As is often the case, Public Discourse has an interesting article today, this one by Matthew Milliner on the current hand-wringing about the future of humanistic inquiry in American higher education.
Milliner, a graduate student in art history at Princeton and a blogger here at First Thoughts, covers a lot of ground, but one point really caught my attention: the tendency of commentators to point to a lousy job market and interminable graduate study as symptoms of a serious problem in academia.
As Milliner reports, Louis Menand raised this concern in his recent survey of the state of the university, “The Marketplace Of Ideas.” Menand makes an observation that’s meant to be damning: “You can become a lawyer in three years, an M.D. In four years, and an M.D.-Ph.D. in six years, but the median time to do a doctoral degree in the humanities disciplines is nine years.”
The implication is that graduate study in English and History is primarily about training and credentialing for a career, with the implicit judgment that it’s silly to imagine that people need nine years to jump through the requisite hoops or learn the appropriate skills.
To this judgment, as Milliner notes, many make the point that the job market for recent PhDs in the humanities is wretched. Again, the implied judgment is that the current scene it bad: we’re training people for no good purpose, because so many can’t get jobs.
There is a lot wrong with American higher education, and I’ve written my share of critiques. But Milliner points out that there is something wrong with this angle of criticism. It treats graduate study as a means to an end—having an “academic career”—when, in fact, humanistic study in an intrinsic good.
Milliner is right. Graduate study may lead to a career as a professor. Who knows, it may be the beginning of a path that leads into the netherworlds of academic administration—or into government bureaucracy, law school, or journalism (it’s been know to happen!). My point (and Milliner’s) is that the career path isn’t the reason for the liberal arts. Indeed, the very name “liberal” in liberal arts means free from concerns about how to make a living. Roman history, medieval poetry, Jansenist theology—these are worth thinking about, full stop.
Thus one reason why graduate students take so long to complete their degrees: for the most part doctoral study in the humanities is very engaging and rewarding. In fact, I often joke (but only half-joke) that the biggest mistake I ever made was to complete my degree.
Over the years I’ve had students and young friends ask me whether or not they should pursue graduate study in the humanities (and theology, which is strictly speaking “the divinities”). Here is what I say: “Only do it if you think it’s worthwhile for its own sake, only if you think you’ll always be glad you did so even if you don’t end up as an academic, only if you’re in love with the discipline.”
Careers? They don’t in fact make people happy. But loves do.
January 7th, 2011 | 11:24 am
One of the things that strikes me about all of this is the built-in assumption that the achievement of an advanced degree carries with it the entitlement to a lucrative career. Certainly some career fields have higher earning potential than others, but entering a certain field and even achieving an advanced degree or career credential (being admitted to the bar, receiving one’s medical license, etc.) are not a guarantee to a high income.
All other things being equal, I want to be taught be a teacher who loves teaching, treated by a doctor who loves medicine or given legal counsel by someone who loves the practice of law. Loving what one does, and willingly taking on the hard work required for success in one’s field (however that is defined) makes one much more likely to maximize whatever earning potential there is.
That being said, if someone is interested in doing graduate studies in the humanities, they should have their eyes open regarding their career options. Getting a graduate degree and working in some other capacity than tenure-track professor is not the end of the world.
I have a graduate degree in theology and work in the business world. I am not owed some sort of lucrative position teaching theology. I love studying theology and I have opportunities to teach in a variety of settings (primarily in the local church). But I wouldn’t trade the studies that I completed for anything.
January 7th, 2011 | 11:26 am
Amen.
Josef Pieper makes this point wonderfully in Leisure: The Basis of Culture, where he draws on Aquinas and Newman to distinguish the liberal and servile arts.
January 7th, 2011 | 11:27 am
Sic et Non. Careers, I’m finding, may not make people happy, but they sure do make their spouses happy. I’m finishing my Ph.D. in theology and don’t regret it even for a second, which is good because there are very few jobs available and usually 100+ applicants for the same position. My wife is not too happy about this, since she is working to support us and doesn’t get to spend time with our son. Professor Reno, Creighton just advertised for a tenure track position in theology — how many applicants did you have for that one position?
I tell people thinking about doctoral work the same thing as you, that it has to have intrinsic value. But I add one other element, which is that they shouldn’t take on debt to do it, both because there are no jobs and even the jobs that are available don’t really pay well enough (in the humanities) to make substantial debt worth it. And if they are married, I tell them that their spouse has to want it for them as much as they do.
The ethical question, it seems to me, is whether there is a certain amount of false advertising taking place and whether the Ph.D. is the proper degree for this. When we apply to doctoral programs we often have to explain how we want to contribute to the academic life of the institution or how we see our academic career progressing. The idea, whether implicit or explicit, is that a Ph.D. is supposed to prepare you for an academic career. If it is not or if the prospects for an academic career are marginal, then we need to be more honest about it. And how much of the benefits of doctoral work could be conveyed without the requirements of a dissertation and without exploiting graduate students for cheap teaching labor? Just a couple of years of extra coursework may be sufficient to give people the additional training they need that allows them to be lifelong learners at a high level, while minimizing their loss of income.
January 7th, 2011 | 11:57 am
The monkey wrench in the “who cares how lucrative it is” position is the reality of debt. If you’re independently wealthy, go for it. Spend as long as you like in school, costing as much as you like, to do what you love, in the way that you like.
But otherwise, if you’re incurring a moral obligation to pay the debt, you’ve a responsibility to exercise reasonable foresight about whether you’re gong to be able to pay it — and what your spouse and kids will think about living with the debt, someday.
January 7th, 2011 | 12:22 pm
2 follow ups:
1. Don’t go into debt for a grad degree in the Humanities (I would advise against it for any degree if at all possible)
2. The desired studies have to be balanced with everything else in life. If I were single and without children, my income threshold would be very different and I would be much more likely to be happy patching together an income from the adjunct teaching world and part-time barista type jobs. There is a reason that for much of the early history of universities, teaching was very much a near-monastic type existence in the sense that it pretty much precluded a wife (yes, the teaching profession was all male back then) and children and one had to be devoted completely to it. If one is dead-set on the tenure-track professor career path, just know that it will likely involve a long-time of low-income and if marriage and family is also part of ones plans, an understanding spouse is an absolute must (think of military life or the life of pastoral ministry in a system that involves episcopal appointment).
In my situation, I am married with three children and my family is much more important to me than some idealized career goal. And frankly, I was a good student, but not so outstanding that the world of professional theology couldn’t do just fine without me. I can scratch that itch by being a lifelong learner and exercising my teaching gift where opportunities arise.
January 7th, 2011 | 12:53 pm
Serious question: Why not just read? Read all the works which you would have read were you to have gotten accreditation. If you’re fortunate enough to live in an academic community and have the time (Yes, two big ‘ifs’) you can engage in casual study groups and clubs. If not, there’s the internet, namely First Things. You won’t have the public prestige of letters after your name, but neither did Socrates.
Do we want a career, prestige, or do we really just want an education for its own sake?
January 7th, 2011 | 1:09 pm
As someone who has an English degree and decided to go back for an actually marketable degree, I have come to the conclusion that liberal arts are very very good for people in other fields to study, but -outside of those pursuing professorships- rarely important as the primary field of study. One could do away with every English lit student in the country and no one would be the wiser.
January 7th, 2011 | 1:30 pm
“There is a reason that for much of the early history of universities, teaching was very much a near-monastic type existence in the sense that it pretty much precluded a wife”
I believe it was into the 20th century that Oxbridge dons were *required* to be unmarried.
January 7th, 2011 | 4:04 pm
baconboy’s points are excellent. If others are affected by your decisions, then saying “but I love this” is not a sufficient reason. This ties in nicely with Kevin Staley-Joyce’s essay today on the definition of marriage, actually. Our intellectual desires are no more sanctified than our physical ones.
I approve greatly of the intrinsic value of humanities. (CS Lewis again: “On Learning In Wartime.”) It is a foundation of the advance of knowledge in general. The difficulty of finding employment is only one factor, not the whole, in deciding whether wishes to devote oneself to a subject.
That said, I do find it tiring when relatives moan about jobs drying up when they “have all this education,” clearly believing they are entitled to some handsome salary because of it. And worse, resenting others who make more.
January 7th, 2011 | 4:55 pm
It’s all well and good to criticize the utilitarian attitude, but in fact PhD programs are structured not just as places where a good is pursued for its own sake, but as places where one is prepared to take up a career as a teacher-scholar (or scholar who happens to be a teacher, as the case may be…). Everything about their structure and the course of studies bears this out. So if someone wants to go to graduate school in the so-called humanities, I would ask them why, if he or she wants to study so badly, he or she couldn’t make it happen as an avocation. That’s not easy when you have other responsibilities, but presumably you want it so badly that you’ll accept having to find other work later anyway, when it will be harder to find a job that gives you some leisure.
January 7th, 2011 | 6:00 pm
Life is full of choices. And these choices aren’t typically choices of an ideal scenario vs a bad scenario. They are choices between a variety of options that all contains pros and cons. If you want to pursue a path, you need to understand that each particular path has some down sides. PhD programs in the humanities are not a retreat from real life. They are just another setting where real life plays out.
It’s a good idea to have some idea what the best case and worse case scenarios are before you make a decision that involves spending 6-8 years in rigorous work for low pay leading to potentially more years of low pay and a vagabond like existence moving from one place to another hoping to land that coveted tenure track position. If you know the score and are convinced that it is the best path for you, more power to you. If you don’t think about the realities that you could face and feel like you are owed something more…well, I guess a nice way to say it is less power to you.
January 11th, 2011 | 1:51 pm
“Thus one reason why graduate students take so long to complete their degrees: for the most part doctoral study in the humanities is very engaging and rewarding. In fact, I often joke (but only half-joke) that the biggest mistake I ever made was to complete my degree.”
Are you kidding?! As a recent Ph.D., with a good share of recently-minted Ph.D. friends, I hardly think this is the case. We all have our horror stories of difficult committee members, or the need to work which dramatically lengthens the time in school.
“The implication is that graduate study in English and History is primarily about training and credentialing for a career, with the implicit judgment that it’s silly to imagine that people need nine years to jump through the requisite hoops or learn the appropriate skills.”
Indeed. Unless you belong to an aristocratic class you need a job. No matter how much you enjoy your field and the pursuit of intellectual pleasure you still need to eat and to feed your family. I am one of the lucky few who was able to find a tt position. As a new Professor I really think long and hard before recommending that any of my students pursue graduate degrees in the humanities . . . at least until the Boomers retire!
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