Changing Dissertation Advising: CHE article

[spork]

I think it's really just that there is essentially no incentive for a humanities professor to be invested in the success of their students, since they don't derive co-authored publications, nor do the vast majority of their students go on to tenure-track positions at comparable research universities, so there's no real intellectual legacy either. In the sciences, your research productivity is very significantly affected by the quality of students that you're able to attract, so you want your students to be productive as well, and the interests of the student and supervisor are better aligned as a consequence.

People absolutely are interested in building intellectual legacies through grad students. Can we stop with the weird claims about the humanities based on total lack of knowledge?

Let's be honest, how much of an intellectual legacy is there to be had from graduating PhD students who will never produce PhD students of their own?

Lots of lessons from evolutionary biology here, with overspecialization probably being the most relevant.

[Caracal]

I think it's really just that there is essentially no incentive for a humanities professor to be invested in the success of their students, since they don't derive co-authored publications, nor do the vast majority of their students go on to tenure-track positions at comparable research universities, so there's no real intellectual legacy either. In the sciences, your research productivity is very significantly affected by the quality of students that you're able to attract, so you want your students to be productive as well, and the interests of the student and supervisor are better aligned as a consequence.

People absolutely are interested in building intellectual legacies through grad students. Can we stop with the weird claims about the humanities based on total lack of knowledge?

Let's be honest, how much of an intellectual legacy is there to be had from graduating PhD students who will never produce PhD students of their own?

Edit: If you have nothing pleasant to say...

Mleok makes a good point. What does it mean for a faculty member to build an "intellectual legacy" through their grad students if those grad students do not and/or cannot carry on that legacy? I don't know that a single generation counts as a a "legacy" if even that generation cannot have the level of success of the mentor*. Usually people speak of a legacy with the idea that the effects will expand over time, not diffuse and disappear.



*This will be even more pronounced if the grad students can't even get TT positions in the first place, let alone supervise PhD students.

No, it is not a good point. I deleted the earlier comment because its difficult to describe that sort of reasoning in any way that isn't going to be abusive and offensive. The only adjectives that really apply are ones like idiotic. The kindest I can probably manage is ignorant. Is it really so difficult to see that there is a difference between the job market being difficult and a discipline vanishing?

Again, there's this weird conflation between the disciplines, the situation of adjuncts, and the job prospects of people with degrees. Lots of people continue to get tenure track jobs in the humanities. Most of those people don't end up advising doctoral students, but that has always been true. However, for professors teaching at grad programs in the top tier, they continue to have grad students get jobs. and then move up the professional ranks to eventually advise grad students themselves.

This doesn't mean that everything is hunky dory and there's no problem. But, this is just sloppy reasoning and thinking from people who ought to know better.

[marshwiggle]

Is it really so difficult to see that there is a difference between the job market being difficult and a discipline vanishing?

Of course not. As long as the pipeline is sustainable, there's no danger of the discipline vanishing. So if the numbers of PhDs produced is in line with the number who will actually end of with jobs that satisfy them, whether those are in academia or not, then there's no problem.

Again, there's this weird conflation between the disciplines, the situation of adjuncts, and the job prospects of people with degrees. Lots of people continue to get tenure track jobs in the humanities. Most of those people don't end up advising doctoral students, but that has always been true. However, for professors teaching at grad programs in the top tier, they continue to have grad students get jobs. and then move up the professional ranks to eventually advise grad students themselves.

This doesn't mean that everything is hunky dory and there's no problem.

OK, so what, in your view, IS the problem?

I don't hear engineers complaining about not being able to make ends meet as adjuncts. Is this because moustache-twirling administrators just love engineers and pay them much more money for adjunct positions? Or is it that there simply aren't as many willing to take low paying positions because it's not worth it?

In principle, all of the stereotypes of "the adjunct problem" should not be discipline-specific. That means it's either the choices people have that differ, or it's the choices that people make that differ. Which is it? And in either case, who is responsible?

[mleok]

I don't hear engineers complaining about not being able to make ends meet as adjuncts. Is this because moustache-twirling administrators just love engineers and pay them much more money for adjunct positions? Or is it that there simply aren't as many willing to take low paying positions because it's not worth it?

In principle, all of the stereotypes of "the adjunct problem" should not be discipline-specific. That means it's either the choices people have that differ, or it's the choices that people make that differ. Which is it? And in either case, who is responsible?

I'm an applied mathematician, and I've produced far more PhD students than I have tenure-track positions to pass on. But, none of my students have ever been adjuncts being paid by the course, because they have acquired skills that are highly prized in industry, and are able to command salaries that far exceed what they would have been able to attract with just a bachelor's degree. Ultimately, this is the reason why the "adjunct problem" is virtually non-existent in some fields, because industry salaries far exceed the salaries of even tenured full professors, much less paid by the course adjuncts.

[mleok]

This doesn't mean that everything is hunky dory and there's no problem. But, this is just sloppy reasoning and thinking from people who ought to know better.

I think it's just you refusing to see that all these issues are closely related. The humanities' insistence that a college (or doctoral) education is not anything as crude as job training means that for the vast majority of college students, who have to incur substantial debt in order to obtain a college education, what a humanities degree offers is poorly aligned with student expectations. This is why the number of humanities majors are in decline, and why the demand for tenure-track positions in the humanities is contracting.

The problem is further aggravated by the poor alignment of interests between mentors and PhD students in the humanities, so that the level of support and mentorship is often poor, resulting in increased time-to-degree, and dramatically increasing the opportunity costs associated with earning a PhD in the humanities. The reality is that unlike a PhD in many STEM fields, a PhD in most humanities disciplines are at best not a hinderance to obtaining a non-academic job, so there isn't a pressure release valve where PhDs in the humanities can easily transition into non-academic careers that value their skill sets and pay a salary premium over a BA holder.

Since the skills provided in a STEM PhD are actually valued in industry, many graduates who choose non-academic options still continue to produce and publish research at the national labs, and industrial research labs, and can transition more easily back into academia, so they remain part of intellectual community even if they're not professors themselves. The move back to academia is made easier because industry and academic research is more closely aligned and industry is actually an attractive option for most students, and an academic job is not a default choice for the majority of these students.

With a low success rate of placement of students into tenure-track positions at PhD granting institutions, the "intellectual legacy" argument for investing time into your students vanishes, and without co-authored publications during the dissertation writing process, one is relying entirely on the good will of faculty to ensure that there is adequate mentorship. The fact that mediocre PhD programs that have poor placement records continue to exist suggests that it is naive to rely solely on good will to ensure that students are adequately supported and mentored.

[spork]

^ +1

[Hibush]

IHE has another column on this topic today, so I'll just append mention it to this thread.

This time, the column is by a UC Irvine informatics professor and graduate dean, Gillian Hayes. The view is different from that in the first one. It is also from someone who can make the changes happen.

One point is that employers in growth industries don't value their employees and pseudo-employees enough to invest in their education. The scourge of contingency is as rampant there as in certain areas of academe.

"the world is now filled with contingent and contract workers, in contrast to a generation or two ago when salaried employees loyal to a company that was loyal to them were once the norm. In this new world, a professional graduate education is no longer a value that companies are investing in heavily. Full-time employees have higher turnover rates than ever before, and increasingly, they aren't even employees. They are often contractors and consultants. So companies are paying for less graduate education."

How does she think prospective grad students look at this situation?

"[Graduate education] now viewed as a decision by an individual to invest in themselves. And those individual investors want to see a return on that investment. They also want to do it on their own terms and at their own pace. Enter the world of modular, stackable, hybrid remote and online degree programs."

Which contrasts with professor's expectations,
"they aren't luxuriating in a world of intellectual thought the way many faculty imagine them to be."

This dean argues for graduate modules in some kind of certificate package, sold one certificate at a time.

That model would not support a research degree, like a PhD. It might be useful as a professional credential, particularly in tech where the pace of change is fast and salaries are high.

She does not see the competition for these students as being with PhD programs, but with independent sources of training. Basically going after a group of potential students that her school could serve and that no public-sector graduate school is serving now. There are a few similar models in business, hospitality or other professional schools.

How big is the market for this kind of grad school? What other disciplines could it work for?

Is her message of "nobody has time to waste on a PhD" going to resonate in her or any other grad school?

[marshwiggle]

IHE has another column on this topic today, so I'll just append mention it to this thread.

This time, the column is by a UC Irvine informatics professor and graduate dean, Gillian Hayes. The view is different from that in the first one. It is also from someone who can make the changes happen.


This dean argues for graduate modules in some kind of certificate package, sold one certificate at a time.

I love this quote:

First of all, students are not taking this time off and sitting in the woods like Thoreau thinking deeply. Thoreau could do that because his mother did his laundry and brought him sandwiches -- oh, and he was rich.

Priceless!

(I think "microcredentials" and "stackable" degrees make a lot of sense.)

[mleok]

She does not see the competition for these students as being with PhD programs, but with independent sources of training. Basically going after a group of potential students that her school could serve and that no public-sector graduate school is serving now. There are a few similar models in business, hospitality or other professional schools.

It sounds like she's targeting things like Microsoft Certifications,

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/

and Cisco Certifications,

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/training-events/training-certifications/certifications.html

[spork]

She does not see the competition for these students as being with PhD programs, but with independent sources of training. Basically going after a group of potential students that her school could serve and that no public-sector graduate school is serving now. There are a few similar models in business, hospitality or other professional schools.

It sounds like she's targeting things like Microsoft Certifications,

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/

and Cisco Certifications,

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/training-events/training-certifications/certifications.html

Which I believe are available at scale from Udemy, Udacity, etc.

[marshwiggle]

She does not see the competition for these students as being with PhD programs, but with independent sources of training. Basically going after a group of potential students that her school could serve and that no public-sector graduate school is serving now. There are a few similar models in business, hospitality or other professional schools.

It sounds like she's targeting things like Microsoft Certifications,

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/

and Cisco Certifications,

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/training-events/training-certifications/certifications.html

Which I believe are available at scale from Udemy, Udacity, etc.

Faculty unions are opposed to the idea, since it prevents including all kinds of "required" courses of dubious value keeping profs employed. Imagine if the only courses students had to take were those that they genuinely saw value in!

[Hibush]

She does not see the competition for these students as being with PhD programs, but with independent sources of training. Basically going after a group of potential students that her school could serve and that no public-sector graduate school is serving now. There are a few similar models in business, hospitality or other professional schools.

It sounds like she's targeting things like Microsoft Certifications,

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/

and Cisco Certifications,

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/training-events/training-certifications/certifications.html

Which I believe are available at scale from Udemy, Udacity, etc.

Faculty unions are opposed to the idea, since it prevents including all kinds of "required" courses of dubious value keeping profs employed. Imagine if the only courses students had to take were those that they genuinely saw value in!

There is a possibility that the Graduate School of UC Irvine could compete head to head with Microsoft, Cisco and Udacity in providing stackable degree consisting of microcredentials. At least in certain fields, probably including IS, CS and the like. It's not a huge market, but they are a credible contender.

Should UCI staff those microcredential units with tenured faculty?
Or should they go contingent, hiring the very best instructor for each microcredential? Each instructor would only have that one responsibility, for however many hours student demand requires. Competition for hours would be keen.

Would you, as a tenured dissertation graduate advisor feel comfortable guiding a student through this? 
Would you, as a tenured graduate advisor feel comforrable encouraging a conventional PhD student to take one of those teaching gigs?

[ciao_yall]

She does not see the competition for these students as being with PhD programs, but with independent sources of training. Basically going after a group of potential students that her school could serve and that no public-sector graduate school is serving now. There are a few similar models in business, hospitality or other professional schools.

It sounds like she's targeting things like Microsoft Certifications,

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/

and Cisco Certifications,

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/training-events/training-certifications/certifications.html

Which I believe are available at scale from Udemy, Udacity, etc.

There is a huge difference between the people going after a Microsoft or Cisco certification; and those going after a PhD in Computer Science or Networking or an MBA or...

SMDH.

[marshwiggle]

There is a possibility that the Graduate School of UC Irvine could compete head to head with Microsoft, Cisco and Udacity in providing stackable degree consisting of microcredentials. At least in certain fields, probably including IS, CS and the like. It's not a huge market, but they are a credible contender.

Should UCI staff those microcredential units with tenured faculty?
Or should they go contingent, hiring the very best instructor for each microcredential? Each instructor would only have that one responsibility, for however many hours student demand requires. Competition for hours would be keen.

I think for these to work students have to perceive the value. So if there are tenured faculty sufficiently recognized in an area, then they can teach. However, there's no point in restricting it to faculty if enough students won't take it to make it fly. In that case, recognized expertise matters more.

There is a huge difference between the people going after a Microsoft or Cisco certification; and those going after a PhD in Computer Science or Networking or an MBA or...

Absolutely. Among other things, vender-specific certifications are to perpetuate corporate lock-in. But if an IT person can take one or two courses on data mining and move to a new job, that may be all they want so the PhD isn't worth it. It makes perfect sense for universities to cash in on that.

[Puget]

This idea doesn't seem particularly new. We, like many universities, have a school of continuing studies which offers applied masters and certificate programs for working professionals (online and low residency, evening and weekend scheduling).