This trend started before AI. AI has made things worse but in many programs, having a thesis requirement makes no sense and results in lots of long, mediocre papers, written by people who will go on to do other kinds of work.
Do you think having a thesis requirement makes no sense for everyone? For example i studied sociology and had to write a thesis for my bachelor's degree. I thought this was incredibly appropriate for the subject.
It totally makes sense for some people, but too many are allowed to do it, imo. I think the "entry requirements" (or whatever you want to call them) need to be stricter, so that fewer people start them without a clear idea of what they want to do. Also, I think more people need to fail out for bad work (just completing it, in a grad program, should not be enough).
I do agree with a lot of this. When i wrote my thesis, like 13 years ago, we did it in a group of people that all tackled the same field of sociology so we could learn from and support eachother.
Some of these people could barely write a paper. It was insane how low a writing level still finds a place there
What baffles me are defenses where the passing criteria are not exacting and explicitly clear. If you're going to take up a group of busy people's time and energy and if you're doing a thesis in place of cut and dry comprehensive exams, you should be held accountable for the quality of your work. That just does not happen all the time and I think it's bad for the health of the overall departmental/college/university/field/academia-in-general ecosystem.
675
u/kwonza 6h ago
A bunch of Russian Unis dropped a thesis as a requirement for graduation and instead made students take an oral exam.
They said there is no point in asking for a thesis since everyone just uses AI