Last week three doctorates were awarded for the Albany Campus by Steve Maharey, the Vice Chancellor of Massey University at the Faculty of Business award ceremony.   The ceremony was well run and the pomp and ceremony was modest rather than ostentatious.  I was there because two of the three candidates had worked with us at the Woodhill Park Research Retreat.

The three doctorates were the final degree to be awarded and each of the candidates was called up, one at a time, with their doctoral sash over one arm.  The Faculty Dean then placed the sash over the head of the successful candidate after which the Vice Chancellor read out an abridged version of the abstract describing the work that each person had completed.  Prior to that, he had extolled the virtues of the candidates and lavished praise on those who had supported the doctoral students throughout their studies.  In particular, he lauded their family and friends and he also noted the enormous effort that is associated with the construction and completion of a doctoral thesis.  

Once the abstract had been presented, the candidate was ceremonially capped by the Chancellor and in a nice touch each candidate was presented with a very large bouquet of flowers at the point of receiving their degree/testamentum.  They were then invited to take a seat with faculty rather than leaving the stage to resume their seats as had all of the other graduates. 

I've now seen a number of graduation awards across a number of tertiary institutions and each is more or less the same but there are unique points of distinction to each ceremony and there is certainly variability in the spirit that each agency conveys.  I particularly liked the Massey one because it was short and to the point; it was not flamboyant and it was clearly well organised. 

And yet, importantly, it still managed to adequately acknowledge the diligence and excellence that each candidate necessarily needed to demonstrate in order to achieve their doctoral degree.  The caring touch of the staff, the brief but apposite speech by the Vice Chancellor, the personal placing of the cape, the giving of flowers to each successful doctoral candidate along with a personal commendation by Vice Chancellor Steve Maharey  was well done.  And making sure that members of the supportive Whanau of each candidate were able to be given a front row seat was entirely appropriate and represented sound PR.  

I contrast the Massey event with one University in Auckland that charges a fee for any additional audience members who attend a graduation.  I know that this happens because my pensioner parents would have been charged to see their grandson graduate when he completed his degree a few years ago had we not stepped in and paid their attendance fee for them.  Is tertiary education in Aotearoa New Zealand really that broke?

I also contrast the largess displayed by those involved with the Massey ceremony to another Auckland University that was, in my opinion, quite mean spirited in the way in which they have approached the matter of capping a recently completed doctoral candidate.  

In this case, a senior citizen who has recently finished his doctorate, and who worked for an extended period at the Woodhill Park Research Retreat, was assured that he would be capped if he submitted the required minor emendations by a certain date.  In his view, the exercise of completing those emendations realistically should have involved only a few hours work.  The candidate's supervisor, however, kept on debating the detail of the emendations very rudely and to such an extent that in the end, the candidate requested that the Head of Department serve as an adjudicator of the revision process. The argument made by the candidate was that the supervisor had ventured way beyond the remit of the revisions prescribed by the examiners.  When ultimately the HOD became involved, the final revision process proceeded quite quickly and, in fact, took only a few hours to complete. 

The upshot of this supervisor-precipitated delay, however, was utterly regrettable - tragic in fact.  It was tragic because the candidate in question had no choice but to tell the PhD office of this university that the hard-bound copies of his now completed thesis would likely be two days late.  No worries, he was verbally assured, they could accommodate lateness on this occasion!

Regrettably, and in an apparent about-face, representatives from that university became quite adamant that the cut-off date had been exceeded and hence the candidate will now have to wait until the September award ceremony.  What a shame and what an anti-climax.  How unjust.

But that's not quite the end of the story:  I've recently learned that academic staff members from that university faculty have been castigated for not showing a collective willingness to attend capping ceremonies.  An email has been sent to them expressing some dismay at their apparent apathy and non-willingness to attend.  It's rather ironical, isn't it, that the elderly successful PhD candidate who wanted to attend the next available ceremony was prevented from doing so by members of that same faculty.  And yet, that 'supportive' bureaucracy, those very same people who turned away a recent doctoral graduand, have now had to cajole academic staff into attending the event that celebrates the successful completion of those people whom they have assisted to succeed.  

I contrast that with what I saw at the other day at the Mason Centre on the North Shore and say, simply, well done Massey...