a question -- update
one of the other new faculty (in chemistry) here at western carolina university asked me today, how many PhD programs in philosophy are there in the US? he said there were something like a couple hundred programs in chemistry, but i had to admit that i really didn't know how many there were in philosophy. a little research this afternoon gave me a preliminary answer from leiter's gourmet report, which indicated there were 100+, but i couldn't seem to find anything more definitive that that (i took a brief look at the APA's website). anybody have this info.? i suspect it has to be definitively in the big book that lists all the philosophy faculty and programs (undergrad and grad) in the country, but i don't currently have access to one of those.
Edited to add the following:
just found this little gem on an old leiter posting, available here :
i presume that villanova (and the spep-continental departments generally) would, for leiter, be in that "bottom third," which, if closed, would be no loss at all.
Edited to add the following:
just found this little gem on an old leiter posting, available here :
There are more than 110 Ph.D.-granting programs in philosophy in the United States. If the majority of them were closed, there would be only a slight loss to the profession; if the weakest third of them were closed, there would be no loss at all, and, in fact, a net increase in human happiness... Philosophy, at least, does not need more Ph.D. programs. It could benefit, I think, from more top-flight, terminal M.A. programs (like Tufts, Wisconsin/Milwaukee, Northern Illinois, Virginia Tech, etc.), as a way of helping students figure out whether the academic career is for them. Unfortunately, the trend right now is in the opposite direction, with what were quite attractive terminal M.A. programs becoming PhD-granting institutions, without any clear market rationale.
i presume that villanova (and the spep-continental departments generally) would, for leiter, be in that "bottom third," which, if closed, would be no loss at all.
Posted by John Whitmire on
Monday August 15, 2005 at 6:51pm
Glad to hear that you are already minggling with folks at WCU.
you meeting some good folks at american?
1. From the point of view of producing future professors and interesting and productive philosophers, I am sure that he is correct that there would be no harm done by lopping off the bottom third of the total number of programs (in principle--if we could actually fairly assess what that bottom third is). But what about lopping off a "majority?
Well, lets take his "more than 110" to be 120. Then lets take his "majority" closing to leave 50 programs. Would this only slightly hurt the profession, as he says? On the one hand, 50 programs seems like a lot. On the other hand, if those fifty were the top 50 in his ratings, we would, I assume, take that to be pretty damaging. I guess it depends on what those 50 programs are.
2. When he mentions losing the "bottom third" he claims not only that it wouldn't hurt, but that it would bring about a "net increase in human happiness." This strikes me as being dubious. Do graduate programs cause that much pain? Are we all masochists, or instrumentally irrational? He must be assuming that there are scads of people who are deluded about their ability to lead a happy life during and after going to graduate school. I doubt this is the case.
3. Is he right about the need for MA programs? I am not sure I have an opinion on this one way or the other. Why can't PhD programs serve the purpose of "helping students figure out whether the academic career is for them"? It seems to me that they in fact do--is that watering them down in any way? I could see an argument other than the one he gives being made in favor of MA programs, though, viz. that it would be good for students to study with a wider array of professors and in different settings.
4. Why should we think about PhD programs in terms of "market rationale"?
i should say by way of disclosure that he was actually arguing in that post that there is a much better chance of ending up in a good position than someone writing in the Village Voice had claimed -- IF, that is, they went to the top institutions in his rankings rather than the ostensible "bottom third," etc. i thought i had actually included the original link in the edited post -- i'll go back and do that now.
in fact, it strikes me that IF it were the case that, empirically speaking, the spep programs (in general, or at least the top ones) DO tend to place their students at anything like the same rate villanova has, that would be a very strong rejoinder to one of the philosophical gourmet's central contentions, that only "analytic continental" philosophy is legitimate. i presume he would still have certain negative things to say about the "scholarship" from those places, but success is success.
and yes, villanova's placement rate with tenure-track positions was, through this past spring, superior to michigan's.
So, basically, a quick look at 3 of the most prominent continental programs gives three placement webpages that are of little use, and are of the sort that would make Leiter's head burst. At least Villanova's is (or will be again when updated with last year's placements) comprehensive, even if it is buried within the website...
of course, that gives rise to the question of what actually constitutes "good" within the job market -- perhaps 70+% of grads from a particular program in t-t positions within 3-5 years? i suppose one would have to do some kind of regression analysis with the placement information from leiter's top 10, top 25, and top 50 for the sake of comparison.
in any case, it seems to me that unless and until that information on spep program grads is publicly available, the philosophical gourmet's contention that "analytic continental" (i think i'm going to start abbreviating these a-continental and s-continental ;) philosophy is the way to go (at least in terms of the market, regardless of intrinsic philosophical value) remains unchallenged.
i think this is well worth bringing up at spep this year. at least we might be able to begin assessing whether leiter is generally correct with regard to the market, and villanova is just an anomaly, or he is just wrong about s-continental generally.
Another issue, which comes up, I think, in much of Leiter's stuff, is what a good job is (and this is a big problem with his outlook on things). Although his post that you link does not (interestingly) make this kind of claim, he often makes it sound like only placement in what he regards as a "top-tier" or perhaps "second-tier" schools counts. This is clearly problematic, as not everyone who aspires to be a professor aspires to be a professor at a top research institution. Furthermore, I am sure that there are scores who really do aspire to be at a top school but nonetheless get on swimmingly at a school far down the ladder. (Also, there is obviously a lot of inbreeding in departments at the top tier of schools, and it is dubious that this is based mainly on academics, so that eliminates a good number of programs from the beginning.)
On the other hand, it does seem to me like there is a necessary distinction to be made between good and bad jobs. Think of the school in Detroit I interviewed with at the APA a couple years back (where the interviewer basically told me it would be a terrible job), or the one job that Farhang turned down. If a PhD program is only placing people in schools like that, that would be a problem. On the other hand, it doesn't (nearly, obviously) necessarily take an endowed chair at an Ivy League school to make a pretty cushy professorial lifestyle...
on the point of what constitutes a "good" job, i wholeheartedly agree. you know, for instance, that from the beginning of grad school i was more interested in landing at a school where the main focus would be on teaching. i don't mean for this to sound pretentious, but i'm far more concerned with modeling what the examined life might actually look like than with producing voluminous reams of scholarship that virtually no one will ever read. (finding those two articles on sartre's les mots from 1968 that i think got it right, when virtually everything i read from then on out got it wrong, was sort of an eye-opener for me.)
leiter, on the other hand, in most places treats it as an obvious issue that if you're doing a PhD, you naturally want to end up in a place where you can do the most research, and the least teaching possible -- and when you have to do that teaching, you better hope it's chiefly graduate-level. (i've seen more than one person bring precisely this issue up in comments to articles on his blog in the past.)
finally, on the issue of placement and the assessments: let's be serious -- how many of those evaluators do you think *don't* know who the players are at leiter's top 15 schools or so, and at least have a sense of how their graduates have done? i mean, presumably all you'd have to know would be that a single prof, Professor X, is at School Y, and School Y (or even simply Professor X as a director) has tended to place a great many of its (his/her) grads, to make the connection between a list with Professor X and various other folks on it, and placement rates. i mean, the evaluators HAVE to know that a good part of what the gourmet is used for is graduate students' decision-making processes, right? consequently, i find it difficult to believe that they are not, at some level, taking into account placement when raking the "overall value" of the faculty members at a given institution. i could be entirely wrong on this, but i think i'd have to hear it from an evaluator to believe it.