she's starting her Ph.D. this fall - hasn't she already achieved it? What is the theory behind expecting someone who has solved a decades-old problem to do some "second" thing to prove that they have extended the bounds of human knowledge?
The next step for someone who has PhD and want to stay in academia is postdoc. After solving one problem, you would not necessarily have what's needed to get a good postdoc, such as clear research agenda or proof of ability to publish consistently.
I hope she's found a program that will support her while realizing she's smarter than whomever is setting the rules, rather than something stifling.
Many institutions would actually jump at the chance. That's way better than a 35 or 37 year old burnt out from just finishing their PhD and getting onto the tenure track suffer-fest. Think of how many years of productive research she has in her. It used to be way more common until academia became so professionalized and bureaucratic.
At 17 she’s so young that a uni hiring her would need to think about child labor laws
But I was offered an assistant professorship at the Kellogg School of Business at age 21, and have often wondered whether I should perhaps have taken that, or else the research position I was offered at RAND.
> “It took me a while to convince Ruixiang Zhang [the professor of the course where the problem had been posed] that my proposal was actually correct,” Cairo says
> At the University of Maryland, she will continue working under the supervision of Zhang. “He helped me so much, and I’m really grateful. Beyond his class, which I loved, he spent countless hours tutoring me,” she recalls.
PhDs "by publication" refers to not having to submit work additional that already published to the examining committee.
Do you have a PhD from a theory department? I do. You're wrong.
Nobody gets a PhD by publication without publications. It's literally axiomatic.
> It's literally axiomatic.
You've made up some axiomatic definition of "by publication" that does not bear any resemblance to the actual definition. Consider that it's possible to
1. Submit a preprint to arxiv and have it count
2. Submit a preprint to a journal and defend before it accepted (or rejected)
3. Not submit anything anywhere and have the PhD itself count (almost all PhDs get an ORCID)
This is a process where you can write your "dissertation" by putting an intro and a conclusion on ~3 papers you have already published and get a PhD that way. You enroll in the school for ~3 months, write the missing parts, and that's it. This is a flexible path to a PhD for industry researchers or other people who have a lot of expertise and have pushed the boundaries of a field but did not do a formal PhD program.
I have never heard of anyone doing this with ArXiV preprints or any school accepting this path if they are not referreed papers. I would love to see an actual counterexample if you have one.
There are degree mills that do what you describe.
There is also the format in countries such as Germany or the Netherlands where one typically "bundles" one's publications into a thesis. However, the work is typically done in the context of supervised doctoral programmes and no less rigorous than that done under different PhD studies formats.
https://www.cambridgestudents.cam.ac.uk/exams/students/postg...
Like I said above, this is not usually offered unless you are clearly doing work of sufficient quality. 3 ArXiV preprints can get you a PhD just fine, but it won't cut it if you wrote them when nobody is watching.
I'm not sure how common a route ot Ph.D. it is (I never heard of it before), but it sounds like an anachronistic extension of the MA's Oxbridge graduates feel entitled to.
"PhD by publication" is a specific thing, it's in italics in the previous post.
My Universities offer a "PhD by publication". You basically staple together a bunch of your publications, and write a brief intro. It saves you writing a full PhD document. But, the standard on those publications is quite high -- you certainly wouldn't get one from preprints to arxiv at any University I've ever worked at.
Of course, you can get a PhD with no publications, just write a good PhD. Lots of students do taht.
Note the italics please.
So I'm sorry you're right I'm not in expert in Europe's monopoly on the phrase "PhD by publication" but who would want to be an expert in trivial bs like that (answer: apparently you and the other guy!)
You are the one who started talking about people not being experts in having a PhD by publication. No-one else (including me) has bought up that they are an expert on that topic.
On average someone that does have a PhD will have a wider set of skills, like understanding of the complexities of the field, resistance to frustration, capability to do research and ability to communicate.