US humanities PhDs ‘produce more employable graduates’

By Elizabeth Gibney. Arts and humanities PhD graduates from the US are more employable than their UK counterparts, a conference on doctoral education has heard. The extra length of the US doctoral education – on average seven years compared with four in the UK – creates graduates with significantly more experience in teaching and administration, said Dina Iordanova, professor of film studies at the University of St Andrews.
“Those coming out of UK programmes often have little experience in teaching and next to no experience in administration,” Professor Iordanova told the UK Council for Graduate Education’s International Conference on Development in Doctoral Education and Training on 12 April, where she was speaking in a personal capacity. Both factors contribute to university employers not being certain of applicants’ command of the field at large, she said. Read more...