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[mayjohn]

Because the humanities are cooler.  Duh.

Are they cooler, or are they easier?

I don't think it has anything to do with ease but comfort and relevance.

I also don't think that the oversupply starts at the graduate school level. It starts much earlier than that.

Take an 18-year old, messed up from all the head-games in high school, insecure, no real plan with their life, hormones pumping and give them wonderful ideas to work with. They thrive. In the social sciences they identify the issues, see the often unsolvable problems, and immediately see a calling...

Look at Psychology enrollments. Do you think they all want to be therapists because it is cool ?  No, they sit in an intro psych class and they begin to relate everything to their own lives, they diagnose their families and get explanations about human behavior. Suddenly the world begins to make sense. So they stick to that and continue...

Take any of the kids above and throw them in Elementary Physics, Calculus or Computer Science...You think they can relate or give a darn about gravity, derivatives or digital logic?

I think the humanities and social sciences are attractive because they relate at a very personal level they deal with often emotionally charged topics. These are the hooks to these programs...

John

[octoprof]

Because the humanities are cooler.  Duh.

Are they cooler, or are they easier?

I don't think it has anything to do with ease but comfort and relevance.

I also don't think that the oversupply starts at the graduate school level. It starts much earlier than that.

Take an 18-year old, messed up from all the head-games in high school, insecure, no real plan with their life, hormones pumping and give them wonderful ideas to work with. They thrive. In the social sciences they identify the issues, see the often unsolvable problems, and immediately see a calling...

Look at Psychology enrollments. Do you think they all want to be therapists because it is cool ?  No, they sit in an intro psych class and they begin to relate everything to their own lives, they diagnose their families and get explanations about human behavior. Suddenly the world begins to make sense. So they stick to that and continue...

Take any of the kids above and throw them in Elementary Physics, Calculus or Computer Science...You think they can relate or give a darn about gravity, derivatives or digital logic?

I think the humanities and social sciences are attractive because they relate at a very personal level they deal with often emotionally charged topics. These are the hooks to these programs...

John

Are you saying physics doesn't make the world make sense?

[finallyfullprof]

This is probably not going to be a very popular viewpoint, but I do think that the "weed out" element has something to do with it.  In the sciences, for example, there is usually at least one course that is the make-or-break element for majors. I've heard it's organic chem for chemistry and biochem/molecular or genetics for biology, for example.  In English, depending on one's program, it's more difficult to pinpoint one class that everyone must take but is the big hump to get over.  The ones that come to mind for me were based in linguistics.  Those were tough courses for many majors. In grad school, the linguistics class required for my master's program had more drops than I'd ever seen in any course, grad or undergrad, to that point.  But aside from that, I can't identify anything that served as the litmus test for English majors in my own experiences. My doctoral program had nothing that even remotely would have served as an impediment in terms of coursework.

[galactic_hedgehog]

Take any of the kids above and throw them in Elementary Physics, Calculus or Computer Science...You think they can relate or give a darn about gravity, derivatives or digital logic?

I did, but, then, I fell down a lot.

[zharkov]

About humanities fields like English and history, I suspect some of the surplus PhDs is just from the surplus of programs from what I'd call the "slippery slope."

Imagine an English or history department from the 1960s or 1970s that grants just bachelor's degrees.  Assuming most of the faculty have doctorates, it is pretty easy to convince the powers that be to offer a master's program, especially if the college wants to "grow into" a university.  And once they have the master's program, give it 10 years, and they decide to offer a doctoral program as well.  Naturally, the bonus is that the grad students are cheap teachers, so it doesn't actually cost the school much to fund these grad students.  They'd have to hire faculty, otherwise.

[dismalist]

About humanities fields like English and history, I suspect some of the surplus PhDs is just from the surplus of programs from what I'd call the "slippery slope."

Imagine an English or history department from the 1960s or 1970s that grants just bachelor's degrees.  Assuming most of the faculty have doctorates, it is pretty easy to convince the powers that be to offer a master's program, especially if the college wants to "grow into" a university.  And once they have the master's program, give it 10 years, and they decide to offer a doctoral program as well.  Naturally, the bonus is that the grad students are cheap teachers, so it doesn't actually cost the school much to fund these grad students.  They'd have to hire faculty, otherwise.

But why do the students come, is the question, I think.

[the_myth]

About humanities fields like English and history, I suspect some of the surplus PhDs is just from the surplus of programs from what I'd call the "slippery slope."

Imagine an English or history department from the 1960s or 1970s that grants just bachelor's degrees.  Assuming most of the faculty have doctorates, it is pretty easy to convince the powers that be to offer a master's program, especially if the college wants to "grow into" a university.  And once they have the master's program, give it 10 years, and they decide to offer a doctoral program as well.  Naturally, the bonus is that the grad students are cheap teachers, so it doesn't actually cost the school much to fund these grad students.  They'd have to hire faculty, otherwise.

But why do the students come, is the question, I think.

"If you build it, they will come." 


[OK, I took a little poetic license, but you get the idea...]

[dismalist]

About humanities fields like English and history, I suspect some of the surplus PhDs is just from the surplus of programs from what I'd call the "slippery slope."

Imagine an English or history department from the 1960s or 1970s that grants just bachelor's degrees.  Assuming most of the faculty have doctorates, it is pretty easy to convince the powers that be to offer a master's program, especially if the college wants to "grow into" a university.  And once they have the master's program, give it 10 years, and they decide to offer a doctoral program as well.  Naturally, the bonus is that the grad students are cheap teachers, so it doesn't actually cost the school much to fund these grad students.  They'd have to hire faculty, otherwise.

But why do the students come, is the question, I think.

"If you build it, they will come." 


[OK, I took a little poetic license, but you get the idea...]

I hope you don't mean that students are fools.

[grasshopper]

Naturally, the bonus is that the grad students are cheap teachers, so it doesn't actually cost the school much to fund these grad students.  They'd have to hire faculty, otherwise.

A couple of people have mentioned this, and I wonder if it's specific to English Lit. In my humanities program we fight for courses.

[the_myth]

About humanities fields like English and history, I suspect some of the surplus PhDs is just from the surplus of programs from what I'd call the "slippery slope."

Imagine an English or history department from the 1960s or 1970s that grants just bachelor's degrees.  Assuming most of the faculty have doctorates, it is pretty easy to convince the powers that be to offer a master's program, especially if the college wants to "grow into" a university.  And once they have the master's program, give it 10 years, and they decide to offer a doctoral program as well.  Naturally, the bonus is that the grad students are cheap teachers, so it doesn't actually cost the school much to fund these grad students.  They'd have to hire faculty, otherwise.

But why do the students come, is the question, I think.

"If you build it, they will come." 


[OK, I took a little poetic license, but you get the idea...]

I hope you don't mean that students are fools.

It's been awhile since I saw the movie, but I don't recall that being the implication of the quote.

What *I* mean follows this logic:

There are many programs.
Those programs have openings.
Those openings are voids waiting to be filled. 
They fill.

I know the real question is more along the lines of "What inspires people to fill those spots?" but, well, I think there's some sort of social cue going on here that we're not always conscious of.

I think the filling is inevitable so long as spots are available.

[systeme_d_]

The Dean of my university's grad school makes it quite clear to us (over and over again) that it is much, much cheaper to hire an adjunct than to fund a grad student, given that one must calculate the "cost" of graduate student as including both tuition remission and stipend.

[dismalist]

About humanities fields like English and history, I suspect some of the surplus PhDs is just from the surplus of programs from what I'd call the "slippery slope."

Imagine an English or history department from the 1960s or 1970s that grants just bachelor's degrees.  Assuming most of the faculty have doctorates, it is pretty easy to convince the powers that be to offer a master's program, especially if the college wants to "grow into" a university.  And once they have the master's program, give it 10 years, and they decide to offer a doctoral program as well.  Naturally, the bonus is that the grad students are cheap teachers, so it doesn't actually cost the school much to fund these grad students.  They'd have to hire faculty, otherwise.

But why do the students come, is the question, I think.

"If you build it, they will come." 


[OK, I took a little poetic license, but you get the idea...]

I hope you don't mean that students are fools.

It's been awhile since I saw the movie, but I don't recall that being the implication of the quote.

What *I* mean follows this logic:

There are many programs.
Those programs have openings.
Those openings are voids waiting to be filled. 
They fill.

I know the real question is more along the lines of "What inspires people to fill those spots?" but, well, I think there's some sort of social cue going on here that we're not always conscious of.

I think the filling is inevitable so long as spots are available.

To the extent they do, and not all do -- some die -- the question remains: Why do they fill?

[octoprof]

About humanities fields like English and history, I suspect some of the surplus PhDs is just from the surplus of programs from what I'd call the "slippery slope."

Imagine an English or history department from the 1960s or 1970s that grants just bachelor's degrees.  Assuming most of the faculty have doctorates, it is pretty easy to convince the powers that be to offer a master's program, especially if the college wants to "grow into" a university.  And once they have the master's program, give it 10 years, and they decide to offer a doctoral program as well.  Naturally, the bonus is that the grad students are cheap teachers, so it doesn't actually cost the school much to fund these grad students.  They'd have to hire faculty, otherwise.

But why do the students come, is the question, I think.

"If you build it, they will come." 


[OK, I took a little poetic license, but you get the idea...]

I hope you don't mean that students are fools.

It's been awhile since I saw the movie, but I don't recall that being the implication of the quote.

What *I* mean follows this logic:

There are many programs.
Those programs have openings.
Those openings are voids waiting to be filled. 
They fill.

I know the real question is more along the lines of "What inspires people to fill those spots?" but, well, I think there's some sort of social cue going on here that we're not always conscious of.

I think the filling is inevitable so long as spots are available.

To the extent they do, and not all do -- some die -- the question remains: Why do they fill?

Contrast this with my field, where we are desperate for new PhDs.  We've had loads of new programs started in the past decade but the number of total grads has dropped. The older larger programs have actually been conferring less degrees per year than formerly.  I don't see how logic applies even in the old supply and demand arrangement.

[dismalist]

But this is the same question: Why doesn't your field fill up?

[the_myth]

Contrast this with my field, where we are desperate for new PhDs.  We've had loads of new programs started in the past decade but the number of total grads has dropped. The older larger programs have actually been conferring less degrees per year than formerly.  I don't see how logic applies even in the old supply and demand arrangement.

Well, that's fascinating!  I do not really recall anyone ever bringing up shortages, except in the sense of shortages being contrivances for recruitment.  [Was this mentioned in this thread?  They're all blending together...]

Can you say more without "outing" yourself?