Getting a literature Ph.D. will turn you into an emotional trainwreck, not a prof...

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by BlueMason, Apr 5, 2013.

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  1. distancedoc2007

    distancedoc2007 New Member

    There are no easy answers to this debate, but it does seem to me that people who get middle-quality doctorates will be happiest if they hang around in environments where a middle-quality doctorate would be looked up to, not looked down on.
     
  2. Paidagogos

    Paidagogos Member

    Very well said, and a very scary trend no doubt. I myself would be very wary of embarking on any Ph.D., but especially one in the humanities/liberal arts - fields I dearly love and believe to be upheld.
     
  3. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    In some fields, getting a PhD from a mid-tier college can be worth it. My school's CJ doctoral program is very new; they just graduated their first students last school year. They have all landed teaching positions. I believe they are all tenure track (I didn't ask) because my professor said they did very well. In CJ, there is a shortage of PhDs. CJ programs want to stop depending on sociologists and other majors to fill the gap.
     
  4. Helpful2013

    Helpful2013 Active Member

    There's an interesting thread at the Chronicle of Higher Education on the author of the article discussed in this post (Schumann). One of the responses characterizes that author's blog as "performance art." It doesn't make what she was saying untrue, but the blog does seem more designed to get attention than enlighten.

    UC RIverside: "We'll notify you by Jan. 3" . . . 5 days before MLA

    The forumites at the Chronicle definitely have their own biases, but it's interesting reading.
     
  5. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Many fields have both an academic component and a practice component. Economics is an example. Human resource development (my field) is another.

    Some fields are just practice-oriented (like homeland security). Others (like archaeology) are almost completely academic.

    The Ph.D. is an academic (scholarly) degree. It is designed to prepare candidates for scholarly pursuits.

    The rampant inflation of credentialing (Hapgood's diplomaism), coupled with a bursting of supply, higher degrees are incredibly accessible and possible for practitioners than ever before. For example, just 20 years ago saw us with only a handful of distance learning MBA options.

    This diplomaism and enhanced supply has led to many practitioners seeking degrees beyond the master's. Thus, many Ph.D. programs are delivered to--and filled with--practitioners. But the paradigm isn't designed for them; their studies, their methods, and the ways in which they are assessed (academic papers, comprehensive exams, and dissertations) are not compatible with their careers. Yet the higher knowledge and higher degrees remain attractive (and much more attainable.)

    A solution to this dilemma is the professional doctorate, which is designed to advance practice, not theoretical scholarship of a field. We see some of this in the U.S.--the Ed.D. and DBA are sometimes examples. ("Sometimes," because often they are merely Ph.D. programs with alternate titles instead of being distinctly practitioner-oriented.)

    In the 1970's we saw the Doctor of Arts movement. The DA was designed as an advanced degree to prepare people to teach--much more than research--their respective academic disciplines. A very cool idea, and certainly more relevant than the Ph.D. for a lot of people interested in teaching, but not in research.

    But what about practice? Most of us neither research nor teach. But we do "do." We practice. What is there for us?

    On the Continent, in the UK, elsewhere, we're seeing the development of professional doctoral programs truly designed around the practitioner. Classes (or the equivalent taught portion) are focused on advancing practice, and the dissertations/theses produced are based in practical research designed to help other practitioners improve, rather than to enhance theory in the scholarly field.

    These professional doctorates are not to be confused first professional degrees--like the MD, DPharm, and JD. Those degrees, usually conferring the title "doctor," are designed for entry into certain professions where the being a "doctor" is much more about your professional role than your academic degree--which invariably does not have a dissertation (or equivalent).

    I had a Ph.D. It would be cool to experience a professional doctorate in my field.
     
  6. distancedoc2007

    distancedoc2007 New Member

    Someone once described their own professional doctorate as "turning practice into theory." It was meant as a self-deprecating joke at the time, but it always stuck with me. I enjoyed doing my DBL because I got to focus my research on a practical area that was really interesting to me from my work life.
     
  7. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    There's no question about it: if you want a good academic job in German, your chances will be much better if the letters on your PhD diploma spell "Berkeley" rather than "Irvine".

    But consider the bigger picture. There are about 50 German PhD programs nationwide. Some of them are closer to Berkeley, in terms of academic reputation. However, most of them are closer to Irvine.

    So let's acknowledge that the author is guilty of some exaggeration. Her article might have been more accurately titled "Getting a literature Ph.D. from most programs will turn you into an emotional trainwreck, not a prof."

    But that still sucks.
     
  8. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    Society at large has one use for the PhD in German: it is a qualification for teaching German at the college level. And that’s pretty much it. So if a given PhD program in German can’t place its graduates in academic positions, then what exactly is the point ? From the "transactional" perspective, there is none.

    So let's consider the "transformational" perspective. Certainly a PhD program is capable of producing “transformative results” on individuals (although in the case of Dr. Schumann, those transformative results were apparently negative). But PhD programs are expensive, and university resources are limited, which means that tough decisions are sometimes necessary. If a given PhD program is not successful at placing graduates within its discipline, and can say only that it has “transformed” them in some way, then maybe that program does not represent the best use of a school’s resources.

    And that’s why one prominent school in California -- the University of Southern California -- recently shut down its German PhD program (USC still offers German at the undergraduate level). California still has six other PhD programs in German (Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, Davis, Irvine, and Santa Barbara). Yet that’s probably still more than are needed. Maybe more schools — possibly including Irvine — should follow USC’s example.

    Is it “anti-intellectual” to support the elimination of some (not all) German PhD programs ? Not necessarily — rather than ending the academic study of German, it could be refocused it in new directions. For example, there are few or no options in the US for non-traditional students who want to earn a bachelor’s or master’s degree in German by DL. Perhaps there would be a net social benefit if some (not all) schools channelled some of their intellectual energy towards addressing that shortage -- instead of adding to the oversupply of traditional PhDs.
     
  9. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

  10. Helpful2013

    Helpful2013 Active Member

    UC Berkeley is a world-class university, and credible in probably every field. However, lots of the smaller UC’s are not, yet they still run PhD programs in most fields. Their graduates aren’t nearly as competitive, but they still get churned out. We could debate whether that is a problem with the students admitted or the program, but we wouldn’t get anywhere. I suspect that the bottom line is that these doctoral programs exist because it’s good for the institution (allocated budget) and professors (prestige). Unfortunately, this produces graduates whose expectations are high, but whose job prospects are limited - and of course, this problem is much, much wider than just the University of California.

    As to why the graduates aren’t competitive, I’d say it’s because the process wasn’t transformative in the first place, i.e. it may have led them through transactions like coursework, comp exams, review panels, and a dissertation, but didn’t transform them into capable independent scholars. I suppose another way of describing it is the difference between outputs and outcome.
     
  11. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    Yeah, it's hard to break into full-time, tenure-track university teaching in most subjects. So a certain kind of person who has all of his/her hopes riding on doing that becomes angry and embittered and lashes out at higher education itself. Apparently it would have been better to have remained uneducated.

    No, I don't think it's that. UC Irvine has an international reputation in literary theory, particularly literary theory of the trendy variety that draws upon 20th century European 'continental' philosophy. (Jacques Derrida taught in the literature program at UCI.) In that particular niche, UCI's probably got a better reputation than most of the ivy league schools.

    At the doctoral level, there's really no such thing as elite schools. There are elite departments. It's even more specific than that, there are elite departments in particular specialties and in particular research problems and approaches. That's typically a function of who is teaching in the department at the moment and that's always fluid as star professors move from university to university.

    Hiring committees are specialists themselves and they're typically familiar with that stuff. They are almost certainly going to be less interested in the USNews ranking of the university an applicant attended than they will be in who the applicant studied with and in what the applicant's area of research specialization was. Recommendations are tremendously important, particularly if they are from respected people in the field.

    Yeah, I agree with that. That's one complaint I've always had about Degreeinfo. There's always been this idea floating around the board that PhDs are PhDs and all that really matters is whether or not the school that granted the degree is RA (or GAAP). There's this assumption that doctoral degrees are fungible commodities. They aren't. But that isn't so much a function of the difference in university reputations as it is a function of departmental reputations in particular specialties. That's my point.

    Thanks. I've always hoped that distance learning might open up new avenues for people with academic interests to affordably pursue their subjects part-time, from wherever they happen to be located, without having to focus their entire existence on the remote hope of eventually becoming a university professor. That's why I became interested in distance learning in the first place (John Bear's book inspired me) and it's why I did a DL masters degree in the humanities. I still consider it one of the best things that I've done in my life.

    Today Degreeinfo seems to be growing increasingly hostile towards the whole idea of anyone studying anything for personal interest. As for me, my academic interests are fundamental to who I am as a person. I don't really need to be told over and over that people like me shouldn't even be thinking about higher education. That's one reason why I rarely post here these days.
     
  12. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I agree with you that education doesn't have to be transactional, but I don't agree that's the only opinion on this forum. I've long said that people should look at education from a position of how it helps them meet their goals. For some people the goal is professional development, and fair enough, but for others it's personal development, and that's fine too.
     
  13. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    I agree with this part to a certain extent. The reputation of the department is way more important than the reputation of the school, but this does have a lot to do with U.S. News rankings. Also, rankings in many subjects are pretty static. This leads me to....

    ...disagreeing with this part, at least for my field. When I looked at the top CJ schools, IIRC, all of the faculty members with CJ degrees came from a higher-ranked school. Maybe there were a few people who managed to get hired at a school ranked one slot higher. There were a lot of professors with sociology degrees. I didn't look into those, but they seemed to come from top schools too. The only school that hired a lot from lower-ranked schools was the #1 school; and, they only hired from the schools that were within a couple of slots below them. One of my professors told us, "You're not going to be hired at a higher-ranked department. It's just not going to happen."
     
  14. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    There may be isolated instances of this, but I wouldn't characterize the board as a whole as "hostile" towards the idea of studying for personal interest. I've noticed, for example, that many board members here have a clear interest in Christian religious degrees -- if you need any proof, just enter "Nations University" into the degreeinfo search box. Somehow I doubt that people are considering Nations University credentials as a vehicle for career enhancement.

    It's probably fair to say that degreeinfo, as a whole, is oriented more towards professional qualifications. But the same is true for distance learning generally.

    I've hoped the same thing. And for the most part, I've been disappointed.

    And I think we have to put some of the blame for this on the universities themselves. Let's suppose, for example, that you are in California and want to study German at an advanced level (like the author who is the subject of this thread). The public universities in this state (UCs and CSUs) offer literally dozens of degree options, from BA to PhD, from Chico to San Diego, and from traditional German language or literature degrees to degrees in International Business with German Concentration.

    But they're all face-to-face. There are no DL degree options. Zero. With luck, you might find a few online extension courses.

    Could the CSU or UC systems offer German degrees online, if they wanted to? Of course they could -- but they don't want to. Suppose an academic department has a choice between teaching:

    (1) students located somewhere far away who want to study casually by DL, on a part-time basis, for personal development, and

    (2) students in full-time residence who want to "focus their entire existence on the remote hope of eventually becoming a university professor".

    Given that choice, the average professor will select Option 2.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 31, 2013
  15. Helpful2013

    Helpful2013 Active Member

    Well, I made a mistake before when I referred to Schuman’s field as English Literature. As CalDog pointed out, the author of the article received her PhD in German literature - but your point stands.

    You’re quite right that once you drill down past the university level, it’s the department that matters. To an extent, at the doctoral level it’s the individual supervisor. Your department could have strengths in a particular area, but if the world’s top specialist is full up with supervisees, you’ll be supervised by the new PhD who is available and your research won’t be the same.

    The one area where I think the whole university makes a contribution is resources: the libraries, the funding, etc., that facilitate students publishing quality material early (as RFValve touched on). If we were to sit around a coffee shop and rank the subfields in our areas, there would be plenty in which the top choice was not Harvard. However, in most cases, I think most of our choices would still be recognizably at the top of the spectrum somewhere.

    I agree, and started a thread on this very subject. If you’d care to go over there and expand on this, please share your thoughts. I think many students need to be prompted to think about these things far earlier in the process than they typically do.
     
  16. Helpful2013

    Helpful2013 Active Member

    My posts appear when I use quick reply, but go to moderation for up to a few days, so please forgive what will eventually be a duplicate post…

    Bill, I agree very much with what you said about academic reputation deriving from the department, not the university, but with one caveat. I think the elite universities (which frequently wind up having top departments) offer significant advantages in terms of library and funding resources. This helps students to begin publishing early, which materially affects their chances when it comes to getting hired.
     
  17. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

  18. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    None of us know what exactly is going on. Hope everything is ok.
     
  19. Helpful2013

    Helpful2013 Active Member

    Look at the bottom of the education section of the LinkedIn page you posted a link to.

    Congratulations Rich!
     
  20. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    University of Leicester
    Doctor of Social Science, Human Resources Development
    Degree expected in 2013
    Rich Douglas, Ph.D., PMP | LinkedIn
     

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