ABSTRACT
As Bourdieu points out, academic life is contested, and there are struggles for legitimacy. In this chapter we try to show what the PhD is in the various disciplines we studied: what the PhD student is aiming for, and what the goals of the supervisor are. A PhD is a badge of legitimate membership: a badge to be worn by the student, helped by the supervisor and tested by the examiners. We explore how the students saw the quest, how the supervisors viewed the PhD, and how staff who had been examiners characterized what they looked for in a PhD. We do not talk about the processes of supervision here, because that is the focus of Chapter 8, nor about the everyday life of the PhD student, because that is the topic of Chapter 9. In this chapter we concentrate on the dreams, the quest, the vision, the grail-or even the Sampo of the Finnish epic, the Kalevala-and the examination at the end of the quest.
