PhDs in the Humanities

By Alex Usher. I had the good fortune earlier this week of speaking to the Future of the Humanities PhD conference at Carleton University. It was an interesting event, full of both faculty and students who are thinking about ways to reform a system takes students far too long to navigate. They asked me for my thoughts, so I gave them. Here’s a precis.
One of the most intractable problems with the PhD (and not just in the humanities) is that it serves a dual purpose. First, it’s a piece of paper that says “you’re a pretty good researcher”; second, it’s a piece of paper that says “you too can become a tenured university professor! Maybe.”
The problem is that “maybe”: lots of people can meet the standard of being a good researcher, but that doesn’t mean there will be university professor jobs for them. More...