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About the Author
Mark Bauerlein is professor of English at Emory University. His books include Literary Criticism: An Autopsy (1997) and Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (2001). His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, TLS, Yale Review, Partisan Review, Reason Magazine, and many other national periodicals. Topics he will cover include the ideological climate of the campus, knowledge and skill levels of U.S. students, and technology in the classroom.
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The Bad Old Days
In an earlier post on undergraduate admissions, a few commenters raised the issue of workloads. Undergrads don’t work as hard, don’t put in as many homework hours, and still get decent grades, they said, which only makes it impossible for the rigorous teachers to hold the line on sliding standards.
The remarks brought me back to graduate school, recalling the old “when I was in school refrain.” So, here’s the way it was at UCLA in the 1980s for an English Ph.D. The school was on the quarter system, with three terms of 10 weeks plus one finals week each year. It seemed that a quarter tried to pack a semester’s worth of work into 11 weeks, and undergraduates did, indeed, meet for four hours per week, not three (as in the semester system).
Requirements for the doctorate included:
1, Course work in eight different areas.
2. One class of bibliography.
3. Two classes of philology (I remember doing phonetic transcriptions of Pope).
4. Three classes in pedagogy.
5. Written qualifying exams at the beginning of the third year.
6. An oral exam in the fifth or sixth year (generally on the dissertation topic).
No. 4 is worth more description. The qualifying exams were called the Part Ones, and everyone lived in fear of them. Each candidate had to take four exams of four hours each taken over a two-week period. Each exam was in a specific historical period, plus a few special areas such as Critical Theory (you could only pick one of these as part of the four). Each exam had three parts. The first part involved a thematic question about the field as a whole, and might single out certain texts for commentary (and it required lots of illustration). The second part provided a passage or short text from the period and asked for an analysis of it. The third part asked a specific question about one of three texts that had been assigned in advance.
Each field had a reading list of several pages. Anything on the lists was fair game for the first question. For an idea of how broad they could be, the Theory list began with Plato and Aristotle and moved through Longinus, Augustine, Dante, Sidney, Enlightenment rhetoricians, German Romantics, Marx and Engels and Trotsky, Arnold and Hulme and Eliot, the New Critics, some New York Intellectuals and structuralists, before getting to poststructuralism.
The attrition rate, I was once told, was around 40 percent. It was a public university, and anybody could be flunked out without much loss to the program. If you failed, you had one more chance, and then goodbye.
Do requirements of that magnitude still exist anywhere?
Posted at 11:26:27 PM on May 13, 2008 | All postings by Mark BauerleinComments
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Their was no requirement to publish in your doctoral program. Students in PhD programs at Polish higher schools are oblidged to publish articles in refereed journals prior to obtaining their degree.
— Dr. Norman L. Butler · May 14, 03:24 AM · #
Yes and no.
Comprehensive exams, at least in composition and rhetoric, remain about as imposing as the ones Bauerlein mentions. But philology, as he must realize, no longer reflects the dominant epistemic modes of literary or cultural studies, which are rhetorical and interpretive, not empirical. It’s the classes in pedagogy at UCLA that have me fascinated. Is this still common in literary studies programs? I wish they were.
I don’t know if Mark is listing these requirements in order to decry the fall of standards as he did in his last column about ignorance among undergraduates. I don’t think his requirements represent any kind of height from which we have fallen. But, they are placed in time (as with the philology requirement).
Also, as #1 pointed out, what about the professionalization of graduate students? Publishing is the new coursework! And what about foreign language requirements? I’m surprised not to hear more about that at UCLA.
— JW · May 14, 07:39 AM · #
No, requirements like this do not exist anywhere anymore, to my knowledge. Dr. Butler points to the new reality: doctoral programs are shaped to prepare students to be active scholars in specific research areas. There are two obvious problems with this approach: a) the ‘research areas’ come and go; we are training for built-in obsolescence; b) the vast majority of English Ph.D.‘s will not have careers in research institutions. They are far less attractive to institutions than former UCLA grads, who could teach, in a pinch, in multiple fields. The 100-200 book reading lists which current students are responsible for on their qualifying exams are far shorter than M.A. reading lists from the 1960’s. Philology requirements and language requirements have also been pared back. The interesting thing is that the ‘time to degree’ remains long, something that the Dupont Circle crowd has expressed anxiety over for a long time. The degree requirements have been significantly reduced, but 10-12 years from B.A. to Ph.D. is still common. UCLA required work in eight areas. The number of ‘areas’ in some English departments now approaches thirty. The ‘every man his own carver’ approach once ridiculed by Swift is now standard operating procedure. The fragmenting of the ‘field’ has resulted in the fragmenting of the market for university press books. While everything in the doctoral programs is designed to grind out productive but narrowly-focused scholars, the fragmentation has made it far more difficult for those scholars to get their work published. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem.
— Observer · May 14, 07:45 AM · #
Yes, I forgot the language requirements. You needed to show “reading knowledge” in two languages, either by coursework or by a test.
Also, everyone had to take an Intro to Literary Interpretation course.
One aspect I wanted to highlight here was the fail rate for qualifying exams. The time before I took them, I was told, three-quarters of the takers failed. They got one more chance, and a few of them made it, but many were unceremoniously pushed out.
— Mark · May 14, 08:23 AM · #
Requirements like this do exist, though they are rare. My own program—and I am still on schedule and writing the diss—is much like that. Courses in linguistics, pedagogy, and bibliography/editing are required, and my critical theory exam came with the same knowledge requirements as yours. (Wasn’t it fun to learn about the sublime beginning with Longinus and transforming to Hazlitt and Coleridge? And I am an Americanist, so this stuff doesn’t fit any “narrowly defined field” I could be expected to work in.) However, my program offers no concrete reading list, so basically everything ever written was fair game. About a year before exams, they suggest some tried-and-true anthologies to help you shape your own lists, and you analyze the old test questions and practice away. So, yes, there is hope out there somewhere, though most students and recent Ph.D.s from other schools were quite shocked at what we had to learn. And most of us pass—thanks to fear.
— MJ · May 14, 08:38 AM · #
Given the large numbers of unemployed PhDs, there may have been more logic to admitting fewer students/flunking out a high percentage than we care to acknowledge.
The narrow focus on narrow research areas is a problem. It is highly questionable whether the average graduate student should be publishing at all (and don’t get me started on some of what passes for publication by established “scholars”). I am on a curriculum revision committee that is struggling with the fact too many faculty are now “too specialized” to teach general education. What does this say about their education? A PhD should have broad knowledge of the discipline as well as specializations within it. That is a loss.
— hippokleides · May 14, 11:16 AM · #
In my PhD program we had to do two primary research languages (usually DLI category 4 langs.) and two secondary languages (easy European langs.). I study the Middle East. You only got one chance to take your Prelim exams (in the third year). If you did not pass then you were out. There were 4 of them (over two weeks) and each had a list of books of more than 55 titles. We had a real dissertation defense. You had to argue and prove the worth of your dissertation (on occasion someone did not made it – largely because he/she did not heed their advisor that they were not ready). The average time to degree was 8-10 years and it was very, very rigorous. Still is. Those requirements are still in place.
— J · May 14, 11:51 AM · #
My graduate program in philosophy required sixty class credits (20 classes on a semester schedule) .
We needed to take courses in every area in the history of philosophy(four) and four thematic areas. In addition, we needed to pass a logic exam and two three hour language translation exams(Greek, Latin, German , French, pick 2).
There were four hour written exams and two hour oral exams for both the MA and Phd, respectively.
The MA and Phd Exams were composed of one historical component and one thematic component. You tested in all four areas of history (ancient, medieval, modern, Kant and nineteenth century) Contemporary philosophy was covered through the thematic segments (philosophy of science, analytic, continental,Ethics/ political).
The courses took four years to complete on their own, let alone with preparation for the exams and dissertation proposal, which received no credit.
To my knowledge, especially the course credit requirement, this remains one of the most demanding programs in terms of requirements for philosophy graduate programs in the US. The students mobilized and voted in these stringent requirements themselves in the early 1990s. That’s the The New School for Social Research for you.
Did I mention that we did this all working and living in NYC with almost no funding (though the latter has been rectified greatly in the very recent past)?
By the time I got my phd , in ten years, I had taught sixty university classes as an adjunct in and around Manhattan (average pay $2500 per class). Sitting comfortably at a tt job now, and I wouldn’t change any of it (except for my student loans).
— New Schooler · May 14, 12:08 PM · #
Virtually all humanities Ph.D. programs need drastic overhaul. Instead of being designed as the pinnacle of the humanities, they have generally become the personal fiefdoms of the senior faculty who run them in the image of their interests and research.
On the one hand, we have all of the humanities professional associations bending over backwards for the media to talk about the “relevance” of the humanities for citizenship, for personal and moral growth, and for the world. Such statements are especially rehearsed for the D.C. lobbying circuit.
On the other hand, the doctoral programs in no way have been re-designed to reflect a global, philosophical “mission” at all. Au contraire.
The solution to the humanities Ph.D. crises (of “coverage”, employment, etc.) isn’t admitting fewer students – what an amazingly anti-intellectual and elitist position that is! – but rather to re-design the programs so that they may meet the more broadly-defined “mission” of the humanities.
The irony is that both the professor and the society at large of the Renaissance had a better understanding of the broad applicability of the humanities to everyday life than contemporary doctoral programs reflect.
Yes, indeed, how could anyone forget a mulitple-foreign language requirement for any humanities doctorate? The world is multi-lingual, the “mission” of the humanities is humanity. How difficult is this to understand? Yet, the number of English Ph.D. programs that have a language requirement is decreasing, post-9/11 notwithstanding.
Humanities doctoral programs must cease to be the only level of higher education with purely solipsistic aims: the production of the future professoriate.
When the humanities Ph.D. is constructed to be the preparation for citizenship lived in many sorts of advanced careers, including but not limited to the (research and teaching) professoriate, the nation will have a chance to become far more humane and humanistic. Imagine if most foreign service officers held humanities Ph.D.s. Or if hybrid-doctoral degrees existed (humanities and economics, humanities and computer science, humanities and biology, etc.) – what a different, more ethical world we would live in.
After the higher education employment crises of the seventies, “jobless” Ph.D.s who went into the workforce in other fields found that they could nonetheless have most, if not all, of the rewards and satisfactions of an academic career – with the exception of the specialized research.
Well then? Isn’t it about time that the humanities Ph.D. programs internalize these results together with their oft-stated “mission” and create programs that represent the inter- and multi-disciplinary, indeed, international nature of the humanities disciplines?
Unfortunately, the corporate CEO that is the modern university president hasn’t the vision of a Robert Maynard Hutchins or a Jaroslav Pelikan, let alone of a John Henry Newman.
To the detriment of the entire nation, alas.
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate · May 14, 01:00 PM · #
These standards do sill exist, I think—but Mark is correct that they are declining, sadly. I received a BA from a liberal arts college that required of English majors a junior project, senior project (with public “defense”) and comprehensive examinations (8 one hour exams on everything in the major literary periods, plus lit crit/theory). My MA, from the graduate school at the same university required a thesis (no defense) and another 8 hours of comprehensive exams. Plus reading knowledge of a foreign (modern or classical) language. PhD requirements — different university —had the same language requirement (and wouldn’t accept the MA level “pass”), written exams (two minor three hour written exams; one major five hour exam), oral prelim based on diss. proposal and performance on written exams, plus dissertation defense.
The reading lists for each of the written exams at my PhD institution were generated by the student for whatever area (s)he chose to be examined—but they had to be approved by the exam committee. At least one exam had to be taken in Renaissance or something older. The other two were the student’s choice. Questions were fashioned by the committee based upon the student’s approved reading lists (for the shorter exams, 20-30 titles; for the longer 35-50 titles) and could be just about any approach to a period.
Same pass-fail system as UCLA in the ’80’s—you could fail any exam once, but fail any exam twice and you were out.
I have no idea what the rate of failure was since our department was pretty tight lipped about such things—after coursework, you’d lose track of colleagues and, sometimes, you’d hear the whispered “Oh, he’s decided not to finish . . .”
As an add on: some in this forum have suggested (in English, anyway) that over-specialization is hurting academe and I agree. But I suspect that the crisis that this may present is just a bit farther down the road: given the difficulty suggested regarding publishing as a result of over-specialization, does anyone think that as the Boomers retire the same will (or already is) cause a similar problem in the job-market? If Boomer A managed to turn out copies of him/herself over the course of X number of years, when (s)he retires, aren’t all those copies competing for relatively few spots?
Will this lead, then, to a new market for generalists, as Universities and English departments realize they get a bigger bang for their buck in hiring someone who can teach Chaucer and Toni Morrison?
— gregorbo · May 14, 01:01 PM · #
I received a PhD in English lit from NYU and the requirements were tough. My wife received a PhD in social work at the same time and we used to laugh about how simple her program was. I spent 60 hours per week on my studies and related work. She spent 25, and she graduated before I did.
— Thomas Jackson · May 19, 09:45 AM · #
I remember Robert Pinsky’s files with hundreds of emotions and for each dozens of ways it had been expressed throughout the history of English. He saw his job at the time as finding new emotions never before felt/expressed and finding expressions now for emotions that were now expressed using apparatus from other eras not especially powerful or apt today. Of all English major/PHD requirements, the hardest was matching his personal commitment to responsibility for the fate of the language as a whole in yet-to-evolve history. Exams, readings, analyses—were, in the end, trivial—compared to matching his professional posture towards English and language and expression. All of our romance and infatuation and self indulgence crashed on the rock of his definition of his mission as poet. THAT was the hard requirement—being in the same room—with him at his best.
— Richard Tabor Greene · May 19, 01:04 PM · #