Once again, William Pannapacker has nailed it . He points to the lack of doctoral job placement data available from most humanities departments, arguing for a "Graduate School Placement Project" that "could bring market forces to bear on programs that are failing their students." Among Pannapacker's many salient points, I particularly like that he "gets" why so many students want to do a humanities degree: In many ways, the choice to go to graduate school is not simply an attraction to a field but a drive toward something that almost everyone wants—a feeling of belonging, living up to one's full potential, and not wasting one's life in meaningless drudgery. This is an important point. On the one hand, there are many graduate programs who simply fail to tell the truth about job placement and refuse to discuss opportunities beyond the academy. On the other, there is still a perception that the academy is the only way to live the "lif
Academiblog... Write your dissertation, get a job, get tenure.