‘So You Want to Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities: 9 Years Later’

Getting Admitted to a graduate program in the humanities:
1) Graduate School Application fee
2) Stamped envelop for personal statement
3) New suit for interview
4) Transportation
Cost: $250

The Masters/Doctoral Marathon
1) Tuition per credit hour ($300-400)
2) Transportation Expenses
3) Textbooks, Conferences and Office Supplies
4) Required organizational memberships, credentialing
5) Total # Parking tickets on campus
6) Time spent: writing for publications
Cost: $40,000/year

Transition from Graduate School to Workforce
1) Resumes, Curricula vitae, & Cover Letters
2) Job training & accrediting exams
3) Mock interviews, Position edits for new openings
4) Interviews, Networking Conferences & Power Interfacing
5) Time Spent Developing a back-up
Cost: $10,000

Tenure-track or Adjunct Hire
1) Research, Research, Service, Research, Teaching
2) Mentoring, Outreach, and Office Hours
3) Keeping track of everything you do for tenure promotion
4) Writing for publication and grants
5) Improving Teaching Delivery via Technology
Cost: Your Soul
Benefit: $55,000

Having this time reduced into 9 minutes: PRICELESS!

The Xtranormal animation has a curious error, where the finished Ph.D. student asks the professor for a position as “teaching assistant” with his department. It would seem that the person who created this one is in an academic profession, and is in English, so you’d think this person know what a teaching assistant is.

“Shakespeare, Emerson, and ….Death” hahah, classic–and the “it’s going to be the biggest new batch of graduates yet!” which is actually something my school was bragging about as I left, the Director saying “it’s all about expanding as much as possible because that way we attract more Government funding,” hilarious and sad.

James from Selloutyoursoul.com

It is only funny if it is not your daughter. Anyone think about the immorality of the faculty who keep admitting students to a program, using students as indentured servants for 8 or 9 years, then sending them out to a hopeless job market? During this time, the faculty treat the students as a distraction to their world-shattering research on “Descartes, Hobbes, and Death.”

gholcomb, the teaching assistant reference points to the ironic position the new PhD is facing now that she has completed the program: she is no longer qualified for employment as a TA because she is no longer a student of the program.

This is great! It’s clever and painful, with nice use of characters, dialogue, gestures, pauses, and background sound. And, of course, death.

This is ripped from another and funnier cartoon on xtranormal

I went paperless in a course I taught a few semesters ago, and I had to go back to using paper for some crucial elements. The problem for me was also when students did not print out their reading assignments. I found this to be due to two reasons: first, the students either understood (correctly) that the goal was to go paperless, and did not have or did not want to bring their laptops; second, they didn’t have the money for printing out reading. The cost for students is, I think, the fundamental problem with going paperless for courses, at least at a university where students don’t necessarily have access to free printing.

I had a similar problem with students not printing out readings when I distributed them in PDF format (to save students the cost of buying the wide variety of texts I wanted them to read, in an institution where that was a valid concern). Given how much of my classes relied on close discussion of the assigned text, for students to not have a copy with them, either electronically or in paper form, was a real problem.

I think there are two choices if going truly paperless is *the goal*:

1) Everyone has to bring a digital device with them. (e.g. laptop or tablet or some other acceptable device that fits with the purpose at hand)

2) Restructure a discussion around concepts so that it is required to be familiar with the concept, but exact citation is not necessary during class time. (such as a brief introduction to the concept, provide questions to keep in mind and make notes about plus read the source document for next class, then have an in depth discuss in the following session)

I see very few people doing the later (either for good or for ill), so if the goal is to become paperless in a discussion environment, it’s the former. Other formats such as project classes work better, but not every class is appropriate in that fashion.

As for experience: My grad-level law class with 10 people has all but 2 bring laptops with them and the materials are being delivered in PDF or via websites. I wouldn’t say there is an advantage to going paperless in this instance; one could substitute paper for electronics and still achieve the same burden and effect. No pedagogical benefit has been gained by going paperless in this instance, but the goal of being paperless if a student so chose to do so was very achievable. The students needed no encouragement to bring the device, if they had one. So if you are at an institution that issues an acceptable device, changes are unless it’s ugly or bad, the student is likely to bring it (again, in my experience). It’s at institutions where you are responsible for your own extra equipment that adoption rates of 100% will be much more difficult.

This is a recurring problem: students not printing out the readings to bring in to class (or otherwise bringing them in on an e/i-device). I’m not so sure, however, that students are actually not doing the reading with anymore than they used to, with paper copies. The only difference now is that it’s more transparent.

One practical solution is to teach students how to print multiple pages per sheet of paper (if the problem is the cost of printing).

I just administered an exam in a university computer lab using blackboard. It was a pain to get it all set up, but it worked out well because it meant I didn’t have to make copies of the 8 page exam, no one had to worry about which bubble form to bring with them, and it’s not the end of the world if someone forgot a # 2 pencil. Also, I didn’t have to make several forms of the exam because there’s an option on blackboard to randomize the questions, and you can even randomize the answers (fr multiple choice questions). Also, for multiple choice exams (as well as other types), they can receive their scores right away, and you can set it up to rovide feedback so that when they review their exam, they understand the mistakes they made. This saves a lot of trees, and a of of time scanning exams and meeting with students to explain the answers to the questions.

You just have to be sure to reserve a computer lab, and be there to make sure they aren’t trying anything silly like opening up a search engine to find the answers (though there is software that prevents this).