You can now get a PhD in creativity

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From Quartz:

Universities don’t like change. But as the breakneck pace of technology speeds up the modern economy, these ancient institutions are starting to break the rules.

To adapt to the needs of future workers, some colleges are moving their courses online; others are doubling down on artificial intelligence. The latest school to offer a nontraditional approach to higher education is the University of the Arts, a visual and performing arts school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which has just set up a new PhD program not in an specific discipline—but in the overarching idea of creativity.

Under the new creativity PhD, which debuted last month, students will participate in cross-disciplinary workshops and produce unique, independent dissertations, advised by professionals brought in from outside the university. The PhD begins with an immersive two-week “creative bootcamp,” meant to throw the students—who ideally will be mid-career professionals already successful in one industry—out of their comfort zone entirely.

. . . .

The whole venture resembles a Silicon Valley startup accelerator more than a degree program—which is partly the intent. As the school’s president David Yager explains it to Quartz: “I think about it as re-engineering. If we’re successful, some of these people will be driving and focusing on industries we’re not even talking about right now. They’ll have tools to think differently.”

Jonathan Fineberg, the director of the PhD program and a 40-year veteran of academia, says he has never felt comfortable with the way most degree programs force students to master all the literature that came before them in order to start on their own work. “It takes some people 10 years to break free of the hierarchies they’ve been taught,” he says. “We want somebody without the skills on the agenda to figure it out in a non-methodical way.”

Link to the rest at Quartz

12 thoughts on “You can now get a PhD in creativity”

  1. As opposed to getting your PhD by creatively massaging (or torturing) data, or finding a “new approach” to a literary work that just happens to align with and support your PhD advisor’s own research?

    Yes, I heard a few too many horror stories in grad school, why?

  2. I dunno, but I always thought creativity was a talent you’re born with, like curiosity, rather than a skill that can be taught.

    Most of these “creativity training” things seem more like problem solving training, focused on process and methodology. Which can be useful, like instruction and practice in the scientific method, but hardly a panacea like these books and programs make it out to be.

    Is this more of the “everybody is special” programming?

    “Yes, you too can be a creative genius like Mozart, Tesla or Jules Verne! All for the low, low price of $1995 a month!”

    • Creativity definitely has aspects of a train-able skill. To be effectively creative in a field you pretty much have to study prior art and techniques.

      Creativity is at least partly learned pattern recognition.

      Ever had to fix something you didn’t have a set of instructions for that was exactly right? Or cook something without a recipe that was exactly right? Maybe you borrowed from several recipes, or maybe you had enough cooking experience to wing it. Or maybe you just had the skills to do a ‘redneck’ fix with duck tape or zip ties.

      The difference between these and the creativity in making a program or a short story is of degree, not kind.

      There probably is a component to creativity that is inborn, or at least is a permanent tendency of the mind.

      I’m not sure that there is a part of creativity that isn’t problem solving.

      Raw creativity completely untutored in the problem domain has never proven useful to me. The material I’ve been reading recently, on solving large complex problems, explicitly says that as you learn more about the problem and solution, you may need to redo work.

      This Ph.D. program, by removing the literature requirement, is denying the foundation you’d need to be creative in whatever field.

      • Uh, more like pattern denial.
        Creativity is going where no one has gone before and making it pay off.
        True creatives are mavericks.
        What these program produce is tame problem solvers, incrementalists. Pattern thinkers are a lot like the books that corporate publishing prefers: mostly like something else that already succeeded but just different enough to not be plagiarism.

        A true creative proposes things that others shake their heads at and pooh-pooh. And proves them wrong. That combination of bent of mind and stubborness can’t be taught.

        • As for problem solving, what problem does creating a symphony or new cosmological theory solve? If you look at the patent registry you’ll find that a lot (majority) of the processes don’t actually solve an existing problem. That’s where the phrase “a solution in search of a problem” comes from.

          When the day the right problem comes up, the patent finds a use.

          Creatives solve problems but problem solving isn’t what makes them creative. It’s how they think and act naturally.

          My background is in R&D so I’ve been surrounded by creatives for most of my adult life and not one of them was taught creativity. Most weren’t even doing it consciously. Ideas popped up, then they found a use for them.

          I understand a lot of the best writers are like that; they don’t struggle to find story ideas. At most, they struggle with how to express them.

          • Best writers is a subjective criteria, and ‘a lot’ could well be too vague. You could perhaps as validly say ‘a lot of the best writers outline’ and ‘a lot of the best writers gateway write’. There is great variation in writer processes, and you can get a lot of anecdotes for one approach, without showing that you’ve covered all common approaches.

            A writer capable of sustaining a career while frequently publishing comes up with a lot of ideas. Much more than they could implement. Some of the ideas are better, some worse, some harder to execute. The more you practice finding ideas, the faster the process gets, you build a bigger backlog, and so forth.

            A painting is a bunch of differently colored blotches. You look at it, your brain does some processing, and you see a picture, maybe a face. That is pattern recognition, and it happens without thinking most of the time.

            Ideas are exactly the same. You collect data, collect data, and wander around looking at things. Then the latest bit of stimulus or processing is the last piece, your brain sees the pattern, and aha!

            It can be tuned to discipline; it happens more frequently and actively for areas you are frequently and actively thinking about.

            When it is a discipline that is entirely new to you, you get lost. I think the ‘pulling from a bunch of different disciplines’ trick might not itself be creativity. But there’s a period of acclimation, where you are lost, and then the ideas start showing up. Or at least, the good usable ideas. (There are lots of very obvious ideas that show up over and over again, but don’t get used because once you understand the discipline, you realize they are garbage that can’t be implemented.)

            Physics theories, if you exclude degenerate cases like “theory X but with three more fairies”, would seem to be solutions to the problem of finding a more satisfying mathematical model. Symphonies? Those are art, hence can be described as an attempt to communicate something or other.

            Have you ever had a creative tell you about some new idea that they didn’t care about? Or did you hear about things that reflected some interest of theirs, that could be seen as a problem or puzzle from their perspective?

  3. When people start talking about “creativity” I keep thinking of bored housewives taking macrame and finger painting classes. “Look at me, I’m creative!”

    I’d be interested in what the school thinks creativity is, and how they plan to identify and grade it.

    Generally, squeezing some Play-Doh into something vaguely animal-shaped is hailed as “creative”, while designing, building, and flying your own airplane is not…

  4. Aside from believing creativity, like leadership, is a born skill or learned skill, how useful will it be to get a job? From my employed experience corporation chiefs pay lip service about creativity, but that’s not the policy of the middle level management. Creativity and risk are two sides of a coin, and no manager will risk their job for a new hair-brained idea. That’s why new ideas come from startups; they have nothing to lose, and don’t need a Ph.D. in creativity.

    • Depends on the business and which part of the company you’re talking about. In management creativity, as you say, isn’t particularly welcome. But in product development and especially R&D it can be very useful, depending on corporate culture.

      HP is one example of a company that for decades valued and encouraged actual creativity. The founders were naturally creative and sought out people like them and gave them free rein. Think of their calculators: using a classic HP calculator meant, for most people, learning a whole new way to think of math; the whole REVERSE POLISH NOTATION thing. But once mastered, the system was notably faster and to some more intuitive. It bred a fanatical brand loyalty.

      Over time turnover and mergers degraded the culture and the company. Today they’re just another electronics vendor with products barely distinguishable from anybody else’s. Too much Compaq and DEC in the mix, too little Hewlett or Packard left.

      Other companies have moved to the forefront in tech creativity. SpaceX, Tesla, the not-so Boring Company financing the development of their tunnel diggers by selling hobbyist flamethrowers, for one.

      The tech world values creativity the most but they aren’t unique. You’ll see flashes of it in entertainment, litersture, finance, crime… lots of creatives go into crime, which I suppose says something about current times. 🙂

      The educational system hasn’t quite stifled creativity just yet. But they do keep trying.

    • I would advise any young person not to treat any degree as something that will automatically get a job.

      Always be asking “What do I do when this job goes away?” Always be looking ahead, preparing to find or make the next job. Making a job is creative. Finding a job also uses creativity. What are people going to be looking for? What kinds of jobs am I close to being qualified for, and what skills or certifications do I meed to get? How do I persuade the HR types that I am qualified, and would be a good fit?

  5. no you cant get a phd in creativity

    you can take coursework made up by a few someones, pay a sh-load of money and have a piece of paper that banks do not recog as currency… nor does anyone else who will give you a job for hi pay

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