Interesting read. I always wondered from where did the idea about "thesis" & other "extra-circular" activities come from, for both students and professors.

Nowadays, promotions of professors for different levels (Assistant, Associate, Professor) is solely dependent on number of papers they are publishing in Q1 journals. But the research maybe entirely bogus, same ideas repurposed hundreds of times by different professors.

The entire concept about "systematic knowledge" has gone downhill.