Gawdawful PHD Topic This Is Our Academia?

This is the world according to Sam. My friends, by now, if we do not realize that our public academic standards and quality are broken, we must be living in la-la land. I do not believe anymore in our secondary school exam quality or its results, especially now knowing what constitutes a passing grade. 40? Or an A grade? The grade inflation has been truly laughable. So, if any of my friends' children hit straight A's, my sincere apologies. I will only say, "Good for you, and hope you work harder." That's all. The shitty public education, well, I think when our University Malaysia

Pahang researchers, uh as far back as 2015, were producing anti-hysteria kits, reportedly including items intended to counter supernatural elements or evil spirits based on local traditional practices, well, might as well queue the music from the Ghostbusters. Then, a professor at University Sains Islam Malaysia claimed in June 2019 that dinosaurs were actually jeans. I wonder whether the fellow is still a professor. Whilst our dear lady professor, who was just sacked, had claimed Malays can fly, and they were the ones who taught Romans shipbuilding. These are the outrageous ones, but

today, I want to show you all uh a more mundane example that for me is evidence of just how low the quality of teaching and the system has become. Apparently, going around in social media is this congratulatory announcement of an English lecturer who has attained a PhD status. This is the PhD thesis title from the linguistic sites of a long-established public university. Let me read it out loud and see whether you guys can make sense of it. The thesis title is refusal and politeness strategies in the speech act of refusing invitation in Malaysia's multicultural higher education context. Okay?

And thus a PhD was awarded. Help me here, guys. I'm no English lecturer. Nor have I ever been near a doctorate degree. I'm only a bachelor in chemical engineering. I'm not an English linguist. But who the hell is the supervisor to this PhD? Which examiners review this thesis and never even commented on the first thing they will read on the thesis paper and then award the PhD? I cannot even see or amend this dump of a title. I don't want to embarrass any individual or institution. So, we'll keep that a secret. This is a commentary that makes me wonder not what is the state of our

public tertiary academia if this is what they produce. But how low has it really come to? And what is the actual quality of graduates, doctorate holders, or even the teaching staff itself. Let me unpack the topic just on the title itself for you to understand how mind-boggling numb it makes me feel. The topic reads like a draft that badly needs an editor. Remember, you need an undergraduate degree, maybe then a master's, and only then you can attempt to be accepted as a PhD student.

Beyond the awkward phrasing, it presents significant academic flaws for a PhD level thesis. Let me go through my criticism. Bear with me, okay? Let's talk about the structure and grammatical flaws. Combining refusal and speech act of refusing creates immediate wordiness. A refusal is a speech act, lah. Saying both is like is called like calling a paper the driving and acceleration habits, the physical act of driving a car. You get what I mean? The propositional overload, ah, in syntax, you know, is a total syntax dub. In the of in in making it feel clunky and unpolished.

Ending on multicultural higher education context creates unnecessary ambiguity. Is it looking at multiple universities, multiple classroom settings, or multiple digital environments? Then, in the speech act, is that a statutory act of law? Or the act of speaking? Dude, a thesis title demand precision even for my undergraduate degree. This is a PhD thesis, lah. Okay. The second component I want to talk about is academic and conceptual criticism, okay? I have a sincere question. Is this thesis relying on the pragmatics of refusal? Specifically, the Brown and Levinson's

uh politeness theory, man, eh? If it is, then it is uh pretty derivative for a PhD thesis. I know. I read a lot, guys. From my limited knowledge of the field, this is one of the most over-researched topics in applied linguistics. Applied to the Malaysian context of higher education, the exact areas has already been explored extensively. I'll get to that later. I think refusing invitations is an overly narrow data set for a multi-year PhD project. A master's dissertation might look at a single speech act, i.e., invitations, but a PhD thesis, ah, need a broader analytical scope.

I would say comparing requests, offers, and invitation, or analyzing underlying power dynamics. Now, the title highlights a multi-cultural context without identifying the actual variables. My scientific nerd is now working. Is it analyzing interactions between Malay, Chinese, and Indian students or local versus international students? Without defining the cultural boundaries, multicultural remain a buzzword. Okay. Let me conclude the monologue. Here is my simple suggestion if I was supervising this PhD student. The The title need to be stripped down to sound professional and punchy. How

about this for a change? Politeness and refusal strategies in Malaysian higher education an intercultural perspective. See? Very easy. Very fundamental. God help us is the standard in Malaysian public academia today is this. We definitely have a country to save. Thank you so much. See you later.