Sad What a waste of taxpayer money. I am sure that there is valuable research coming out of some of those same universities, but someone at those schools is failing miserably in their responsibility to maintain quality standards.
Re: Sad The Australian schools, you mean. Penn State obviously maintains high standards in hiring leaders in their fields.
Um, well, wait a minute. Somewhere I got the idea that the primary purpose of doing a dissertation was to develop and display the research skills a scholar requires. I didn't think that the topic mattered that much. I mean, blondness probably DOES have historic and sociological consequences. ASTROLOGY, I admit, seems less defensable...
I'd be interested in actually seeing these dissertations. I wonder if they are really as stupid as this writer suggests, or whether they are being caricaturized somehow for somebody's amusement. We need to remember that popular culture is a legitimate subject for academic inquiry. We all accept the legitimacy of studying the Greek classics. We all accept the legitimacy of studying obscure theologians. Unfortunately, most people out there in the real world live lives utterly untouched by Greek classics or obscure theologians. But they are strongly influenced by ideas that they absorb from the popular media. They watch movies and TV, they read throw-away magazines, they watch sports and they listen to pop music. Song lyrics contribute more to the philosophical ideas of adolescents than all of the university philosophy departments combined. That's simply a fact. (And 18 year olds can vote.) I think that there is both intellectual interest and pragmatic utility in getting some handle on what kind of ideas and beliefs are circulating out there among individuals who are less educated than university professors.
