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Higher education in Kiravia: Difference between revisions
→Qualifications
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*'''[Degree 3]''' - Equivalent to the Western doctorate | *'''[Degree 3]''' - Equivalent to the Western doctorate | ||
*'''[Degree 4]''' - Highly advanced degrees awarded to [Degree 3] and [Degree 1+2] holders after ~1-2 years of intensive study and a a solid record of professional research and publishing. [Degree 4] courses focus on a specialised topic within a discipline (e.g. {{wp|organometallic chemistry}} within chemistry, third-generation Shaftonist music theory within musicology) and are regarded as conferring a right to "speak with authority" (''arda akrovirdas'') on that topic within the scholarly community. [Degrees 4] are most common in field regarded as {{wp|humanities}} in the Occident, but are also awarded in the natural sciences and {{wp|jurist|juristics}}. Most [Degree 4] holders are full-time academics or clergy; those who are not are overwhelmingly {{wp|surgeon|surgeons}}, as the [Degree 4] is an important and lucrative qualification among the Kiravian surgical profession and a requirement to teach surgery in most provinces. | *'''[Degree 4]''' - Highly advanced degrees awarded to [Degree 3] and [Degree 1+2] holders after ~1-2 years of intensive study and a a solid record of professional research and publishing. [Degree 4] courses focus on a specialised topic within a discipline (e.g. {{wp|organometallic chemistry}} within chemistry, third-generation Shaftonist music theory within musicology) and are regarded as conferring a right to "speak with authority" (''arda akrovirdas'') on that topic within the scholarly community. [Degrees 4] are most common in field regarded as {{wp|humanities}} in the Occident, but are also awarded in the natural sciences and {{wp|jurist|juristics}}. Most [Degree 4] holders are full-time academics or clergy; those who are not are overwhelmingly {{wp|surgeon|surgeons}}, as the [Degree 4] is an important and lucrative qualification among the Kiravian surgical profession and a requirement to teach surgery in most provinces. | ||
Degrees other than [Degree 1½] are not {{wp|List of tagged degrees|tagged}} with the holder's course of study. Rather, they are noted on CVs and such with the title of the monstration ([[Higher education in Kiravia#Monstration|see below]]) for which they were granted, which is taken as an indication of the holder's academic focus. However, in recent decades it has become more common (mostly for postgraduate degrees) to interpolate the field of study between the degree and monstration title, e.g. " [Degree 2] - Proteomics - ''Induction of IgG1 and IgG3 Secretion in Naïve Surface Immunoglobulin D+ (sIgD+) B-cells by [[Kikpari]] Interleukin 10'' ". | |||
===Monstrations=== | ===Monstrations=== | ||
Kiravian degrees are not granted on the basis of satisfactory completion of ordinary coursework or credit-hours (though this is ''most often'' a prerequisite). Rather, they are awarded for a ''trua'' (rendered in Ænglish as "{{wt|monstration|monstration}}") showing their mastery of the subject matter. A ''trua'' may take the form of an ''ōrstava'' ("review"), an ''amderen'' ("submission"), or both ''ōrstava amderesk'' ("review of submission"). A review is an {{wp|oral examination}} by ranking faculty, which was the standard mode of undergraduate ''trua'' from antiquity until the mid-19th century ''anno Domini''. A submission is some form of deliverable - normally a paper - submitted to ranking faculty for approval, which accounts for the majority of undergraduate ''trua'' today. A submission review entails delivering a submission to senior faculty for their perusal and subsequently responding to their questions and challenges thereto, usually orally, not unlike an Occidental dissertation defence. The title of one's ''trua'' appears on one's diploma (as it is notionally awarded to the monstration rather than its author), and is cited on one's CV. | |||
At the undergraduate level, the ''ōrstava'' has been largely supplanted by the ''amderen'', though it remains the norm in the Northeast and at historically Taństan, Kandan, and Kaltan colleges, some more traditionalist private universities, and elite schools in South Kirav, and for pre-professional programmes. It is more widely employed for [Degree 1½] and at the graduate level (indeed, it is standard for medical and legal degrees). The ''ōrstava amderesk'' is the most common form of ''trua'' given for [Degree 2] and [Degree 3]. | |||
The ''amderen'' is normally a paper, but may also take the form of a project or performance, commonly expected in arts, culinary, and architectural programmes, and increasingly common at business and engineering schools. At the [Degree 4] level, the standards for evaluating an ''amderen'' or ''ōrstava amderesk'' have converged with the standards for the Occidental doctorate dissertation - that is, they are expected to represent {{wp|original research}} that meaningfully advances the state of knowledge in the field. At the [Degree 2] level and below, this is not so, and [Degree 2] ''amderen'' may represent fieldwork, case studies, etc. rather than a {{wp|thesis}}. At the [Degree 1] level, insofar as ''amderen'' are subject to substantive evaluation at all (see below), they more often take the form of a {{wp|literature review}} than a thesis, especially at universities under a Didactic rule. In former times, universities printed and bound all ''amderen'' to which they awarded degrees for retention in their campus library. Today, this form of archiving is limited to graduate ''amderen''; undergraduate submissions are usually preserved on microfilm or as digital scans only. | |||
In modern times, completion of coursework is normally a prerequisite for the consideration of a monstration. However, historically this was not the case, and even today it is not a hard-and-fast rule at institutions and faculties that practice substantive review of monstrations. Students in such programmes may opt to make their monstration ahead of schedule, which was formerly quite common. Faculties may (for a fee) entertain monstrations from students who have studied at a different university without requiring a {{wp|College transfer|transfer}}. This is rare (though not unheard of) at the undergraduate level, but more frequent further up the degree hierarchy, especially for [Degree 3], for which applicants have been known to "shop around" after an initial rejection. Many non-surgical [Degree 4] programmes are intended for full-time academics from other institutions and some are entirely monstration-based. In extremely rare cases, some accredited universities have awarded degrees for monstrations from independent scholars who have undertaken no coursework anywhere. | |||
===Current State of Undergraduate Monstrations=== | |||
Changing conditions in Kiravian higher education during the post-Kirosocialist era have altered the role of the monstration at the [Degree 1] and [Degree 0] level. Enrollment at degree-granting institutions, particularly public ones, saw massive growth after post-liberalisation economic growth set in, with much of this enrollment in new disciplines such as business management, for which there were not yet settled standards for evaluating monstrations, and for which some faculty questioned the relevance of the practice. Moreover, under the Kiravian Union, ''amderen'' in most disciplines had been judged according to a fairly standardised set of rubrics heavy with [[Kiravian Marxist philosophy|Kiro-Marxian]] ideological strictures, and so the displacement of Kirosocialist and Analytical Shaftonist ideological orthodoxy from the academy left the standards used to evaluate theses in economics, political studies, history, philosophy, and the humanities deprecated. Under [[The Deluge|the deluge]] of submissions from an enlarged candidate pool and a lack of consensus as to how to evaluate ''amderen'', most public universities quietly discontinued substantive examination of undergraduate theses, granting [Degree 1] after cursory or formalities-only review, though they would not begin to publicly confirm this change until the [DECADE]s. | |||
Today, the evaluation of ''amderen'' varies by rule and from institution to institution. While a few flagship (University of Ykraine) state universities (mostly in Taństan-speaking states) or individual departments perform cursory examinations as a matter of course, most flagship and all second-tier (Ykraine State University) public universities no longer examine undergraduate monstrations on the merits by default. Students seeking consideration for honours must specially request substantive examination and pass a cursory review before proceeding further. | |||
At other types of institutions, especially private ones, ''amderen'' are still examined on the merits. Some such institutions (or departments) require an oral defence, or an epistolary defence involving two or three rounds of written responses to challenges from the examining faculty. | |||
The ''pro forma'' nature of the undergraduate monstration for a sizeable minority of students and the understanding that most will never be read have encouraged the submission of millions of ''amderen'' that are brazenly low-effort (example: ), patently spurious (example: ), humorous (example: ), unrelated to the author’s field of study (example: ), or wholly unreadable (example: ). Unabashed plagiarism was rampant in the intervening decades between the official end of substantive examination at public universities and the digitisation of academic databases. In 21208, D.F.W. Érigorivan, a professor of [[Kalvertan Coscivian|Kalvertan]] literature at [[Hanoram]]’s third-tier Spuirdun State College and a defender of substantive examination, found that between 80% and 90% of theses submitted to his institution during the three preceding years were computer-generated, with widely varying levels of sophistication and believability. Further, a full 20% of theses were duplicates or near-duplicates (most often with the title being the only point of difference). | |||
A growing number of schools make published theses accessible online, which has led to IxTwitter accounts that highlight especially humorous, implausible, or unusual thesis titles and abstracts. | |||
Despite this, there remain incentives for students to produce serious and high-quality theses. These include postgraduate admissions, consideration for honours, use of the thesis as a writing sample when seeking employment, personal pride, and its twin sibling parental pressure. | |||
==Selected List of Institutions== | ==Selected List of Institutions== | ||