China's higher education, especially graduate education, has gradually increased since the expansion of university enrollment, and by 2015, the number of doctoral students exceeded 70,000, and the number of doctoral students graduated that year exceeded 50,000. From 2006 to 2015, the United States has trained a total of 501695 doctors in 10 years, with an average of 45,219 doctors per year. Obviously, the number of doctoral training in China has surpassed that of the United States. The United States trained 44,915 Chinese doctors between 2006 and 2015, with an average of 4,492 per year. It can be seen that the number of Chinese doctors trained in the United States now accounts for only about 10% of the number of doctors trained in China. There is a popular saying in China's higher education circles: "There is no master's degree that has been postponed, there is no doctorate who graduated on schedule". Some analysts pointed out that in recent years, the probability of postponing the graduation of Chinese doctors is close to 50%. Therefore, it can be speculated that pursuing a PhD is indeed not an easy task, and some of these questions may be worth thinking about for PhD students who are planning to pursue or are already studying.
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Vian thompson of Clemson University's School of Management. Professor Varun Grover wrote an article that, depending on the time period, put forward some questions that deserve serious consideration by students, and suggested that based on the results of thinking about these issues, careful decisions should be made in order to successfully complete their studies. Professor Grewell's discussion touches on an important concept, which is the "motivation" of man. What is motivation? American psychologist Dennis. Dennis Coon points out in Introduction to Psychology( Translated by Zheng Gang et al.): "Motivation is the motivation of behavior, which triggers human activity and promotes and guides people to strive for a specific goal. "Robert. Robert E. Franken, in Human Motivation (translated by Guo Benyu et al.), said: "Over the years, many theories of motivation have been improved. Each theory has a different focus to some extent. The theories I will discuss, though very different in many respects, all stem from similar considerations, namely, the eviction, orientation, and persistence of behavior, which are the focus of motivational research. Although it is still difficult to establish a precise concept of "motivation", it has become a consensus to confirm that the three points of human "evoking, directing and persistence" of human behavior are the core of motivation research. These three points are also enough to distinguish "motivation" from the elements of "attention, curiosity, interest, hobby, passion" and other elements in human psychology. It is generally believed that the strength of human motivation, the degree of concentration and the level of persistence play a crucial role in the ultimate realization of human goals that require great energy and long time. Let's take a look at some of the issues that Professor Greywell pointed out to be worth noting during his PhD studies.
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(1) A research and teaching position.
(2) Construct a new idea, idea, or disseminate knowledge.
If you answered "no" to both, then it is recommended that you cancel the Plan for Cooper.
First school year:
(1) Is there an incentive to motivate you to do this?
(1) A research and teaching position.
(2) Construct a new idea, idea, or disseminate knowledge.
(2) By reading articles in mainstream journals in your field of study and research, did you seek a sense of research?
(3) Are you trying to write a research project or work on a research project?
(4) Do you have a clear understanding of the diversity of research methods and have acquired a certain depth of knowledge within certain fields.
(5) Have you started building a social network to connect with local teachers and classmates and want to work with them?
(6) Is your interest in study and research shifting to new areas?
(7) Are you planning your program and developing an annual action plan for doctoral studies?
For the above 7 questions, I hope that your answer is as much as possible not "no".
Second school year:
(2) Have you completed a research paper and submitted it to academic journals and conferences?
(3) Do you have the opportunity to come up with your own new ideas or ideas in the research team?
(4) Do you have a deep knowledge and understanding of the diversity of research methods and multiple research tools?
(5) Can you construct your own research outline based on previous literature study and review?
(6) Have you set up a project team with peers and teachers, is this important to you?
(7) Can you build a basic framework for a dissertation on a topic in your field of study through literature review research?
(8) Can you arrange your time according to the importance of the matter and manage your various activities?
For the above 8 questions, I hope that your answer is not "no" as much as possible.
End of third school:
(2) Have you gone through the peer review process of submitting your own academic paper?
(3) Do you have the opportunity to present your views at regional or national academic conferences?
(4) Do you have the opportunity to review papers provided by others to academic journals or conferences?
(5) Can you read academic articles more effectively and quickly integrate their views into your own academic research theoretical system?
(6) Have you passed the relevant exams?
(7) Have you come up with ideas or topics for your dissertation and can defend it?
(8) Does the research method you use exactly match your research topic?
(9) Have you developed good presentation skills in defending your dissertation?
(10) Are you considering entering the job market?
(11) Have you identified the chair and committee members of the dissertation defense committee that match the topic of your dissertation submission?
(12) Do you have the responsibility to attend classes for students?
For the above 12 questions, I hope that your answer is as much as possible not "no".
End of fourth school year:
(1) Is there an incentive to continue to motivate you to do this?
(2) Has your article been accepted by a journal or conference?
(3) Have you ever attended a national conference in this field of study?
(4) Have you passed the thesis defense?
(5) Have you constructed a research plan from your own project and dissertation?
(6) Have you developed good teamwork skills?
(7) Are you able to communicate and interact well with external peers and share the information you care about?
(8) Do you have a job?
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Although Professor Greywell may not exhaust all the problems of pursuing a Ph.D., it is obviously important for students to list some of the common problems and let students think, reflect, and adjust. The problems mentioned by Professor Grivell mainly focus on the basic literacy and basic abilities of doctoral students, which is also a problem that many doctoral students are confused about. Professor Revere did not propose any brilliant ideas for these questions. Obviously, for a broad, challenging, and stressful doctoral study process involving different individual doctoral students, it is difficult to find a unified, standard, feasible, effective, and absolutely compliant response to these 36 problems. However, if students can recognize these problems as soon as possible, evaluate themselves in a timely manner, and constantly revise, adjust, enrich and change themselves according to their own personality characteristics, personality patterns, cognitive preferences, value orientations and existing knowledge systems, combined with the correct development direction, and adapt to and cope with the challenges in the process of pursuing a doctorate as perfectly as possible, then the important practical significance of Professor Greywell's proposal of these issues is self-evident.
March 21, 2017
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