Comments on: Since when is faster necessarily better?

By: Tati Tuesdays: Week of June 16-June 22 « A Lesbian and a Scholar

Tati Tuesdays: Week of June 16-June 22 « A Lesbian and a Scholar — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:53:56 +0000

[...] at Historiann, an interesting discussion on the drawbacks of complete-it-quick PhD [...]

By: Tuesday 23 June 2009 « what i discovered today

Tuesday 23 June 2009 « what i discovered today — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:00:26 +0000

[...] Links into an article on http://www.historiann.com about how quickly people should complete theses… their opinion is that long drawn out ones are good, but the commenters apparently don’t understand financial constraints? Then again, they are also not in the British system, so that might have something to do with it. [...]

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:31:23 +0000

Servetus–I agree entirely with your assessment, and it’s extremely troubling to me. I’m afraid that this push for speed (and typical U.S. carelessness about languages) is going to further privilege modern and U.S. History. And precisely as you say–it’s an incredibly imperialist maneuver to try to do “comparative” or “transnational” history in only English!

By: servetus

servetus — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:27:01 +0000

I think one thing we are increasingly seeing at my campus is non-admission of students whose interests in the research side of the PhD would take longer than 5 years to realize. E.g., they want to study something that requires three languages and they can only show one of them, and people on the admissions committee say that they are unprepared to study the topic and an otherwise strong candidate gets turned down, the explicit reason being “unprepared” but the implicit one being “we aren’t prepared to support that language study on our clock and our budget.” This problem will probably kill medieval history on our campus over the mid-range. There is a certain irony to all of this happening just as the big push in the profession is for transnational and comparative projects.

By: Z

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:36:09 +0000

It, Rad Readr? And, BA to PhD, while TAing? In the US? In the humanities? I’m aware of lots of 3 year programs but they presuppose the M.A. Maybe I’m getting field-o-centric (to my field).

But perhaps one could think of these 3 year BA to PhD programs like the old fashioned M.A.’s with theses, which were really solid back in my grandmother’s day. The upside would be fewer ramen eating years in graduate school.

By: Rad Readr

Rad Readr — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:31:00 +0000

Cassandra is correct. Z may be catching some zzzzs. But it’s good at math.

By: Cassandra

Cassandra — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:23:32 +0000

Z said, “Historiann, I wouldn’t worry. This 3 year PhD discussion comes up every once in a while. The plan won’t stick unless they completely redefine everything.”

Not sticking?

It’s already in place in some programs at some schools. And the movement appears to be spreading…

Those in TT positions need to prepare themselves to stem the tide when their administration first introduces this wonderful new idea at a faculty meeting.

By: Z

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:55:00 +0000

(3+10)/2=6.5

By: Rad Readr

Rad Readr — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:37:01 +0000

One of the big discussions this year at large research u. (among chairs and administrative types) has been how to move grad students along. The problem, of course, is money, which means a decline in the number of TAs available. Yes, this is academic shrinkage. Our college had many discussions about graduate time-to-degree (enforcing it, pushing it, threatening with it) — and the big administration was threatening to fine departments that gave TAs to people who had been in their programs for too long (I think it was more than three years after qualifying). Already this has affected our graduate programs.

Morris may be the poster child of the budget crunch — at once the administration’s beloved and the scholar’s scourge. I would hope that we can find a middle ground between 3 and 10.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:07:34 +0000

I coincidentally saw a c.v. today, not kidding, wherein someone wrote about hir Ph.D program in English lit:

Program Started: Spring 2009
Anticipated Completion Date: Spring 20l0

It did not seem to be a typo, though it did seem to be a pretty creative to maybe even a flaky self presentation. It was not actionable, in that I was not seeing it in any role or function as a decision maker. But my first thought was, not surprisingly: whoah, this one has got to go straight to Historiann.com!