, I am fully entitle to ask whether you have information that is denied to the rest of us. Certainly no emotion on my part in doing so. But from your post, it seems you might be suffering from some form of inferior complex in your job, as your institution do not have the power to confer degrees, but must reply on other to do so. Maybe you feel you deserve better after gaining your PhD from one of the 'top' unis?

I am currently a PhD student at the OU, and to be honest I have found it to be more rigorous than any of my prior institutions. I suppose it might be because there is this attitude that it is not as good as other universities, so they feel they must be just as if not more rigorous than others. Some of the academics in my department have published work of some importance in the field (neuroscience) as well. All in all, I had some apprehensions before I started, not helped by the reactions I received from others when I told them where I was studying ("oh, so it's not a real PhD then?"), but these have been squashed completely.

There is another reason for the effect Trilla has described in terms of reduced funding for PIs when they leave red bricks for the OU.

Snobbery.

What happens is that everyone and their dog tries to get into the "top" universities, looking down on those who go to "lesser" universities. Funding bodies then through snobbery assume that only the "top" universities get the funding because clearly those "lesser" institutions can't possible produce good research. The "lesser" universities then attract fewer academics and students and you end up with a cycle of self fulfilling prophesy.

The problem is that all the snobbish assumptions are based on horseshit. Lecturers at Bristol, Durham and Imperial College are no more likely to be good teachers than those found at the University of the West of Scotland. In fact the reverse can often be true because the latter don't have access to research funding and can deviote more time to teaching.

There is no shortage of evidence of this sort of nonsense. Have a look at graduate employment. Every graduate targets the same "top 100 companies" with those firms apparently receiving tens of thousands of CVs. Google receive about a million CVs a year as far as I know. Nobody can tell you WHY those 100 companies are the "top" in the country. At the same time as graduates are crying into their sleeves about there being "no jobs", millions of small and medium companies can't get a hold of a graduate for love or money because they can't afford to advertise or pay recruitment agencies fees and graduates don't seek them out because they have been brainwashed into thinking those companies are "beneath them".

This is humans all over Trilla. The perfect storm of stupidity and prejudice. I think that is the most likely reason for your scenario.