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  • Yet More Evidence That I Don't Understand the Press

    By Dean Dad December 8, 2008 9:45 pm

    Isn't this story actually good news?

    It's being covered as if it's somehow a bad thing that fewer people are taking the GRE this year. (The GRE is the sort of SAT-for-grad-school.) It's a pretty good predictor of the coming year's grad school applications. Typically, enrollments boom during recessions, but even though this recession has hair and teeth, applications are actually down.

    People, this is fantastic news.

    If all the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth about the plight of adjuncts is actually starting to get through on the Admissions end of the pipeline, then there may be actual hope for eventual improvement. Fewer people hopping into the sausage grinder may mean less sausage down the line.

    Yes, there's the predictable "but we need educated people!" objection, but that strikes me as hopelessly naïve. Right now we turn down hundreds of applicants for every faculty job (or, more accurately, we did when we were still hiring at all). That doesn't smell like a labor shortage to me. If the number of disappointed applicants drops by half, it's still indefensibly high. To argue that it should be even higher strikes me as simply perverse.

    In most of the classic academic disciplines, it's devilishly hard to get a full-time academic job. This is not news. What I haven't been able to figure out is how it is that we've been trumpeting this basic fact from the hilltops for a decade or more, with no discernible effect on the number of people entering the field.

    Could it be that they're finally starting to connect the dots? Could it be that, even in a recession, the prospect of spending 5-10 years trying to get credentialed for a field with overwhelming odds of underemployment is perhaps less attractive than other things?

    (Admittedly, it may be more a matter of increased debt aversion than raised consciousness. That's okay; I'll still take it.)

    As regular readers know, I'm a fan of an educated population. This isn't about hoarding knowledge, or returning grad school to its roots as a province of the elite, or engaging in a rearguard action against diversity, or any other sinister motive. It's about treating people fairly. Continuing to shunt bright young minds into an already overcrowded pool just doesn't make sense. If some of those bright young minds are figuring that out for themselves, all the better.

    Of course, certain graduate programs – I'm not naming any names, you know who you are – may respond simply by lowering their standards. All those sections of Freshman Comp aren't going to teach themselves, after all. And certain professors – again, I'm not naming any names – will do whatever they need to do to maintain their status as members of 'graduate' programs, even if there's no demonstrable need for their programs.

    Still, the beginnings of a Great Refusal suggests that some basic truths are starting to get through. The optimist in me can't help but smile at that, and hope that it continues.

Go to comments (4) »
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Comments on Yet More Evidence That I Don't Understand the Press

  • Grad enrollments
  • Posted by formerccpres on December 9, 2008 at 9:15am EST

  • The pathogen that is beginning to show symptoms is that too many university professors are intent on recreating themselves (i.e. university profs) rather than a society of educated people.

  • Grad Enrollment Integrity
  • Posted by Ray , a Psych Professor on December 9, 2008 at 12:10pm EST

  • When I was a graduate student in the 1980s, the (prestigious, highly ranked) Philosophy Department at my university had a graduate program but included a detailed disclaimer in their brochures that there were very, very few jobs for PhDs in Philosophy and that students should be very careful about choosing to follow that path.

    Would that more departments elsewhere demonstrated such integrity.

  • Not all grad degrees are academic
  • Posted by Faculty Person on December 9, 2008 at 12:10pm EST

  • Graduates in a number of fields are actually more likely to work in industry than academia especially if you include masters degrees in the mix (these are generally not the fields where there are 100s of applications for open faculty slots).

  • Posted by English Prof on December 9, 2008 at 1:35pm EST

  • I am an English Prof at a now four year but recently two year college and have been at my present institution for nearly twenty years after a stint at a tradional four year liberal arts college for five years (Didn't finish the doctorate and didn't get tenure. These things happen.). When I entered into a doctoral program in the 1980's, I too was told that my chances of actually getting a job in the field were problematic, and that I should do graduate work only if I was interested in the knowledge for myself. That was good advice then, and it is good advice now. Perhaps I am a bit old fashioned in this sense: I make a distinction between education and work. Some of us just want the education. Now, certainly I have successfully been in the business of education for my entire life, and I am one of the lucky ones who made it, even without the PHD, so perhaps I have a different perspective.
    What I am trying to get to is this: I would like to see people in graduate school, but for the right reasons. For some, graduate school is a way to "productively waste time" - that means grow up and get things figured out. It also means that those in grad school aren't competing in the rest of the economy. So, I have quite mixed feelings about the stats that the numbers for the GRE are down. I agree with Dean Dad, but I don't think it really is all that much of a shame if people choose to go to grad school.

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