Monday, April 19, 1999
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MLA Looks at Expanded Master's-Degree Programs as a Tonic for the Ph.D. Job CrisisBy DENISE K. MAGNER
Madison, Wis.
Expanded master's-degree programs could be a solution to the job-market crisis facing Ph.D.'s in the humanities, according to many participants at a weekend conference here on the future of doctoral education. More than 180 professors, administrators, and graduate students in English and foreign languages met at the University of Wisconsin at Madison for the meeting, which was sponsored by the Modern Language Association and the university. It was only the second time in the M.L.A.'s history that it had convened a special national meeting devoted to the topic. By now, academe is well acquainted with the woes of the humanities profession. The job market for Ph.D.'s in English and foreign languages has been in a rut for much of the '90s, as universities have reduced the number of tenure-track positions on their campuses and instead relied more heavily on adjuncts and graduate students to teach the undergraduate curriculum. According to the most recent statistics from the M.L.A., only 33 per cent of the students who earned Ph.D.'s in English in 1996-97 landed tenure-track positions that year, and only 38 per cent of their counterparts in foreign languages. "Human beings in general overestimate their chances of success -- state lotteries depend on this, and graduate students are no exception," said John Guillory, a professor of English at Harvard University. "Our students persist in wanting to pursue an academic career even after hearing the worst from us." Mr. Guillory said many of the economic difficulties facing research universities cannot be solved within the university, but he pointed to a few "pressure points" where he felt academics could make a difference. The sharp division in status between composition professors and literature faculty members could be lessened if lower-division composition courses were not just remedial in nature, but were redesigned so that they would be attractive to faculty members to teach. More controversially, he questioned why graduate education should be an unregulated market and suggested that some accrediting power could be invested in the M.L.A. or a group like it to monitor doctoral education. That suggestion, however, seemed to have few takers in the audience here. What did intrigue many here was the potential of the master's degree. New kinds of master's programs in the humanities could prepare students for a variety of careers, such as working in non-profit agencies, schools, computer companies, or entertainment fields. Professors and administrators at the meeting suggested that master's programs could do two things for the humanities: They could help departments maintain enrollment in graduate programs as the number of doctoral students declines. And such programs could help departments make connections to the world outside of academe and demonstrate that training in the humanities is of broad value to the society, and not simply a way to perpetuate the professoriate. Catharine R. Stimpson, dean of the graduate school at New York University, predicted: "The master's degree will get even more popular. The master's can no longer be dismissed as a mere pathway to a Ph.D., but will become as crucial a degree as the B.A. became after World War II." David Ward, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, echoed that sentiment. He called the master's degree one solution to the preservation of the liberal arts, and urged departments to consider cross-disciplinary programs in which, for example, a business major might get a master's degree in a one-year foreign-language immersion program. The key for the humanities, Mr. Ward said, "is to move beyond critique, move beyond angst and come up with some concrete ways that those of us who want to help can." Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has some concrete ideas but they are not always welcomed by administrators. He suggested, for example, that a cap be placed on administrative and faculty salaries and that the money saved by the cap be used to improve the wages of part-timers and teaching assistants. Mr. Nelson said graduate students who spend seven years or more in training for a Ph.D. develop an identity that is deeply connected to academic life. "It trivializes that identity to suggest that they should be happy to abandon something they've committed 10 years to so they can go a work in a bank," he said. "If you want to put someone in an alternative career, it should begin early on, with different courses and internships offered. An M.A. program is a much better way to do it." J. Lawrence Mitchell, a professor of English at Texas A&M University said Mr. Nelson's "idealistic" approach was "nice," but added: "I'm a pragmatist. What can we do here and now for people who can't make it into academe?" Robert Weisbuch, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, agreed. He has been leading a project at the foundation to expand career options for Ph.D.'s within and beyond academe. (See a story from The Chronicle on April 16.) The idea that a student spends 10 years pursuing a Ph.D. in English only to end up working in the business world, "that's not what we're hoping to have happen," Mr. Weisbuch said. "That's what the current situation is. The nation is predicting a shortage of 2 million schoolteachers in the coming years, and we've got underemployment of Ph.D.'s. We've got to put some of these things together." While many professors were not in favor of removing anything currently involved in Ph.D. training they were willing to consider ways to supplement doctoral training that might better prepare Ph.D.'s for the likelihood that they won't find a tenure-track job. One venture that received a lot of attention at the conference is taking shape at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Deborah Carlin, director of the graduate program in English there, is creating an internship program for Ph.D.'s, in such settings as local historical societies, film companies, and theater groups. Hands-on experience in a setting outside academe will give Ph.D.'s something to put on their résumés in the event that an academic career doesn't pan out, she said. The internships are intended to be meaningful positions for Ph.D.'s. "We intend that they not be Xeroxing monkeys," she said. "The point," Ms. Carlin added, "is the acquisition of experience." Some graduate students who have been pushing for the M.L.A. and academic departments to do more about the job crisis said they were encouraged by what they heard at the conference, even if the early sessions spent too much time "regurgitating the history that all of us know," as Mark Kelley, president of the association's Graduate Student Caucus, put it. He and others said that while the M.L.A. had taken steps to include graduate students in the meeting -- paying the expenses of 15 Ph.D. students from around the country -- nonetheless, only one graduate student was included as a speaker in the plenary sessions. Still Mr. Kelley said, "People are more and more aware of the issues and willing to engage than they were even two years ago."
Background stories from The Chronicle:
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Copyright © 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education