Nicholas Barber2013-05-25T13:27:21-04:00Nicholas Barberhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=nicholas-barberCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Nicholas BarberGood old fashioned elbow grease.Grad School's Not the Problem, You Aretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32406932013-05-09T16:02:39-04:002013-05-09T17:35:44-04:00Nicholas Barberhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-barber/here, here, and here, among many others). Needless to say, these are depressing, discouraging reads for those of us already pursuing advanced degrees.
The arguments expressed in such articles are based on an antiquated and retrograde attitude towards the form and purpose of doctoral studies. Writers such as Schuman who complain about the misery and futility of their PhDs, tend to view these degrees as four to six years of self-sacrifice and toil undertaken in order to achieve a tenure-track professorship. The problem is that such jobs are increasingly hard to find. While there may have been an era when the majority of PhD graduates obtained university faculty positions, today only 31 per cent of Canadians with doctorates hold full time jobs in academia.
In spite of this, however, many PhD students continue to believe that any postgraduate position other than a professorship (or perhaps a really good postdoctoral fellowship) represents a personal failure. No wonder so many of them are chronically unhappy: They've set themselves up for disappointment. Schuman sums this up in typically overwrought terms:
"By the time you finish...your academic self will be the culmination of your entire self, and thus you will believe, incomprehensibly, that not having a tenure-track job makes you worthless. You will believe this so strongly that when you do not land a job, it will destroy you."
Contrary to the hyperbolic assertions of Schuman and her like, however, a PhD in the humanities or social sciences need not entail years of misery followed by a lifetime of poverty and despair. A doctorate can be a phenomenal experience if approached in the right spirit. The solution is to rethink the form and purpose of graduate studies.
We need, first and foremost, to do away with the idea that the only valid reason to undertake a PhD is in order to become a professor. Doctoral degrees -- and, more importantly, the concrete skills and experience acquired through PhD research -- can be an invaluable qualification for any number of positions in the public and private sectors. PhD holders also earn more over the course of their careers than those with Bachelor's or Master's degrees, regardless of whether they work within the academy or outside of it.
More importantly, one's doctoral work can also have intrinsic value, contributing to one's personal growth and to the world at large. Indeed, one of the most distressing aspects of Schuman's article is the dismissive attitude that she adopts towards her own research. She seems to view a PhD thesis as equivalent to the SATs: It is simply a test that one must pass in order to receive the promised reward of one's academic toil. Content is irrelevant.
The idea that a PhD is simply something that one must "get through" in order to become a professor also underlies another problematic aspect of many doctoral students' attitudes towards their degrees: The belief that, in order to be successful, one's studies must consume the entirety of one's time and energy. This type of self-sacrifice may have been "worth it" when there was a good chance of attaining a plum, tenure-track position upon graduation. These days, however, single-minded focus on research often engenders self-doubt and depression, as students read yet another article about dismal job prospects in academia and wonder, "what am I doing this for"?
A narrow focus on one's research at the expense of outside interests, social activities, and physical and mental well being, I would argue, is also actually detrimental to one's job prospects. While students who devote themselves almost exclusively to academic research and writing may emerge from their studies with a few additional journal publications, this often comes at the expense of developing the social skills, breadth of interests and abilities, and personal connections that are vital in today's job market. While these qualities are particularly vital for the 69 per cent of graduates who will seek jobs outside of academia, they are important for jobs within the academy as well. While quality academic publications remain the most important qualification for faculty jobs, I have observed two job searches during my time as a grad student and both times the candidate who was the most confident, personally likeable, and engaging was awarded the position.
At the risk of being too harsh, Schuman comes across in her article as bitter and self-pitying, and even goes so far as to describe herself as an "emotional trainwreck." She writes that by the end of her doctorate, she had no friends left outside of academia, that any joy she had once experienced in her work had been "theorized to death," that she had been "broken down and reconfigured in the image of the academy." Given this, it is reasonable to wonder if perhaps Schuman's single-minded focus on academics might be part of the reason why she is having so much difficult finding a job. Certainly she doesn't seem like somebody I would want to share an office with.
I enjoy being a PhD student. I work hard and gain great satisfaction from my research, which has brought me to Cameroon to work with an incredible organization dedicated to advancing indigenous rights. I have also had the opportunity to teach undergraduate courses, engage with great works of theory, and be inspired by my classmates. I have done this while maintaining my connections with friends outside of academia, as well as pursuing a number of non-scholarly interests and activities. I suppose that I could have more publications if I sacrificed these things; that I could go to more conferences, teach more courses. But I choose not to allow the fact that I am a PhD student define my entire life.
When I complete my studies I would like to find a professorship. Not because it is a high paying job where you "only have to work five hours a week," as Schuman asserts, but because I would like to continue teaching, writing, and exploring ideas and issues that I believe are important. But if I am unsuccessful, as I very well might be, this will not "destroy the very fabric of my being." Doing a PhD will have been the source of wonderful life experiences. It will have made me not only a more competitive job candidate for whatever position I do end up pursuing, but a happier, more well-rounded, more well-adjusted person.]]>Want to Quell Student Stress? Don't Take Wente's Advicetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23158382012-12-17T12:35:57-05:002013-02-16T05:12:01-05:00Nicholas Barberhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-barber/articles have appeared detailing efforts to ease finals-related stress. Concerned administrators and campus organizations are offering programs ranging from free yoga classes, to "dog therapy" sessions, all with the goal of ensuring students' mental well-being.
Not everyone is pleased with this trend. Writing in the Globe and Mail on December 6, in a column titled "University's not meant to be easy," Margaret Wente argued that Canadian universities were guilty of "infantilizing," rather than "challenging" students. Monday, December 3 on CBC Radio's The Current, Ken Coates, Canada Research Chair at the University of Saskatchewan and author of the book Campus Confidential, expressed similar sentiments: Universities should function as a "proving ground," he argued, and therefore not be too accommodating.
To be fair, neither Wente nor Coates was speaking about yoga or dog therapy. Rather, both were expressing concerns about more substantive changes, such as those recommended in a recent Queen's University report on student mental health. These include reductions in the amount of required reading and writing at certain times of the semester, greater flexibility on assignment deadlines for students with special needs, and longer exam periods.
In essence, Wente and Coates' argument goes something like this: Universities are admitting more and more students who are unsuited to the rigours of higher education. These institutions have lowered their standards in order to make more money through tuition fees and, at the same time, high schools are "coddling" their students, leaving them "thin-skinned" and unprepared. Instead of reforming these mediocre students' bad habits, universities have made it easier to achieve good grades and, eventually, receive a degree. This, in turn, reduces the economic value of a university education (anyone, it seems, can get a B.A.) and leaves graduates unprepared for the "real world."
Wente and Coates believe that universities should serve the job market. A university degree used to mean something to employers, bemoaned Coates in his Current interview: "It meant you could handle stress; it meant you could cope; it meant you took responsibility for yourself; it meant you managed your classes, managed your workload." Similarly, Wente writes that university should be where you go to "learn to cope with your responsibilities and manage your time."
It is striking that neither Wente nor Coates had anything to say about the content of a university education. The topic of your undergraduate honours thesis, it seems, matters less than whether or not you submitted it on time and formatted the bibliography correctly. Universities are supposed to test students' mettle, to sort the employable wheat from the unproductive chaff.
The problem is that, at least in the case of the social sciences and humanities, universities were never meant to function as a sorting mechanism for the job market. As Mark Kingwell pointed out in a recent Globe and Mail article, "liberal education is about citizenship, not job training or simple personal enrichment." Universities are not supposed to help corporations find productive workers, they are supposed to create an engaged and informed public.
In her article Wente deplores the fact that (according to an unnamed professor friend) university students today are less interested in "challenging or debating" ideas in class than were their predecessors. These students, she posits, simply wish to "collect a credential," rather than engaging in their education in a more meaningful way. This attitude, however, is the logical outcome of precisely the type of higher education that Wente and Coates advocate. A view that sees universities as more valuable for testing instrumental organizational skills than for teaching literature, rhetoric, or philosophy can't help but devalue the process of learning in favour of the simple obtainment of a degree.
I agree with Wente and Cotes on one point: University isn't for everyone. There are plenty of ways to be successful in life without attending university. We would all be better served by eliminating the false and misguided tendency of seeing those who choose not to attend university as "lesser." Indeed, it is this attitude that is responsible for a great deal of students' stress. The possibility of a poor grade seems to imply not only academic, but also personal and societal failure.
Increasing the range of socially acceptable options for graduating high school students does not, however, mean that we should make it harder to attend university, only that we should make it easier and more acceptable to pursue other options.
We shouldn't be bemoaning the fact that more students who are not "academically gifted" in an extremely narrow, extremely traditional sense, are going to university. We shouldn't be trying to root these students out through unnecessarily onerous workloads. The fact that more students are attending university is cause for celebration. We should devote the effort and resources necessary to change university education to better serve all students; to provide them with the facts, theories, and critical thinking skills that will help them better contribute to our democracy.
Attending university shouldn't be more stressful and more demanding. It should be more exciting and engaging.