Say what?

Some of the associate professors who remain were the good hires of yesteryear who didn’t manage to find the jobs they once longed for. Many of them now spurn the academy in general, reserving their special contempt for the graduate students who teach our service courses (two a semester!). I’ve even heard some colleagues voice the opinion that we ought to disband the Ph.D. program, "since our students won’t get jobs anyway." This is perhaps a defensible argument for a professor at a branch university or a liberal-arts institution, but we are the flagship public university in the state.

— Frank Midler, "The Plight of the Newly Tenured," Chronicle of Higher Education, 4/5/04

"Frank Midler," newly tenured at a large Midwestern university (I always wonder when I read such a description: could it be my large Midwestern university? Have I met him?), writes about life for the just-tenured. He has some instructive things to say about the (relatively) low pay and heavy workload of new full professors, and he didn’t even trigger my cynicism reflex. At least, not at first.

Then I got to that paragraph I quoted above. And it makes no sense to me. Dr. Midler’s colleagues suggested that their department shut down its Ph.D. program because the graduate students aren’t getting jobs — and that’s supposed to be an indication of contempt for the students? It sounds like common sense to me — common sense and compassion for those who will probably end up spending years of their lives chasing after jobs they won’t get, ending up embittered and underemployed.

The logic of this paragraph seems to rest on the following assumption: graduate students at "a branch university or a liberal-arts institution" might not ever get jobs, so professors at such institutions are justified in suggesting that their departments shut down their Ph.D. program. But graduate students from "flagship public institutions" such as Dr. Midler’s own have a good enough shot at future academic employment that there’s no reason to limit the overproduction of new Ph.D.s.

Ahem. Dr. Midler, perhaps you’re not teaching at the university where I got my Ph.D. after all. Because we’re also a flagship institution for our state, and out of fifteen recent Ph.D.s and almost-finisheds from my department who were looking for jobs last year, guess how many actually got hired? One. And for many of them it wasn’t their first year on the market. So don’t tell me that a Ph.D. from a highly-ranked university is enough to ensure future employment for the graduate students in your program, because it. Is. Not. (Picture me burying my head in my hands.)

But perhaps it’s easy to assume your graduate students will get jobs when they’re so useful for teaching two "service courses" a semester. (Oops. There goes that cynicism reflex.) Or maybe it’s just that tenure can induce selective blindness toward the state of the job market.

12 Responses to “Say what?”

  1. ladygoat says:

    Still, getting your degree froma well-respected department and working with known researchers adds a lot to how candidates are viewed by those hiring. It’s sort of a shame, because just because you’ve worked with big names doesn’t really mean you’re smarter or better trained. But some names do carry more weight.
    That said, a lot of people are willing to pay for that opportunity, taking out big student loans if they don’t get financial assistance, with the expectation that it’s an investment in their career. It’s an expectation that really needs to be criticized, because as you say, it doesn’t always pay off, in fact it might be said to rarely pay off. It would be nice if they were more realistic to students about their chances, if not by closing programs then at least by drastically reducing the number of students accepted, but in terms of the faculty, they may not really see it since it worked out for them, and for the university, they may not want to reduce the number of paying students.

  2. ben wolfson says:

    I can’t help but wonder what Midler thinks is indefensible about the argument when it concerns a flagship state university. If it really is true that recent graduates haven’t been getting jobs, then what’s his quarrel with, reality? Does he think that his graduates should get jobs (after all, this is a flagship university!) so they ought to keep producing them until the rest of the world wakes up to the fact and starts offering them jobs?

  3. Rana says:

    As I posted over at wolfangel’s site, what particularly struck me about this was how defeatist the attitudes of those professors are (and that the author didn’t see it this way). Instead of exploring other options for those students, or working to improve the job market, they just give up? Says a lot about how important they think graduate education in their field is, don’t they? No wonder the humanities are in trouble!

  4. Rana says:

    Erg. That should be “doesn’t it”

  5. Chris says:

    Even with his worried consternation and self-reflection over the cross-roads of the newly post-tenured, this he is nevertheless “poised to enjoy the gentlemanlike position of a comfortable, secure income for the rest of my life.”
    Soon enough, I would guess, he will understand better than any of us the indifference of those he now softly chastises.

  6. yami says:

    But if the flagship university doesn’t have grad students… who will teach the undergrads, the professors? I don’t think so.
    Actually, I think there’s an element of pride in having a graduate program, particularly among Midwesterners who don’t like being flown over.

  7. Amanda says:

    True, there is something defeatist about proposing only “keep sending Ph.D.s out into a hostile market where they’re unlikely to all get jobs” and “disband the graduate program” as the only alternatives. The way I see it now, there are several options for graduate programs:
    1. Continue with the status quo, knowing that your graduate students are statistically likely to spend a big portion of their professional lives searching for jobs they’ll never get. This, when you look at it objectively, is kind of repugnant.
    2. Acknowledge the glutted market and trend toward adjunct hiring by not producing as many (or any) Ph.D.s.
    3. Realize that your grad students need options outside of academia and reconfigure your program such that they are not trained exclusively to be professors and can then have an easier time searching for employment elsewhere.
    If option 2 is unrealistic, option 3 seems like the most ethical thing for departments to do. But it doesn’t seem to be happening.

  8. Frank Midler says:

    I agree with you regarding Option 3 (and even Option 2 needs to be encouraged). I’m interested in all your comments on my piece, but I want to explain what I meant about it being “indefensible” to disband a PhD program at a flagship campus: the state is paying for our university to offer programs to its citizens. My program is an important program in the humanities, and the state’s residents deserve to have us here as a resource for them, whether to pursue degrees themselves or to have us for the speakers we can bring in and the attention to the humanities that only a PhD program can bring. How we function in “the profession” at large is one thing. What we do for the state as a resource is a different thing, and in our myopia we tend to forget that. I teach at a land-grant institution, and that means something to me.

  9. Amanda says:

    “How we function in ‘the profession’ at large is one thing. What we do for the state as a resource is a different thing, and in our myopia we tend to forget that. I teach at a land-grant institution, and that means something to me.”
    Ah. Now I see what you were saying, and that does make sense. And I’m all in favor of drawing attention to the humanities, really I am. (I’m also a bit embarrassed at having posted while in such a cranky state.) But all the same, I wish there were more organizations to bring the humanities into people’s lives without, at the same time, causing the kind of damage that one sees so often among those who don’t make it to the tenure stage.
    I see what you’re saying, because my own university brings all manner of good people and good things — musicians, artists, speakers, traveling exhibits, conferences, the lot — into our state and our town. It would be hypocritical of me to say that these things don’t matter; I’ve been to too many conferences and concerts and exhibits and other cultural events to dismiss the university’s hand in them.
    Out of curiosity, and because I don’t think I can finish replying right away (too groggy to compose a coherent paragraph), can anyone comment on non-university organizations that might serve some of the same functions, apart from degree-granting, that Frank’s university does — like humanities councils and the like? My own state’s humanities council sponsors some interesting programs, but I haven’t had much direct contact with them. Anyone else know of anything similar?

  10. Excuse me for being cynical, but exactly what attention to the humanities can only a Ph.D program bring?
    This sounds to me perilously close to treating unemployable Ph.Ds as acceptable collateral damage — they’re just there to be bodies so that the department can do its Other Work, whatever that is.
    If that’s the case, shouldn’t they be told as much?

  11. Frank Midler says:

    I understand the frustration that might lead pending and recent PhDs to resent the professors and programs that have nurtured them and then let them out into a cold, hard world of underemployment. But if you’ve ever been in a city of 100,000 with a major university and then a city of 100,000 with no university, you will know the difference that doctoral level programs, with the students, research, and resources they bring to a community, can make for non-academics and academics alike. As I said before, Amanda is right to want faculty and administrators to reflect on what they are doing when they admit students to their programs. On the other hand, I know of institutions and faculty members that discourage talented undergraduates from pursuing advanced degrees. Do you really think it’s a better world in which people are denied the opportunity to read, think, learn, and teach about subjects that deeply interest them? I know a large number of PhDs who ended up choosing non-academic work. The ones who were most successful in their programs tend to be glad they did doctoral work. The ones who weren’t as successful in their programs tend to be most caustic about the experience. As an employment class, PhDs have very low unemployment and very high job satisfaction, regardless of the work they do. I believe it’s important for the vibrancy of our culture to encourage study in the humanities. I’m sorry if it didn’t work out for some of you, but not so sorry that I believe the unhappiness of some requires the impoverishing of our culture.

  12. Amanda says:

    Okay. First of all, I don’t think it’s fair to assume that those who are dissatisfied with the current bleak job market for Ph.D.s in the humanities are the ones who haven’t been “successful” academically. I know graduate students who haven’t “succeeded” and yet are unembittered. And one can see from the Invisible Adjunct’s site that there are plenty of academically successful former graduate students who have nonetheless spent years looking for work, or gotten stuck in jobs that make them unhappy. Even Ms. Mentor of the Chronicle comments in her latest column on the volume of mail she gets from exhausted and miserable junior faculty — and these are the academically successful ones.
    It sounds like you’re writing off the people who criticize the current system by dismissing them as academic failures. That may not be what you’re trying to do, but that’s what it sounds like. And that’s not at all fair.
    I’ve met a lot of talented undergraduates here. Even though I love to see them enjoying learning, and I’d be very happy if they go on learning for the rest of their lives, I no longer think that pursuing a Ph.D. is the only way for them to go about it. I can’t in good conscience encourage them to pursue a path that’s still defined very narrowly as leading only to a career as a professor. Especially when such careers are so hard to come by and non-academic work is hardly ever mentioned as a real possibility for them.
    If graduate departments were in the habit of preparing their students for nonacademic work, I’d feel more confident about telling undergraduates “Go forth and get an advanced degree!” But when I’m saying, in effect, “Go forth and learn for the sheer love of it, but expect to go into debt, and work for peanuts, and uproot your life to follow elusive one-year visiting positions all over the country, and forego some of your chances at forming lasting relationships with other people, and be met with bafflement when you want to do something else” — well, then I’m not so inclined to tell them to go to graduate school.
    I think what we need are different means of enriching the culture and allowing people to learn, because I still believe in those goals — just not necessarily in a university setting.