H-Teachers have discussed the Ph.D. oversupply problem at some length. Generally, we have divided into two groups which can, with some arbritrariness, be termed the "realists" and the "idealists." The "realists" argue that programs should reflect the shrinking market, that like it or not, no matter what they say or what they're told when they enter a program, the vast majority of Ph.D. students do want a job in the academy after they receive their degree. Thus, accepting too many is grossly irresponsible.
The "idealists" argue that the market is not the point, and that our only responsibility lies in carefully and completely explaining the horrible job situation to prospective candidates. If, after hearing and understanding that explanation, they wish to continue for the love of the craft, the "idealists" argue that freedom of choice should be respected. Thus, realists would in all probability applaud the decision of the Ohio Board to cut its doctoral programs, while idealists would argue that freedom of choice has been damaged. As a die-hard realist, I count myself in the first category, and so, with great apologies to Bob Wheeler, our hard-working moderator, who is perhaps personally affected by this decision, and from the standpoint of an institution that grants no graduate degrees in history, I say ALL RIGHT.
BUT, there is one fearful drawback which I hope my colleagues in the Ohio system will address: Will this decision be used as an excuse for cutting back the number of faculty? If so, it will be terribly destructive. Presumably, Ohio institutions have been employing graduate students as adjunct survey faculty or at least as graders. If the number of graduate students falls AND the number of faculty is reduced, Ohio will be performing a service to responsibility in the profession at considerable cost to its own undergraduate students, who will presumably find themselves in larger classes with less individual attention from faculty who are even more overworked than they were before. That said, this is an interesting development, and I hope colleagues from Ohio will offer occasional progress reports as the process unfolds.
Greg Monahan
gmonahan@eosc.osshe.ed
Co-editor's note: my institution does not grant doctorates because we thought there were too many programs (even in the 70s). We do produce master's students and since many of them are tied by family responsibilities to northeastern Ohio this recommendation, if instituted, would severely restrict their choices. We will have to see what happens. BW
From: Bob Wheeler CSU <hteach@math3.math.csuohio.edu> Subject: Ohio to cut subsidy to PhD History programs (long and important)
Co-editor's note: These documents describe the current situation in Ohio but have serious implications for history programs, graduate students and potential graduate students nation-wide. What do H-Teachers think of the Regents' strategy and their estimate of the job market which drives it?BW
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 1995 05:20:40 -0600 (CST) From: H-Net Central <CAMPBELLD@LYNX.APSU.EDU>
[The Ohio Board of regents is the statewide body in charge of higher education. The 8 state universities in Ohio with PhDs in History and the number of PhDs they awarded in 1994 are: Akron (1 PhD); Bowling Green (5 PhDs); Cincinnati (3 PhDs); Kent State (3 PhDs); Miami (0 PhDs); Ohio State (17 PhDs); Ohio U. (1 PhD); and Toledo (2 PhDs). A final decision from the Regents is expected Dec 1, 1995.]
[excerpts; source: http://www.bor.ohio.gov/ [ed note: the 8 state universities in Ohio with PhDs in History are: Akron; Bowling Green; Cincinnati; Kent State; Miami; Ohio State; Ohio U.; and Toledo] Final decision is expected Dec 1, 1995.]
History: The Ohio Board of Regents Committee on State Investment thoroughly reviewed the recommendations of the External Panel. Both the Committee and Panel were in agreement that state support should continue for a comprehensive, but significantly smaller doctoral program in History at The Ohio State University and for a more narrowly-focused program in Contemporary History at Ohio University.
The Regents endorsed those funding recommendations today.
The Committee on State Investment, however, indicated that
market conditions for doctoral graduates in History, as evidenced by the placement records of Ohio's programs and by national conditions, suggest that the supply of graduates significantly exceeds the demand for such graduates. In addition, the panel found unlike Psychology, there is no local/regional need for doctoral programs in History. This situation is not likely to improve in either the short or long term. Accordingly, the Committee recommended that state subsidy for the other six doctoral programs in History (University of Akron, Bowling Green State University, University of Cincinnati, Kent State University, Miami University and University of Toledo) be withdrawn. Regents Chancellor Elaine H. Hairston indicated that the Committee on State Investment formulated its recommendation to withdraw subsidy from six of Ohio's eight Ph.D. programs in History quite recently.
Conversations have begun with affected universities, including development of plans for managing this recommended removal of subsidy. As a result of this situation, the Board of Regents has agreed to defer their action on this Committee recommendation until a special session of the Board, scheduled for Friday, December 1, in Columbus. B. document: Ohio Board of Regents on History
source: http://www.bor.ohio.gov/
OHIO BOARD OF REGENTS REPORT ON THE REVIEW OF DOCTORAL PROGRAMS November 17, 1995
[excerpts]
....
A very important point is that the Task Force did not recommend
that the Regents be given the authority to withdraw an
institution's right to offer a degree. Rather the recommendation
was to allow the Regents to withdraw state support for programs.
In effect, any change would be focussed on public investment
(based on need and quality) and would not compromise the right of
a university's trustees to determine whether or not a degree
would be conferred. This limitation is consistent with the
traditional separation of responsibilities in Ohio's system of
higher education.
....
C. History.
intended, with minor exceptions, to prepare graduates to participate as faculty members in higher education. As described above for Psychology, the academic job market for History collapsed in the early 1970s. This led to substantial unemployment and underemployment, as the over 100 programs in the United States had many students in the pipeline (the Ph.D. program in History takes between four and seven years after the Baccalaureate, with times at the longer end of the range being far more common). As a consequence, organizations like the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as some private foundations, implemented major efforts to retrain historians and other humanities doctoral graduates in the humanities for careers in business and government. These efforts had some success, but, in large part because of the long time period needed to train a Ph.D. in History, they were never seen as a long term solution. American universities therefore sharply reduced their production of graduates. The numbers fell by about fifty percent over a twenty year period. While holders of doctorates in History can now be found in a wide variety of occupations, no strong alternative market, like that for Psychologists and Computer Scientists, has emerged.
Ohio's eight public doctoral programs in History [Akron; Bowling Green; Cincinnati; Kent State; Miami; Ohio State; Ohio U.; Toledo, ed.] produce about 4% of the nation's doctorates-- about what one would expect given that Ohio comprises about 4% of the US population. However, when one considers Ohio's public universities against the nation's public universities, Ohio's share rises to about 6%-- significantly larger than its share of the population. Another important characteristic to consider is the pattern of change; the number of graduates from Ohio's public universities has decreased significantly since the 1970s, but Ohio's rate of decrease is only about two-thirds that of the nation's strongest programs (the top eleven as cited in the most recent National Research Council study). Finally, considering more recent trends, seven of the eight programs in Ohio showed increases in FTE from 1988-89 to 1993-9; the overall increase was 48%.
considered to be the poor placement of graduates of Ohio's eight doctoral programs in History. On average, slightly more than a third of graduates from the last five years were employed as regular faculty in four year colleges and universities. The Panel considers this market, the only one in which the graduate teaches advanced as well as introductory courses in the discipline, to be the only major area in which the Ph.D. is required. Other types of employment, for example teaching survey courses in two year colleges, do not require doctoral education, with its strong emphasis on research, and should not be a principal justification for a doctoral program. The Panel also noted that many graduates had no permanent employment at all. Ohio's placements do not support the idea that the academic market for historians is improving.
As noted above, the Panel does not believe that a doctoral program is necessary for an undergraduate program of quality. There are many colleges and universities, both public and private, with outstanding reputations for undergraduate education that do not have doctoral programs.
The Panel observed that all of the programs in Ohio had a number of faculty who were highly effective scholars, an artifact of the buyer's market that has obtained in this discipline for almost a quarter century, but believed that the quality of students, especially as measured by undergraduate grade point averages and Graduate Record Examination scores, was not nearly as impressive.
The Panel did not find evidence of any local/ regional need for doctoral programs in History. Universities cited a number of regional activities of importance, but the Panel did not consider that there were any that could not be accomplished if the department did not have a doctoral program.
(1) No recommendations for change/ no further
review: (a) Ohio State. (2) Recommendations for change/ three year review (a) Ohio University The Panel suggested after reading the self-study that Ohio University's doctoral program in History be limited to the focus area of Contemporary History (the middle to later decades of the Twentieth Century). Ohio University embraced this idea and made a number of changes to further strengthen its effort in this area. The three year review for this program is in the nature of a progress report, as the Panel has no substantive concerns. (3) Others The Panel is still considering responses from the universities and will not have recommendations on the other six programs until that review is complete. In the interim it is appropriate, however, to characterize the Panel's overall appraisal of these six programs as 'marginal.' The Panel considers that, although all have a number of strong faculty (see above), none has been successful in placing graduates in the extraordinarily competitive academic job market . Moreover, the Panel does not believe that these programs have much probability of improving their competitiveness. Even if this job market improves significantly, as some have predicted but none have proven, the Panel believes that the strongest programs in the country, those that have for the most part done the most aggressive downsizing, will respond with greater production and are far more likely to place their graduates than are the Ohio programs.
State Investment has a place in the review process that both precedes and follows that of the Panels. It is important to understand how the charges given to the Committee on State Investment and the Panels differ (see Appendix D). The Panels were asked to consider the quality of the programs in each discipline, including such factors as described in the Standards of Viability. In addition, each of the panels considered market conditions (national and, where appropriate, regional) for doctoral graduates in the discipline provided an especially important element in assessing the need for the program and in interpreting the placement data. The Panels also considered evidence of local/ regional need for programs. Given the quality and need assessments provided by the external panels, the Committee on State Investment was charged to add one additional consideration, the effective investment of state resources for higher education. That is, the Committee was to recommend if the state should modify its level of investment in the discipline, taking into consideration that the quality and market assessments provided by the Panels. Each Panel was to look at Ohio's doctoral programs in a specific discipline while the Committee was to consider Ohio's investment across all the disciplines.
The Committee on State Investment accepts the History Panel's
assessments of quality and agrees with its view of market
conditions as they relate to Ohio's doctoral History programs.
The Committee agrees with the Panel that the appropriate
placement for doctoral graduates in history is in four year
colleges and universities; this is the only environment in which
the purpose of a Ph.D., including advancing knowledge and
training the next generation of scholars, is fully achieved (the
Committee recognizes that there are other placements for which a
Ph.D. in History is needed, but believes that these are valid as
collateral activities, not as the core of a program's activity).
The market conditions for doctoral graduates in History, as
evidenced by the placement records of Ohio's programs as well as
by the national conditions described by the Panel, suggest that
the supply of graduates significantly exceeds the demand for such
graduates. The Committee is aware of no persuasive argument that
market conditions are likely to improve in either the short or
long term and agrees with the Panel that many of the leading
programs in the country have decreased the size of their doctoral
programs in response to the market conditions and still place
only some of their graduates. (See Attachment I, Status of the
Job Market for History)
The Committee's concern about the market for doctoral
graduates in history is exacerbated by the Panel's assessment of
the relative quality of the programs. The Committee notes that,
while all of these programs are regarded as having some
strengths, none is considered as being nationally competitive.
Taken together with the Panel's belief that there is no local/
regional justification for a doctoral program in history, the
Committee believes that a strategy of suggesting follow up
reviews for marginal programs with the expectation that they be
improved, and as a consequence be better able to compete in the
national market for graduates, has no merit. The Committee finds
no evidence, either from the Panel report or from the additional
materials supplied to it, that there is any reasonable hope that
this expectation can be met. If market conditions do improve, the
likely scenario would be for the strongest programs nationally to
resume their more normal enrollment levels.
Accordingly, the Committee believes that Ohio's universities
should be encouraged not to make additional resource investments
in History doctoral programs. This conclusion leads the Committee
to a different recommendation than that made by the External
Panel in History.
The Committee concurs that Ohio State should continue to
offer a comprehensive doctoral program in History and that Ohio
University should offer a focused program in Contemporary
History.
However, it does not concur with the recommendations that
the History programs at the other universities, either alone or
combined, should be continued pending the outcome of a review
after three years. The Committee believes that such a
recommendation will lead these universities to allocate
additional resources to their doctoral programs in History.
Instead, the Committee recommends that state support be
withdrawn from all programs except those at Ohio State and Ohio
University.
4. Chancellor's Recommendations The Chancellor has not had adequate
time before this meeting to consult with the campuses on the
Committee on State Investment's recommendations for the remaining
six programs in History. Consultations have begun and are
continuing. At this point it is possible to say only that a
number of the universities are planning to withdraw their
programs in advance of Board action and others are considering
it. In consequence, it is recommended that Board action on
History (other than for the two universities noted above) be
postponed until December.
V. The impact of Round One recommendations
A. Changes in FTE and funding over time. Because the
recommendations on History are not complete, we cannot provide a final analysis. However, Ohio State is voluntarily decreasing the size of its program in history and the limited program at Ohio University will be smaller than the current one. These changes alone are expected to amount to a reduction of over 25 FTE per year.
B. Impact on current students:
1. Full funding until students graduate or reach funding
limit. Note that, in the event that the Regents withdraw subsidy from a degree program, the law provides for full funding of students in that program until graduation or until the student reaches the current funding limit of 260 quarter credit hours.
C. Impact on universities:
1. Master's programs continue. Funding for Master's
programs would be unaffected by Regents' action on doctoral programs.
2. Opportunities for collaboration. The History Panel has suggested that the Board of Regents explore ways in which faculty at universities without doctoral programs can participate in doctoral education. The staff believes that this suggestion has considerable merit, and intends to pursue it vigorously for all disciplines.
For those of you that don't get Baron's you might be interested in the November 27 issue for an article on page 25 titled, "Campus Unrest".
The article is about the rising cost of colleges and what is being done about it as well as what should be done about. Mostly it is an interesting article and worth reading. But towards the end the author found a need to take the traditional swipe at under worked faculty and their role in keeping college costs high.
I can't reprint the whole article so I will give you some of the more inflamatory sentences.
The major problem on college campuses is clearly productivity .... One can start with the nation's 530,000 professors who are ... a pampered caste in a semi-socialist system.
A survey by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute gave some support to those with a jaundiced view of professors productivity. .... Even allowing for lecture preparation, grading and counseling and other administrative duties , professors [who average less than 8 hours a week of teaching a week] still have two or three days a week free and plenty of vacation time to engage in all the independent research or moonlighting they want according to the survey.
Yet much of that research, particularly in the humanities is garbage, by most accounts.
Productivity at colleges could be boosted materially by a greater emphasis on teaching and imposition of heavier teaching loads.
Some one at National AAUP needs to answer all these charges.
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
715 Stadium Dr.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
telephone: (210)-736-7484 fax: (210)-736-7477 email:akonstam@trinity.edu
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 16:06:25 -0600 (CST) From: H-Net Central <CAMPBELLD@LYNX.APSU.EDU>
BARRON'S 11/27/1995
"Colleges May Be Forced To Change Their Free-Spending Ways"
By Jonathan R. Laing
For decades, America's universities have provided comfortable sinecures for tenured professors and self-important administrators alike, keeping them safe from the massive layoffs that savaged workers in virtually every other sector of the U.S. economy. But now, finally, universities, too, are beginning to feel the pinch, Barron's reports. Lax cost-controls and cavalier exploitation of pricing power have caused colleges to boost tuitions more than 200% in the 14 years ending in 1993. That's around double the rate of overall inflation, and it eclipses even the meteoric rise in healthcare costs during the period. As a result of tuition increases, a year of college absorbs 45% of median family income today, up from 25% in 1980. These large tuition hikes are especially galling when one considers that universities have achieved few of the quality improvements or technological breakthroughs boasted by, say, manufacturing or medical care in the past two decades. Despite rumors to the contrary, tuition increases have been fairly similar at public and private colleges. Tuitions rose 220% at private institutions between 1980 and 1993, as against 218% at public ones.
Nor has the pell-mell rise in tuitions abated much in the past two
years. Tuitions at both private and public institutions have been
increasing at about 6% a year, still about double the inflation
rate, according to the College Board, the New York-based
college admissions and financial-aid association. Today, a year's
tuition at the average private school is $12,432, while public
institutions are charging $2,860 on average. Throw in room and
board, and the total average cost of the privates rises to $17,631,
compared with $6,832 for public institutions. Ivy League schools
such as Harvard, Princeton and Yale have led the charge, boosting
their total charges to nearly $30,000 a year. Parents are griping
more than ever. Indeed, in response to complaints from constituents,
some 30 U.S. Congressmen formally requested last spring that the
General Accounting Office initiate a study of why college costs have
so outstripped inflation and become unaffordable for the broad reach
of American families. Hearings on the subject are expected to begin
sometime next year.
The surge in college costs has gotten so bad that it provokes
criticism from academics themselves. Arnold Weber, an economist and
president of Northwestern University for 10 years before retiring
early this year, talked to Barron's of the "quasi-moral" obligation
schools have to restrain tuition price increases. "We're all taxexempt
entities rather than profit-maximizing private corporations,
so it's not fair for us to charge all the market will bear when
family income growth has been flagging and parents are being forced
to take out huge home-equity loans to send kids to college," he
observed. Weber's comments are not just empty talk. During his stint
as president of Northwestern, he restrained tuition increases to the
point that his school fell from having the eighth-highest tuition
among the top 25 U.S. schools to the 24th. And his approach turned
out to be a shrewd business strategy. Annual applications at
Northwestern jumped from 7,000 to 13,000 even as the students'
average SAT scores, the litmus test of quality for many parents,
increased by some 40 points. In many ways, Weber was ahead of his
time. Right now other schools are making their first tentative moves
at cost-cutting in an effort to temper tuition hikes after decades
of profligate spending on new programs, salary increases and new
buildings. Little wonder, then, that terms like Total Quality
Management and re-engineering, long buzzwords in Corporate America,
are enjoying a sudden cachet on campuses across America.
Some Move To Cut Tuition
Faced with falling enrollments, both St. Bonaventure in Olean, New York, and Bennington College in Vermont recently axed tenured faculty to keep costs in line and halt the upward spiral in tuitions. "We've made a commitment to cut the real annual cost for a year at Bennington (now $25,800) by 10% over the next five years," Bennington President Elizabeth Coleman explained. "In the process of chopping away at programs and practices that had accrued over the upplementing our slimmed-down core faculty with top visiting teacher-practitioners, we've been able to improve the quality of the Bennington experience and become bloody good."
Boston's Northeastern University also has had to bite the bullet.
The institution's moment of truth came in the fall of 1990 when, as
a result of the collapse of Massachusetts's Economic Miracle, only
2,700 freshmen showed up rather than the 3,800 the school had been
expecting. Faced with a looming $16 million operating deficit,
inistrative officials and paring
Northeastern's faculty by 20% through attrition. Faculty members
likewise agreed to forgo several years of salary increases, and
students were asked to initially pay a surcharge to help the school
through rough times. Much of the sting of the surcharge has been
reduced, however, by beefed-up financial aid packages and tuition
increases in the last few years that were below the national
average. The school's re-engineering effort continues, in ways large
and small. One example: Curry's latest initiative calls for
Northeastern and other institutions in Boston's Fenway area to
collectively outsource winter snow-shoveling services.
Northeastern's smaller-is-better philosophy appears to be paying
dividends. The school now accepts only 74% of its applicants,
compared with 90% previously. The average combined SAT scores of its
incoming freshmen has jumped some 80 points, to around 1,000.
The new realities are impelling some colleges to hire administrators from outside the clubby, incestuous world of academe. M. Peter McPherson, for example, became President of Michigan State University in 1993 after serving as a group executive vice president at Bank of America and, before that, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush Administration. Moreover, he lacked the proper academic pedigree of a Ph.D., though he had a law degree and an MBA. The situation he inherited at Michigan State was a familiar one for many public universities. Cost discipline was non-existent. And tuition and fees had been increased by more than 70% since 1988 in an effort to plug the widening gap between the anemic growth in state funding for the university and the school's rising costs. But McPherson's solution has been anything but typical. Late last year, he announced that Michigan State would cap all tuition increases at the inflation rate for the next four years. At the same time, he imposed an innovative program of cost-cutting and productivity enhancement. He privatized the campus bookstore, saving more than $400,000 a year and garnering a $2 million up-front payment for the school. He also is pressuring the school's tenured faculty to boost their teaching load.
Emphasis On Technology
Meanwhile, McPherson is pushing Michigan State into the forefront of educational technology, in which teleconferencing, televised lectures and CD-ROMs and other interactive multimedia methods are being used to teach large survey courses on American Thought as well as freshman Chemistry and Physics courses so that 18 different sites around the state can be linked to a single lecturer. As McPherson sees it: "Higher education will go through the same kind of restructuring in the 'Nineties that the auto industry underwent in the early 'Eighties and the healthcare industry more recently. The new themes will be technology, efficiency and improved quality."
A handful of schools have launched other initiatives to arrest the
upward spiral in tuition and other college costs. Among the
institutions offering a three-year bachelor's degree are Middlebury
College in Vermont, Valparaiso University in Indiana and Susquehanna
University in Pennsylvania. Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., and
Clark University in Worcester, Mass., allow undergraduates of high
achievement to take a fifth year free of charge to obtain an
accelerated master's degree. At the same time, the University of
Rochester in New York recently began offering in-state freshmen a
$5,000 tuition discount. Rice University is one of a half-dozen
schools that guarantees that increases in tuition and fees for
first-year students will be held to the rate of inflation during
their entire period of enrollment.
Arthur Hauptman, a Washington-based educational consultant, not only
thinks that colleges will increasingly be forced to adopt such
tuition-limiting measures, he even sees a possibility of tuition
price wars in the near future. According to Hauptman, all but the
two dozen or so most prestigious and sought-after institutions are
encountering growing consumer resistance. For a time in the
'Eighties, middle- and upper-middle-class families could still swing
the cost of even the most expensive schools, if with difficulty. But
the corporate restructurings of the 'Nineties have wreaked as much
havoc on white-collar America as the retrenchments in manufacturing
in the early 'Eighties hurt the blue-collar parents of state school
students. Likewise, the artificial boost in U.S. family income from
wives returning to work to help put Junior through college has now
run its course, says Hauptman. The proportion of dual-income
families has clearly topped out. More and more middle-income
students are migrating from expensive private schools to cheaper
state institutions. "Look at many private schools today and you'll
see a hole in the income distribution of their student body between
the wealthy who can pay the full freight and increased lower-income
students for whom aid represents the only way they can attend the
school," Hauptman explains. "For many middle-class families who
can't qualify for aid, the state school system just makes more
sense." As a result, some private colleges these days have taken to
offering tuition discounts under the guise of need-based financial
aid. But this new policy of charging high tuition and doling out
hefty aid packages is fast reaching the point of diminishing
returns, according to Hauptman. And lastly, colleges can no longer
count on the same federal support as in the past. Federallysponsored
research projects, grants and student loans have been
crucial contributors to the strong revenue growth enjoyed by both
public and private colleges in the 'Eighties and early 'Nineties.
But federal spending on these programs is no longer keeping pace.
What's more, as part of the federal deficit-reduction package,
Congress is threatening to chop the levels of funding for work-study
and several loan programs.
Copyright (c) 1995 by Barron's. Fair Use reprint for scholarly nonprofit use only.
In cutting PhD programs:
Gary Nelson, Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, justifies limiting of PhD programs in "Lessons from the Job Wars: What Is to Be Done?" published in Academe, Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors. "For the large number of academics who believe we can ignore present conditions until better times return, it is past time to state the obvious: The good times are over." He continues: "The problem with graduate study now- in a long-term environment where jobs for new PhD's are the exception rather than the rule-is that apprenticeship as turned into exploitation. Indeed, where apprenticeship leads to no future, it becomes not only unethical, but also pathological. Apprenticeship with no future is servitude. For then the abuses of hierarchy and status have no compensatory and cancelling structure. Without a viable job market, , PhD programs have only oen economic rationale-they are a source of cheap instructional labor for universities.
The lengthy articles outlines a twelve-step program for academia, here briefly itemized:
Write a Bill of Rights for Graduate students and Teaching Assistants(Admit that TAs are not apprentices but rather term employees simultaneously undertaking a rigorous discipline of cultural enrichment).
TAs should unionize
Challenge the priority given to faculty salaries
Urge community colleges to hire PhD's (They do in Florida!)
Challenge disciplinary organizations to directo more of their resources toward examining and intervening in higher educations's crisis and less toward enhancing their members'careers.
Fight false consciousness/educate the educators. Graduate students need to be socialized into a much broader conception of academic citizenship: they need to be trained to take on a wider set of social and political repsonsibilities.
Close marginal doctoral programs/prevent new ones from being created
Encourage ineffective faculty to retire
This is an inadequate review of an excellent account of the job market crisis. I urge you to read the article in the November-December l995 issue.
Lavon Gappa-Levi
Florida State University
Tony Edmonds writes that advanced undergraduate history majors, with
guidance, are allowed to grade short essay exams, along with other, more
mundane assistant teaching tasks. Not only would this violate the
policies of my university, but I find it quite inappropriate.
Undergraduate students, no matter how sophisticated and advanced, should
not be doing what I have the training and experience to do, what I am paid
to do, and what my students understandably expect me to do with
accountability to them.
While this practice may have some educational benefits for the student
assistants, it really is a cost savings strategy by the university which
masks inadequate staffing levels. I suspect it compromises the quality of
instruction at the undergraduate level. True, the alternative might be an
undesirable format by which students are evaluated (e.g., multiple choice
tests, fewer essay exams, etc.) but I wonder if the trade-off is worth it.
Rather than opt for multiple choice tests or fewer essays, I would prefer
pressures on the administration to support increased staffing. How's that
for opening a can of worms? With no absolutely offense intended toward
Tony Edmonds at Ball State, sincerely, Doug Skopp (SUNY Plattsburgh)
Douglas R. Skopp Professor of History Champlain Valley Hall 321 State University of New York at Plattsburgh Plattsburgh, New York 12901 OFFICE TELEPHONE: 518-564-52I8 INTERNET: SKOPPDR@SPLAVA.CC.PLATTSBURGH.EDU
FAX: 518-564-7827 Home Telephone: 518-563-6592--But not after 9 pm EST please.
I was just wondering how many hours a week people are required to teach.
In the real world of teaching...teachers don't have the luxury of using graduate or honors students to do the more "mundane" tasks.
It is generally considered to be one of their responsibilities for which they are paid a salary.
Bill Hogan
Woodstock High School
Woodstock, New Brunswick
bhogan@nbnet.nb.ca
I find criticisms of American higher ed by business people most curious. According to business lights, we should let the market decide the merits of a service. The international market has for generations voted the American higher education system the best in the world. People come from everywhere to attend our universities. The market has spoken -- higher ed works.
By contrast, the world does not flock to imitate American business. German and Japanese business models, at the very least, hold equal influence and prestige. Given this, I would recommend that American businessmen should look again at higher education and see if they can find models here that they might imitate.
I'm really quite serious about this. Higher ed is an information business with a long tradition of success. The business world is coming increasingly to rely on information as a vital component. The philosophy of higher education has long been to hire the best people and then leave them the hell alone. I submit that business people are critical of this model because it frightens them and renders the vast blubber of middle managers superfluous.
This has nothing to do with freedom or ideology or capitalism. Higher ed works quite well. I think the management theory folks should take a long look at how universities work, with all their inefficiencies.
After all, it wasn't the business world that invented the Internet.
Skip Knox Boise State University Boise, Idaho
elknox@bsu.idbsu.edu elknox@topgun.idbsu.edu
Cogito ergo spud: I think therefore I yam
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 11:57:15 -0500
From: amayberg@curry.edu (Allan Mayberry Greenberg)
Using undergraduates as assistants is hardly a new concept. Many years ago, my college roommate--a math major--taught a calculus course as an honors level senior. The faculty at Cornell University did not see this as a problem, nor--apparently--did the students taking the course. At the 4-year college where I work, about 20 years ago we had a course entitled "Peer Teaching in..."--the specific course is irrelevant: the students selected for this course were high caliber, did an excellent job, and did not work exclusively on their own, but together with Ph.D. qualified faculty. In both of these instances, and another that I am currently involved in, the students were in genuine learning settings: acting as peer teachers, essentially, they were relearning material in a very different way--and were truly advancing. Supervision had the responsibility for ascertaining that what was done would have a positive effect on all students--and have done so in a critical and responsible way.
As I see it, this is one option that may make sense in certain settings. And I do agree that there have to be parameters enabling us to avoid exploitation--a question we have discussed often....
Allan C. Mayberry Greenberg
Curry College
Milton MA 02186
(617) 333-2374
amayberg@curry.edu
From: kwoestma@mail.pittstate.edu (Kelly A. Woestman) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 10:25:37 +22310028 (CST)
Tony Edmonds' post (and one a few days ago whose author I've forgotten) point to an unspoken view in many of the comments - both "pro" and "con" on this topic -- As a profession, we seem to value teaching doctoral level students over freshmen. We all have our strengths and weaknesses but I don't think one should be valued above the other. I look forward to opening the minds of freshmen (traditional as well as non-traditional) to understanding the world around them. Their minds can be just as critical and probing as some of the best doctoral students. This also means they can be just as challenging to us as teachers as "higher-level" students - if we just let them. That means taking the time with them and trying not to teach the masses all at one time. After all, where did those doctoral students begin their education?
I graduated from a PhD program that the state of Texas was threatening to eliminate. Again, I didn't agree with their reasoning but the evidence they were using had a point. Students were not graduating in a timely fashion and not getting jobs commensurate with their degrees. As Edmonds points out, if we aren't accountable ourselves, outside forces will make us be accountable in ways we don't like. Not just history, but most college degree programs are evaluated by where they graduates end up finding jobs.
Does anyone have access to the figures of what it cost to educate a doctoral level student v. undergraduates? That would be interesting for us to compare since I imagine the "agencies" looking to cut PhD programs are looking at these numbers with a magnifying glass.
I'm now teaching at a small regents university in Kansas with an MA program. Most of our MA students are area high school and community college teachers, so I believe we are fulfilling a mission of serving our community.
We have had no trouble attracting qualified candidates for new positions. We advertised two temporary positions in Summer 1994 and had about 100 applicants for each job, even though we had advertised at such a late date.
This is an excellent discussion and it presents us with an opportuntinty to evaluate our profession and our role in preserving and promoting the study of history.
Kelly in Kansas
kwoestma@pittstate.edu
316-235-4316
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 12:18:15 -0500 (EST) From: HALSALL@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU
There is an underlying statistical mistake being made with regard to numbers of job applicants and numbers of jobs.
A number of people have commented that each advertised job receives hundreds of applications. To some extent this is a product of easy xeroxing and computer printers. People would apply to far fewer jobs if they had to write out each application by hand [and even more so if each referee had to write out each application by hand!].
As it stands everybody applies for every possible job, and so the situation [which is bad] looks worse than it is.
I wonder if the H-Net powers that be, might consider supporting the sellers in the market just as they do the buyers. Each week H-net sends out its wonderful job listing [who puts it together btw - they should get a standing ovation at the AHA]. How about establishing am Hnet "teachers/faculty available" web site, perhaps computer searchable?
Paul Halsall
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 12:05:26 -0600 (CST) From: Bill Cecil-Fronsman <zzceci@acc.wuacc.edu>
Paul Halsall writes:
There is an underlying statistical mistake being made with regard to numbers of job applicants and numbers of jobs.
A number of people have commented that each advertised job receives hundreds of applications. To some extent this is a product of easy xeroxing and computer printers. People would apply to far fewer jobs if they had to write out each application by hand [and even more so if each referee had to write out each application by hand!].
I doubt it.
I first entered the job market in the days before I had access to computers. I had to type every bloody job application myself. I applied for every job I thought I was qualified to get. Once I had access to computers and printers and could simply modify my job application letters, I applied for every job I thought I was qualified to get. Let's not confuse the situation.
Anyone who has ever been on a search committee knows that there are some people who apply for jobs that they are clearly unqualified to get. But anyone who has ever been on a search committee knows that there are an abundance of people who are clearly qualified for virtually every job that is out there. If I wanted a history teaching job and I saw an opening, I would apply for it, even if I had to chissel my letter in stone.
Bill Cecil-Fronsman zzceci@acc.wuacc.edu Department of History Office: (913) 231-1010 x1317 Washburn University Fax: (913) 231-1084
Topeka, KS 66621
From: jschick@mail.pittstate.edu (James B. Schick) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 11:34:18 +22310028 (CST)
Just one question: we're supposed to follow a "business model" but where do we have a good example of such a model in reality?
Giant corporations -- which should surely be what universities must be compared to rather than mom-and-pop storefronts -- are engaged in downsizing, restructuring, splitting into thirds, disgorging previous acquisitions that proved indigestible, going chapter 11 to avoid unions and creditors, moving abroad to escape their ethical responsibilities of paying proper taxation, assuming huge debts to acquire other companies and reduce competition, and the like. There are complaints about how they treat employees, how they don't listen to customers (General Motors comes to mind, at least in the previous decades when they lost out to the Japanese, along with Ford and the rest), and such. They demand (and get) huge tax breaks from their state and community by threatening to move the sports franchise to another city.
It seems to me that we are presented with a theoretical good model with too few realworld examples of the same. We find the government excoriated for the $500 toilet seats and screwdrivers and such but I cannot recall ever hearing negative words about the corporation that had the gall to charge the government such outlandish prices. We have privately run corporations *knowingly* selling defective products to NASA and the Defense Department; I cannot recall anyone bringing them to trial for treason, and if this isn't giving "aid and comfort" to the nation's enemies, what is it?
Of course I have oversimplified. There are likely very good corporations and good models. And good businessmen by the score. But it seems to me that we're being held up to a mythical standard. I suppose I should also point out that it's middle managers (read administrators) who are getting the axe in the current business bloodletting, and that's not what's being proposed here I suspect. If our product is defective, let's be held accountable. If we cannot sell our product, then we should do a little market research and find out why: it may be that the very people who are in charge of this cutting have allowed more administrators per institution to grow out of proportion to what it once was and have phased out faculty positions quietly over the years so there are fewer positions for those doctoral students to occupy than there were (per capita) two or more decades ago. There may be an oversupply. Do we really want to tell students with the ability to become a professor of history they haven't got the chance to do so because someone has decided the market won't tolerate them in a couple of years? Maybe that oversupply should be examined, too, to find out how many outstanding prospects are going without jobs and how many ones of less-superior skills are being hired? In other words, just counting noses and jobs may not really tell us all we need to know in order to remedy the situation.
If advocates of a business model would produce two or five actual corporations which could be examined for their applicability to higher education, we'd have something to get our teeth into. As it stands it's like the government professor who compared capitalism (holding it accountable for the Great Depression, Latin American dicatorships, and the rest) to communism (rejecting the then-Soviet Union, Cuba, or any other real system as not sufficiently communist to be charged against the theoretical ideal); guess which this professor preferred?
Speaking of capitalism, there's a stimulating account of "moral capitalism" or "social capitalism" in Stephen Innes's new book, _Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England_ (see the introduction) that deserves a much wider audience than I fear a book on this topic will get. Well worth reading by anyone dealing with early America or with business models for higher education, for college professors are not the same sorts of employees and do not do things for the same motivations as employees in most corporations. We don't get raises if we sell all our products (Ph.D.s or M.A.s or B.S.s). In Kansas we get only "merit raises" and not cost of living, but they're talking of just 1 or 2% this year or nothing at all: have we all suddenly done nothing meritorious this past year? To impose a business model without understanding the nature of the business sounds like poor business practice that would and should get someone fired in a real corporation.
(Sorry for the long posting.)
Jim Schick
jschick@pittstate.edu
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 18:50:02 GMT
From: kennrem@CyberGate.COM (Kevin Enns-Rempel)
David Fahey asks,
What about master's programs? Although not as costly, they present the same problem. Fewer and fewer M.A. recipients will go on to doctoral programs, at least to ones in history. I have a much fuzzier notion of what kinds of jobs M.A. recipients obtain than for doctoral recipients. Are the jobs in fact related to the degree or is the situation comparable to that for the B.A., a liberal arts degree which happens to be in history?
Many individuals with M.A. degrees in history work in the area of archival management, museum curatorship and historic preservation. It seems to me that all of these jobs are closely related to the degree. Whether such professions could absorb large numbers of persons diverted from Ph.D. programs is doubtful, however.
Kevin Enns-Rempel
Fresno Pacific College
Fresno, CA
Kennrem@cybergate.com
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 12:46:47 -0800 (PST) From: gmonahan@eosc.osshe.edu (Gregory Monahan)
This thread has wondered fairly far from its original impetus--the decision of the Ohio Board to consolidate and/or reduce the number of Ph.D. programs in history. We can argue endlessly about the applicability of business models to the academy or vice versa and about whether we're writing books that nobody reads, but I don't think there is much argument that we're making a LOT more Ph.D's than we can place. So the issue is, should we reduce the number of Ph.D. programs, and who should decide which programs get cut? Lots of colleagues might agree that there are too many programs, but it seems to me that too few (with exceptions such as Ball State) are inclined to cut THEIR programs. We seem inclined to cut OTHER people's programs. That attitude, hardly confined to historians, helps explain why it is that administrators end up making such decisions.
That is especially the case when it is a question of several programs in a given state. There are very few organizational fora for faculty from every Ph.D-granting program in a given state to come together and decide this issue. Perhaps administrators would perform a service by convening such a summit meeting in various states, laying the data before the faculty involved and suggesting that they come up with a plan to match Ph.D. candidates with the market. Such a meeting might succeed in making everyone a part of the solution rather than the problem. Still, short of that, it seems to me that the Ohio Board went about its decision responsibly. It looked at placement. It found poor placement records with some programs. It suggested cutting those programs. Now, one person's supportive administrator is always another's destructive bureaucrat, and I won't argue that a principle reason for such decisions lies in saving money. Is saving money evil? We need to be very careful about making that assumption. It leaves us with very few places to go, and not very many convincing arguments to make. As long as Ph.D. programs continue to accept candidates they cannot place, they will invite administrative intervention. I rest with a suggestion I made here a while back. No program should accept more graduate students in a given year than it placed the previous year. Period.
Greg Monahan
gmonahan@eosc.osshe.edu
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 11:36:28 -0600
From: duncano@storm.simpson.edu (Owen Duncan)
I agree with the reservations about business standards being imposed upon the academy, but I think we have to some extent brought this upon ourselves. How do we justify the increased cost of an education, so far above the national inflation rate? And if not the promise of jobs, what is the value of history classes for students? As a profession we are unable to produce standards of teaching American and World History that even a liberal senator like Ted Kennedy could sign on to. We continually tell people that we cannot agree on what is valuable for students to learn from history. Why in a democracy should taxpayers subsidize us if we offer neither jobs nor values that people can use in some sense.
In fact, I think we agree on more than we admit publicly and that the study of history is essential to the development of thoughtful citizens, but we do a very poor job of making that case, and therefore find ourselves hard pressed to defend our profession when budget cutters get to our programs.
Sixty years ago Carl Becker called out attention to the fact that "every man is a historian" and that historians had best think about how to get the attention of every man. "the professional historian will never get his own chastened and corrected image of the past into common minds if no one reads his books (or takes his classes). his books may be as solid as you like, but their social influence will be nil if peolple do not read them and not merely read them, but read them willingly and with understanding." It seems to me that in emphasizing our freedom to follow our own projects, in our refusal to make distinctions between history that is interesting to us and history that is meaningful to every man, we have undermined our claims for public support.
Owen Duncan
Simpson College
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 95 15:41:59 EST
From: "Alfons H. Teipen" <V1807G@VM.TEMPLE.EDU>
On Tue, 28 Nov 1995 13:30:39 -0500 "Bob Wheeler C.S.U." said: Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 12:05:26 -0600 (CST) From: Bill Cecil-Fronsman <zzceci@acc.wuacc.edu>
Paul Halsall writes:
>>> There is an underlying statistical mistake being made with regard to
>>> numbers of job applicants and numbers of jobs.
>>>
>>> A number of people have commented that each advertised job receives
>>> hundreds of applications. To some extent this is a product of
>>> easy xeroxing and computer printers. People would apply to far fewer
>>> jobs if they had to write out each application by hand [and even more
>>> so if each referee had to write out each application by hand!].
>>
>>I doubt it.
>>
>>I first entered the job market in the days before I had access to
>>computers. I had to type every bloody job application myself. I applied
>>for every job I thought I was qualified to get....
Regardless of whether applications are done by computer or typewriter, Paul is right insofar as there are not only hundreds of applications per job, but at the same time dozens of jobs that individual applicants go for.
That has to be taken into account if one wants to get an accurate picture of the relationship or ratio of applicants per job. For example, if the market had 10 different positions, and 100 applicants applied to each of these positions, we would have an application ratio of 1000 to 10, whereas the applicant ratio would only be 100 to 10. I think that was the point Paul was trying to make.
Alfons
O-------------------------------------------------------O ________O
| Alfons H. Teipen Internet: V1807G@VM.TEMPLE.EDU / / ____/ / | Temple University Bitnet: V1807G@TEMPLEVM / /-- __/_--_ | Religion - Dept VOICE: (215) 843 5618 / /____ /_/__ _ | TUDOR-L (Temple Univ. Dept. of Rel.) Listowner / / O-------------------------------------------------O O
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 15:46:40 EST
From: kwolf@racer1.mursuky.edu
David Faheys asks a very good question. My perspective is that an MA in History does serve some students as an "advanced" liberal arts degree, to which some of our students have add a JD or an MBA. However, we also are attracting many students to our MA program (from outside our normal "service area") since we added a major field in Public History. Students with a major emphasis in American History and Public History can walk into some pretty good jobs with museums, park services (state and federal), other govt. agencies, or even private companies.
Also, Tony Edmonds' idea of having senior undergrads as interns is most intriguing. Perhaps that is, among other things, a good way for them to learn history. Most of us (if we are honest) really didn't master much of the material we teach until we actually had to teach it. Teaching history is not, I suppose, the same as "doing history" (to us Jack Hexter's somewhat odd and dated phrase) but it is a start. Good for Ball State. [I await with some dread the comments on this, which will doubtless stress that it is bad enough for an unemployed Ph.D to be replaced by an MA-level adjunct, but by an undergrad?!]
Pax vobiscum anyway.
Ken Wolf, History "Don't Worry, Be Happy" Murray State University (Just kidding, we are academics!) P.O. Box 9 Murray KY 42071 KWOLF@Racer1.Mursuky.edu
(502)762-6582 or 762-2232
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 16:54:01 EST
From: "Hughie Lawson, Murray State" <hlawson@racer1.mursuky.edu>
It's important for professors not to assume more responsibility than they actually have for conditions in higher education. Professors don't:
Of course we have opinions about these, and we have interests in
connection with them. We may form an interest group that lobbies for
action on these questions. But the
decisions are made by upper administration and governing boards. In
making these decisions they are influenced by all kinds of
extra-insitutional political interests as well as intra-institutional
logrolling.
While professors may benefit from high educational costs, this doesn't mean they cause the higher costs. So I don't agree with the idea that "we brought it on ourselves." I've never had a chance to help decide any of those 7 issues.
This raises the interesting question why they are blamed by writers who know better, or ought to know better.
Hughie Lawson <hlawson@racer1.mursuky.edu>
Murray State University
Murray, Kentucky 42071
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 15:59:06 -0500 (EST) From: "J. Douglas Deal" <deal@Oswego.Oswego.EDU>
>> Does anyone have access to the figures of what it cost to educate a
>> doctoral level student v. undergraduates? That would be interesting for
>> us to compare since I imagine the "agencies" looking to cut PhD
>> programs are looking at these numbers with a magnifying glass.
>>
>>
>> Kelly in Kansas
>> kwoestma@pittstate.edu
>> 316-235-4316
Kelly et al.:
The State University of New York is going through a "rethinking" process (driven mainly by politics and a budget crunch) that will undoubtedly involve some downsizing, consolidation, elimination of programs, and the like. I have seen some official SUNY figures that show that the cost of graduate programs is generally FAR above the cost of undergraduate programs. But that doesn't mean that administrators or politicians are only looking to cut ultra-expensive graduate programs! And before we start feeling too secure or too proud about the low cost or high "efficiency" of undergraduate education (I teach undergraduates myself), let's remember that it's our relatively low salaries and high numbers of students taught that make it so. Neither is a particular source of satisfaction for the professors that I know....
Doug Deal
SUNY-Oswego/History
From: kwoestma@mail.pittstate.edu (Kelly A. Woestman) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 20:17:20 +22310028 (CST)
Re: Doug Deal's info on cost of grad programs
Thanks for the insight on the situation in NY. You're right, cost isn't
the only consideration -- it's merely one of them. How do you factor in
the "cheap" labor provided by doctoral students who teach undergraduate
courses? (Cheap only means in comparison to pay . . . )
--
Kelly in Kansas
kwoestma@pittstate.edu
316-235-4316
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 19:07:38 -0500 (CDT) From: clm1b36@PANAM1.PANAM.EDU
I was intrigued by Greg Monahan's comments, as by those of all who have responded to this thread. There's no doubt about it, we're all caught in a bind and need to re-think the Ph.D. and its applications with labor realities firmly in mind. Like many of you, I'm leery of having administrators, legislators, and accountants making those decisions, but as several of you have noted, we seem incapable of making such decisions ourselves.
One quick thought crossed my mind as I read through various proposals. At Ball State the faculty voluntarily scrapped the Ph.D. program out of ethical concerns for the professional futures for their graduates. This left a number of faculty members who were eminently qualified to guide doctoral students with no forum, though they seem to have adapted to the situation philosphically. Others have commented that they have hired excellent faculty members at non-Ph.D. granting institutions, individuals who could surely guide advanced students. Yet others comment that some of our colleagues might support "downsizing" Ph.D. programs, but can't imagine life without the benefits (real and psychological) that accompany being associated with Ph.D. granting institutions.
OK. How about this as a suggestion for everyone to chew on. Rather than having a bunch of under-supported doctoral programs in a given region or state, or eliminating Ph.D. programs at all but flagship campuses (e.g. Ohio State), why not establish state- or region-wide consortia between many campuses to engage in doctoral teaching. This would allow the sort of "downsizing" that the fiscal folks (and the ethically sensitive) are insisting upon, but permit those who have the qualifications to teach on the doctoral level while giving potential Ph.D. students a broad selection of faculty with various specializations to choose from. With the miracle of modern telecommunications, distances shouldn't be too much of a bother. It seems to me the only real problem would be how to apportion funds, Graduate Assistant hours, and so forth, but these are things that our sharp-pencilled friends in administration are quite good at juggling when properly motivated.
The fact of the matter is that as resources decline, sharing resources--yes, even human resources--will become increasingly necessary.
What do you think?
Christopher L. Miller
University of Texas--Pan American
From: cdawson@Phoenix.kent.edu (Chris Dawson) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 01:19:47 -0500 (EST)
Professor Miller is correct in advocating a series of regional consortiums for PhD programs. In fact at Kent State, we were trying to do that, to form a consortium with Akron University, which is only about 15-20 minutes away from us. If it had gone (or will go) through, the consortium would have been the second biggest history department in the state of Ohio, second only to Ohio State, which is almost a factory of sorts. There's still the possibility that this idea will succeed and there will be a consortium. As a student, I support it heartily, and think that the idea ought to be applied to other universities that are geographically close to one another. My only problem with the idea is that it was inspired because of the threatened cuts (the Board of Regents was going to cut SOME programs initially, not almost all of them), instead of by common sense. Apparently the idea was floated by the Administration years back but nothing came of it. I think it's an idea whose time has come. Instead of having a large number of PhD programs, a smaller number run through a consortium program will make much more sense, and actually give students more research options and facilities. I'm hoping the idea still works for us at Kent and Akron, because I think it makes all the sense in the world. Hopefully other schools will see the logic of the idea and also develop closer ties. It's time to circle the wagons, if I may use a rather un-P.C. analogy.
--
Christopher J. Dawson
cdawson@phoenix.kent.edu
Kent State University
One of the last PhDs in the Kent History Program
Will the last History PhD at Kent please turn out the lights?
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 02:37:19 +0001 (EST) From: peter c holloran <pch@world.std.com>
I agree the Barron's article is groundless. Remember back in the late 1970s when some Ph.D.s were converting to get jobs in corporations? They encountered a problem because business executives (who were supposed to hire these unemployed historians as management trainees) had a funny bias. They hated history in college, and were quite anti-intellectual. They perceived Ph.D.s as lazy, impractical idealists who would not fit in with hardheaded, practical business executives. Headhunters found it very difficult to place historians in the corporate world for this bias was (and still is, I assume) widespread. Criticism by Barrons is nothing new and nothing to panic about either.
Peter Holloran, Mount Ida College, pch@world.std.com
>>>>>"I wonder if there are any of these exchange sessions in your area - there >>>>>are none I know of in mine."
>>>>>There was an AHA-sponsored committee promoting these regional exchanges at
>>>>>one point. I don't know if it's still in business. I was asked by it
>>>>>to planan exchange, but organization is my Achilles heel and it did
>>>>>not happen. NEH
>>>>>Grants exist for joint college-hs conferences. I went to one on the
>>>>>American and French Revolutions at New York University in 1987 and
>>>>>1988. In fact I was given a small stipend to lead a group under the
>>>>>grant the first summer, but the second summer I was waved away for a
>>>>>reason I later discovered had to do with my gender, not my competence.
>>>>>Since then, there has been little of this kind of activity. The NY
>>>>>State Councils on the Arts and Humanities don't seem
>>>>>to be interested.
>>>>>
>>>>>They will be less interested after this session of Congress is over.
>>>>>
>>>>>By the way, may I thank your dogsbodiness for your stalwart editorship of
>>>>>H-TEACH. It's a good forum, and my impression is that running it can be
>>>>>thankless. Nevertheless, it's all there is, nationally, in the way of
>>>>>low-cost history teacher to history teacher conferencing.
>>>>>
>>>>>-Bill Everdell
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>--
>>>Robert A. Wheeler
>>>Department of History
>>>Cleveland State University
>>>216 687 3513
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>Bob Wheeler
>Department of History
>Cleveland State University
>rwheeler@math3.math.csuohio.edu
>
>
From: "Russ Hunt" <HUNT@academic.stu.StThomasU.ca> Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 08:31:46 AST
What amazes me about the Barron's piece is the total incomprehension of what tuition increases mean, and are caused by. I'd always thought those folks had a couple of clues. Wrong again, I guess.
The question is whether individuals and families carry the burden of the costs of education or whether society as a whole does. As governments pull out of direct support for education, the only alternative for universities is to shift toward tuition as a source of income. The general pattern is that government support is then tilted toward more student loans, bursaries, etc. (Tilted, but not _replaced_; this is all partly a way of cutting back on public support for universities.)
It's very like instituting a "voucher system" for school financing, and is part of a general move toward privatization. The idea is to put the customers in charge. You may think that's a bad idea or a good one (myself, I think it's obscene), but for Barron's to assert that it's a matter of profiteering suggests they just flat don't know anything about education, or educational financing.
So when Owen Duncan comments
>> I think we have to some extent brought this upon ourselves. How do >> we justify the increased cost of an education, so far above the >> national inflation rate?
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 08:14:04 -0500 (EST) From: 00aoedmonds@bsuvc.bsu.edu
Doug Skopp questions the appropriateness of having undergraduate interns grade any kind of essay exam. I agree that it is a very debatable issue. I should have made clear that a) such practice is permitted, not mandated, and that many of our faculty don't do it; b) those who do use interns only on short, 4-8 sentence identification essays. All I can say is that there have been few complaints about the system because we train the interns rigorously and monitor their work carefully. In my experience they are perfectly capable of this kind of activity. We have fought the class size battle and lost. When told over the past two years that we had to cut other budgets in order to insure salary increases, the department voted to eliminate contract faculty FTE and raise class sizes in survey classes. This fall, the average class size in our western civ survey with over 2,000 enrolled is around 180! If writing is to occur, in many cases interns will be marginally involved. I chose that path over purely "objective" tests. Theological considerations asideit does generally work.
Tony Edmonds
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 07:43:03 -0500
From: Everdell@aol.com
Bill Cecil-Fronsman writes: "We made the decision to reduce the number of upper-division classes and to offer more sections of survey courses with a 35 student cap. (This enables us to concentrate more on teaching skills like writing.) This was not an easy thing to do. Many of us enjoy teaching upper-division students more than survey students. We are able to get into deeper material that is closer to our research emphasis in an upper-division class than in our surveys. But we decided that we were better positioned if we made the cuts ourselves. In other words, we decided how to allocate our own resources so that we could better serve our students and (we hope) protect our positions."
This same decision has been made without much reflection by every independent secondary school I know of. More than one of these teachers will be glad you've done the same. A recognition that our culture needs more history teaching should not imply any eagerness to restrict the availability of degrees for history teachers. It does, however, require that the average history scholar be hired to 1) teach and 2) try to keep up with what the few who are productive original scholars are doing out there and have done. I don't think the majority of us should be paid to devote our time to scholarship, because - as with poetry - not enough of us are good at it. For the majority, scholarship should be what informs and improves our introductory history courses. If it were, I think it would become possible to hire a great many appropriately knowledgeable teachers from among the current ranks of the un- and under-employed.
It is clear from the Barron's piece that the yahoos and philistines will be upon us soon to eliminate even introductory history. Their ambition seems to be to bottom-line the long view out of existence and make it possible for more of their kind of people to make good livings reinventing wheels or providing the average US college graduate with lowfat bread and filmed circuses.
And when the assault comes, we may find we have organized the profession in a way that guarantees defeat, incapable of teaching enough people that the wheel was invented about 5,000 years ago, in Sumer.
-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 07:49:42 -0600 (CST) From: ARTHUR ZILVERSMIT <ZILVERSMIT@LFC.EDU>
The real issue in Ohio's decision to cut support for PhD programs at several of its institutions should be seen in the context of what is happening to public support for education in general. After a long campaign, the Republican Right has convinced Americans that they are seriously overtaxed. Ever since California's Proposition 13, they have told us repeatedly that taxes must be cut and, therefore, spending must be cut too. This is part of a long term effort to undo not only the social legislation of the New Deal but the Progressive Era as well. Now they have convinced the American people that this is the way to go. As a result we are actually cutting spending for Headstart. If Headstart is cut, how can we justify continued spending for more esoteric educational needs?
Arthur Zilversmit
Lake Forest College
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 08:45:43 -0600 (CST) From: Anthony G Carey <careyag@mail.auburn.edu>
Is not the wave of tuition increases more or less directly related to declining support from states and federal government? Shrinking of research dollars, cutting of direct appropriations, etc.? At Auburn, which U.S. News & World Report always cites as a bargain, tuition increases have come recently in an effort to make up for state funding cuts. Students, of course, still pay only a fraction of the actual cost of their educations, a fact that most are very surprised to learn. Perhaps the academy can rally middle class voters to support colleges and universities so that others can pay their children's bills, rather than having to pay themselves through tuition increases. Methinks that would sell. Would be interested to know of any systematic study correlating funding declines and tuition increases.
Tony Carey, Auburn U. <careyag@mail.auburn.edu>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 95 08:42:32 CST
From: Karl Schmidt <SCHMID02@VM.MSSC.EDU>
Dear Colleagues:
Bill Hogan's comments about the "real world of teaching" are well taken, but I sense that many secondary teachers are under the false impression that life in the academy is always softened by the use of assistants. I teach at a four-year college and I grade all of my own assignments. We have no teaching assistants, nor undergraduate helpers. My teaching load is 4/4, and in addition to many other assigned tasks, I am expected to do some research. While I understand that secondary teachers teach more, how many do research and publish? Simple comparisons between the so-called "real world of teaching" and the so-called soft life of academia are not very useful.
Karl Schmidt
Assistant Professor of History
Missouri Southern State College
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 11:36:14 -0600
From: duncano@storm.simpson.edu (Owen Duncan)
In other words, we decided how to allocate our own resources so that we could better serve our students and (we hope) protect our positions."
-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn
I agree with Bill Everdell's assertion that we should as much as possible take matters into our own hands and seek a better public image by emphasizing teaching. No one has yet made a convincing argument against what is happening in Ohio, although it is certainly true that increased costs are partly the result of shifting expenses from the state to the individual.
By reducing class size to 35 in introductory courses, shifting history from the social sciences to the Humanities where it competes with English, Philosophy, and Religion for students (all writing courses) instead of Psychology and Sociology, we have improved enrollments in upper level classes. The fact that we are "productive" and inexpensive has actually put us in the queue for a possible additional staff member in the future at our small liberal arts college.
Everdell's point is, I take it, wherever the problem originates, it is in our interest to make the strongest possible argument for the study of history, and we have not done so to my satisfaction.
Owen Duncan
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 22:03:16 +0001 (EST) From: peter c holloran
I must object to Paul Halsall's posting. What point is he trying to make? Does he think the pc makes job application processes too easy? Sorry, but the number of tenure track positions for Ph.D.s in History is quite low and declining as adjuncts are hired to replace tenured professors. This is a sad state of affairs for our profession, our students, our colleagues and ourselves. Attributing this crisis to the proliferation of computers makes little sense.
Peter Holloran, Mount Ida College, pch@world.std.com
>> Re: Doug Deal's info on cost of grad programs
>>
>> Thanks for the insight on the situation in NY. You're right, cost isn't
>> the only consideration -- it's merely one of them. How do you factor in
>> the "cheap" labor provided by doctoral students who teach undergraduate
>> courses? (Cheap only means in comparison to pay . . . )
>> --
>> Kelly in Kansas
I don't know whether the "cheap" instruction they provide is factored in or not. I suspect not, since all but the most isolated schools seem to be able to hire adjunct faculty to teach some of their undergraduates at very low cost ($2300 per 3-hour course here), whether or not they have doctoral programs themselves.
Doug Deal
History/SUNY-Oswego
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 15:12:39 -0500 (EST) From: HALSALL@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU
Peter Holloran's complaint seems a bit over-reactive
>> I must obect to Paul Halsall's posting. What point is he trying to make? >> Does he think the pc makes job application processes too easy? >> Sorry, but the number of tenure track positions for Ph.D.s in History is >> quite low and declining as adjuncts are hired to replace tenured >> professors. This is a sad state of affairs for our profession, our >> students, our colleagues and ourselves. Attributing this crisis to the >> proliferation of computers makes little sense.
You might *disagree* with me, but why object? I certainly did not attribute the "crisis" to the computer, I merely pointed out that continual postings about how many applications have been recieved form some lousy job in ***-**** University, while having some interest, fail to take into account how easy a proliferation of applications is now.
In fact the mistmatch between PH.Ds and jobs, while real, is nowhere near as great as some have argued. At least if figures in Perspectives are to be credited over the past few years, the number of Ph.Ds has outrun jobs by {I think> 20 to 50%. This is worrying, but it is not, on an individual level, hopeless.
The situation is worse I suspect for US historians and best for Asianists [in fact having struggled to learn one difficult language -Greek- it now strikes me that, professionally, it would have made more sense to learn Chinese. Hey, even the grammar is easier]. For medievalists, for whom there are few jobs, but not a massive oversupply of PH.DS [again according to Perspectives figures], the comparison with Americanists is interesting. Americanists can apply for tens of jobs each year, medievalists for far fewer, but with basically less competition. What is the better situation.
Paul Halsall
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 09:08:19 -0800
From: afhes@VMS.ACAD2.ALASKA.EDU
>> Date: Tue, 28 Nov 95 07:10:59 EST
>> From: David Fahey <DFAHEY@MIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
>[deletions]
>
>> What about master's programs? Although not as costly, they present
>> the same problem. Fewer and fewer M.A. recipients will go on to
>> doctoral programs, at least to ones in history. I have a much fuzzier
>> notion of what kinds of jobs M.A. recipients obtain than for doctoral
>> recipients. Are the jobs in fact related to the degree or is the
>> situation comparable to that for the B.A., a liberal arts degree which
>> happens to be in history?
Most secondary social studies and history teachers get pay based on both length of service and educational degrees. That is, MAs and MATs get more money than do BAs. I suspect, therefore, that MA programs will continued to receive funding and admin support--there is a direct correlation to the marketplace for those degrees. And, because most teachers don't want to leave home during their summers in order to update their continuing education or work on advanced degrees, even relatively small colleges tend to offer programs that are supported by the local communities.
One other thought--many of the folks in my MA program had no intention of going further; their chosen career path (secondary teaching) did not make much financial distinction between MA and PhD. And, finally, many community and/or junior colleges deem the MA sufficient authority to teach intro and sophmore courses.
Hank Stamm <afhes@vms.acad2.alaska.edu> University of Alaska Anchorage
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 10:27:06 EST
From: "Hughie Lawson, Murray State" <hlawson@racer1.mursuky.edu>
I really don't think the Barrons article does any more than retail the traditional American gripe about professors.
After all, there are hundreds and hundreds of colleges, many of them eager for students. Moreover, in many traditional fields there is an over-supply of qualified persons for faculty posts. Economic common sense says there is a huge incentive for some institutions to provide good education at reduced cost. Why isn't this happening? Barrons wants us to believe that professors have some kind of secret monopoly control.
Professors, Barrons whipping boys, have little control over entry into their profession; besides this, they can't stop an entrepreneurial college from using technology to get by with fewer profs if they can manage this.
The most expensive colleges are the ones Barrons readers want to get their kids in. But they would like a lower price tag. So they convert their personal grievance into a PROBLEM that somebody else ought to fix for them. What Barrons readers probably want is a snob school for 10 thou a year. So the editors come up with a wish-fulfillment fantasy for them. But, there's no such thing as a free lunch; you want snob products, you pay snob prices. (My apologies to those who teach in snob schools; I'd love to teach in one too.)
There are plenty of colleges where teachers teach twelve hours each semester. In community colleges they teach fifteen.
In history that means lots of paper grading, and it means everybody retires by the time they're 60 or so. In a few places, esp Ph.D. institutions, profs have smaller loads and more pleasant assignments. But that's because GA's are doing a lot of the teaching. Cutting expensive Ph.D. programs probably won't cut the cost of teaching for such schools; they'll have to shift more of the teaching to regular faculty, who cost more per class.
Anybody with the ability can earn a baccalaureate degree at lost cost.
Exploit CLEP and AP. Finish gen ed at the local CC. Finish up at
the friendly nearby state college. If you have the means to send your
child to say Emory or Vanderbilt, you could do the low-cost way instead,
and bank the savings,
about 60 thousand, I'd say, as a rough guess. Enough to support your
kid for a two-year grand tour after college and send them to study abroad every
summer of college, if you pick your programs right.
People who read Barrons are smart enough to do this analysis. People who write for Barrons are smart enough to do this analysis. Why don't they? Suggest it, and they will probably answer, "That is not it; that is not it at all." Or, like the rich young ruler, they will turn away sadly.
Don't panic, professors; and don't be irritated by a little upscale populism in Barrons! Just enjoy the spectacle of rich suckers paying for this journalistic snake-oil.
Hughie Lawson <hlawson@racer1.mursuky.edu>
Murray State University
Murray, Kentucky 42071
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