Inside Higher Ed continues its coverage of ideas on humanities graduate education reform with this update about the proposals coming from Russell Berman at Stanford. Obviously if some of the elite private schools lead the way, it could open the doors for others. But maybe not. Here's a comment from Facebook by Richard Grusin, Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies at UW-Milwaukee:
"Clearly there are some interesting ideas here. Nonetheless this discussion is silent, has nothing to say--nada, zip, niente--about the economic or labor issues constraining graduate education in the humanities. While some such change as this could perhaps work at a wealthy institution like Stanford, which might be able to afford to fund graduate study without asking doctoral students to teach 3 or 4 courses per academic year throughout their career, I don't see it working at state-assisted institutions where student support means 5 years as an over-worked and under-paid TA, added on to 4 years of undergraduate debt. While the University of Minnesota is mentioned, I would be interested to see the details of their proposal, if there is one yet." See also the video, below, of the discussion with Jay and Cassuto on the dissertation.
"Clearly there are some interesting ideas here. Nonetheless this discussion is silent, has nothing to say--nada, zip, niente--about the economic or labor issues constraining graduate education in the humanities. While some such change as this could perhaps work at a wealthy institution like Stanford, which might be able to afford to fund graduate study without asking doctoral students to teach 3 or 4 courses per academic year throughout their career, I don't see it working at state-assisted institutions where student support means 5 years as an over-worked and under-paid TA, added on to 4 years of undergraduate debt. While the University of Minnesota is mentioned, I would be interested to see the details of their proposal, if there is one yet." See also the video, below, of the discussion with Jay and Cassuto on the dissertation.
Teresa Mangum responds on Facebook: "Two other questions--how many grad students would know at year 2 they want to do something different and are there really alternative careers out there other than a limited number of DH positions? But it's refreshing to see departments at least explore possibilities. I also like this program at Stanford that is helping grad students articulate the ways grad studies have prepared them for nonacademic careers: http://news.stanford.edu/
Forgive the pitch, but I do want to add that at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at the U of Iowa, we've been running the Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy for six years now. A number of our "alums" in the humanities, but also in fields like computer science and journalism, are getting interviews for academic positions in part because of the Institute and the publicly engaged projects they develop with us. Here's a link to the program: http://obermann.uiowa.edu/programs/graduate-institute-engagement-and-academy.
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