The Humanities, Unraveled

Autor/in	Berube, Michael
Titel	The Humanities, Unraveled
Quelle	In: Chronicle of Higher Education, (2013) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0009-5982
Schlagwörter	Time to Degree; College Faculty; Tenure; College Instruction; Graduate Study; Graduate Students; Humanities; Doctoral Programs; Labor Market; Doctoral Dissertations; Academic Persistence; Adjunct Faculty; Employment Potential + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Fakultät; Amtszeit; Beschäftigungsdauer; Hochschullehre; Aufbaustudium; Graduiertenstudium; Hauptstudium; Graduate Study; Student; Students; Studentin; Geisteswissenschaften; Humanwissenschaften; Doktorandenprogramm; Labour market; Arbeitsmarkt; Doctoral dissertation; Doctoral thesis; Doctoral theses; Dissertationsschrift; Arbeitsmarktbezogene Qualifikation; Beschäftigungsfähigkeit
Abstract	Graduate education in the humanities is in crisis. Every aspect, from the most specific details of the curriculum to the broadest questions about its purpose, is in crisis. It is a seamless garment of crisis: If one pulls on any one thread, the entire thing unravels. It is therefore exceptionally difficult to discuss any one aspect of graduate education in isolation. Questions about the function of the dissertation inevitably become questions about the future of scholarly communication; they also entail questions about attrition, time to degree, and the flood of A.B.D.'s, who make up so much of the non-tenure-track and adjunct labor force. Questions about attrition and time to degree open onto questions about the graduate curriculum and the ideal size of graduate programs. Those questions obviously have profound implications for the faculty. So one seamless garment, one complexly interwoven web of trouble. In the humanities, when one talks about the purpose of graduate programs and the career trajectories of graduate students, the discussion devolves almost immediately to the state of the academic job market. Graduate programs in the humanities have been designed precisely to replenish the ranks of the professoriate; that is why they have such a strong research component, also known as the dissertation. But leaving aside a few upticks in the academic job market in the late 1980s and late 1990s, the overall job system in the humanities has been in a state of more or less permanent distress for more than 40 years. Since 1970 doctoral programs have been producing many more job candidates than there are jobs; and yet this is not entirely a supply-side problem, because over those 40 years, academic jobs themselves have changed radically. Of the 1.5 million people now employed in the profession of college teaching, more than one million are teaching off the tenure track, with no hope or expectation of ever winding up on the tenure track. Many of them do not have Ph.D.'s: According to the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (the last such study conducted), 65.2 percent of non-tenure-track faculty members hold the M.A. as their highest degree--57.3 percent teach in four-year institutions, 76.2 percent in two-year institutions (many holding more than one part-time position). Clearly, something about the structure of graduate education in the humanities is broken. Or, more precisely, the system has been redesigned in such a way as to call into question the function of the doctorate as a credential for employment in higher education. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	Chronicle of Higher Education. 1255 23rd Street NW Suite 700, Washington, DC 20037. Tel: 800-728-2803; Tel: 202-466-1000; Fax: 202-452-1033; e-mail: circulation@chronicle.com; Web site: http://chronicle.com
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10