In France and certain other European countries, it is necessary to pass your Ph.D. thesis a second time, and acquire yet another diploma known as a habilitation à diriger des recherches (or HDR). To do so, one must enroll as a student at a university again.

My friends who have passed their HDR found that the major advantage was to have a student card so as to access the cafeteria usually reserved for medical students at a fair price for a hot meal at lunchtime.

Now, in theory, the point of an HDR is precisely not to be a second doctorate. Up until 1984, there were really two types of Ph.D. in France, the doctorat d’état, and the regular doctorat, with the former integrating what has now been detached into the habilitation. It’s a formal post-doctoral diploma, and I hadn’t bothered, because in the U.S., it is superfluous. Under it all, I am still American, and I think the proof is in the pudding. Here though, someone has to eat the pudding and rate it.

If I prepare a presentation of my work done to date over the last ten years, I would have the right to call myself a docent and to apply for full professorships in France, Germany and Brazil, among other places. However, in France, I have started along a parallel system to the university ones, where I am not supposed to integrate a formal teaching component to my career. At least, not yet – the reforme des universités underway currently may lead to some bridges traversing this chasm between the professor-researchers and the “pure” researchers such as myself. (For future reference, as relates to the careers of researchers, pure or not, there were the Hoffmann and Schwartz reports made to the Minister of Research, in which the former at least recommended the abolition of superfluous administration in the careers of researchers and the “revalorisation” of the Ph.D., by which I would interpret it as recognition of the little added value represented by the HDR).

In the Wikipedia article, I learned that “Many, especially researchers in the natural sciences, as well as young researchers, have long demanded the abandonment of the habilitation as they think it to be an unnecessary and time-consuming obstacle in a scientific career, contributing to the brain drain of talented young researchers who think their chances of getting a professorship at a reasonable age to be better abroad and hence move, for example, to the UK or USA.”

That sums up my attitude to yet another administrative hurdle. It’s not of course insurmountable, but a waste of my time, at least in my field. Perhaps it is necessary in theology.

The reason I must pass this is because my first Ph.D. student is defending in October, but I can only hold the role of an “examiner” on her thesis committee because I do not yet have this qualification. I knew this ahead of time, but it seems properly stupid. Binding up thirty-odd articles and trying to explain a common thread between them is not going to make me a better student supervisor. It merely will confirm my scientific authority. And I already have my tenured position for life, so the only point of this exercise is to protect the unsuspecting student populace from people like me who couldn’t be bothered until now. (Which may not be such a bad idea.)

Rather than just permit a demonstration of one’s capacity to obtain funding and publish articles or monographs, there should be an explicit demonstration of one’s capacity to direct students. It is not necessary to have an HDR to direct a master’s degree-level student, and I’ve had many come through my hands, nor is is necessary for a Ph.D. level student if, like me, you’ve teamed up with a senior professor who will watch your back and step in if you can’t handle it after all and you are a poor advisor. Some of the HDRs do incorporate some recognition of teaching and advising capacity. What if we asked for recommendation letters from those we’ve advised, after they are out of our hands, and confidentially to the HDR committee? That might really be eye-opening and actually confer some usefulness to the process.