My PhD - a story that almost didn't end well
Short introduction to my latest white paper: On failures in academia - my PhD story
Doctoral tutorial (left) and thank-you speech (right), both at 1994 EIBA conference in Warsaw
It was twenty-(nine) years ago today, but the band didn’t come out to play. Well… not for me at least. It did for others; it was graduation day, and the ceremony would be starting in 15 minutes. I was really looking forward to giving celebratory speeches for my five Masters’ dissertation students. But I decided to quickly pick up my (snail) mail at the department’s secretariat as I wasn’t sure it would still be open by the end of the ceremony.
And there it was! The letter by the chair of the examination committee informing me of the verdict on my recently submitted PhD: it was not approved by the majority (two out of three) of the examiners. The accompanying examiners’ comments implied I needed to completely rewrite my PhD and cut about half of it in the process. It was not quite a failed PhD. But after working on it so hard for four years, sacrificing so much of my free time – I was working as a lecturer at the same time – it certainly felt like that.
Curious about how the story ends? You can read all about it here: On failures in academia - my PhD story. It takes you through my journey step-by-step, including the context, my PhD process, the outcome, the examiners' verdict, my many questions and doubts, and finally the happy ending. However, I also share my own reflections nearly 30 years after the fact and consider the lessons we can draw from this story about academic life in general.
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Copyright © 2026 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Wed 24 Jun 2026 07:02
Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.
