… have asked UD to read it and write about it. The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It. It’s by Leonard Cassuto.
She’s already reading it – these days they give it to you via download – and will review it on her blog.
… have asked UD to read it and write about it. The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It. It’s by Leonard Cassuto.
She’s already reading it – these days they give it to you via download – and will review it on her blog.
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August 28th, 2015 at 7:25AM
I hope the authors don’t practice the usual conceit of assuming that graduate school = liberal arts graduate school. The blurb seems to conflate the two quite a bit.
August 28th, 2015 at 7:48AM
Alan: In his introduction, the author takes up why he’s focusing on the liberal arts.
August 28th, 2015 at 10:41AM
at least part of the problem is that graduate studies are all to often largely about making it in academia (publishing,networking,pleasing the powers that be, cliquing, etc) and not about the subject matter (getting things right and or more available, more explicit)or about actually studying and practicing the arts/sciences of teaching. Too much socialization not enough thinking…
August 28th, 2015 at 3:43PM
Given the first part of the subtitle, I wonder whether it will turn into a Harvard vs. Princeton smackdown, given how involved Princeton affiliates were in predicting, and publicizing, a shortage of humanities faculty that was supposed to hit c. 1990 or so?
On the other hand, I can report from firsthand experience that Harvard humanities faculty in the late ’80s had imbibed, if not brewed, the same kool-aid, and were quite active in pushing it on undergrads who seemed suited for grad school in the humanities.
So the subject of part 2 of the subtitle is probably more interesting. I just hope the solution, whatever it is, includes some ideas for keeping those of us who might be described as the human waste products of the late-20th-century humanities-grad-school debacle usefully (and gainfully) occupied for the remainder of our working years. Too many “solutions” out there seem to skip right over the existence of a considerable backlog of underemployed humanities Ph.D.s in their eagerness to describe plans for keeping Ph.D. programs afloat by filling them with millenials who will finish their dissertations quickly and happily go on to alt- or non-academic careers.