A doctoral student writes:
The only reason why there’s a glut of PhD graduates without jobs is that the availability of full-time tenure-track professorships has declined. Why is that? It’s not because of demand. There’s no shortage of students applying and going to college. The problem is on the supply side. Instead of filling tenure-track jobs with new tenure tracks, large universities have switched to using adjuncts.
He says many universities have no good reason to cut tenure-track positions:
At a time in which endowments, enrollment, tuition, and campus-building (including cruise-ship-quality dorms) are on the rise, it’s an absolute canard to say that universities do not have the money to create full-time professorships. For example, my school just announced that it is halfway to its $4-billion fundraising goal – to be added to its already multi-billion-dollar endowment – and it has opened or restored a new building almost every year that I have been here. Yet they say there is no money to expand the full-time faculty and are in the process of cutting enrollments under the justification of raising student stipends.
I am a sixth-year student on the verge of graduating. We were told the first year that the demographics of higher education – the fact that a large number of tenured professors were at or near retirement age – meant that we would have jobs available once we graduated. I have no doubt that these faculties are indeed retiring, but they aren’t being replaced.
The view from the other side:
I am a recently tenured professor of history at a liberal arts college; my previous experience includes a tenure-track position at a second-tier state research university. I agree with McArdle that part of the problem is the proliferation of doctoral programs at institutions that arguably should not have them. My previous employer provides a good example.
Even the very best doctoral students from that program have had to settle, by and large, for the types of exploitative positions that McArdle and others rightly decry, even though in my opinion they would have made very fine faculty members at just about any institution that might have hired them. One young woman had substantial teaching experience, had presented at several major conferences, published articles in two first-rate journals, and already had a contract from Oxford University Press to turn her dissertation into a book. It took her almost a decade to land a tenure-track position.
That points to deeper systemic issues. Having served on a number of faculty search committees, academia is no less prone to the lure of the brand name than the rest of society. More than once I have sat in a room when a colleague argued – vehemently – for an Ivy League candidate who clearly didn’t fit the job description at the expense of other candidates who did, even ones from other top-25 programs.
The tenured prof continues by identifying another problem:
Administrators at R-1 universities tend to allocate resources, and peers tend to rank programs (back to brand-naming, again) based on the number of PhDs a department churns out, often with little regard to the actual employment outcomes for the students themselves. A lack of administrative imagination and a lack of any sense of real responsibility to the students a university has produced is a cultural problem for which I am at a loss to answer.
Any responsible faculty member should worry more about making sure those who would embark on the journey (or enter the tournament, to use McArdle’s description) do so with their eyes wide open. It is the one thing we can do in the face of a variety of factors utterly beyond our control as faculty members.
A tenure-track professor sounds off:
While I recognize that there is a major jobs crisis in academia, I don’t think that McArdle grasps the consequences and severity of what she’s proposing. Reducing the number of grad students means reducing the number of graduate seminars. Academic disciplines are dependent upon grad seminars, because grad seminars allow research-oriented professors to put their research in the classroom in ways not possible when teaching undergraduates.
The way I see it, reducing the number of grad students would have to encompass an across-the-board de-emphasis on academic research. Yet most universities are going the opposite direction: research and publications are prioritized even above committee service and teaching. As for the needs of grad students on the job market? That is the lowest priority of all.
A self-described “physics graduate-school refugee” reminds everyone that the picture looks very different for budding scientists:
In the STEM disciplines, graduate students and postdocs can easily drop out of academia and quickly be financially secure in technology industries. McArdle’s assumption that graduate school is only preparation for academia or other long-odds tournaments does not apply in these disciplines.
Lastly, a reader emphasizes the personal benefits of doctoral study:
People do not get PhDs only to be professors. For many of them, even if they hope to enter academia, the enormous personal value they gain from the education makes the experience worthwhile. As for their careers: these people are not going to be unemployable, even if their professorships do not pan out. They have skills that are easily transferrable in other directions. As a long-time professor – now aged 63 and still a visiting prof on year-to-year contracts who must say yes to whatever my college asks me to do and is certain to be the first one out if the college finances go downhill – getting a PhD was one of the best decisions I ever made.
The Dish 