I’m very pleased that the MLA has launched a new forum to address the topics I’ve begun to raise here (in fits and starts). Those of you who are interested, please take the opportunity to go to the “Graduate Education Reform” site on MLA Commons. (http://gradreform.mla.hcommons.org)

I’m right now at the annual Council of Graduate Schools meeting in Washington (along with AVP Eric Wertheimer in ASU’s graduate education office). It’s strange being here NOT as a graduate dean, but with the somewhat different perspective of being a dean of our humanities units in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU. We need to bring together graduate deans (who are often thought leaders) with the people who really can have direct impact on specific programs (the college deans). We’ve had great conversations, and now I’m ready to get to work!

This Chronicle article 7/15/13 prompts some questions:

What should the MLA’s role be in helping or encouraging graduate departments to offer nonacademic career services for their PhD candidates? Should the English or foreign language PhD curriculum include such advice? Should we offer different tracks through the PhD for those aiming at research, at teaching, at not-for-profit work?

What kind of “consumer information” should doctoral programs in the humanities provide to prospective students? Pursuing a PhD is not like smoking: the warning against entering graduate school might take the form of the nutrition information on packaged foods rather than the dire warning of impending disease and death that we put on cigarette packages.

At the annual meeting of the Association of Graduate Schools (AGS) in 2011 I gave a short talked about the information on student outcomes we should provide for the public. I used the website of my PhD alma mater, the English Department of the University of Pennsylvania, to make a (negative) point about what we should NOT be doing. First, I looked up the page on alumni that Penn, like most doctoral institutions, maintains. On the site there was a (to me) strange sentence providing a placement “rate” and arguing that the Penn data were pure: ONLY tenure-track placements at colleges and universities count as placements for the doctoral completers tracked by the department.

It’s true that the past few years of Penn English PhDs have gone on to impressive institutions. I followed a link to an older and less impressive era: 1994, when I myself finished my PhD. I noticed a number of names that were not familiar to me, a number of people I considered in different classes (they began either before or after me, with some overlap), and a few of my cohort. The information was a bit old: I was listed as associate professor and associate dean (I tried not to resent that my ascension via loss of the prefixed “associate” had not been reflected on the site). And, both from personal knowledge and from taking an hour to look everyone up on LinkedIn as well as googling them, I could see that the information was sadly out of date.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, turned out to be a wonderful repository of information. I traded the fascinating careers of colleagues, some of whom started tenure-track jobs (the only kind worth mentioning, as the headnote had sneered) and then accepted other employment, some of whom always had either para-academic or non-academic work, and the small number of others of us who had more or less conventional academic careers.

I pointed out that the organization of the website suffered from a couple of flaws: it should group people according to when they begin together rather than when they end (we could see how long it took them!); the site should register how many students began and did NOT complete in those years (without, of course, mentioning them by individual name); and the site should track how the careers of us humanities PhDs actually progress.

The news from Penn English was actually good news. Those of us who finished in 1994 have had extremely interesting, productive, and engaged careers. My colleague at Penn, Andy Binns, who was in the audience, accepted the ribbing with good grace. After all, Penn English is no worse than nearly every other graduate program in this regard.

Our programs are small enough that we should be able to track our students accurately and extensively, including those who never manage to finish their degrees. Accurate data from the past twenty or thirty years would provide incoming students with a full story. That full story can’t be captured in a “placement rate” or in a list of best-case outcomes. Instead, it should bring to life the wide range of interesting, if occasionally unexpected, career tracks taken by those of who pursued a burning interest in our subject matter in graduate school.

If the data were accurate, complete, and presented outcomes for a wide range of years with accuracy and detail, prospective students could better assess their desire to devote a number of years to PhD work.

Real information–transparently and openly provided–could drive the change my previous entry hopes to see in our curricula and program structures. But that change shouldn’t come only from our charitable sense that we could make our programs more humane (while retaining rigor). That change must come from students, who have a lot to tell us if we’re willing to listen.

There have been some graduate student comments on previous entries. Students, please let me–please let all of us–know what you’re thinking.

I don’t want to enter the increasingly heated debate over whether talented undergraduates should be encouraged or discouraged from pursuing graduate study in the humanities. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the issue–as a director of graduate studies in an English department recruiting large PhD cohorts (achieving mixed placement records); as a graduate dean; and, in a few weeks, as a dean of humanities overseeing humanities schools/department with a number of PhD programs. Instead of weighing in on whether students should or should not come to graduate school in the humanities, I’d rather focus on the responsibility that we–those of us who mentor students, create and maintain curricula, and profit from graduate student labor (and the luxury of teaching small doctoral seminars as a major percentage of the work we do)–have to change what we do. If things remain as they are–prospective students should absolutely beware. And that’s because we have shirked our duty to make our programs as productive for students as possible. Our loyalty has primarily been to ourselves and to our “field.” We need to re-orient our doctoral programs to our students and to student success. We need to listen to students to help understand what that “success” might entail.

Also–we need to retire at reasonable ages so that jobs come open! I don’t hear a lot of talk about this issue. A retired faculty member can certainly continue to excel in teaching or research–but can do so at a very small cost to an institution, which can then use the faculty line on other priorities, including new tenure-track faculty.

What would a “student-centered PhD program in the humanities” look like?

I hope others will add their thoughts. My opening ideas are unsurprising:

*an actual, structured curriculum
*reduced time to degree: five years maximum beyond the BA, but preferably four.
*flexible dissertations–flexible in both topic and format
*better training for careers in a wide variety of teaching environments
*deliberate exploration of non-academic career possibilities

Our goal must be to empower our students to do great work. I don’t think that’s how most of our current programs function.

In today’s Chronicle of Higher Education, Rob Jenkins suggests a “two-tier” approach to the future of the professoriate. Here is the link:

http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Not-a-2-Tier-System-/138521/

I think this is worth a conversation, but it raises a deeper question about the purpose of the PhD-track (top tier) faculty in his discussion. What *do* we add to our universities and cultures, to our classrooms and our conversations, for which our PhD educations provide unique qualification?

I personally would prefer one PhD track, and one “career,” but with the possibility of flexibility over that career. Not everyone, at all times, needs to be on the classic (but utterly false) 40/40/20 model. There are already numerous tracks, but we don’t understand them well, nor do our PhD programs adequately prepare future faculty for those varying opportunities.

So, stuck as I am in Columbia’s “airport,” I thought I might try to get the ball rolling on a discussion of appropriate “milestones” en route to the PhD. Please feel free to add or amend, and then I’d like the group to think about how these moments in a grad student’s career work, or don’t work, on their own and together.
Recruiting
Application
The summer before
Orientation
*Choosing a specialization* (added by Eric; see below)
*Career explorations* (added by Russell; see below)
Qualifying exams
Programs of study/the “curriculum”
Choosing a committee
Choosing an advisor
Comprehensive examinations
Foreign language courses/exams
Dissertation proposal
Study abroad Research
Writing the dissertation
Defending the dissertation
Submitting the dissertation
“Publishing” the dissertation
Finding a job
Leaving graduate school
Are there critical moments I’ve left out in my five minute self-brainstorm? Does responsibility for all of these moments lie with the faculty of graduate programs and their universities?

I’ve started this group as a discussion forum for a topic at the center of our profession (and our organization’s) attention: what should the PhD look like in the years ahead? We have a responsibility to the students we admit to our programs; and we have a responsibility to our discipline. We also need to respond to the “job market,” whatever it is and in whatever form it takes. I have a particular take on this issue since my full-time job at the moment is as graduate dean on the campus of a major research university. I spend my days with programs ranging far outside of the “humanities.” And, sad to say, I have found my colleagues outside of the humanities far more engaged in the questions I’ve raised in my description for the group. Let’s change that; and let’s become change agents at our institutions and in our profession.