In short, I think academia shares many of the classic elements of a social trap: It is in most faculty members’ and departments’ best interests to recruit a lot of graduate students. … [y]et, as in any social trap, when everybody acts in their self-interest, a negative collective outcome ensues.
What I’ve witnessed, more than anything else are students right out of college hoping to be the next hotshot in their field. I was even told, point-blank by the chair and resident hot shot faculty member, that if I wasn’t in it to be hot-shot, I was in the wrong program.
Look, I think this article is another scare tactic. And I think it’s lame. Do I think that people who are unqualified to start ph.ds get in and start and often even finish? YES. Do I think that programs need to be more selective again? YES. Do I think this is a degree that only the brightest should complete? YES.
THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT.
But I don’t think arguing that we should limit the number of doctoral candidates based on a currently shitty job market. I know I may never get tenure, even if I want that, desperately. I may have to find another career. But I’m still completing this. BECAUSE I WANT MY FUCKING DOCTORATE. I HAVE WANTED MY FUCKING DOCTORATE SINCE I WAS ABOUT 6 YEARS OLD.
I. AM. DOING. THIS. FOR. ME. AND ONLY ME.
To that end, I also respectfully disagree with you, Disgruntled. I think doctoral students should want to be the best, every single one of them, because if you’re not trying to be the best, or at least produce one article in your life that’s game changing, you’re not working hard enough to warrant your degree.
I’m totally with you that doctoral students should be the best and brightest, I also think that’s it’s fucking stupid to stop admitting graduate students because the market is saturated. Graduate students are valuable, but our labor all too often goes unrecognized. I think the author will find that her PhD students do a lot more work for her than she doesn’t give them credit for.
But I also think I should clarify the “hot shot” comment given by that “hot shot” faculty member. I think the only way to go after your doctoral degree is to go all out, but I think fame has become a goal in and of itself, crowding out the goals of academia.
Don’t get me wrong, I want to be published, get tenure, go on awesome research sabbaticals … who of us doesn’t want those things?
And I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t all be hot-shots, but I think we need a definition of what a hot-shot is. Too many of my peers think being a hot-shot is shooting down everyone else’s ideas while not being able to take criticism, or having Gayatri Spivak’s cell number, or denigrating your undergrads, or just being an all-around, stinky-eyed asshole. I say, those people have it all wrong.
I want to be a hot-shot for my contribution to the field. This comes from the following: writing, research, peer review, and education. This means the grunt work of writing, reading, and research; engaging in critical dialogue about your own and peer work without it turning into either a lovey-dovey therapy session or a battle; and equally important, teaching.
I attend a large research university where, like many research institutions, teaching undergrads is the lowest priority. The university treats each student as a dollar sign. They’re there simply to line pockets and pay for graduate education, they are not considered thinkers. I think this is wrong. I think this is the university system responding to market-driven demands rather than academic ones. This is why tenure is under attack and we’re seeing academic labor growing increasingly casualized (adjunct teaching without benefits, for example), why grad students aren’t considered workers despite the incredible amount of course-prep, grading, office hours, and overall handholding we do, and why we turn into assholes in the hope that we’ll be recognized, doted upon, and be the one who “makes it in Hollywood,” so to speak.
Maybe that’s just my department, or my university, but I think our generation of doctors should demand that the field be driven by discourse, not personality.
