Doctor of Philosophy Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Educational reforms in Germany === This situation changed in the early 19th century through the educational reforms in [[Germany]], most strongly embodied in the model of the [[Humboldt University of Berlin|University of Berlin]], founded and controlled by the [[Prussian government]] in 1810. The arts faculty, which in Germany was labelled the faculty of philosophy, started demanding contributions to research,<ref name="Redefining the Doctorate">{{Cite book |last=Park |first=C. |url=https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/gradschool/about/external/publications/redefining-the-doctorate.pdf |title=Redefining the Doctorate |publisher=The Higher Education Academy |year=2007 |location=York, UK |page=4 |access-date=2 October 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161006014331/https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/gradschool/about/external/publications/redefining-the-doctorate.pdf |archive-date=6 October 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> attested by a dissertation, for the award of their final degree, which was labelled Doctor of Philosophy (abbreviated as Ph.D.)—originally this was just the German equivalent of the Master of Arts degree. Whereas in the Middle Ages the arts faculty had a set curriculum, based upon the [[trivium (education)|trivium]] and the [[quadrivium]], by the 19th century it had come to house all the courses of study in subjects now commonly referred to as sciences and humanities.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Rüegg |first=Walter |title=A History of the University in Europe: Volume 3, Universities in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945) |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}</ref> Professors across the humanities and sciences focused on their advanced research.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Turner |first=R. Steven |title=The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818 to 1848-Causes and Context |year=1971 |volume=3 |pages=137–182 |doi=10.2307/27757317 |jstor=27757317 |journal=Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences}}</ref> Practically all the funding came from the central government, and it could be cut off if the professor was politically unacceptable.{{Relevance inline|date=May 2015}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lenoir |first=Timothy |title=Revolution from above: The Role of the State in Creating the German Research System, 1810–1910 |year=1998 |volume=88 |pages=22–27 |jstor=116886 |issue=2 |journal=The American Economic Review}}</ref> These reforms proved extremely successful, and fairly quickly the German universities started attracting foreign students, notably from the United States. The American students would go to Germany to obtain a PhD after having studied for a bachelor's degree at an American college. So influential was this practice that it was imported to the United States, where in 1861 [[Yale University]] started granting the PhD degree to younger students who, after having obtained the bachelor's degree, had completed a prescribed course of graduate study and successfully defended a [[thesis]] or dissertation containing original research in science or in the humanities.<ref>See, for instance, {{Cite journal |last=Rosenberg |first=R. P. |title=Eugene Schuyler's Doctor of Philosophy Degree: A Theory Concerning the Dissertation |year=1962 |volume=33 |pages=381–386 |doi=10.2307/1979947 |jstor=1979947 |issue=7 |journal=The Journal of Higher Education}}</ref> In Germany, the name of the doctorate was adapted after the philosophy faculty started being split up − e.g. Dr. rer. nat. for doctorates in the faculty of natural sciences − but in most of the English-speaking world the name "Doctor of Philosophy" was retained for research doctorates in all disciplines. The PhD degree and similar awards spread across Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The degree was introduced in France in 1808, replacing [[diploma]]s as the highest academic degree; into Russia in 1819, when the ''[[Doktor Nauk]]'' degree, roughly equivalent to a PhD, gradually started replacing the [[specialist diploma]], roughly equivalent to the MA, as the highest academic degree; and in Italy in 1927, when PhDs gradually started replacing the [[Laurea]] as the highest academic degree.{{citation needed|date=February 2017}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page