One question and one comment.
Thomas, are you suggesting that PhD students should not have to pay the
printing and binding costs of their theses? That the University should print
and bind the thesis for the student free of charge? Or, more sensibly, that
the University should stop requiring printed theses and allow submission in
electronic form -- on a CD-ROM, if they wish to avoid any subsequent changes to
the thesis?
Re "tollgating entry to the academic profession" -- it needs to noted that only
a minority of PhDs become academics. Some go off to practice their profession
in non-academic environments, and others leave their academic field and become
accountants, managers or whatever.
Fytton.
Quoting Thomas Krichel <krichel_at_OPENLIB.ORG>:
> Fytton Rowland writes
>
> > But here the students usually just groan and bear it!
>
> Getting the money for the printing cost back sounds like a flimsy
> excuse to me.
>
> If someone does a doctorate to become a member of the academic
> profession,
> then toll-gating the PhD does not seem to me to be a good strategy,
> because of the adverse effects that it has on dissemination.
>
> And the same thing should hold for libraries. Libraries should pay
> for printing out students work, archive local dissertations on
> paper (because of the problems of digital preservation), and
> make them available through Eprints, and pay for this by not buying
> dissertations produced anywhere else, or reduce serials holdings.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Thomas Krichel
> mailto:krichel_at_openlib.org
>
> http://openlib.org/home/krichel
>
> RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
>
>
Received on Mon Jul 22 2002 - 11:30:33 BST