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[daniel_von_flanagan]

It strikes me that if you want to thin the PhD herd, especially in the humanities, you do not need to shutter departments as recommended by parispundit.  Rather, you need to stop funding graduate students.

What fraction of humanities grad students do you think are being funded (beyond, say, a tuition waiver)? - DvF

[watermarkup]

It strikes me that if you want to thin the PhD herd, especially in the humanities, you do not need to shutter departments as recommended by parispundit.  Rather, you need to stop funding graduate students.

What fraction of humanities grad students do you think are being funded (beyond, say, a tuition waiver)? - DvF

According to the official statistics-gatherers in my MLA discipline, over the last decade, 90% of grad students have been funded as TAs (ca. 60%), on fellowship (ca. 20%), or RAs (ca. 10%). Those 70% who are TAs or RAs are nearly always receiving a tuition waiver and a stipend (and I'm guessing most of those on fellowship are, too). It would be a simple matter to stop funding them by simply eliminating teaching or research in the humanities, which seems to be a popular option these days.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Watermarkup, this sounds high to me.  Does that 90% mean that 90% were funded throughout their graduate career, or that 90% had funding at some point in this career?  - DvF

[parispundit]

It strikes me that if you want to thin the PhD herd, especially in the humanities, you do not need to shutter departments as recommended by parispundit.  Rather, you need to stop funding graduate students.

What fraction of humanities grad students do you think are being funded (beyond, say, a tuition waiver)? - DvF

According to the official statistics-gatherers in my MLA discipline, over the last decade, 90% of grad students have been funded as TAs (ca. 60%), on fellowship (ca. 20%), or RAs (ca. 10%). Those 70% who are TAs or RAs are nearly always receiving a tuition waiver and a stipend (and I'm guessing most of those on fellowship are, too). It would be a simple matter to stop funding them by simply eliminating teaching or research in the humanities, which seems to be a popular option these days.

This is precisely why grad depts. need to be closed - because smart admins know that Ph.D. programs make money for the school, by supplying teaching at an even lower cost in out-of-pocket expenses than adjuncts, via the grad students. This will be the chief obstacle to persuading the Dean to close the Ph.D. program in History. Immediate consequences: 1) higher teaching loads for regular faculty. 2) higher demand for and possibly slightly higher salaries for adjuncts, and a few more full-time lecturer jobs 3) a little more online teaching. Long-run consequence: 1) A better balance between supply and demand for Ph.Ds. 2) A long-term decline in the knowledge base in the humanities - but who cares?

[cranefly]

Maybe instead of stopping funding or graduating PhDs in Humanities, we need to better prepare them for non-academic careers? 
The assumption in the Humanities is that once you get your PhD you become a professor, but there are lots of jobs where research skills are very useful.
How can we better prepare grad students for non-academic jobs?

[bwwm1]

Maybe instead of stopping funding or graduating PhDs in Humanities, we need to better prepare them for non-academic careers? 
The assumption in the Humanities is that once you get your PhD you become a professor, but there are lots of jobs where research skills are very useful.
How can we better prepare grad students for non-academic jobs?

This is essential. Or at least, humanities graduate students should be made very aware of the fact that they can't rely on getting an academic job, and that they need to concern themselves with broadening their skills and experience during their years of graduate school. The vast majority of my colleagues who went through graduate school with me don't have academic jobs because we graduated at the worst time (or so it seems), and now they're all scrambling for non-academic work. I was fortunate enough to have worked the entire time so the current academic job market doesn't bother me. I spend a lot of time encouraging people not to despair.

Cutting down on the size of humanities Phd programs seems to me to be a good idea. Unfortunately, intake is being driven by financing issues, as parispundit pointed out. Administrators want cheap labour to teach undergrads, which generates income streams.

[retrenchment]

Cutting down on the size of humanities Phd programs seems to me to be a good idea. Unfortunately, intake is being driven by financing issues, as parispundit pointed out. Administrators want cheap labour to teach undergrads, which generates income streams.

If only administrators would listen more to regular faculty, who apparently want the combination of higher teaching loads for themselves, fewer graduate students doing teaching, and in improvement in adjunct pay.

[janewales]

Watermarkup, this sounds high to me.  Does that 90% mean that 90% were funded throughout their graduate career, or that 90% had funding at some point in this career?  - DvF

Yes, I'd like to know too what the details of the funding situation might be. I can provide one data point. I run a grad program in the humanities. We offer "full funding" to all accepted PhD students for 4 years. Full funding means tuition plus a good stipend, part of which is straight cash, and part of which (the lesser part) comes from teaching assistantships (TAs do not teach their own classes; they hold tutorial groups and/ or act as markers). The value of the stipend plus the TAship is about 25K per year. In the fifth year, we offer partial funding by means of continuing TAships. Our aim is to have students finish in 4-5 years (the university allows no more than 6).

We won't take anyone we don't fund, so our program is small.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

janewales, am I right in recalling that you are in Canada?

The humanities and social science programs on my campus are all over the place w/r to funding.  However, there are relatively few students fully funded through their entire program (which can be 7-10 years in some departments).

Contrary to what parispundit writes, our administrators want to shrink these graduate programs down, meanwhile faculty in those programs are lobbying for more TAships so that more grad students can be supported.  - DvF

[janewales]

You're right, DvF, I'm in Canada. One important difference in our programs might be that our doctoral students tend not to be direct-entry; since they mostly have MAs, they can be expected to move a little more quickly through the programs. Ours do only one year of coursework, for example. On my campus, TAs in the humanities tend not to have sole responsibility for classes, so they're not an uncomplicated source of cheap labour. The pressure to grow grad programs comes from the administration, I think because of a combination of funding factors (grad students are worth more) and prestige (a desire to confirm the institution's research orientation/ standing).

But I don't know that the situation I describe is typical across all units at my institution, let alone across Canada. We just made our own decision that, given the realities of the job market, it simply wasn't ethical to encourage students to go into debt to pursue a doctoral degree in our subject.

[watermarkup]

D.v.Flanagan and J. Wales, my information is taken from the last paragraphs of the article here, which you likely have access to through some institutional means. I will be the first to state that a lot of the disciplinary statistics-gathering assembled in this source is incredibly shoddy, but the level of TA support sounds about right to me, as I believe most programs have moved away from admitting unfunded students.

I haven't followed the discussion here closely, so I don't know what points these statistics may support or undermine.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

D.v.Flanagan and J. Wales, my information is taken from the last paragraphs of the article here, which you likely have access to through some institutional means.

Looking at the article, it still isn't clear what fraction of students have a full ride throughout their career.  I can believe, however, that TAships in the languages are relatively better-established than they are in other fields.[/quote]

I haven't followed the discussion here closely, so I don't know what points these statistics may support or undermine.

There was an assertion that the saturated job market could be "fixed" by cutting graduate student support.  My impression (based in part on my campus, and in part on discussions on the CHE) was that there were many graduate students choosing to pursue a PhD even without funding. - DvF

[merce]

MLA data on Graduate education.

The Admin of our school made the claim that grad students do not help the university financially at all.

The claim of our provost was that the tuition waived was real money. On top of this they were paid a stipend, in our case, 14K a year for TAing 2 classes.  (TAs in my program are sole instructors of the course with a coordinator for 20 courses determining the curriculum).

Our grad program was "axed" in that we no longer can offer a financial package of any kind. We could accept MA students if they are willing to pay full tuition.  We now have graduated off our last MA students who have gone on to Yale and U of Chicago and government positions in DC.
We now have BA/MA students who decide during the BA that they would like to stay on for a 5th year. A number of their courses will count towards "both the BA and the MA."
They will take an MA exam. They will write a thesis that "may be" based on a paper they wrote for one of their seminar courses during the fifth year.

They pay tuition all five years. We have students who are currently teaching 3 courses (not assisting in instruction but undertaking instruction fully).  This is the first year we have this as far as I know.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

The claim of our provost was that the tuition waived was real money.

This can actually be true in a state-supported institution, depending on how your institution does its bookkeeping. - DvF

[parispundit]

The claim of our provost was that the tuition waived was real money.

This can actually be true in a state-supported institution, depending on how your institution does its bookkeeping. - DvF

Yet another reason for closing programs in order to get some balance back into the market. It is true this violates the individual freedom of some damn fools willing to pay full freight and take out loans cause they are desperate to become profs, but the best ones will still get into the remaining programs, and as for the others, well, we know more than they do.

One can talk all one likes about the value of a humanities ph.d. in the non-academic job market, but 1) this is not why people want humanities ph.ds, and 2) try convincing your average large corporation of this first. I'll believe it when I see them come around recruiting at such departments.