Is It Time To Close All But The Top Humanities Ph.D. Programs?

[Hibush]

If the Chicago Econ grads are considering investment banking or someting like it, the dog-eat-dog evisceration of the bottom half is simply good acculturation and something they should thrive on. Delicious, not toxic.

[dismalist]

If the Chicago Econ grads are considering investment banking or someting like it, the dog-eat-dog evisceration of the bottom half is simply good acculturation and something they should thrive on. Delicious, not toxic.

I knew when I brought it up that my reference to Chicago Econ would be used to deflect attention from the question of this thread -- when to close programs.

By the way, not to get precise, Econ and investment banking are two different kettles of fish. I-banking, as the aficionados call it, does seem to require a certain personality type. I've seen such, ugly, but not in Econ departments.

Know before you go.

[Hibush]

Where do Chicago Econ PhDs end up? Especially if they are not drawn to the cutthroat.   

And...to get on topic...if academic employment is comparable to humanities, how would the department change if it were one of ten or so programs granting a PhD in Econ?

Under the scenario described, the enrolment would presumably not increase in any of the remaining programs.

[dismalist]

Where do Chicago Econ PhDs end up? Especially if they are not drawn to the cutthroat.   

And...to get on topic...if academic employment is comparable to humanities, how would the department change if it were one of ten or so programs granting a PhD in Econ?

Under the scenario described, the enrolment would presumably not increase in any of the remaining programs.

Chicago PhD's become Professors of Economics.

As I said, it's only one program that employs this strategy and succeeds at it. The dept is in the top 5, on whatever metric. I am not suggesting anyone else should try this strategy. It's one, a single one, institution that has been successful at it. Nothing to do with a general strategy to get more cash into higher ed.

As I also said, this factoid is being jumped on for purposes unrelated to the thread question: Who should be closed down?

I repeat my answer: If you got the cash don't close. If you don't got the cash, close.

[Wahoo Redux]

I started this thread because a friend of ours with a PhD from a school far down in the US News "lower tiers" was finally forced to take a job as an academic advisor in a different state after a decade in the adjuncts ranks.  I suppose it is good to have someone with advanced education and teaching experience working as an advisor...but it is really a waste of a PhD.  And yes, Marshy, hu is heavily in debt and quite burned out.

There are also rumors of PhD programs experimenting with business and grant-writing training for their PhDs.  Okay, not the worst things.  But what point in getting a PhD, which is a tremendous amount of work, if you are going to write grants for other peoples' projects?  Do we train PhDs to live in the cube farm now?

I suppose there is always the argument, which I also subscribe to, that education, even advanced education, is good for society no matter what one does for a living.  And I do not buy Polly's constant argument about "opportunity costs"; the great thing about life is that there is always opportunity, and many of us switch career and life paths multiple times in our lives no matter what we do or how much education we have-----so spending 10 years getting a doctorate does not doom anyone because of "lost opportunity."

Nevertheless, I have yet to meet a PhD candidate in English who is hoping to become a grant writer.     And the adjunct army grows yearly.   And the job prospects decline yearly.  And a lot of people attempt the doctorate and fall short.  And even Harvard is having trouble placing people...

So what is to be done?

[mamselle]

Grantwriting could benefit those individuals learning it by making their own ability to get grants better, too...

That's something the humanities often don't teach--or haven't always taught or pushed for as well as the sciences: grad students of the science profs I worked for helped write sections of the proposals that funded their work, both to farm that part of it out, and so they'd know how to do their own when the time came.

None of my humanities profs ever showed, helped, or expected anyone in the program to find funding, and when, by a fluke of luck, I was able to turn around what I'd learned in the sciences and get grant funding two years in a row (to go to France for several months the first time, and a month-long return follow-up visit the next year), my then-advisor said, when I asked for advice on how to structure my time, "I don't  know. I've never gotten a grant like that."

So, nothing wrong with learning grantwriting.

It's also, like editing, a good "in-between" skill if the job market isn't rolling as one might wish, since one can free-lance--and then leave--if a teaching job does turn up, and it keeps you in contact with academia and with academics in your field.

M.

[apl68]

I never learned anything about grant writing in grad school.  I did have to learn about it after getting into the public library field.  I've found that my long years of grad study in a reading/writing-intensive field did a lot to prepare me for developing grant proposals and narratives.  I use those skills all the time in my work.  So all that academic training was not a waste. 

That said, going through a PhD program was an awfully long and painful way to acquire that level of skill.  I could never in good conscience recommend that a bright undergrad go into any program, especially a humanities program, past the Master's level, without thinking more than twice about it, going in knowing that a Plan B will likely be necessary, and considering that there could indeed, as Polly said, be an opportunity cost to following that career path. 

I would advise absolutely against going into any PhD program that did not offer full funding for at least six years.  And if a program is not prepared to offer full funding to its PhD students all the way through, or has many graduate assistants but scarcely any placements in the field for its graduates, then that program starts to look exploitative.  I would say that a program like that is taking advantage of its students and should close down.

[Ruralguy]

Even at my small college, some humanities professors are applying for grant funding. Though, as with the sciences now, it tend to tie into much bigger projects.

[marshwiggle]

There are also rumors of PhD programs experimenting with business and grant-writing training for their PhDs.  Okay, not the worst things.  But what point in getting a PhD, which is a tremendous amount of work, if you are going to write grants for other peoples' projects?  Do we train PhDs to live in the cube farm now?

I suppose there is always the argument, which I also subscribe to, that education, even advanced education, is good for society no matter what one does for a living. 

I have yet to meet a PhD candidate in English who is hoping to become a grant writer.     And the adjunct army grows yearly.   And the job prospects decline yearly.  And a lot of people attempt the doctorate and fall short.  And even Harvard is having trouble placing people...

So what is to be done?

The big question is "by whom"?

• Should students research the job market before entering a PhD program to learn their prospects as graduates?
• Should faculty research the job market to give students realistic advice before they enter a PhD program to understand their prospects as graduates?
• Should institutions reduce their intake to match demand for graduates?
• Should governments and/or accrediting agencies reduce the number of programs to match demand for graduates?

While these are not mutually exclusive, human nature will make all of those groups point to one or more of the others and say "It's their problem."

[mamselle]

Well, some of us always knew that doctoral work might or might not ever lead to a teaching position, per se. It has always seemed a bit entitled to me to have people essentially say, "OK, I've got my degree, now where's my job?"

In cases where the degree is the only way to get a particular job, where one is good at that job, and where the then-current environment makes such a job possible, fine.

But life is never quite what you'd expect, and it would be boring if it were.

I don't think anyone gets a doctorate in grantwriting, if anything maybe it's a certificate program, but I also know many freelance grantwriters who just picked it up along the way--some while doing editing or conservation/ preservation certificates, some while doing other stuff. The EA work I did taught me, essentially.

But it's honest paying work, so why shrug it off?

It's fine to hold out for "something more" whenever you can, but being responsibly nimble is a virtue, too.

Segmenting your skills and finding a place to use them in intelligent, communicative company is worthwhile, too.

M.

[Hibush]

There are also rumors of PhD programs experimenting with business and grant-writing training for their PhDs.  Okay, not the worst things.  But what point in getting a PhD, which is a tremendous amount of work, if you are going to write grants for other peoples' projects?  Do we train PhDs to live in the cube farm now?

I suppose there is always the argument, which I also subscribe to, that education, even advanced education, is good for society no matter what one does for a living. 

I have yet to meet a PhD candidate in English who is hoping to become a grant writer.     And the adjunct army grows yearly.   And the job prospects decline yearly.  And a lot of people attempt the doctorate and fall short.  And even Harvard is having trouble placing people...

So what is to be done?

The big question is "by whom"?

• Should students research the job market before entering a PhD program to learn their prospects as graduates?
• Should faculty research the job market to give students realistic advice before they enter a PhD program to understand their prospects as graduates?
• Should institutions reduce their intake to match demand for graduates?
• Should governments and/or accrediting agencies reduce the number of programs to match demand for graduates?

While these are not mutually exclusive, human nature will make all of those groups point to one or more of the others and say "It's their problem."

Dismalist recommends the approach that departments not subsidize grad training so that programs without funding close. That would be the Econ 101 model of the market determining who remains. More universities are implementing a budget model that includes at least a portion of that market force, and makes subsidies explicit. E.g. "we are providing your department with $1 million in graduate teaching assistantships in order to cover the freshman writing class required of all students." How many grad programs would close in oversupplied fields if those who didn't get enough external funding stopped taking students?

[dismalist]

There are also rumors of PhD programs experimenting with business and grant-writing training for their PhDs.  Okay, not the worst things.  But what point in getting a PhD, which is a tremendous amount of work, if you are going to write grants for other peoples' projects?  Do we train PhDs to live in the cube farm now?

I suppose there is always the argument, which I also subscribe to, that education, even advanced education, is good for society no matter what one does for a living. 

I have yet to meet a PhD candidate in English who is hoping to become a grant writer.     And the adjunct army grows yearly.   And the job prospects decline yearly.  And a lot of people attempt the doctorate and fall short.  And even Harvard is having trouble placing people...

So what is to be done?

The big question is "by whom"?

• Should students research the job market before entering a PhD program to learn their prospects as graduates?
• Should faculty research the job market to give students realistic advice before they enter a PhD program to understand their prospects as graduates?
• Should institutions reduce their intake to match demand for graduates?
• Should governments and/or accrediting agencies reduce the number of programs to match demand for graduates?

While these are not mutually exclusive, human nature will make all of those groups point to one or more of the others and say "It's their problem."

Dismalist recommends the approach that departments not subsidize grad training so that programs without funding close. That would be the Econ 101 model of the market determining who remains. More universities are implementing a budget model that includes at least a portion of that market force, and makes subsidies explicit. E.g. "we are providing your department with $1 million in graduate teaching assistantships in order to cover the freshman writing class required of all students." How many grad programs would close in oversupplied fields if those who didn't get enough external funding stopped taking students?

I never said that, Hibush.

The relevant questions are well stated by Marsh.

i and ii already are normal.

iii is achievable only  by coordination, which is illegal, and for good reason.

iv I wouldn't leave to the government decisions to close down departments, for it knows as little as is needed for opening departments!

What is efficient is for each of us to have general principles about public funding of higher ed, and fight out the decision in the political sphere.

My personal preference is to reduce it drastically, but not necessarily eliminate it. Never mind why. Anything else can be financed privately, by borrowing if need be. I will not try to convince anybody on this board, so I'm only one vote.

[Wahoo Redux]

None of my humanities profs ever showed, helped, or expected anyone in the program to find funding, and when, by a fluke of luck, I was able to turn around what I'd learned in the sciences and get grant funding two years in a row (to go to France for several months the first time, and a month-long return follow-up visit the next year), my then-advisor said, when I asked for advice on how to structure my time, "I don't  know. I've never gotten a grant like that."

So, nothing wrong with learning grantwriting.

I wish they had taught me grant writing in English grad school, but, as I am sure you know, the humanities doesn't traditionally survive on grants in the way the sciences do.  We don't really need grants to write monographs and novels (that is what sabbatical is for).

But we are literary and rhetorical scholars and creative writers.  I see nothing wrong with writing a grant for a social services entity or whatever, but it is really not what the PhD in English is for.

[Wahoo Redux]

The big question is "by whom"?

• Should students research the job market before entering a PhD program to learn their prospects as graduates?
• Should faculty research the job market to give students realistic advice before they enter a PhD program to understand their prospects as graduates?
• Should institutions reduce their intake to match demand for graduates?
• Should governments and/or accrediting agencies reduce the number of programs to match demand for graduates?

While these are not mutually exclusive, human nature will make all of those groups point to one or more of the others and say "It's their problem."

Marshy, we go over and over this.  Your first two bullet points are reinventing the wheel.  Humanities  faculty have been doing this for decades.  We've had numerous discussions about those very things.

Graduate students are often too starry-eyed and excited to be discouraged from pursuing the PhD.

The second two bullet points are what I thought was encompassed within the original question.

[Wahoo Redux]

iii is achievable only  by coordination, which is illegal, and for good reason.

Many if not most (or even all, I am not sure) English graduate programs have greatly reduced their intakes.

We are still producing more MAs and PhDs than we can accommodate professionally.