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Debate: Excuse me, but is that educational victimisation?

Lise Wogensen Bach, head of graduate school and vice-dean at Health, responds in an article in the Danish newspaper Berlingske to the newspaper’s interview with Professor Flemming Besenbacher, in which the professor warns against "educational snobbishness" and a lack of international quality among Danish PhD students.

2015.11.13

[Translate to English:] Debatikon

By Lise Wogensen Bach, head of graduate school and vice-dean at Aarhus University, Health.

In an interview with the Danish newspaper Berlingske on 2 November, Professor Flemming Besenbacher warns against educational snobbishness and, in connection with this, criticises the number of PhD students in Denmark in the following quote: "I would imagine that twenty per cent of them do not have sufficiently high international quality. (…) Up to fifty per cent of the medical graduates become PhD students. Excuse me, but we simply do not have so many talented students in Denmark."

Excuse me, but how do you know that, Flemming? And what kind of definition are you using of quality here?

At the graduate schools, we have spent many years trying to achieve a common understanding of what quality is in connection with a PhD degree programme.
But now, where it appears you also have a suggestion, I look forward to a more detailed description. It will also help us better understand why you think that twenty per cent of the PhD students fail to live up to your international level criteria.

You also question the reasonableness of almost half of medical graduates becoming PhD students.
I would too – if that were correct!
But I am not so sure that it is. Over the last four years here at the Faculty of Heath at Aarhus University, we have on average enrolled 180 PhD students per year. Of these, approximately 52 per cent (90) have a background in medicine.
By comparison, the annual number of graduates from the degree programme in medicine is around 280.
I admit these figures are not one hundred per cent precise, but however I look at them, I cannot get them to add up to "up to fifty per cent" – if anything, a third of the graduates from medicine come to take a PhD with us. But is that the correct figure?

Last year we decided to limit the admission of PhD students to approx. 170 annually. In this way we will in future have to prioritise among the applicants here at Health. Because I agree with you that we need to strengthen the quality of the PhD degree programme, and one parameter for doing this is to look at whom we recruit.

Of course we should discuss our educational system for researchers. But why are the medical PhD students time and time again the ones in the firing line – why are they the ones who are almost being victimised? Surely the public healthcare system can benefit from the additional baggage that these research-trained medical doctors bring with them?

At Aarhus University, Health, our goal is for around half of our PhD students to be medical doctors, because we wish to see more research in practical medicine. Concurrently, we wish to obtain evidence of the effect that a PhD education has on the clinical work of doctors. We are therefore in the process of examining the importance of the PhD programme for the professional practice of medical doctors (and nurses), so that we have a sounder basis for commenting on this.

I hope that – in line with this – the coming political decisions will themselves be based on evidence-based premises and not on myths which, once they have been repeated often enough, risk appearing to be true.

  • The article was published in the Danish newspaper Berlingske on 10 November 2015.
Talent development, Health and disease, All groups, Health, Health, External target group