Master of research

Dreams, hopes and promises
Fragments out of time
All of these things have been spoken
But still you don't understand how it feels when I'm
Waiting for them to be broken

(Peter Hammill, "My room (waiting for wonderland)")

Today I had the viva examination for my doctorate. As can be understood from this blog's title and the above quote, I was not awarded the doctorate. "We can see that the these is much improved from the first version and that this is valuable work. But we feel that the thesis does not meet the contribution threshold and so we can't award the doctorate. In recognition of your work, we recommend that you receive the Master of Research degree" (near enough what was said after the examination).

I did explain the difference between a PhD and a DBA in that the first degree expects new knowledge (or a contribution to the knowledge base) whereas a DBA is more an apprenticeship in research. The examiners were somewhat surprised to hear this, and maybe they consulted with someone in the business school when they were discussing my work (I wasn't present at this point), but they are sticking with their opinion.

So that's that. At least ten years' work gone up in smoke. To be honest, I'm fairly apathetic at the moment. I imagine that I would have felt differently had the exam taken place a year ago. It's slightly galling to realise that I was offered the Master of Research degree two and a half years ago and so I could have saved all my efforts. 

The work on the doctorate has been valuable, but at the moment, I don't have any more to say.

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
362	20/05/2011	Kate Bush - The Director's Cut	Kate Bush, The Unthanks
710	20/05/2014	Tea and iron	Health
854	20/05/2015	Venice log 1 - Arriving	Holiday, Venice, Italy
1135	20/05/2018	Harvest festival	Jewish holidays, Kibbutz
1220	20/05/2019	Villages (Greece 4)	Holiday, Andros, Greece
1221	20/05/2019	Searching for the elusive waterfall (Greece 5)	Holiday, Andros, Greece
1319	20/05/2020	More DBA news in May: it's getting even nearer the end	DBA