‘Cold emails’ give academia the shivers

 

Cold email is increasingly being used in academia as the first line of connection between an applicant for a PhD degree, and a potential supervisor.

In my opinion, shooting off cold emails to professors is not only counterproductive, but feeds into academic trickery.

Cold email is defined as a personalised, one-to-one message targeted at a specific individual.

Traditionally, its aim is to get into a business conversation with that individual, rather than to promote a product or a service to the masses. It is also not considered spam.

Cold email later moved into the sales industry. Here, the sole purpose was to pitch “the perfect offer”. Usually, one generic message is sent to a large group of prospective consumers, without any personalisation.

Over the last decade or so, cold email has been furiously penetrating academia. At PhD level, applicants are blasting off cold emails to established scholars, asking to be supervised by them.

Potential students send generic emails to professors and department administrators, hoping to get a positive response.

Over the course of my career, I have received quite a number, but that number has quadrupled over the last five years.

Here is an example of one I received just three days ago:

“Hi, I hope you are doing well. I have done my MS in Security and Strategic Studies from Pakistan. Now I am applying for PhD in Strategy and Security Studies at (Your University). I am attaching my CV, MS degree and transcript and my research proposal. Please have a look at my documents. Hope you will consider me for your kind supervision.”

This latest cold email was sent to four of my ex-colleagues and to me.

Two have retired over the last two years, while another was transferred to a research institute more than three years ago. The sender obviously did not do their homework.

On top of this, all five of us “addressees” specialise in completely different sub-fields.

The sender attached his research proposal, which made it obvious that he was not looking for “expertise” in the field of his interest.

The “Hi, I hope you are doing well” opener is not only unprofessional, but also impersonal and adolescent, even though this person is a 30-year-old individual, who claims to have a Master’s degree. Why would any self-respecting scholar take this applicant seriously?

A potential student resorting to cold email can be perceived as someone who is desperate, opportunistic and infantile.

These “wannabee” PhD candidates possibly use cold email because they know universities compete for students to boost their global ranking, not to mention the brownie points universities get for “internationalising” their student body.

Prospective PhD students also know how to capitalise on the ambitions of mid- to senior-level lecturers.

They are aware that these academics need many PhD candidates to supervise, to boost their key performance indicators (KPIs). The more PhDs they can “GoT” (i.e. graduate on time), the better their chances for promotion.

In the pre-cold email days, students diligently applied using simple forms. The application process was quick, organised, and professional. What’s more, the applicant had to write professionally, and there was no such thing as a “Hi, how are you doing?” opener. The applicant had to THINK.

In the past, the rule of thumb was that there were at least four basic rules that potential supervisors would traditionally follow.

First, an application that contains a list of potential mentors “cut and pasted” from the internet, would not make it past the initial round of consideration.

Such a mangled list of mentors indicates that the candidate does not know the scholarly field. They are neither making the effort to know the field, nor showing an interest in intellectually associating with the mentor’s genius.

At best, this grocery list of experts is a vulgar exhibition of name-dropping.

Second, it was not common for professors to receive emails with embedded links to CVs. We would not simply click some random link, especially if the applicant did not intelligently discuss aspects of their intended research project.

Third, cold emails today have a lot of grammatical and spelling errors. One could excuse a few, especially in cases where the applicant is writing in a language other than their native language.

However, if such a candidate desires to be mentored by a professor who has published in a particular language, it is expected that the applicant would take care to write a grammatically correct email.

Fourth, in the pre-cold email days, promising PhD candidates would be called for an interview after an initial vetting process.

Today, the authors of cold email demand an interview and a laboratory tour. On top of this, they impertinently decide that such an interview would take “only one or two hours of the professor’s time”, so why not oblige?

Cold emails almost always betray their author’s sincerity in wanting to do a PhD. Supervisors should be wary of the candidate’s research or “science” capabilities, based on the careless approach in the application. The world still boasts credible scholars who prefer not to be intellectual “babysitters”. We still believe in intellectual mentoring.

Also, most scholars still look for students who can make ideological connections with past research. They look for potential candidates who can state this in their PhD applications.

Today, cold emails do the complete opposite. They are a testament to the absence of analytical depth in PhD applications.

Without such depth in an application, what does this suggest about the eventual dissertations produced, or the intellectual quality of those awarded doctorates?

Is it any wonder that there is an overwhelming number of unemployed PhD holders, both in Malaysia and globally?

At the end of the day, the critical question is: what is the point of pursuing a PhD? Malaysia’s public universities may boast the production of thousands of PhD holders annually, many of whom may have been accepted through the “cold email route”.

Is it worth anything to have these people running around, expecting to be called “Dr”? - FMT

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