Posted in the dunk tank because I expect to be dunked on.
So I got in a discussion with a friend that someone they knew was hardworking because they were doing a degree in music theory on a PhD track while also juggling multiple jobs. I was impressed with all the jobs this person was doing, but I said that music theory as a degree is absurd and most liberal arts degrees are related to professional bullshitting (re: writing useless essays about a specific quality of something) than they are about something socially useful so I didn't find that aspect impressive at all. In my eyes, the socially useful thing about a music theory degree would be applying this idea to make good music, or to teach others about it. Notably, music theory is not about engineering a stage for good acoustics, nor is it about building instruments. It leads to nothing tangible, but rather is a sort of meta-analysis of music as a whole. Its possible to receive a music theory degree while making bad music. And bad music and good music is wholly subjective, its possible to put on a very musically skillful display and have no one like it, or not be interesting enough that a good swath of people enjoy it.
Compare this to, say, an architecture degree. There can be artistic expression in architecture, but its incredibly important to put people through a degree program for rigor to avoid architectural deficiencies which can kill people. The point here is that any sort of rigor drilled into someone in a music theory PhD pipeline has questionable benefits, and is likely a waste of time and labor. However, it is possible that it would be useful to have music theory certifications that are relatively quick, cheap, and potentially free to get to help teach musicians music theory to improve their art, maximizing social benefits. And I think that is something that can be applied to a lot of liberal art degrees.
Maybe this is colored by the way my grandma taught me about Socialist Czechoslovakia. There were benefits for artists, but people could only get free/subsidized degrees if they went to do something very practical such as architecture, engineering, science, and so on. Which is why so much socialist art is baked into something practical, like housing.
the process of the PhD is to put together a committee of existing researchers in your discipline, have them collaborate to develop initial survey of existing scholarship in the topic of your research. after you do this background and extensive research of what has already been done and demonstrate some mastery of the knowledge, you identify the specific gap in existing knowledge and set to investigate it specifically under the guidance of your committee before developing a novel paper of your findings (maybe 50 pages?) to report back to your committee and the public and then spend a few hours defending your investigative process and articulating what you discovered, what it might mean to the discipline at large, and what are some questions or areas for followup/expanded investigation that you might pursue.
the amount of coursework in a PhD is minimal compared to research and inquiry.
as it was explained to me, a Bachelor's is meant to show you have a basic knowledge of the field. a Masters shows you have some additional specialized knowledge and how to conduct research into a topic within that field. a PhD shows you know how to identify gaps in understanding in a field, ask questions that haven't been asked, and investigate answers accordingly.
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy
I'm a stem head and have resisted the PhD route, because i don't really want to be part of the R1 machine and have yet to meet many PhDs that I would want to mentor under. but I don't really see the problem with how it works on a basic level. it's a tiny minority of people and it's a process for knowledge production and sharing. it has flaws, it's inefficient. big whoop. that comes with the territory of asking questions no one has asked before.
bestowing any discipline as being "practical" and more worthy is reactionary and leads to a seige mentality of disciplines closing off from each other instead of collaborating, which is is the biggest crisis in the academy. there needs to be more interdisciplinarity in inquiry. the problems we have today are going to rely on solutions drawing upon several disciplines, but that happens less when disciplines are pitted against each other for resources by a political project with an agenda.
what is that?
it's a classification the Carnegie Foundation awards every 5 years to designate level of research activity/"prestige", or more accurately, how much research $$$ passes through an institution. R1 is the highest, signifying "very high research activity". if you are going into academia and you work at an R1, the system is not going to care about your public service or your teaching record beyond lip service. you are there to get research grants and turn them into publications, or more insidiously, turn them into marketable intellectual property for the institution.
at the risk of sounding self-contradictory to my defense of the research professional development process in theory here, the R1 designation and the research professional development process, in practice, in the US is something i am ready to criticize 24-7. being part of the R1 machine, in my meaning, is an institutional and careerist devotion to investigation and knowledge production at the expense of knowledge dissemination through education and outreach.