For decision making and for tackling economic and social problems, some countries would depend on academicians more than politicians.
Dear Mahfuz
Percentage of Brazilian ministers with a doctorate in the period 1985-2007:
Highest rate - 52.9% Economics
Lowest index - 6.1% Social Action
Average - 22.5%
source:
The ministers of the New Republic
Maria Celina D Araujo
Paper presented at the II Consad, Brasilia, May 2009
Please check this and guess where the term stems from!!!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kordanize
Dear All,
I think number of people with a PhD in a government has nothing to do with the influence of scientific views or the appearance of a desire to use scientific approach. Politicians are selected according to their political views, interests and connections. The title of Dr. is only a mere adornment but may show the first failure of a politician.
In Estonia this is very rare. Most of them have only had a Bachelor degree, and we've even had a minister who even had not achieved that.
This is the way that it should be but unfortunately it is not the case all over the world
The great French general and statesman Charles de Gaulle once said:
"I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians."
Hi all. It depends on how politicians want to shape public image. In corrupt countries I think 100 percent of politicians will try to hide behind a doctorate degree. But if the bureaucratic system is efficient and corrupt free, there is no need for PhD's to run the offices. Having a PhD degree does not guarantee managerial abilities.
In India hardly few ministers are PhD.
I feel a True PhD student will have following qualities inculcated during his studies:
Patience
Methodical
Planning
Up-to-date
quest for "State of the art"
Sincere
Ready to learn from mistakes
dedication
targeted thought process
Honesty
Hard-work
Communication skills
Leader/Team spirit
Visionary
Management........
And we need all this in our politicians (Only possible in virtual environment).
I wish PhD could be made minimum qualification for becoming a minister. So that bureaucrats can not fool them and run the ministry/Govt and corruption could be eradicated.
I will echo Abdalla's words in that it depends on whether it translates into a PhD making something useful. This is one thing in academia that we forget. Research is not just abstract knowledge but it becomes useful once it is applied. Maybe that is why we are not getting funded as much.
There are many economic and social problems that the only way to tackle them is to have advanced knowledge of engineering, mathematics, political science, etc. These problems can be handled as they are currently being handled or they can be optimized by someone with deep insight into the matter and this is where I see a contribution by someone having a PhD.
In Serbia, there are always a few ministers with doctoral degree. Very often, their degrees do not mean anything regarding their job. Also, many people in and around Government are subject to laughing mood for suspected diplomas from private Universities! There are many scandals about!
I think that the job of a minister is to manage, rule and control his/her department following an objective purpose and plan called politics decided by a parliament if the country is a democracy or decided by a clan if the country is gerontocracy model. The minister must be of course high educated and skilled in the field of the ministry he/she should manage plus in management and communications rules.
A Phd degree is needed for people who want to pursue teacher or researcher career. If an academician or researcher is sufficiently skilled in management and communication and sufficiently technician ' as ministry management require much more pragmatism and a technician is more suitable than a theorist ', he/she could be very successful minister; In many developing countries especially in Arabic ones, required skills are hidden and people belonging to politics prefer titles of phd degrees as respectful image of them even if the degree is a corrupted one!!
In my country, many teachers go for a PhD, whether full time or part time. Now, many of us are civil servants, and for many years not allowed to take part in politics, except to vote and to be polling clerks. Schools are the voting centres.
So there are very few politicians with Doctorate degree. One previous prime minister was a medical doctor, and most ministers are probably lawyers. It's educators who have PhDs.
In my country Algeria, many ministers are high educated some of them with phd degrees from western countries universities 'Europe and USA', but their management were and are not successful. The first reason seems to be that no clear objective purpose drives their job or may be are people who impose and work with their self ideas out of any control from parliament or from their superiors or any official institution. The second reason is that most of them are not sufficiently skilled in communication with their department's professionals and with public media 'where the official language is a populist one' . The third reason is their managerial incompetency may be connected to their following to the oligarchic obedience policy and scheme. Which is very curious is that they assume their unsuccessful or their incompetence behind 2 words " the president's program". In other words if the program is non successful it is not me but the president. Anyway conscious people couldn't drive a program which is not successful and must assume their incompetency too
I think it is more important for politicians to have a science degree than a PhD in an irrelevant subject. There are only three with science PhDs in the 2010 UK Parliament.
I would like to share the summary of an article I published several days ago. It has to do with the education of Latin American presidents.
In the entire history of Latin America, only five presidents hold (or have held) a Ph.D. degree. These are: Chile (Rafael Pinera), Ecuador (Rafael Correa), Mexico (former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari), Mexico (former president Ernesto Zedillo), Chile (former president Ricardo Lagos).
Besides, the following presidents hold a Master degree: Colombia (current president Juan Manuel Santos), who holds 2 Master degrees), Panamá (Ricardo Martinelli), Costa Rica (Laura Chinchila), Peru (Ollanta Humala).
The rest of presidents either only have a B.A., or technical studies. Three presidents have no college whatsoever (Uruguay: Pepe Mojica; Bolivia: Evo Morales; Venezuela: Nicolás Maduro).
As for the rest, all presidents in Latin America have only had a BA degree.
Interesting, isn' t? I published this article in: Le Monde Diplomatique. You can find the text (in Spanish, tough) here:
http://www.carlosmaldonado.org/articulos/36-37%20mald.pdf
I would like to point out to two facts, thus:
a) In the labour market, earning just a BA degree is simply insufficient. The labour market demands that you have higher educational degrees so that your performance be enhanced and more efficient, not to mention better.
b) Many societies (and countries!) are entering into the information society, and a number of them are even entering into the knowledge society. These are from many standpoints qualitatively different societies than those in the past. Life is being organized differently.
Given these two facts (out of brevity) the leaders of a nation must cope with the new standards in general. Whether political, military, economical, or social leadership.
And yes: nonetheless, I agree with Adrian: the power of the "small people" is extremely important and can not be dismissed. Yet, one thing does not hinder or contradict with the other.
In the framework of the knowledge society having higher and better education is a condition - no body s talking about a guarantee! - for being a better person. Simply: higher and better education provides higher better quality of life for people. And scientists are among those layers of the population with a moral responsibility to help improve a better and higher quality of life for mankind. They do it by helping understand much better society, the universe and ourselves.
This is very good question. Today's ministers tend to show off with a PhD degree not knowing that a PhD is a way of life yet not suitable for their line of works.
"Then, Anthony, what about a business PhD?"
I think many politicians and MPs should have a business background, but am not sure if a business PhD would help. Actually, I am not even sure how relevant it is in business itself, since there are very many top businessmen who have succeeded from the bottom up, and have not floated in at the top with a degree. What you get with a science degree, and maybe not elsewhere, is numeracy, statistical competence and exposure to the scientific method, which is counter-intuitive to common sense.
A doctor degree - whether Ph.D., or B.Ph.D., provides mental discipline, forms or improves a broader and deeper scope or worldview, it corresponds to the actuisition of new languages, it allows the capacity to see and work in terms of interdisciplinarity. Therefore, it is desirable that decision-makers - as they are called (sic) - have a doctor degree. Certaintly they do not have to be academicians or scholars (sorry for this: in many cases it is even a fine decision that they decide no stay outside academia), but that education permits a larger view vis-à-vis time a longer time scales.
Dear K. C., I agree that common sense is vital for both performance and survival. No question about that. However, if you allow me to go a bit deeper, political theory and political philosophy has sufficiently pointed out that the most conservative political ideas have historucally been rooted or grounded on commonsense. (F.i., Oakshott, Fukuyama, Hungtington, and many others). I do not mean to discuss here about politics, I am just saying that commonsense has a clear tendency - when left on its own -, to be acritical and reluctant to innovation.
Of course, a sound commonsense (...) accompanied by a fine education and sense of compassion for mankind may help improve our world. We all have to help educate and form our own politicians. Their fate is for some extent also ours.
I don't believe there are many ministers with a doctorate, I don't event think there would be few...
In terms of level of education in representatives of the people in the political arena, a PhD may be rare .. however a higher degree of education can be assumed to be helpful in helping the government to form progressive views and policies. Still one may wonder how great a role literacy plays. Often literacy is not necessarily a sign or measure of education. A self taught businessman may be more educated in business management than one holding a degree. Still in the absence of better methods of evaluation a degree holds good. What would be helpful may be a necessity for politicians and leaders to prove some level of excellence in some field whether by having earned a degree or working in any field with some quantum of success besides winning elections.
Dear mandana, there are rather many ministers in Europe that hold a Ph.D. - mainly (don' t ask me why) in economics. Conspicuous cases are Iceland, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, to name but a few. You know? It's rather the amewrican influence that hinders politicians holding a Ph.D. That gap is stronger in the U.S., than in Europe or elsewhere. Did you know that in the U.S. only one president has had a Ph.D. degree? Amazing, right?
Enering into the knowledge society requires that a better and higher education be considered as a conditio-sine-qua-non for learders in general. nd I litearlly mena: as "one" condition. Certainly not everything is to be reduced to having higher academic diplomas.
Good morning,
I live in Italy and in the history of our Republic, the number of PhDs — or other higly qualified persons in our Governments— corresponds to an infinitesimal percentage of the total.
Not only that.
Traditionally, the vast majority of vice-ministers, counselors, advisors, even private consultants, and any other category of employees of our Ministers, has always been caught in the lower levels of education — according to nepotistic criteria.
This does not apply to lawyers. Our institutions are full of this kind of "experts".
The reason is easy to understand: Italy has a high level of corruption — corruption mechanisms with very sophisticated praxis [although retrograde. Nothing brilliant, but they work very well].
Thus, to have an attorney as an advisor, ensures politicians and senior bureaucrats to continue undisturbed.
But I have to observe that in the recent time something changed, apparently.
From a couple of seasons ago, suddenly a new political class has imposed: the Professors.
Every well-known person of the high bureaucracy and politics, called only "Honorable" up those days, suddenly began to show off his title of "Professor", "Academic", "Emeritus". In this way, trying to pair up the so-called "technicians". A sort of imitation of the prevailing European bureaucratic model.
We all understand, then, that the matter of the question wasn't about the level of education, the PhD degree, the high qualification owned by ministers. To give a practical example, recently a government of senior technicians, caused a huge disaster to the Italian society, with inhomogeneous technical choices and theoretical models unsubstantiated in the applicative phase.
Thus, we understood [I hope so…] that the matter is that ministers and senior officials should have ***the highest rate in some appropriate rankings***. Even if not *equipped* with a PhD.
And it follows that we understood [I hope…] that the responsibility goes back to the electors. If you vote someone without looking at his rank; or — worse – if you do not care at all whether there is a clear ranking, comprehensive and transparent, or not... Well, then the matter of this question isn't about the Minister's PhD, but the yours.
In recent months, some of the "Movements" in Italy [and hopefully, elsewhere] are trying to pursue a policy to break this corrupt, retrograde tradition. Well, we all will ascertain if those same voters will be able to support them.
—g
http://www.transparency.it/upload_doc/GCB2013_Report_Embargo.pdf
I like what Giuseppe shares with us. The astonishing fact is that politicians seen to go on one road, and soceity and knowledge on another different road. We don' t have to be neoliberals (God prevents us from that!) to claim that the market demands people highly qualified just in order for the market to achieve better performance. Politicians are under-qualified vis-a-vis of the dynamics of society, namely going into the informations society and the knowledge society.
For me, no matter if ministry is an PhD or not. The important things to be considered that the ministry could govern their position like the way an PhD proven their tesis and made a good decision, either to verified or falsified the science based on their knowledge and the facts.
In Germany we have a lot of ministers with a PhD. The interesting development is the scandalizing discovery that some of these PhDs are illegal. They are contradicted by the universities because of plagiary. The authors passed thoughts of other scientist as own discovery, and omitted the necessary citations. Some of our scientific politicians use the PhD but even never acquired a master degree. The normal political and social reaction in those cases is the instant dismissal of these persons from poltical administrative bodies.
@Hanno, we have similar situation in Serbia! Many scandals starting from President of Serbia and many others! :(((
I think that I can link my thread with this one.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_think_about_plagiarism_especially_when_it_is_related_to_high_Government_officials
Dear All,
The phenomenon, Ljbomir mentioned, is well-known also in Hungary. There occurred earlier that some deputy ministers used their official power to get a doctoral degree. Many people use faked language certificates that can be get in the black market for a certain amount of money.
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