Obtaining a Doctorate at the Fachgruppe Praktische Informatik (Software Engineering and Databases) at the Department of Electical Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Siegen, Germany Udo Kelter 18.12.2000 I have received several inquiries recently whether and how it is possible to gain a doctorate in our group, mostly from abroad. This page summarizes the most relevant information. ## 1. Positioning the Degree The German educational system has many facets and alternatives; here is a archetypical CV of a person achieving the Doktor degree: Age 6-10 primary school 10-19 Gymnasium (~ British grammar school) 19-21 basic course of study (ending with the Vordiplom) 21-24 main course of study (ending with the Diplom) 24-28ff research work, writing the dissertation There are other possible CVs leading to a doctorate, but as a rule of thumb, they all try to appoximate the above archetypical CV. In all engineering disciplines, the Diplom is the first degree which formally qualifies for professional work. It is required by most employers, notably in the public services. A Doktor degree is required only for a small fraction of all positions, notably those which are research-oriented. As a basic rule, only persons having the Diplom degree can obtain a Doktor degree. The main aim of the Doktor degree is not to express that the holder is able to perform professional work, but, above and in addition to that, able to independently conduct research. Some foreign countries have educational systems similar to the German one. Other countries have substantially different systems in which the Bachelor degree plays the important role of the first degree which formally qualifies for professional work (in Germany, this may be also be true in the near future). The Bachelor degree is, to give very rough estimate, somewhere between the Vordiplom and the Diplom, but in most cases nearer to the Vordiplom, and generally not accepted in Germany as equivalent to the Diplom. Persons aiming at a Doktor degree and having a qualification below that of a Diplom must expect that they have to study (and take exams of) the elements of our curriculum not covered by their qualification. This is normally decided upon on an individual basis. The responsible authority is the Promotionsausschuß (Doctorate Committee) of the department. They try to map the exams, credit points etc. which a candidate has acquired to the elements of our curriculum. Elements can be covered by equivalent elements obtained at other universities. The candidate is requested to acquire the missing elements here (or elsewhere), which typically means that the candidate has to study these topics. Be warned that this can easily amount to 1 - 2 years of work. This applies particularly to candidates holding a degree in Mathematics or Mechanical Engineering. A master's degree is in general considered as equivalent to the Diplom degree. ## 2. Degrees Awarded by our Department All the details of how to achieve a Doktor degree are defined in the Promotionsordnung of the department. (Unfortunately, no English translation is available; on the other hand, if you cannot read such a document, you may have a problem anyway to live in Germany.) I summarize only the most important aspects here. The Department of Electical Engineering and Computer Science currently awards the degree `Doktor-Ingenieur' (Dr.-Ing.). In Germany, this degree is uniformly used in all Departments of Engineering. A precondition in our department is to have either the degree `Diplom-Ingenieur' (Dipl.-Ing.) in Electrical Engineering or the degree `Diplom-Informatiker' (Dipl.-Inform.). Starting from the academic year 2000/01, the department is offering a new course of study, called `Angewandte Informatik' (Applied Computer Science). The degree awarded in this course is Diplom-Informatiker (and is defined to be equivalent to a Master in Computer Science (M.C.Sc.). I expect that the department will sooner or later extend its Promotionsordnung to the effect that those candidates which hold the degree `Diplom-Informatiker' or equivalent will be awarded with the degree `Dr. rer. nat.' (rather than Dr.-Ing.). In most other countries, both degrees should to be accepted as equivalent to a Ph.D. degree (in computer science). The most important piece of work to be done is to write a dissertation. This is typically a scientific text of 200+ pages. A candidate must also pass an oral exam in the subject area of the dissertation, and fulfill several other technical or administrative duties, which are of secondary importance. ## 3. Employment at the Department It is often wrongly assumed that a person which performs research work with a view of achieving a doctorate must be employed by the university. The Doktor degree reflects a personal qualification, thus all preconditions listed in the Promotionsordnung are personal properties. The only official relation between a candidate and the department mentioned in the Promotionsordnung is that the candidate must be enrolled for at least two terms as a student. There are persons which do just this, they finance their living expenses through other sources, e.g. DAAD scholarhips. (By the way, the department does not offer any scholarhips; on the other hand, and in contrast to many other countries, there are virtually no tuition fees.) Most persons aiming at a doctorate are, however, employed by the department. There are basically two alternatives: - Employment as a `wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft' (scientific assistant). This is a typical position for people working on a dissertation. The number of official hours of work per week is at most 19, and the basic monthly salary is about 2050 DM, plus 50% of the social insurance fees being payed by the employer, plus possibly a 13th salary per year (Weihnachtsgeld; Christmas gratification). Scientific assistant are eligible to certain social benefits, similar to normal students. Their salary is below certain limits, with the effect that they are not considered as normal employes, and do not need visa required for normal employment. - Employment as a `wissenschaftlicher Angestellter' according to Bundesangestelltentarif (BAT, a system of salaries and wages applicable to large parts of the public servces), salary group IIa. The annual salary depends on age, marital status and a number of other factors and ranges typically from 65 to 75 thousand Deutsche Mark (gross; it is subject to income tax and miscellaneous insurance fees [you may have a bad surprise when seeing your net salary]) for a 26 year old unmarried person. The position has teaching duties of 4 hours per week during the teaching periods, including organizational work. One should expect that this consumes between 25 an 50 % of the total working time, depending on the subject and the experience. Both forms of employment require an M.Sc. degree or equivalent; A Bachelor degree is not sufficient. Fluent German is very desirable for these positions, and indispensable for the teaching duties and organizational work mentioned above. This holds also for work to be performed in certain ``German'' projects. A basic level of knowledge of the German language is sufficient for mainly research-oriented work. Starting with zero knowledge, one should expect about 400 - 600 hours of exercises to reach this level. ## 4. Time Frame A dissertation differs from a master's thesis (or German Diplomarbeit) in two important aspects: 1. The main goal of a master's thesis is to show that the candidate can solve a substantial problem with the scientific methods and techniques she or he has learned. The topic of the thesis should be chosen so that one can make a reasonable plan according to which the problem is solved in 6 months (i.e. the prescribed time frame for the thesis). 2. The main goal of a dissertation (in computer science) is to solve an open problem and to contribute to the state of the art in this way. There is basically no relation to time frames at all. What counts is the result, not the effort used to achieve it. The typical method of assessing the quality of the contents of a dissertation is to get a related paper accepted at a reasonable well-reputed conference or journal. In some working groups, this is a hard condition. The paper presents one or a few central points of the dissertation in a compact form, leaving out may details and secondary subjects. The dissertation (and the related short paper) should clearly explain which ``open problem'' it solves; it is not sufficient to describe the problem as such, one must also show that all relevant known methods, techniques, or approaches do not completely solve the problem. It follows that a candidate must know all relevant known methods, techniques, and approaches. Such a detailled knowledge in a subject area is not usually acquired during the courses leading to a master's degree. Typically, students read only few scientific papers as part of the preparation of their master's thesis. The papers are selected by the thesis supervisor and are immediately useful for the thesis and not too difficult or lengthy. In contrast to this, one typically has to read 50 or 100 or even more scientific papers, whole monographs and existing dissertations as part of the preparation of a dissertation. Not all the papers will be directly relevant to the narrow subject of research and must be read and understood letterwise; but unfortunately, one does not know this subset in advance. In summary, a candidate must become a real expert in the (narrow) subject area of his or her dissertation. This learning process can easily consume 1000 hours of work (+/-50%) and extend over one or two years (assuming you are not full-time working on your thesis because of teaching duties). Only after you have become an expert in the subject area, you will be able to assess whether the subjects you may have initially thought of to be dealt with in your dissertation are really new and relevant. Thus, in the later phases of your studies, you will be lead by the goal to compare your own ideas and approaches to existing work. You may have bad surprises and detect that other people have done good work before. The typical time frame for preparing a dissertation is 4 to 5 years for candidates with teachig duties, and 3 - 4 years for candidates without teachig duties.