‘Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh’.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, Letter to his son 8 May 1750
Things I have learnt about different PhDs in my first year
As my first year comes to a close, I thought I would comment on what I have learnt about doing a PhD during my first year. I have realised that I do not know anything and that my academic writing is awful. I will get into this in a moment, for now, I am going to talk about differences in law and business PhDs.
I am doing a PhD in financial law. My law faculty belongs to the ‘School of Business and Law’ and law and business researchers share a common room that contains our desks, computers etc. We have a great PhD community, and we attend events together such as writing retreats, conferences and social events. However, the composition of our PhDs could not be more different. To understand this, I need to introduce the researchers who are coming to the end of their PhD journey and what they have to say on this.
The veterans
Our common room contains ‘senior’ researchers in both law and business. The business students have PhDs that utilise massive amounts of data that gets analysed by software. It is then assimilated and published. On the other hand, the law students (or legal scholars as they like to be known), use philosophical debates to argue their points and it is a very theoretical exercise.
Therefore, the business students are quite proud that they utilise data sets. They believe that this makes their research more scientific. Law students do not tend to use vast amounts of data, but they do complete vast amounts of reading of books and journals. This is the first bone of contention between both schools.
Both sets of researchers let their egos become involved at this point. Business researchers mock the law researchers because their PhDs are non-scientific. In return, the legal researchers regard the business students as having not having deep knowledge of their subject matter as their PhDs do not contain that much reading.
Confirmation of Registration
At the end of the first year in the UK, you have to pass the upgrade interview or the confirmation of Registration (“CoR”). All researchers in the UK are initially on the MPhil path. Upon passing the CoR they are upgraded from the MPhil path to the PhD. This is an important stage and must be passed successfully. It is a great idea as it stops the researcher and supervisors wasting 3 or 4 years after only 1 year. I want to go through the past 2.5 months that it has taken to pass my CoR.
The first issue begins with the university software. On this software, I was informed of my submission date. About 2 weeks before the submission date, I was informed by the doctoral academy that I only had two weeks left to complete my CoR process. Although I was quick to inform the doctoral academy representative that my SUBMISSION date was two weeks away, the reply was mind boggling.
It was pointed out to me that the word ‘submission’ aligned to the submission date on the software, did not mean submission (I was being far too literal) it actually meant that I had to complete my CoR by the submission date. Even after I had pointed that there are literal definitions for these words, I was still in the wrong.
The second issue was listening to the veterans. None of them could accurately recall their own CoR, but every one of them remembered it was just a 10-minute chat about their research. This bore no resemblance to the process that I was subjected to. Mine was a professional interview, one of which I was not prepared for. There was a reason for this.
A deficit of internal examiners
First, a brief explanatory note regarding the subject of my PhD is required for some background. My PhD is concerned with the calls to regulate the private debt market. I am focused on only 3 private debt financial instruments being Collateralised Loan Obligations, Business Development Companies and Direct Lending Funds. I am focused upon 3 jurisdictions, the United Kingdom, the United States and the EU as these 3 jurisdictions account for over 90% of the market for the three afore mentioned financial instruments.
A pattern has emerged highlighting that in recent financial crises within these jurisdictions (involving institutions not utilising private debt) that the regulators had received early warnings and did nothing with this information.
There is a growing army of doom sayers that are calling for these private debt instruments to be regulated under current banking laws. There appears to be genuine concern but the counter argument from the industry points out that these instruments have never failed nor caused a crisis, so why would they now be regulated under banking laws whose members continue to fail?
My PhD examines this situation, has highlighted that the system is not broken but there is evidence that a disconnect of some sort appears that causes the regulators to miss vital information within all of the data it receives, thus resulting in different financial crises. I then propose two models which can regulate and harmonise the regulator’s actions once it receives relevant data and takes it out of the hands of one or several analysts.
Both of my supervisors are experienced in what my thesis is focused upon, but unfortunately, they cannot be the examiner for my CoR. Therefore, an external examiner was recruited to complete my CoR. Although a thoroughly decent and experienced professor, he was not from either a legal or a financial background. He raised concerns about my CoR as I had not provided information in my presentation that he would have expected from one of his students.
This caused great consternation and dismay during the process as he was becoming exasperated that what he would normally expect to be included, was not even mentioned. His terminology was alien to me, and I was repeatedly asking for clarification of the words used within every question. Fortunately for me, the answers I provided were the correct answers, but I did not know this at the time. It was only afterwards when he was discussing my performance with my supervisors that clarity was achieved, and the error was discovered. He was using terms that are prevalent within his subject matter, but which are not used in law. I was answering using legal philosophy which, in his eyes, had nothing to do with the questions he was asking.
The end result was positive
As I mentioned, once the examiner has completed the questions they wish to ask, you, the candidate, leaves the room so that the examiner can discuss your performance with your supervisors, write his report and they then call you back in so the examiner can let you know your result.
He informed me that I had not included anything he would have expected within my submission documentation, and he thought I should have to fail. Once he discussed this with my supervisors, he realised we had been at crossed purposes and that I had actually answered all of his questions correctly from a legal perspective. The worrying aspect of this for me, was that this result was purely based upon luck, not concrete understanding of the questions being asked. The deficit in my knowledge was enormous.
His report contained no commentaries or negative wording, in fact I passed with flying colours. My birthday was the following day, so this proved to be an early birthday present and one which I was thankful for.
Actions to follow up on
This week will be spent obtaining the knowledge of the terminologies used within the CoR. If at my actual viva, similar terms are used, I want to be able to answer them with the full confidence that I understand what is being asked and that I am sure my answers are correct.
The week has started off with me having more questions than answers, but I suppose that is what the PhD process is all about. I have discovered that I have a deficiency in knowledge in an area that I need to be competent in, so it is my task to do the research and become knowledgeable about it. This will delay what I had programmed in for this week. The good side of this, is that I am still learning and improving my knowledge and rising to the challenges whilst doing a PhD at the age of 54 and two days. As the saying at the top of this post says, knowledge gives weight.