Professors revel in reputation--and nowhere does that show more clearly than in their concern about educational pedigree. That concern takes complicated forms. The author wondered what might happen if graduate admissions were reduced to a level that would only replace retiring professors. One possible consequence of such a move would be that…

Marc Aronson, a lecturer in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University at New Brunswick and a historian who writes books for young adults, recently suggested that all Ph.D. candidates be required to take a course he calls "Communications." The goal would be to teach Ph.D.'s--both would-be academics and those who will pursue…

The dissertation is broken, many scholars agree. Rethinking the academic centerpiece of a graduate education is an obvious place to start if, as many people believe, Ph.D. programs are in a state of crisis. Universities face urgent calls to reduce the time it takes to complete degrees, reduce attrition, and do more to prepare doctoral candidates…

Whenever a discussion opens about nonacademic employment for Ph.D.s, it is not long before someone suggests reducing graduate-school admissions. "The market for full-time scholars has fallen off a cliff lately," this argument goes, "so why not just train fewer of them?" The strategy to reduce the number of Ph.D. students recurs in those…

If a person managed to finish his work--whether it was research, teaching, or service--on time and in the correct format, he would have a huge competitive advantage over many of his peers. Procrastination is not always bad: Sometimes the work one puts off doing is better left undone. And sometimes the best ideas just come late. But perennially…

In recent years, some very smart people--like Michael Berube, Marc Bousquet, Anthony Grafton, and William Pannapacker, to name a few--have offered on these pages their thoughts about how to fix graduate education and, by extension, the academic labor market, which, everyone seems to agree, has "unraveled". The author approaches this issue from a…

In master's programs, and especially at the doctoral level, graduate students depend on their advisers more than on anyone else in their careers. Students do more work for their adviser's eyes than for anyone else's, and the adviser's approval is the key to the door that leads to the next place, whether full-time employment or more school. For…

The crisis in humanities graduate education is coming to an end. But academic jobs are still few and far between, and graduate education remains on shaky ground both institutionally and socially. Nevertheless, two generations of "crisis thinking" are finally giving way to the idea that graduate education is not in a crisis. Instead, it…

Graduate education in the humanities is in crisis. Every aspect, from the most specific details of the curriculum to the broadest questions about its purpose, is in crisis. It is a seamless garment of crisis: If one pulls on any one thread, the entire thing unravels. It is therefore exceptionally difficult to discuss any one aspect of graduate…

When students receive a doctoral degree and find their first job, they will be exposed to the realities of academic life. What will it be like? How should they navigate that particular real world they are thrust into? Most students, even those who taught part time before earning a Ph.D., have only the vaguest concept of what it is like to work in…

Colleges looking to hire junior faculty members are enjoying something of a buyer's market these days. With job offers scarce in many fields, small, teaching-intensive colleges and regionally oriented state universities have been able to snag recent graduates of the nation's top programs, the kinds of candidates who would have probably gone to…

When a person sends in his or her job-application materials, he or she is not just assembling separate documents to fulfill the requirements of an ad. Those documents are part of a larger rhetorical whole, and together they form an argument for the viability of his or her candidacy for a particular job. Documents should be crafted meticulously,…

Foreign students applying to graduate schools in the United States are increasingly favoring the doctoral institutions that were already popular among them, while losing some interest in other types of colleges, according to a survey released last week by the Council of Graduate Schools. Over all, foreign applications for graduate programs are up…

This author realizes that an important part of his job is to make sure his graduate students get their own jobs. What that means is talking about job placement as soon as they walk in the door and tell him they want to do a Ph.D. First he informs them of the current job situation, whatever that is at the time. He makes it clear that the first…

With many professors approaching retirement. a shortage of qualified academics has reached crisis proportions at a number of African universities. The shortfall is a consequence of decades of neglect of African higher education, as donors and governments concentrated limited resources on primary and secondary schools, and young scholars who manage…