The Long-Haul Degree

Patricia Cohen
Law students get a diploma in three years. Medical students receive an M.D. in
four. But for graduate students in the humanities, it takes, on average, more than nine
years to complete a degree. What some of those Ph.D. recipients may not realize is
that they could spend another nine years, or more, looking for a tenure （ 终 身 教 职 ） -
track teaching job at a college or university—without ever finding one.
The Road to a Ph.D. in Humanities
As the recession has downsized university endowments （ 资 助 ， 捐 赠 ） and
departments, the sense of crisis that has surrounded graduate education for more than
a decade has sharpened. “What’s worse than desperate?” asks William Pannapacker,
an associate professor of English at Hope College, in Michigan, who writes a column
for The Chronicle（年鉴）of Higher Education under the name Thomas H. Benton.
A graduate-school Cassandra¹, Dr. Pannapacker calles the graduate
apprenticeship （训练期） system bankrupt and warns students against the heartbreak of
pursuing a Ph.D. While finishing his own degree in American civilization at Harvard
in 1999 (another difficult job year), he helped organize a protest at the annual meeting
of the Modern Language Association, an organization of scholars and professors of
language and literature.
On a large reproduction of Gaya’s bloody painting “Saturn （萨杜恩，农神，相当于希
腊神话中的 Cronus）Devouring His Son”², he wrote, “Enjoying your apprenticeship yet?”
First- and second-year Ph.D. students in, say, English literature may not face the
same aching course load or backstabbing （暗箭伤人的） competition as their friends in
medical and law schools, but they have a longer haul ahead. Doctoral students are
expected not only to master a wide swath of （一宽条）material to pass general and oral
exams, but to produce a nearly book-length dissertation （学位论文）of original research
that, depending on the subject, may ultimately sit on a shelf as undisturbed as the
Epsom salts （泄盐） at the back of the medicine chest. These students must earn their
keep by patching together a mix of grants and wages for helping to teach
undergraduate courses—a job that eats into research time. Third-year medical students
may be bleary eyed from hospital rotations （轮班）, but at least the works goes toward
their degree.
This system of financing is partly responsible for the absurdly long time it can
take to get a degree in the humanities, says Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council
of Graduate Schools. In many countries, the government pays students to complete
Ph. D.’s within a certain time frame, perhaps three or four years.
In the United States, given that most students take time off, nearly a dozen years
can pass between receiving a B.A. and Ph. D. About half who enter a humanities
doctoral program drop out along the way. The average student receiving a Ph.D. today
is 35 years old, $23,000 in debt and facing a historically bad job market. Adjunct（辅助
的 ） jobs—with year-to-year contracts, no benefits and no security—may be the only
option.
Louis Menand, an English professor at Harvard and another longtime critic of the
Ph.D. production process, notes: “Lives are warped because of the length and
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uncertainty of the doctoral education process.” In his new book, The Marketplace of
Ideas, he writes, “Put in less personal terms, there is a huge social inefficiency in
taking people of high intelligence and devoting resources to training them in programs
that half will never complete and for jobs that most will not get.”
In the spring issue of the Modern Language Association’s newsletter, Sidonie
Smith, an English professor at the University of Michigan and president of the
organization, resuscitated a proposal that had been swirling around blue-ribbon task
forces³ and education panels for years: to broaden the range of research options
beyond the classic dissertation to include already-published peer-reviewed essays,
research portfolios （研究组合） and digital publications and presentations. Aside from
shortening the Ph.D. process, she argues, this would make scholarship less arcane （神
秘的，晦涩难解的）and more relevant.
Despite high-level support for reform, educators say that wholesale change is not
likely any time soon. For one, any meaningful transformation in doctoral
requirements must be adopted universally, says Richard Wheeler, interim （过渡期的，临
时的） vice chancellor for academic affairs and former dean of the graduate college at
the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Who would want to attend a program
that another university—and potential employer—doesn’t recognize as valid?” It
hasn’t reached enough of a crisis point yet,” Dr. Wheeler says.
“It’s very hard to get through the graduate student experience,” he adds.
The union of graduate students at Illinois staged a brief strike in November over
guarantees that their tuition would be waived （ 放 弃 ） . Dr. Wheeler attributes the
protest to general discontent as much as specific employment issues. “There’s despair,
anger, frustration,” he says. “A lot of people are unhappy.”
Dr. Wheeler, who received his English Ph.D. in 1969, took four years to finish.
Graduate programs have since added more stringent （严格的，严厉的） requirements, he
says, and expectations for what a degree holder is supposed to have accomplished. He
had not published anything when he was hired; today, applicants are expected to have
a list of published research on their résumés.
The job problem has been brewing （ 酝 酿 ， 发 酵 ） for years. In 1989, William G.
Bowen and Julie Ann Sosa issued a widely publicized report that forecast a huge
turnover （ 人 员 调 整 ， 人 员 更 替 ） in faculty and suggested the creation of a federal
program to increase humanities and social sciences Ph.D.’s. Many students—Dr.
Pannapacker included—took that advice to heart. Ph.D. production in English and
American language and literature grew 61 percent between 1987 and 1995; history
Ph.D.’s rose by 51 percent.
By the late 1990s, though, the spanking-new （ 崭 新 的 ） degree candidates
discovered just how mistaken the Bowen-Sosa report was. The end of mandatory （强

制的） retirement and the increase in the use of part-time and adjunct faculty meant
there were many more exceptionally qualified job seekers than jobs. The current
recession has only exacerbated （ 加 剧 ） the problem, with many institutions imposing
hiring freezes or layoffs. The M.L.A., for example, reported that its total job listings
dropped by a quarter in the 2008-2009 academic year, the largest single-year decline
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in the 34 years that the organization has been doing job counts. And these numbers
don’t include postings that were subsequently canceled because of budget cuts.
At the same time, the practice of hiring off-tenure teachers is growing. According
to a new survey of humanities departments by the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, half of the faculty members in English and foreign languages—more than
any other department—are not on a tenure track. Part of the reason for the large
number is that freshman composition classes, which are often required, are taught by
those departments, and adjuncts.
Unlike in life science or engineering, the number of doctoral degrees awarded in
the humanities—the pool of fields that generally include languages, history,

philosophy, music, drama ad archeology （考古学） —has actually dipped （小幅度减少，

下降） in the last few years, with 4,722 recipients in 2008 (down from 5,112 in 2007),
according to the National Science Foundation.
But more than a third of those degree-holders had no definite job (part or full
time, off or a tenure track) or any postdoctoral study commitment.
The number of degrees may dip further. Some major universities, including
Harvard, Princeton, the University of Chicago, Emory and Northwestern, reduced the
number of doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences they admitted this
past year. Much more radical （ 激 进 的 ， 彻 底 的 ） cuts would be required to bring the
supply of graduates and the demand for them into balance, and that would be a
solution that stirs up its own problems. If enrollment （招生） drops too low, there may
not be enough students to justify courses in specialized areas.
Other practical reasons exist for resisting reductions. Doctoral programs bring
prestige to a university and help retain faculty members who want to mentor （指导。该
词来自希腊神话中的门托尔/门特，他是奥德修斯的忠诚朋友和智囊谋士，也是奥德修斯儿子 Telemachus
的良师） the next generation of scholars. They also provide the staff for courses offered
to first- and second-year undergraduates—a task many tenured faculty members
resist. Even graduate students on full scholarships are cheap labor if they are teaching
enough tuition-paying undergraduates.
Dr. Wheeler would like to reverse （反转） that practice, at least. “Putting as many
faculty in front of undergraduates as possible,” he says, would not only improve the
quality of education but would also increase the demand for more tenured faculty
members over time.
Funding to hire the professors in the first place has to be there, however.
Dr. Pannapacker has rebuked graduate schools for perpetuating a culture in which
unattainable academic careers are portrayed as the only worthwhile goal, and for
failing to level with students about their true prospects. With more transparency （ 透

明）—if every graduate program published its attrition （自然缩减）rate, average debt of
its students, time to completion, and what kind of job its graduates got—
undergraduates, he says, could make more-informed choices.
“Academe encourages students to think of what they’re doing as a special kind of
calling or vocation （职业） which is exempt （豁免） from the rules of the marketplace,”
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he says. Those who look to work outside the scholarly world are seen as rejecting the
academy’s core values. “They socialize students into believing they can’t leave
academe or shouldn’t, which is why they hang on year after year as adjuncts, rather
than pursue alternative（可选择其一的）careers.”
A bad job market, too, tempts graduate students to stay even longer, since being
out on the job circuit （ 巡 回 ） for more than a year tends to taint （ 败 坏 ， 使 受 污
染）candidates.
As the number or tenure-track jobs shrink, Ms. Stewart, the Council of Graduate
School says, the profession needs to address these failings.
“Humanities Ph.D.’s have focused exclusively on the academic job market,” Ms.
Stewart says. “They don’t have anyplace else to go, or they don’t perceive that they
have anyplace else to go.”

Note:
1. Cassandra—In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and
Queen Hecuba of Troy (特洛伊). Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of
prophecy（预言）. In an alternative version, she spent a night at Apollo’s temple, at
which time the temple snakes licked her ears clean so that she was able to hear the
future. However, when she did not return his love, Apollo placed a curse on her so
that no one would ever believe her predictions. She is a figure both of the epic
tradition and of tragedy, where her combination of deep understanding and
powerlessness exemplify (展示) the ironic (反讽的) condition of humankind.
2. Goya—A Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the
Old Master and the first of the moderns.

Here we see “Saturn Devouring His Son,” the most famous “black painting” of Spanish
romantic painter Francisco Goya (1746 - 1828). Originally painted directly on the wall of the
artist’s house between 1819 and 1823, it stems from a dark time in Goya’s creative life—
indeed
from the vortex （漩涡） of his final mental and physical decline. Saturn ate his sons partly
because he feared their power when grown. Goya based this design on a picture by
Rubens （鲁本斯，巴洛克艺术代表人物，在欧洲艺术史上有巨大影响，作品有《基督下十字架》、
《维纳斯和阿多尼斯》、《农民的舞蹈》等） of the same subject and in seventeenth-century
emblem books Saturn signified the weariness （厌倦，疲惫） of the aged for whom life
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 has become burdensome.
3. A “blue-ribbon” task force—A group of people brought together to solve or advise
on some important topic. Traditionally, the members of this group are prominent
people, usually experts in the topic under consideration. The term derives from the
concept of a “blue ribbon” being awarded at fairs and contests for either a winner
or an outstanding achievement in some contest. Thus, a “blue ribbon” committee
is one specifically chosen to be made up of outstanding members (usually those
who have significant academic, social, political, or industry prestige in their field).

Exercises:
A. Answer the following questions based on the text.
1. What is the situation faced by today’s doctoral students?
2. What are the reasons for the difficulty of graduation according to the author?
3. What proposals are made by Sidonie Smith to reform the present Ph.D. production
process?
4. Why is the wholesale change impossible to be implemented despite the universal
support for reform?
5. What suggestion is made by Dr. Pannapacker to graduate school to solve the
problem?
B. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False according to
the text.
1. Graduation for students in humanities is comparatively easier compared with other
majors.
2. Some students have to tutor undergraduates to support their study and life.
3. The requirements for the doctoral students are always so strict as today.
4. The report issued by William G. Bowen and Julie Ann Sosa misled many students
to pursue the doctor’s degree.
5. Some universities downsize their enrollment for doctoral students to balance the
supply and demand.