Okay, this post is going to be of the snake-biting-its-tail variety, so stay close. You know that Mark C. Taylor piece that the New York Times ran a few weeks ago? One of the letters they ran in response to it was this one from James F. Mahon:
Doctoral programs that fail to place their graduates in research positions should not respond by attempting to become M.B.A. or M.P.A. programs. Instead, they would better serve their prospective students by setting the right expectations through full disclosure of their recent graduate placement history. With this information, applicants could make informed decisions when choosing a graduate school.
Makes sense, right? I think this is the angle that I’ve been taking so far here at Leaving Academia: departments need to tell potential and current grad students what they can expect from their program based on what previous students got out of it.
But in response to that Times letter, Michael Elliott over at The Edge of the American West wrote a great post on the whole topic of doctoral students and placement rates. Elliott complicates just what the hell “placement rate” is supposed to take into account (and queries–not simply as an academic exercise, either–what “placement” even means these days). But he also says this:
This is not to say that we shouldn’t keep pressing for disclosure about employment. And I think everyone who teaches in a PhD program should be forced to consider carefully the employment of its graduates. … [It's] crucial to ask what percentage of graduates end up teaching in the academy, what percentage of those are on the tenure-track, and what other kinds of positions graduates hold.
Finally, graduate programs should calculate the average time that it takes those who seek tenure-track positions to secure them. (The national average is that it takes just over ten years from the time that a student enters graduate study.) Programs should then ask what kind of financial resources — including temporary teaching employment — their universities can provide to cover that whole duration, including the period that extends beyond when the students actually receive their degrees. Those programs that cannot identify adequate resources to cover that full spread of time should take a hard look at themselves.
I completely agree with this take–or I did until I looked at the comments section for the post. There’s some really good stuff there, including the wonderful Bitch Ph.D.’s take:
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How true is that? Similarly, before you give birth to a child, you’re like, “Okay, it’s gonna hurt. I’ve prepared myself. But it’ll be worth it.” But you simply cannot know the pain until you’ve fully descended into the depths of the hot, burning hell. It’s like with grad school. You’ve browsed the interwebs and seen lots of cranky grad students and faculty complaining about shit. You’re a bit puzzled, but maybe you think, “Okay, getting a Ph.D. is gonna be tough.”
But it’s not until you’ve had your first proper mental breakdown that you really know what those people are talking about. Even worse, every person who enters a doctoral program secretly thinks that it is she or he who shall be the one who shall be good enough and smart enough to be the one out of the cohort to finish first and get a tenure track job. So they know it’s gonna be tough…but they might be the one to squeeze their baby out in record time and have an orgasmic birth. Right. Good luck with that.
All of this stuff is excellent fodder for really thinking through what responsibilities graduate schools have and should have to their students. What do you think would be the best way program directors could give students a realistic snapshot of the career trajectories of not only its graduates but the folks who left before finishing?