<p>As the parent of a graduate student I found the following Op Ed piece interesting, even if I see a disconnect between the provocative headline and the changes proposed which would not necessarily require to "end universities as we know them".</p>
<p>I read that artical also. There have been several articles recently discussing the polight of the grad student, and the financial burden. However, I wonder if the authort personally discusses this with the grad students in his department ?</p>
<p>I just skimmed the article and decided not to read it through. Too many disjointed ideas strung together. It is an ill-conceived piece.</p>
<p>Tenure has little to do with overproduction of Ph.D.s or the way departments are set up and overspecialization. If all the social sciences departments were merged into a single one,and all the humanities departments also merged, the issue of tenure and overproduction of Ph.D.s would remain. </p>
<p>Tenure became a real issue because of two things: the hiring of baby boomer profs in the 1960s and 1970s; and the ending of mandatory retirement age (a federal law, not a university policy). The baby boomer profs are still in place; the current financial crisis is not helping universities to get them to retire and make way for new hires!
From the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Website (via Wikipedia):</p>
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<p>There is indeed increased specialization but there is also a trend toward combination of specialties as in bio-statistics. There are fields that did not exist twenty years ago thanks to new discoveries.</p>
<p>I agree with Marite’s summary statement: an ill-conceived piece. </p>
<p>It may well be that his own field has become obsolete as a stand-alone program, particularly at the graduate level, but that hardly argues that biochemistry, economics, computer science, etc., departments are obsolete or fossilized. In fact, biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics and many other bio-related departments have changed drastically over the last 25 years. (In the case of biochemistry, the field first moved out of chemistry departments to establish stand-alone departments, and in some cases are now recombining with molecular biology and related departments to form super-departments at the graduate student level.) The economics departments with which I am familiar often collaborate with other policy-based fields in many ways, including cross-listed courses at the graduate level and by sharing of professors on dissertation committees.</p>
<p>I don’t think tenure and retirement issues are closely related to the fact that the author’s graduate students can’t find a job in academia. It is no big surprise to me that he is having trouble finding students willing to pay 100K to obtain a religion doctorate. That is hardly a good reason to suggest that all of academe needs to be reorganized.</p>
<p>The author assumes that everyone entering graduate school has aspirations to become a tenured professor - totally untrue for the vast majority of graduate students in the life sciences!</p>
<p>Bunsen, what about the humanities and social sciences graduate students? I believe the author wrote the piece for that particular audience.</p>
<p>The counter-argument in the Chronicle:</p>
<p>[Brainstorm:</a> More Drivel From ‘The New York Times’ - Chronicle.com](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bousquet/more-drivel-from-the-new-york-times]Brainstorm:”>http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bousquet/more-drivel-from-the-new-york-times)</p>