Not on purpose, says the "Marketplace of Ideas" author. But the system is starting to hurt them nonetheless.<br /><br />Question: Are humanities <br />degrees high-risk? <br /> <br />Louis Menand: Yeah. Well, I think the time to degree is right now the big <br />obstacle to entry into the professions. <br />Now, the median time to degree, to PhD in the humanities is nine <br />years, <br />and that's time as a registered student. <br />The time between Bachelor's degree and a PhD, the median time is <br />over 11 <br />years. So then you're still only <br />on a tenure ladder, you're not tenured. <br />So it generally takes 6 to 8 years after that to get tenure. So that's a very long period of what's <br />essentially apprenticeship, of insecurity. <br />I don't think that's very healthy for any business, certainly not <br /> for a <br />business where you want people to be original and creative and take <br />risks. So I think that's a big problem, and <br />the humanities seems to be doing worse than the other disciplines, <br />though the <br />other disciplines also have increased time to degrees. <br /> <br />Now, part of the reason for that is that it's <br />difficult to <br />get a job and people stay in school longer because they're employed as <br />teaching <br />assistants or instructors by their schools, by their schools where <br />they're <br />graduate students, and that does become exploitative eventually because <br />they're <br />very cheap labor and there's a way in which in it's not in the <br />institution's <br />interest to give them a degree if they can continue to employ them, I <br />don't <br />think anybody thinks that way, but effectively that's the way the system <br /> is <br />starting to work. That's a bad <br />morale problem and it's something that gets into the mentality of the <br />ABD's, who <br />do a lot of this teaching, and it's not good for, again, not good for <br />collegiality, and not good for intellectual culture. <br /> <br />So I think everybody recognizes at this point that <br />we've <br />gotten ourselves into a really weird situation where the supply curve <br />and the <br />demand curve are just not, you know, where they should be and it would <br />be very <br />good for the profession generally, and the humanities in particular, <br />because we <br />have a lot of other things that we're struggling with, if we could <br />get the <br />professional training part of it a little more rational and efficient.<br /><br />Question: Are humanities <br />degrees high-risk? <br /> <br />Louis Menand: Yeah. Well, I think the time to degree is right now the big <br />obstacle to entry into the professions. <br />Now, the median time to degree, to PhD in the humanities is nine <br />years, <br />and that's time as a registered student. <br />The time between Bachelor's degree and a PhD, the median time is <br />over 11 <br />years. So then you're still only <br />on a tenure ladder, you're not tenured. <br />So it generally takes 6 to 8 years after that to get tenure. So that's a very long period of what's <br />essentially apprenticeship, of insecurity. <br />I don't think that's very healthy for any business, certainly not <br /> for a <br />business where you want people to be original and creative and take <br />risks. So I think that's a big problem, and <br />the humanities seems to be doing worse than the other disciplines, <br />though the <br />other disciplines also have increased time to degrees. <br /> <br />Now, part of the reason for that is that it's <br />difficult to <br />get a job and people stay in school longer because they're employed as <br />teaching <br />assistants or instructors by their schools, by their schools where <br />they're <br />graduate students, and that does become exploitative eventually because <br />they're <br />very cheap labor and there's a way in which in it's not in the <br />institution's <br />interest to give them a degree if they can continue to employ them, I <br />don't <br />think anybody thinks that way, but effectively that's the way the system <br /> is <br />starting to work. That's a bad <br />morale problem and it's something that gets into the mentality of the <br />ABD's, who <br />do a lot of this teaching, and it's not good for, again, not good for <br />collegiality, and not good for intellectual culture. <br /> <br />So I think everybody recognizes at this point that <br />we've <br />gotten ourselves into a really weird situation where the supply curve <br />and the <br />demand curve are just not, you know, where they should be and it would <br />be very <br />good for the profession generally, and the humanities in particular, <br />because we <br />have a lot of other things that we're struggling with, if we could <br />get the <br />professional training part of it a little more rational and efficient.
