Some details have come out about a 37-year-old Korean student at Oxford University who committed suicide last July, hours after learning his doctorate in Buddhism wouldn't be granted because his thesis wasn't good enough.
Well, unlike Korea, people in Western unis don't have their MAs and Ph.Ds rubber stamped after their thesis "defense". I don't doubt there are other Koreans who did the same thing upon having their theses/dissertations rejected.
Probably, he would only have needed to rework the thesis to make it acceptable. When I was at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a Korean man there was told that his M.A. thesis was too weak and would be failed unless he reworked it. I edited it for him, showing him what was extraneous and what needed to be emphasized. When he'd reworked it, he received a very high evaluation, for he actually had some very good ideas that had been obscured by the extraneous.
I just have to know where his faculty advisor was in all this. I understand they're busy and can't babysit a guy's thesis, but if after five years Park wasn't where he needed to be, you have to ask what the advisor was doing.
Well, unlike Korea, people in Western unis don't have their MAs and Ph.Ds rubber stamped after their thesis "defense". I don't doubt there are other Koreans who did the same thing upon having their theses/dissertations rejected.
ReplyDeleteProbably, he would only have needed to rework the thesis to make it acceptable. When I was at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a Korean man there was told that his M.A. thesis was too weak and would be failed unless he reworked it. I edited it for him, showing him what was extraneous and what needed to be emphasized. When he'd reworked it, he received a very high evaluation, for he actually had some very good ideas that had been obscured by the extraneous.
ReplyDeleteJeffery Hodges
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I just have to know where his faculty advisor was in all this. I understand they're busy and can't babysit a guy's thesis, but if after five years Park wasn't where he needed to be, you have to ask what the advisor was doing.
ReplyDelete