Understanding “Research Only” Ph.D. Programs: A Closer Look

By: Howard Borenstein

I would like to devote this blog post to discussing the “research only” Ph.D. programs. The impetus for this is that over the past month, we have received two RFE’s specifically on Greek Ph.D. programs claiming that a Ph.D. from Greece was not equivalent to a Ph.D. in the US. This is despite the fact that Greece only offers research-based and not classroom-based Ph.D. programs. AACRAO EDGE is clear that the Ph.D. degree from Greece is indeed equivalent to an earned doctorate in the United States.

The nature of the challenges I have seen, in my opinion, reveals USCIS’ specific understanding of higher education. Namely, that a bachelor’s must be four years, a master’s two years, and all education from grade school to doctoral level is completed in a “school,” as in a brick-and-mortar building with rooms and physical chalk. This reflects, of course, a strong US-centered bias.

Specifically, regarding Ph.D. degrees, it’s important to realize that not all legitimate Ph.D. programs are classroom-based. There are, in fact, many “doctorate by thesis” programs all over the world, including the United States. Of course, in some countries, such as Italy and Greece, research-only programs are the only avenues for a Ph.D., with no classroom-based programs available. In these programs, the candidate prepares and defends a thesis to an expert, showing mastery of a given field of knowledge, whereby the candidate is then awarded a Ph.D. if that expert thinks the thesis is sufficiently advanced. This model was actually the dominant model for earning a Ph.D. for many years. Doctoral candidates submitted their research to a noted expert, and if it were deemed worthy of review and then considered noteworthy enough, the candidate would be awarded a Ph.D.

This system has not really changed all that much within Ph.D. programs in the United States. Ph.D. students typically complete one to two years of classroom instruction leading to the completion of several qualifying examinations to confirm a certain basic knowledge of the field. But once this is completed, these students typically pursue high-level research on their own, seeking out faculty advisors to work on a particular thesis topic. Typically, for at least two to three years, the Ph.D. candidate will not be taking any more classroom instruction but will continue their research, collaborating with other experts in the field, culminating in a final thesis. As such, most of the Ph.D. cycle in the United States currently is actually “research-only,” as it is assumed that at the Ph.D. level, students don’t need the day-to-day supervision and instruction of a classroom and are competent enough to branch out on their own and perform their own research with the skills to evaluate and understand the high-level, peer-reviewed literature of their field.

In fact, Albert Einstein himself only received his Ph.D. after submitting his thesis to a professor at the University of Zurich, since the university he attended years earlier was an “ETH” program and, at the time, was not allowed to award Ph.D. degrees. Interestingly enough, his body of work that finally convinced Professor Alfred Kleiner to award Einstein his Ph.D. was not his theory of relativity but his work on determining the size of various molecular radii, which, despite getting Einstein his Ph.D., is probably what he is least known for. Physicists thought at the time the theory of relativity was too strange to consider. Werner Heisenberg years later had been said to quip about some of Einstein’s theories: “it isn’t that his theory is strange, the problem is that it might not be strange enough,” which is a statement that might sum up most of 21st-century physics.

In sum, there are many paths to getting a Ph.D., and alternate paths should not be devalued. Rather, there are, in fact, many different models practiced around the world and even within the United States. They may be less well-known than the traditional classroom model but are no less valued and no less equivalent to a U.S. Ph.D. In fact, outside of the United States, these alternate programs based entirely on research and scholarly writing are quite common in England, Greece, South Africa, and other areas. As we have seen, USCIS challenges these credentials regardless, so it is incredibly important to include an accurate and reliable evaluation when submitting them with your petition.

As such, regardless of whether or not the candidate’s Ph.D. has a classroom component, the Ph.D. degree is considered equivalent to an earned doctorate in the United States. Our country may have a bias toward systems that include some kind of coursework as part of their model, but coursework is NOT a requirement for a Ph.D. A Ph.D. only requires a thesis or published material demonstrating mastery and original research in a given body of knowledge and nothing more.

Of course, one final caveat is that I am not referring to “post-doctoral” degrees or “professional Ph.D.’s”. Those are typically not equivalent to Ph.D. degrees, but that is a separate topic we will discuss in a future post. In the meantime, don’t wait to reach out to us at [email protected] or give us a call at 212-581-8877 if you have a Ph.D. you need evaluated!