- If it’s wrong to kill Michael Vick for this, can’t he be forced to watch his crimes over and over again, like Malcolm in A Clockwork Orange? Or maybe allowed to have his his arms and legs broken?
- Why is the Oxford University Press blog teh cool? The etymology of break.
- From The Quick and the Ed: I often feel scandalized when I realize that the fact I spent five years in a PhD program without even reaching the halfway mark is both increasingly common and yet uncommon in the history of PhDs. I see very little benefit to taking more than five years to complete any degree, and I’d wager a degree program benefits even less by keeping students so long.
- Perspective on crotchety anti-Harry Potter op-eds is important. (Also see Ogged, here and here.)
- Homeland Security Adviser Frances Townsend doesn’t understand hornets.
- In Jim Wooten’s eulogy for David Halberstam, we learn that Halberstam taught Wooten to say “I love you.”
Thanks for the link re: Ph.D. completion rates. I recently read an excerpt on Chronicle of Higher Ed. (I don’t subscribe) reporting that Ph.D. completion rates have improved from 50% over 10 years to 56% over ten years. Some improvement.
Nonetheless, here I go into year seven, with only a single dissertation chapter to show for it, and once again saying this year will be my last.
I do think some of Vedder’s (?) solutions (refusing state funding after year 4 or 5) only punish the already exploited graduate students if they aren’t accompanied with revisions in graduate programs that facilitate completion of degrees such as limiting the time and length of dissertation projects or requiring more active faculty involvement in such projects.
by shaun—Jul 18, 01:32 PM
I agree that he’s awfully punitive. I don’t understand how it makes sense to diagnose one source of a problem is insufficient funds, then turn around and penalize the effect of the problem by… withdrawing funds? There are better ways to build a PhD, I suspect.
by greg—Jul 18, 01:51 PM
(Not that I’d know, of course.)
by greg—Jul 18, 01:54 PM
i personally am not opposed to funding limits… but not after 5 years. i’d say a max of seven.
3 years course work, or so
1 year exams.
1 year research.
1 year writing.
given this timeline, i can see how someone who would argue that two years course work is enough might argue for 5 years… but, i do think that, say in history, literature, philosophy. three solid years of course work are very helpfull for one to get one’s sea-legs.
the thing about the dissertation… and this is from someone who wants his burned and utterly stricken from the memory of all, is that they are not books, they are simply projects that must be put out of their misery. (of course, there are those who write such amazing dissertations that they revolutionize the field… but those are few… the rest of us should just take our medicine and get out of the sweatshop)
INMHO… but, i know how the diss can paralyze one.
by Balthasar Gracián—Jul 18, 02:23 PM
It’s not that I’m against funding limits. I see their point, and in fact, I haven’t had funding since I completed my fifth year.
But, while funding limits may frighten some students into picking up the pace, they have almost no effect on faculty who, while sympathetic, no longer bear the material burdens of prolonged graduate study (their own loans excepted, of course).
BG, thanks for the reminder about the character of the dissertation. I’m to a point where I just want to be done, so taking my medicine isn’t a problem any more.
by shaun—Jul 18, 02:48 PM
I misrepresented him above, btw. I thought he’d said that funding decreases had caused this. He doesn’t.
Anyway, I’m not really opposed, per se, to funding limits; they can help to set a path for degree completion. But taking into account Vedder’s argument that (from the perspective of the school & faculty) the exploitation of graduate students has made it such that g.s. labor as labor is more important than the completion of the degree, there are important factors outside of funding that need to be addressed. I take that to be shaun’s point—it at least was mine.
At the same time, shaun: get to writing!
by greg—Jul 18, 02:49 PM
On a similar note, many schools allow students to continue working toward the degree after the fifth year (all of them probably), but I can’t imagine any that fund (much) past that. Is state funding into years six and seven just a red herring?
by shaun—Jul 18, 02:50 PM
6 to 4
by greg—Jul 18, 02:50 PM
i know of a u that wants to start up a PHiD—it wants this for prestige, for cheap labor, for reduced class-loads (when it already has a very humane 3/2 load), for research support, so that profs won’t have to teach language, just lit.
the carrot that the admin holds out to its faculty is lower course loads—2 dissertations directed equal one course, or so they say.
i tend to find the desire to start up a PHiD morally reprehensible. not that it’s not minimally attractive to have PHiD students, the dream, of course is that esoterica one finds so enrapturing will be found that much more interesting by PHiD students; but the PHiD feels like an elaborate lie.
not only would i question the sanity of someone enrolling in this hypothetical PHiD, but in a world where already existing Spanish PHiD programs are meeting the demand and newly minted PHiDs, who used to get snatched up, are now becoming truly peripatetic, as they wander from lecturate to lecturate, i wonder where will they get hired?
by Balthasar Gracián—Jul 18, 03:08 PM
Wow. A 3/2 load and they want to reduce it. I agree that starting up new PHD programs when there is absolutely no market for them, and likely with no consideration of how to shape the program with regard to market demands, is unethical and exploitative.
The problem isn’t that graduate students are too lazy to complete their degrees, but that too many universities are actually benefitting from their slow progress and sometimes failure.
by shaun—Jul 18, 03:27 PM
re:Harry Potter…
we’re going outta town this week. I shouldn’t‘ve -pre-ordered the darn book. Had we left well enough alone, we coulda bought it in NC and read it on the way home.
this is not good… it will certainly put back my book chapter by two or three days.
by Balthasar Gracián—Jul 18, 06:07 PM
My mother finished her PhD in what she describes as a “leisurely seven years” (although I think she may only see them as leisurely by comparison with medical school, which she tackled next—it’s hard to feel that two masters degrees amount to much when your parents have three doctorates between them). She also frequently says—and this is the relevant point here—that there are only two kinds of dissertations: finished and unfinished. No other qualities or attributes exist for dissertations. I heard this so often that I expected to be repeating it to myself when finishing my own dissertation, but then I ended up doing one master’s degree where 59 pages of essays sufficed and another where almost no work of any kind was required. But I figured I’d pass them on, on the off chance they’re helpful to anyone else.
by Laura—Jul 18, 07:11 PM
Not that the current subject’s uninteresting, but let’s hate for a while on Michael Vick, OK? From the WaPo article linked above,
a) Can anyone give a good argument for why Vick should have any fans—or a job? b) It’d be a disgrace if this is allowed to go the way of Kobe Bryant, where highpaid lawyers succeeded in dragging everyone so far into the mud they surrendered for fear of drowning. (I don’t know why Bryant should have fans either, much less a job, BTW.)
by greg—Jul 19, 08:12 AM
i almost commented on it… but my baser instincts came out and we’ve long ago left the roman coliseums for the less bloody telecom arenas
by Jeremy—Jul 19, 08:15 AM
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t revive it for special cases, you know.
by greg—Jul 19, 08:21 AM
were it not for the fact that dogs might get hurt… he should be thrown to the winning dogs, to a pack of ravenous pits.
the other possibility would be to reinstitute gladiator style combat, with the caveat that none of these will ever be able to obtain their freedom and plot of land in Hispania and none will be able to not fight due to illness, age, or frailty
by Jeremy—Jul 19, 08:25 AM
If you starve him long enough, maybe stab one of his feet a couple of times, the dogs will be fine.
by greg—Jul 19, 08:30 AM
NPR has a story today assessing the popularity of dogfighting in the US. Atrocious (the fact of the pervasiveness, not the story; the story’s mostly a survey).
Oh, and this ESPN story from May about Vick’s reputation among dog fighters.
by greg—Jul 20, 06:40 AM