Recently, I signed on as a part-time remote academic editor for a for-profit higher education institution located somewhere in the Midwest. It’s not a big outfit. It resembles the university I attended back in 2005, before they sold out to a management company and started taking federal student loan money. I thought taking this job would help me stay connected to the institutional side of academics.
Over the course of a month, I have edited three chapters for three dissertators. What I’ve learned is that this higher education institution—no doubt in the name of customer service—has inadvertently erected barriers to dissertator success. Arbitrary guidelines have become obstacles—I’ll choose the three obstacles I’ve seen so far: using first person, choosing a document title, and receiving conflicting advice from checklists and templates.
Why can’t I use first-person?
Despite some clear, logical guidance on use of first person in the latest edition of the American Psychological Association’s publication manual, the dissertators at this institution are not allowed to refer to themselves in first-person more than twice in Chapter 3 (their Methodology chapter), and only in the section entitled “Role of the Researcher.” (That section is typically only found in qualitative and mixed-methods dissertations. I don’t know what quantitative dissertators are going to do.) Nowhere else. And preferably only once. Definitely not more than twice. We are counting!
What’s more, dissertators are not allowed to refer to themselves in the third-person at all. Typically, in academic writing, authors who aren’t allowed to use first-person will use third-person, usually “the researcher.” It’s very common to see statements such as “The researcher will employ a qualitative methodology” or “The researcher found that 40% of the moon is made of green cheese.” You’ve no doubt seen this in journal articles and published dissertations. It’s clunky, I agree, but it is well-accepted that we know who the author is referring to when we see “the researcher.”
This school, my new employer, does not allow “the researcher.” That leaves us with passive voice. That results in sentences such as “a qualitative methodology was employed” (apparently by some anonymous entity who will remain in the shadows). Lucky for me, APA style has loosened up since the 6th edition. Now we can write “The study found that 40% of the moon is made of green cheese” and not get busted for anthropomorphism. What a relief.
Still, my point is . . . what is my point? Every institution has its quirky guidelines. Somewhere in the annals of someone’s academic experience, some administrator got reamed for using first-person pronouns. Hence forward, no more “I,” “me,” “my,” or “mine.” Forget about claiming their role as the researcher. And thus, their personal shame has morphed into a prohibition codified into a dissertation template that disregards the lovely energy of current APA style.
Why can’t I write my own title?
This institution designates a specific approach to writing the dissertation title. The title should capture the essence of the study, mention the target population or sample groups, and should include the methodology. I have no problem with mentioning the population or sample, but unless the dissertation is about the methodology itself, it is often a waste of keyword real estate to include the methodology in the title.
A common title among dissertators at this for-profit institution seems to be something like Examining perceptions of colorful cheese on the moon: A qualitative phenomenological study. I’ve only edited three chapters so far, but “qualitative phenomenological study” seems to be trending. My Dissertation Chair would have shredded my submission, saying, get a clue, qualitative and phenomenological are redundant. Duh. My Chair was a methodologist. I don’t get the sense that the authors of this template and checklist are deeply steeped in methodology. I think they are deeply steeped in a desire to streamline the process of writing a dissertation so that even nonacademics can produce an acceptable manuscript, graduate, and get busy paying back their credit card loans.
This is what happens when institutions attempt to control for quality. In a better world, controlling for quality should apply to the customer service students receive from administrative staff. A quality-focused student-centric approach should include responsive faculty, easy-to-navigate learning platforms, technology that works, and a library that has what dissertators need. Controlling for dissertation quality by requiring all dissertators to write dissertations to conform with an arbitrary set of guidelines is not likely to produce robust studies that help practitioners improve their practices.
What should I do if there are conflicting guidelines?
Conflicting guidelines are the bane of an editor’s existence. They aren’t good for dissertators either. So much time and energy is wasted in tracking down the “right” format. In the dissertation checklist, dissertators learn that paragraphs can have more than three sentences, but not fewer. However, in the dissertation template, dissertators find out there is no set number of sentences in a paragraph. They should simply avoid paragraphs that consist of one sentence or more than one page. A Chair who follows the checklist will annoy the dissertator who follows the template. Who is right? The Chair, of course. Gatekeepers are always right, even when they are wrong.
Here’s another one. The checklist requires the dissertator to format the research questions with a half-inch indent. No, wait, according to the template, format the research questions with a first-line indent. Well, whatever we do, make sure you write out the number, like this: Research Question One. No, make that Research Question 1—follow APA style and use the numeral. This conflict is small, like fly crap in the pepper. However, when time is a factor, a dissertator can waste a lot of that precious resource trying to get guidance on something as ridiculous as formatting the research questions. It would be nice if we could simply follow APA style, but no such luck. When the gatekeeper prefers the “official” checklist and not the “official” template, we go with the gatekeeper’s preference.
What can a dissertator do?
These examples show what happens when an institution tries to manage and control quality by making all dissertations fit a specific format and style. If the required style complied with APA style, at least we could all (mostly) agree on a format. However, when institutional requirements depart from APA style, and moreover, if the requirements conflict among internal guidelines, what is a dissertator (or editor) to do?
I studied academic quality at several for-profit career colleges. I was working for one at the time, and I was peeved at what I perceived to be a tendency for administrators and owners to ignore education quality in their rabid pursuit of profit. For-profits want to operate like a business—efficient, lean, and profit-centric. It’s Business Administration 101. The owners and managers have taken the management courses. It ought to work. Except education is not transportation. Dissertators are not cars. Helping students earn their degrees is not like running a just-in-time assembly line. In the context of doctoral-level education, for-profits do a great disservice to their “customers” when they pretend that a one-size-fits-all approach to writing and formatting dissertations is going to produce robust dissertations that the institution can proudly publish.
What can a dissertator do?
Read like a maniac. Read dissertations in your field published by for-profit, private nonprofit, and public institutions. You will start to sense the guardrails that might or might not exist at your institution.
Talk to your Chair. Ask about style preferences. Get it in writing.
Study your institution’s templates and handbooks. Watch for discrepancies. I guarantee you will find some. Pay attention to both content requirements and formatting requirements.
Study the APA style guide (or whatever style guide you are required to use). Again, watch for discrepancies between your institution’s guidelines and APA style. And your Chair’s preferences.
Try not to take it personally. Jump through the hoops as best you can. Remember, this is just the beginning of your academic career. You have lots of time to create your own style.
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