Cultural Differences in Academics.

As you might know, I’m currently working in Germany as a doctoral candidate at a technical university. I’m currently in the 3rd year of my research. Through the years I’ve seen a lot of my fellow researchers at our institute defend their thesis. Especially this year there were a lot of them. So far, there have been already two of them. The rest of the year there are three more to be expected.

I’ve noticed during my time in Germany that there are some interesting differences between the Dutch and German traditions when it comes to defending the thesis, and the graduation “ceremony” in general. Of course, there are not only differences between the countries, but also universities and even institutes itself. However, there are some general trends per country.

Public vs Private

The first big difference between Germany and the Netherlands is the way you defend your thesis. In the Netherlands, for example, typically your thesis defense is public. This means that you will defend the years of research you’ve done in front of a group of professors, while an audience is watching you answer their questions. You can imagine how stressful this can be for the candidate that is defending.

A typical defense at the TU Delft. Here you see the candidate on the left, the committee of professors on the sides, and the public audience on the left part of the photo. (Image source: TU Delft).

The public defense takes exactly one hour after which the master of ceremony (called pedel in Dutch) bangs its so-called bedel loudly on the ground and yells ”ora est!” (”it is time!” in Latin). After this the session is over, even if the student is in the middle of answering a question. You can understand that due to the fixed time limit it is smart to give long, elaborate, and above all time-consuming answers to the questions asked!

The master of ceremony ("pedel" in Dutch) wearing the traditional academic attire and holding the "bedel" (Image source: TU Delft).

At our institute in Germany, the way of defending is a little less stressful. The day starts with a public presentation on a topic that is not directly related to the topic of your research (it’s weird I know). This presentation is in front of your doctor father (your supervising professor) and typically two or more other professors that are working in the field of your research. After the presentation, there is time for questions by both the committee of professors and the audience.

After the presentation, the committee and the doctoral candidate move to a private room where the student will be defending his research in front of the professors. The main difference, is that in this case, the defense is behind closed doors. An additional difference that is actually more stressfull, is the fact that during this defense the professors can ask you questions about all the topics you’ve studied during your whole academic career. Meaning, not only your research but also your bachelor’s and master’s degrees! This can be quite daunting, as you can imagine!

The graduation ceremony

After the defense is done (both in Germany and the Netherlands) there are some typical things that happen. At our institute in Germany, your fellow colleagues will build you a doctoral hat. This is not a standard hat as you know it. It is a construction that contains all kinds of things that represent your life during your time at the institute. Typically, these hats are huge and sometimes even contain some moving parts.

Here is a small collection of hats what we’ve built over the years:

Image source: me.

Image source: me.

Image source: me.

You can see from these pictures that a lot of time can go into building these hats. At the moment we are building a hat for one of my colleagues. We’ve already spent quite some hours working on it with several people. Once done I’ll post about the result in a few days from now!

The ceremony in the Netherlands is a bit different. First of all the professors, as well as the student and its so-called paranymphs are dressed up with strict clothing guidelines. After the defense, the committee of professors moves into a private room to discuss your defense.

Once they came to a conclusion the enter back into the room where the defense took place. The chairman of the committee (which is the rector magnificus of the university) will announce the final verdict. No doctor hat in this case!

Image source.

After receiving the official degree in a big red cylindrical container typically a picture is taken of the candidate, his paranymphs (standing next to the candidate) and the committee.

A picture of all defense participants including the candidate, his paranymphs and the master of ceremony holding the bedel ( Image source: TU Delft).

---

As a disclaimer, I am not saying that these traditions are the same everywhere in either the Netherland or Germany. These are just the differences that I’ve experienced while studying in Delft during my bachelors and master’s degrees and in Aachen during my doctoral studies. Every university or even institute has its own traditions in addition to possibly the once I’ve written about.

Thank you all for reading my stuff, I appreciate it!