Reforming the Requirements for the Humanities PhD

Reading this article about an MLA panel on reforming the requirements for humanities doctorates made me sick, as it reminded me just how grim the job prospects are for English PhDs. After spending an average of eight years earning a doctorate, which requires those who are not from wealthy families to go into serious debt, only about half of us can expect to land tenure-track jobs.

The title of the article--Are State Troopers Models for Professors?--puts things into perspective. A state trooper needs only 1-year of training and makes as much as a nontenure-track instructor. As Louis Menand noted "Students are being way over-trained for the jobs available. The argument that they need the training to teach undergraduates is belied by the fact that they are already teaching undergraduates. And the idea that the doctoral thesis is a rigorous requirement is belied by the quality of most doctoral theses." The article contains a few interesting proposals for improving the higher-education training system. I particularly like the one about requiring one published (peer-reviewed) journal article, rather than a book-length dissertation, for the PhD.