Journey of a Journalist (Part 4B)

Piling High and Deep in journalism—Doing the PhD

By Shelton A. Gunaratne©2009

(August 04, Washington, Sri Lanka Guardian) I was sure that I did not want to prolong people’s dukkha by creating tanhā through Madison Avenue techniques, which I learned in Oregon. Therefore, after consulting with my adviser, I decided to do course work for two additional years despite the fact that some overlap existed between the mandatory Minnesota courses and those in my Oregon transcript.

The final shape of my Ph.D. from Minnesota emerged from the following knowledge-base:

Educational psychology courses in statistical methods 14 credits

Cultural anthropology courses 12 credits

Speech communication course in international broadcasting 3 credits

Journalism courses in international communication 12 credits

Journalism seminars (201, 202, 203) on MC theory and methods 9 credits

Other journalism courses (public opinion, analysis, etc.) 12 credits

It took me two years full-time, including summer sessions, to complete these 62 credits. The last 12 credits constituted overkill because my Oregon coursework overlapped with most. But Minnesota SJMC thought of itself as a superior graduate school whose graduate quality would be contaminated by allowing too many substitutions.

I reproduced the above coursework structure to point out that a Ph.D. in journalism entails a meaning well beyond what journalism is understood to be in the newsroom. One who gets a Minnesota doctorate in journalism invariably turns into a “chi-square” concerned with quantitative analysis in contrast to a “green-eye-shade” who prefers qualitative analysis.

A Ph.D. moulds one into a scholar who uses the scientific method to analyze complex social problems involving (mass) communication.

In fall 1970, I turned into an ABD (all but the doctorate). I sat the written preliminary examination in international communication (on Oct. 24) and theory and methods (on Nov. 14). A committee comprising professors Roy Carter Jr., Raymond Nixon, Philip Tichenor (all from SJMC), Luther Gerlach (anthropology) and Donald Browne (speech communication) conducted my preliminary PhD oral examination on Dec. 8. After the two-hour examination, the committee recognized me as an official candidate in philosophy—an ABD.

A British-style Ph.D. would have dispensed with most of the coursework and focused on the dissertation. Now, after more than three years in graduate school, I had yet to do the field work needed to write my dissertation. But I had the academic know-how to do my research in rural Ceylon thanks to the cultural anthropological coursework I had completed.

I had planned returning to my homeland to do a longitudinal study of modernization that might contribute to its understanding of the interaction of the mass media with other co-arising factors in producing ongoing change. But my requests for assistance from the government of Ceylon did not evoke any interest. My project was to re-visit and study the same villages that sociologists Bryce Ryan and S. J. Tambiah had already studied—Pelpola, Wattappola, Elagammillewa and Bulupitiya—during the period 1949-1952.

I took up a university appointment as a full-time research fellow at the Bureau of Institutional Affairs during the first half of 1971 in hopes of replenishing my bank account prior to leaving for Ceylon. The university also awarded me a Putnam D. McMillan Fellowship for $1,400 to cover my travel expenses, as well as a Graduate School grant of $500 to do field work.

[Note: I spent six months in Ceylon from August 1971 to February 1972 doing my field research. See next installment for my impressions on my homeland after my five-year stay in America.]

After returning to Minnesota in mid-March, I had to again look for accommodation in the vicinity of Dinkytown. During the spring, I laboriously analyzed the data punched into my computer cards using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences as my bible. I relied heavily on SJMC research fellows Dennis Davis and Kurt Kent to select the statistical techniques pertinent the type of data I had collected. All data-processing was to be done at the university’s computer center because the days of the powerful desktops had yet to arrive.

I wrote most of my thesis in the summer in the absence of my adviser who was on a sabbatical in Brazil. I had to send each segment of my thesis for his comments by mail. It somehow worked. He returned to Minnesota from Brazil on Aug. 13. With his approval, I arranged my final oral Ph.D. examination for Aug. 16. Three of the panel—Carter, Nixon and Browne—were on my preliminary oral examination panel previous December. Two were new—Robert Lindsay (SJMC) and Alan Rew (anthropology).

The next day, Carter signed a letter certifying that I (Dr. Shelton Gunaratne) was entitled to all the privileges of a Ph.D. However, the regents of the University of Minnesota awarded me the degree of Doctor of Philosophy only on Dec. 13, 1972.

I have documented the details and results pertaining to my study in my dissertation titled “Mass media information, social differentiation and modernization: A longitudinal survey of four Ceylonese villages” approved and released by University of Minnesota in December 1972.

I turned it into a book titled Modernization and Knowledge: A study of four Ceylonese villages. Amic in Singapore published it as a communication monograph in 1976.


Next: Part 4C Piling High and Deep in journalism—an excursus

[The writer is a professor of mass communications emeritus at Minnesota State University Moorhead.]

-Sri Lanka Guardian