Tips for (humanities?) grad students: IHE article

[Caracal]

I'm a mathematician, so I don't have a lab, and each of my students work on their distinct project, but I meet with each of them weekly, and I am deeply involved in guiding and shaping their research direction, and scaffolding the process so that their level of independence increases over time.

This is a substantial time commitment, and we coauthor papers, so the incentive system better aligns my professional interests with theirs, but as I said upthread, this is still a poorer research return on time investment compared to working with postdocs and more experienced collaborators. Sure, there is some professional value in placing your students into tenure-track positions at research universities, but this is a small fraction of the graduate student cohort, so that's at best a weak incentive.

I am simply saying it's possible to better align incentives, without necessarily resulting in the kind of intense micromanagement and exploitation that sometimes happens in large STEM labs.

It isn't all that different in some ways. I certainly met with my advisor more often in my first year or two of my program than later. I still think a lot of this is just disciplinary in terms of how large the discrete chunks of material are. Once I had finished comps, there wouldn't have been much value in meeting every week with my advisor. When I was in the earlier research stages, I was just in the archive going through material and figuring out what to make of it. There were various stages in that process where I met with my advisor and it was helpful to discuss where the project was going, but there were weeks and months where all I was doing was creating spreadsheets from census data.

Writing is similar. The building blocks of dissertations are chapters. Before I was finished I went through three full drafts of every chapter of my dissertation and my advisor gave me extensive comments on all of those, and I always met him to discuss the chapters. However, when I was in the midst of writing a chapter there wasn't much to talk about with my advisor, unless I had run into some really specific issue I needed help with. Once I finished the chapter and got it into a reasonably polished version of an early draft, then my advisor could give me useful feedback.

You're right that some of the incentives aren't perfectly aligned. However, as you point out, that's true for you too. What do you think would be the solution? More collaborative work?

[mleok]

In these cases, it's typical for the student or postdoc who wrote the initial draft to be the first author on the resulting publication, and it does not compromise their competitiveness for positions to coauthor these papers, so I find the idea that this is somehow exploitative to be strange.

The entire problem with trying to evaluate another discipline based on your own pedagogy in your own discipline.

So, do you feel the incentives in your field are sufficiently aligned that one is not simply reliant on advisors to provide adequate mentoring out of the kindness of their heart? Or more simply, do you think the level of mentoring in your field is generally adequate? Are the kind of disciplinary norms that are currently in effect contributing to the isolation students seem to complain about, and is there a way to achieve the same pedagogical outcomes in a more efficient and humane manner? Put another way, does a more collaborative approach to doctoral research truly compromise the intellectual integrity of your field?

[Caracal]

So, do you feel the incentives in your field are sufficiently aligned that one is not simply reliant on advisors to provide adequate mentoring out of the kindness of their heart? Or more simply, do you think the level of mentoring in your field is generally adequate? Are the kind of disciplinary norms that are currently in effect contributing to the isolation students seem to complain about, and is there a way to achieve the same pedagogical outcomes in a more efficient and humane manner? Put another way, does a more collaborative approach to doctoral research truly compromise the intellectual integrity of your field?

I don't think it is an issue of intellectual integrity, just how disciplines operate. Most humanities fields are book fields and because of that the model of research and writing is mostly individual. It's embedded in the nature of the discipline. I think there's something to be said for more collaborative work in my field, but it doesn't make sense to complain that history grad programs train people to work as historians.

[mleok]

I don't think it is an issue of intellectual integrity, just how disciplines operate. Most humanities fields are book fields and because of that the model of research and writing is mostly individual. It's embedded in the nature of the discipline. I think there's something to be said for more collaborative work in my field, but it doesn't make sense to complain that history grad programs train people to work as historians.

Fair enough, but with the decline in university presses, is there a push towards reevaluating the notion that the book is the only publication that matters in such fields? Are books are requirement for tenure at non-research universities?

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

In fact, I didn't know anybody who wrote a "150-page dissertation"---most were between 250 and 400 pages.

It consists of 4 articles (2 accepted and 2 under review at the time) with a short introduction and conclusion added.

That would probably compensate for a 200-page dissertation!  Of course, 400-600-page dissertations aren't too unusual...  Maybe -40-degree field work with seriously dangerous wildlife nearby?

Seriously dangerous wildlife encounters were non-cumulative with -40 due to its seasonal hibernation. Plus, it lived at a different research site anyway.

Just from reading the forum, the impression one gets is that humanities PhDs take longer to complete their degrees, labor almost independently, with little support from their advisor and department

Again, I think that you are seeing differences and assigning negative values to them.

Spending longer time in grad school is not a problem per se (even all those extra TA duties can be considered a preparation for a teaching job).
The problems are that
a) it is largely unaccounted for in the funding structure
b) there is a big difference for one's life trajectory between dropping out after 3 and 6 years in grad school

[Wahoo Redux]

In these cases, it's typical for the student or postdoc who wrote the initial draft to be the first author on the resulting publication, and it does not compromise their competitiveness for positions to coauthor these papers, so I find the idea that this is somehow exploitative to be strange.

The entire problem with trying to evaluate another discipline based on your own pedagogy in your own discipline.

So, do you feel the incentives in your field are sufficiently aligned that one is not simply reliant on advisors to provide adequate mentoring out of the kindness of their heart? Or more simply, do you think the level of mentoring in your field is generally adequate? Are the kind of disciplinary norms that are currently in effect contributing to the isolation students seem to complain about, and is there a way to achieve the same pedagogical outcomes in a more efficient and humane manner? Put another way, does a more collaborative approach to doctoral research truly compromise the intellectual integrity of your field?

If you are asking is it a perfect system, then of course not.  Nothing human ever is.  But yeah, I think the mentoring is generally adequate.  Most programs train their graduate students with practice interviews and CV workshops (I've actually done one of those) and various panel-discussions, both interdepartmental and at our national conventions (I've done one of those too).  Could there be more of this sort of interaction?  Sure. I think there always could be.

And perhaps you've addressed this and I haven't read it since I skimmed the thread, so I apologize if you've already posted this, but what specifically are you talking about?  Do you have a link or an article or study you are referring to?  Your question is pretty vague.

I don't know of any students complaining of isolation.  I'm sure some do, but again, somebody is always going to feel ostracized or marginalized or disgruntled.  My own experience in grad school was pretty warm and fuzzy, and even though I hated the part of the country my program was located, I really miss the folks there.  We all keep in touch on Facebook and some of these folks are friends for life.  Other programs are more brutal, I know, but again, specifically what are you referring to when you say that students feel "isolated"?  What disciplines or programs are students isolated in? 

As far as I can tell----and there are a lot of headlines about this----being in a collaborative with a senior scholar is not always a beneficial relationship. 

As far collaboration, I didn't want that at all.  I wanted to produce my own original work.  I still do.

I think you might be trying a fit-square-peg-round-hole kind of approach. 

Again, what specifically are you talking about? 

[Wahoo Redux]

In fact, I didn't know anybody who wrote a "150-page dissertation"---most were between 250 and 400 pages.

It consists of 4 articles (2 accepted and 2 under review at the time) with a short introduction and conclusion added.

What is "it"?  Humanities dissertations take numerous forms and various lengths.  Some are cut up and published as independent articles, some become books.  Some are completely rewritten later and some end up gathering dust on a bookshelf in the author's basement somewhere.

I do wonder...

[kaysixteen]

Mleok is more or less exactly correct.  Caracal's points may be applicable in some dept., but not all (it bears no resemblance to anything I observed in my dept back in the 90s).   Further, one need not use one's grad students as teachers or researchers or grunt labor, in order to want grad students in one's dept and not care whether these students have any prospects of academic employment, even in humanities where, as noted by mleok, most of these PhDs have limited non-academic professional opportunities with their PhDs, and indeed those PhDs often work against them when seeking such work.  Simply padding your dept with grad students just cannot be justified any longer-- the Bowen report, et all, stuff from the 90s wrt future academic employment prospects, have all been proven false, and we have to recognize this, and act accordingly.

[Caracal]

Mleok is more or less exactly correct.  Caracal's points may be applicable in some dept., but not all (it bears no resemblance to anything I observed in my dept back in the 90s).   Further, one need not use one's grad students as teachers or researchers or grunt labor, in order to want grad students in one's dept and not care whether these students have any prospects of academic employment, even in humanities where, as noted by mleok, most of these PhDs have limited non-academic professional opportunities with their PhDs, and indeed those PhDs often work against them when seeking such work.  Simply padding your dept with grad students just cannot be justified any longer-- the Bowen report, et all, stuff from the 90s wrt future academic employment prospects, have all been proven false, and we have to recognize this, and act accordingly.

Seems like a rather different issue. Programs shouldn't admit grad students without guaranteed funding for five years. If they are, it probably means they are admitting too many. People certainly shouldn't go to grad school without that guaranteed funding. However, I'm with Wahoo. What's the evidence that this is a huge problem in the discipline? It can't just be that some humanities grad students didn't feel well mentored or supported. Plenty of us, like Wahoo and I had good social and intellectual support in grad school.

[apl68]

Writing is similar. The building blocks of dissertations are chapters. Before I was finished I went through three full drafts of every chapter of my dissertation and my advisor gave me extensive comments on all of those, and I always met him to discuss the chapters. However, when I was in the midst of writing a chapter there wasn't much to talk about with my advisor, unless I had run into some really specific issue I needed help with. Once I finished the chapter and got it into a reasonably polished version of an early draft, then my advisor could give me useful feedback.

You're fortunate to have gotten that kind of advising from your advisor.  Mine never gave me more than the vaguest sorts of comments about needing more analysis, and repeated suggestions about still more sources that I could spend time checking out.  Requests for anything more specific elicited the comment "I decline to write it for you." 

Some other grads in our program seem to have gotten much more substantial help from their advisors.  They were also the ones who had the inside track for applying for the few fifth-year funding opportunities that were available to us.  The rest of us had that TA and grading work that didn't even pay minimum wage once you'd put in the number of uncompensated hours you were expected to work.

It was as though we had a division among grad students between the anointed ones who would receive full support in their studies and apprenticeship, and those of us who were largely left to fend for ourselves.  I don't know why this was.  I know they weren't just hoping that if they ignored us we would get the hint and go away--when I tried to do so, they kept talking me back, until I eventually refused to be talked back any longer.  They weren't getting a lot of money out of us, except for some shamefully underpaid labor.  I've always suspected that we lower-caste students were just there to be cheap labor.

[RatGuy]

It was as though we had a division among grad students between the anointed ones who would receive full support in their studies and apprenticeship, and those of us who were largely left to fend for ourselves.  I've always suspected that we lower-caste students were just there to be cheap labor.

Also my experience. In my grad program, there were two tracks to degree. One could be finished in three years: 5 semesters of coursework, standard written comprehensive in 5th semester, 6th semester was formatting the dissertation. The dissertation was a portfolio of previous term papers with an introduction. No oral defense.

Track #2 was normally finished in 5-6 years, as it contained oral and written comps, prospectus defense, dissertation (entirely new material), oral defense. But the department marketed itself as "the PhD you can get in 3 years," so normally students in track 2 were left unfunded after year 3.

It created a nasty atmosphere among the different cohorts for apparent discrepancies in rigor, funding, professional opportunities. This also meant that the faculty were at odds with each other, offering preferential treatment to the students in the faculty member's chosen track.

[Parasaurolophus]

Also my experience. In my grad program, there were two tracks to degree. One could be finished in three years: 5 semesters of coursework, standard written comprehensive in 5th semester, 6th semester was formatting the dissertation. The dissertation was a portfolio of previous term papers with an introduction. No oral defense.

...wow. 0_o

[Caracal]

It was as though we had a division among grad students between the anointed ones who would receive full support in their studies and apprenticeship, and those of us who were largely left to fend for ourselves.  I've always suspected that we lower-caste students were just there to be cheap labor.

Also my experience. In my grad program, there were two tracks to degree. One could be finished in three years: 5 semesters of coursework, standard written comprehensive in 5th semester, 6th semester was formatting the dissertation. The dissertation was a portfolio of previous term papers with an introduction. No oral defense.

Track #2 was normally finished in 5-6 years, as it contained oral and written comps, prospectus defense, dissertation (entirely new material), oral defense. But the department marketed itself as "the PhD you can get in 3 years," so normally students in track 2 were left unfunded after year 3.

It created a nasty atmosphere among the different cohorts for apparent discrepancies in rigor, funding, professional opportunities. This also meant that the faculty were at odds with each other, offering preferential treatment to the students in the faculty member's chosen track.

That makes sense. My program gave 5 years of guaranteed funding to everyone and I think that did a lot to create a good environment. You weren't in competition with anyone for funding.

Also this was a humanities discipline? In my field there's just no way you could produce a dissertation based on previous term papers that would meet the acceptable standards in the field.

[Wahoo Redux]

Also my experience. In my grad program, there were two tracks to degree. One could be finished in three years: 5 semesters of coursework, standard written comprehensive in 5th semester, 6th semester was formatting the dissertation. The dissertation was a portfolio of previous term papers with an introduction. No oral defense.

Is your 3 year track an Ed.D or a Ph.D?

[mamselle]

Again, it's about not getting so antsy about differences.

I know of many science Ph.D's whose qualifying production was three published/publishable (had to be in press) articles.

In a couple of cases you might thread them together with an intro and a bit of a conclusion to show how they connected, but that was seen to be self-evident.

The humanities programs I saw generally wanted something more in-depth, more comparatively analyzed, more historically contextualized, and with a larger as well as several smaller "findings" that were new or previously not considered at depth in the field.

Each has its values.

It reminds me of a talk a friend gave once on the value of the "Thing-sorter" as a metaphor for community.

The "Thing-sorter" is a colorful, hollow, plastic dodecahedral toy.

Each face has a differently-shaped opening and there are differently-shaped pieces to fit into the openings.

The fun, for a 3-year-old, anyway, is in figuring out which shape fits into which entry point in the "Thing-sorter," and putting them all in to rattle around.

Round pieces fit in the circular holes. Cubed pieces fit in the square holes. Pyramidal pieces fit in the triangular holes.

If your discipline is triangular, the training you need isn't something that will help you fit into the square hole.

If it's circular, fitting into the triangular hole isn't going to get you anywhere.

There's no "bad" or "good" about the shapes of the holes or the pieces that fit in them.

They're just different....but they can all be inside the "Thing-sorter" peaceably, once they're there.

(And they can rattle around and make great dance rhythms if you are so inclined, as well....)

M.