Hughie Lawson's rhetorical question as to how we might cut down on the
production of Ph.Ds struck a chord with me. We know we are overproducing
specialists, but the whole structure of the discipline AND the demand from
the students practically tracks us into doing so. Any suggestion that we
might arbitrarily impose caps runs straight into an ethical problem: what
right do we have to act as a guild, denying those who really yearn for a
higher level of learning access to it? Given the way my own career worked
out it also smacks too much of kicking away the ladder after you have got
safely over the wall.
After brooding on this for some time a few years ago, I decided to
go with a partial solution I can at least live with: only to accept Ph.D
students in areas our library resources and my expertise can properly
sustain (basically 18C England and Scotland - takers thus far = 0), and
otherwise to throw them out to compete for places at universities with a
better resource base and acknowledged expertise in the areas we are weak
in after they complete their masters degrees. This in some ways
represents weaseling out, because, for all that I have and will continue
to support them strongly when writing references, etc, I am still just
putting the onus of terminating many of their academic careers onto an
impersonal applications process. The final argument I used to justify
this approach to myself was that it would also aid the careers of those
who were either accepted or extruded under it. If they did decide to do
18C history here with me, they would at least have plenty of good
primaries available and I would have the right contacts to help them in the
future. If they made the cut and got into a Ph.D programme at a more
prestigious and better known university, name recognition (a serious
problem at universities like Auburn - cf. the latest academic rankings
of History programmes and that despite our research productivity record)
would boost their eventual job prospects.
Daniel Szechi
Auburn University