The main requirements for doing a dissertation project

I have had a chance to meet some of the Master Degree students today. From what I learned, students have been reminded on the following requirements/ expectations for doing final year dissertation projects:

1. Specific ways to collect primary data
2. Use of specific statistical methods to analyze data
3. Specific number of academic journal articles and textbooks required
4. Lots of meetings and reporting to the project supervisor, project mentor and the university
5. Be expected that the dissertation work is demanding and tough (and the project failure rate for this university is quite high)
6. Clearly formulated research objectives and questions
7. Probably follow closely the proposal ideas from project supervisor
8. Be prepared that the dissertation project will last for 1 and a half year

Students are also concerned about being able to speedily reserve a capable project supervisor.


From what I can tell, these requirements and expectations are unnecessay; in my view:

1. Dissertation projects should be enjoyable and engaging. Choose a dissertation topic that appears interesting to you and one  that  has good practical and academic values.
2. Dissertation projects are not exercises, thus thus dissertation project proposals cannot be clearly formulated at the initial stage of project process.
3. While there may be a broad survey of the relevant literature, most students will only employ 1-2 sophisticated methodologies (e.g. soft systems methodology) to do their projects. [Do not tell me that SWOT analysis is a sophisticated methodology!]
4. Research methods can be objective, subjective or mixed.
5. While it is very useful to have intellectuals/ teachers who can inspire you (and who act as your project supervisor, a reasonably good supervisor is one who largely leaves you alone to do your project work. Inspiring mentors are useful for inspiring your work, nevertheless.
6. A final year project that lasts longer than 1 year is getting boring, from my perspective.

The main requirements for doing a good project and gaining an enjoyable experience are: (a) an intellectually curious mindset, (b) access to library and e-library, and (c) sufficient intellectual competence and devotion.

Doing dissertation projects can be very rewarding because, via doing the final year projects, you learn very important practical skills, namely, skills in research methods and skills in using e-library/ litearture review. Getting a pass in final year project is, in this case, a very trivial matter.