To the Editor:
I am glad that I did not read Thomas H. Benton’s convincing argument against attending graduate school in the humanities (“Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go,” The Chronicle Careers, January 30) when it was my time to either prolong the leisure and romance of campus life or do something practical like get a job at a financial-services company or marketing firm.
If I had, I would not be a tenured professor of philosophy at a public university, I would not enjoy the fulfillment of extolling the relevance of Socrates to students in 2009 — and, like Socrates, I would not have the satisfaction of being accused by local taxpayers of corrupting the minds of the youth of Utah County.
Perhaps it’s better to have hopes and dreams and try and fail than to fail without trying.
David R. Keller Professor of Philosophy Utah Valley University Orem, Utah
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To the Editor:
The recent columns by Thomas H. Benton urging students not to go to graduate school unless they are independently wealthy or otherwise insulated against risk have been surprising in their vehemence, coming from a columnist who has usually shown more balance and perspective. They have also been remarkably free of data to support his contentions that prospective students should not expect to have a professorial life before them. Rather, they have the flavor of anecdotal disappointment.
Perhaps that reflects his field, English, which has probably been the major discipline with the worst ratio of job-seekers to jobs in recent decades. But he is wrong to generalize from this experience. It would no doubt also be wrong for me to generalize from the fact that of the 10 students who have completed dissertations under my direction, in classics, history, religion, and anthropology, eight have permanent teaching positions and two have administrative jobs in higher education.
Data do exist, and they do not support the extremely negative view Benton presents. The prototype of the Humanities Indicators at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences shows that in every cohort, a majority of humanities Ph.D.'s are employed in postsecondary teaching, with additional Ph.D.'s teaching at other levels or in management. Not everyone pursues a humanities doctorate with college teaching in mind or enjoys academic life once employed, and the figures suggest that most people who actually want an academic career find one. That is not to say that all is rosy, but there is no basis for the suggestion that failure is practically certain.
Still more disturbing in the columns, perhaps, is the assumption that we sit in our offices advising undergraduates to go to graduate school. I have never done that. Students ask about which graduate schools are good, whom they might work with, how to strengthen their applications, what topics might be rewarding — never whether this is the right life choice for them. To try to make that decision for someone else would be pure arrogance, an attempt to play God. These students are not ignorant of the risks of choosing an academic track, but it’s what they want to do. My job is to give them the best advice I can about how to pursue their chosen path successfully, not to tell them that I know better.
Roger S. Bagnall Director Institute for the Study of the Ancient World New York University New York
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 55, Issue 33, Page A27
