Louis Menand, writing in Harvard Magazine, certainly gets to the root of the “Ph.D. Problem”:
What is clear is that students who spend eight or nine years in graduate school are being seriously over-trained for the jobs that are available. The argument that they need the training to be qualified to teach undergraduates is belied by the fact that they are already teaching undergraduates. Undergraduate teaching is part of doctoral education; at many institutions, graduate students begin teaching classes the year they arrive.
His solution, on the other hand, is absolutely mystifying to me:
The moral of the story that the numbers tell once seemed straightforward: if there are fewer jobs for people with Ph.D.s, then universities should stop giving so many Ph.D.s—by making it harder to get into a Ph.D. program (reducing the number of entrants) or harder to get through (reducing the number of graduates). But this has not worked. Possibly the story has a different moral, which is that there should be a lot more Ph.D.s, and they should be much easier to get. The non-academic world would be enriched if more people in it had exposure to academic modes of thought, and had thereby acquired a little understanding of the issues that scare terms like “deconstruction” and “postmodernism” are attempts to deal with. And the academic world would be livelier if it conceived of its purpose as something larger and more various than professional reproduction—and also if it had to deal with students who were not so neurotically invested in the academic intellectual status quo.
If Ph.Ds are of little value in the job market now, why should we should we expand their numbers? After all, if we are producing all these disillusioned graduate students they should be pouring into all these other jobs if employers actually valued their skills. But, of course, they don’t.
A graduate degree in the humanities teaches a very specific set of skills that are useful for a very specific set of circumstances. Those skills matter in people’s lives, but only as long as you have the opportunity to utilize them once you’ve acquired them.
Convincing people to pay for a degree that is unnecessary for most positions and won’t pay for itself in the end is no different than selling someone an investment property they don’t need and can’t afford. Expanding the supply of labor where there’s no demand is the last thing that universities should be doing.
There is an unspoken phenomenon that always gets skipped in these discussions:
Many college instructors have a master’s degree and are not enrolled in any PhD program. In the old days, this was perfectly acceptable, especially at community colleges. But I have seen this at R1 universities too! The people I have encountered often do not even hold their master’s degree in the field for which they are teaching! I suspect this isn’t just limited to that school either.
So, the fact remains that a lot of people are getting hired —as adjuncts, as short-term/non-TT faculty, or as TT faculty –without a PhD. This has always been happening, and yet no one ever talks about it, acknowledges it, or even considers the impact it has on PhD holders unable to earn the jobs tey were trained to do.
Cassandra:
Of course you’re right. The need to maintain the steady supply of labor to underpay is why graduate departments won’t cut enrollment. Increasing enrollment and lowering standards will only make the phenomenon you describe worse.
A graduate degree in the humanities teaches a very specific set of skills that are useful for a very specific set of circumstances.
Menand is saying that’s what should be changed. Reconceive the PhD.
Also, things like the Leaving Academia blog and _So What Are You Going To Do With That_, make it very clear that the skills accumulated in grad school are actually useful in many other circumstances, and equally clear that grad schools do a TERRIBLE job of communicating that to either students or the public.
Dance:
While I believe that in principle, I don’t believe it will work that way in practice. Employers will take the undergraduate version of applicants with those same skills at a lower price and the world will be left with even more miserable over-qualified people.
Rees said, “Employers will take the undergraduate version of applicants with those same skills at a lower price and the world will be left with even more miserable over-qualified people.”
Exactly. Even if I am WILLING to do that low-paid job (that pays more than adjuncting), no one has called me for an interview yet. And I only have a master’s degree (with lots of now-useless grad level courses in the PhD-program-left-behind).
[...] of humanities graduate students is not a conspiracy. 1 02 2010 I continue to be unimpressed by everything I’ve read about Louis Menand’s new book on higher education. The latest [...]