Practical PhD: Rethinking what a doctorate should deliver

 

I RECENTLY read an article stating that China is awarding PhDs (Doctor of Philosophy) to inventors without compromising academic standards. If this is indeed true, what’s a PhD even for anymore?

For a long time, the answer felt pretty clear: write a massive thesis, get published in academic journals, stack up citations, and earn your seat at the global research table. That’s the model nearly every university—including ours in Malaysia—grew up with.

But the world has changed. Economies are shifting. Competition in tech is fiercer than ever. And that tidy old formula is starting to feel a little outdated.

China recently shook things up. They’ve opened a new route for some engineering PhD students: instead of a 100-page dissertation, they can graduate with a working product. A real prototype. Something you can touch, test, deploy. An advanced chip, a manufacturing breakthrough, an operational system.

Some people love it. Some hate it. But either way, it’s forcing a conversation we shouldn’t duck out of.

Here in Malaysia, higher education has come a long way in twenty years. More papers published. Better rankings. Stronger international ties. But quietly, something else has crept in: a culture obsessed with metrics.

Want a promotion? Count your papers. Need grant renewal? Show your journal output. Universities celebrate citation numbers like scoreboards. And sure, publishing is part of science. That’s not the problem. The problem is when volume becomes the goal, and when “impact” only means impact on other academics.

Meanwhile, Malaysia’s economy is standing at a crossroads. We want to lead in semiconductor design, climb the electronics value chain, push into green energy, build our own medical tech.

These aren’t theoretical ambitions—they need people who can turn knowledge into actual working systems.

But too many PhD graduates struggle to bridge that gap between theory and practice and so maybe it’s time to carve out another path.

What if Malaysia offered two PhD routes? One for traditional academic research. Another for innovation grounded in industry. Not a watered-down degree—the second option would still demand rigorous analysis.

But instead of a thesis that lives on a library shelf, the output could be a validated prototype, a patentable invention, a real-world solution deployed and tested.

This isn’t fantasy. We already have the ecosystems for it. Penang’s electronics cluster. Johor’s expanding data infrastructure. Medical device manufacturing hubs. Renewable energy projects taking shape. These are places where a practical PhD could thrive.

Of course, it has to be done right. A working prototype alone isn’t a doctorate. Candidates would still need to show originality, technical depth, and meaningful advancement over what already exists.

And evaluation panels should bring in independent industry experts alongside academics—no conflicts, no shortcuts. The payoff could be real.

Students would wrestle with actual industrial challenges. Companies would get access to serious problem-solvers. Universities would stop being isolated knowledge silos and become genuine innovation partners.

But let’s be clear: this isn’t about turning our backs on fundamental science. Breakthroughs don’t always come with a commercial label attached. A healthy ecosystem needs both the thinkers and the builders.

The real challenge is incentives.

If universities keep rewarding publication counts over patents, startups, or tech transfer, nothing changes. Reform has to reach into promotion criteria, grant evaluations, KPIs. It has to mean something in how careers are built.

So no, this isn’t about copying China. Our politics, our economy, our academic traditions are different. The question is simpler: does our doctoral education reflect where we want to go as a country?

A PhD should stand for the highest form of intellectual achievement. But in a developing nation chasing technological leaps, it should also stand for something else: the ability to solve hard, messy, real-world problems.

Malaysia doesn’t need fewer scholars. It needs more scholar-engineers. Scholar-innovators. Scholar-builders.

If we get this right, a practical PhD pathway could shift the centre of gravity—from producing papers that circulate inside academic databases to producing solutions that circulate inside society. 

 KT Maran is a Focus Malaysia viewer.

The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of  MMKtT.

- Focus Malaysia.