I am not sure if I want to be a Political Scientist or a Historian yet (I keep going back and forth on that), but I want to know what everyone thinks of interdisciplinary area studies PhDs (mainly in the Middle East). I have heard some people say they are amazing and the future and have heard others say they are the decline of Western academia. I have also heard people say things in-between.
Why should I get/ not get an interdisciplinary PhD? What do you all think? Are there any leading academic opinions on the issue? Any distinct advantages or disadvantages?
I think that interdisciplinary PhDs are amazing and are the future, but I am biased because I have one (albeit in a field in which they are more acceptable).
Here’s the thing. Interdisciplinary PhDs are amazing for the value in the program. You get to tailor the program to your own needs and desires, and study in-depth what you really want to study. You get to combine the theory and methods from a variety of fields to create your research agenda and worldview.
What they are not necessarily good for is value after the program. Think about it this way: If you get a PhD in political science, you could teach in a political science department OR any interdisciplinary department looking for a political scientist. You could teach, depending on your research interests, in a Middle East studies department, or in a variety of other interdisciplinary departments that might want your skills. There are political science departments at basically every four-year college and university in the country. The same is true of history.
But a Middle Eastern studies PhD cannot as easily get work in a political science department. You would HAVE to find work in an interdisciplinary department, if you wanted to be an academic. Times are slowly changing and interdisciplinary degrees are becoming more accepted in disciplinary departments, but not on a large scale.
So IMO, I would choose to get a disciplinary PhD at a university where 1) the discipline has a specialty in Middle Eastern ____ (fill in political science or history there) and 2) there is a Middle Eastern studies department where you can take classes and work with an advisor there. You might even, say, be able to get get a PhD in political science but a secondary specialization or certificate in history - although you will have to choose which one you want to be. But I think you would have to do that even if you went to a Middle Eastern studies program, because you need to specialize in something.
Part of what I am also looking into are joint PhDs in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies or History and Middle Eastern Studies. I am friends with a good academic who did that with History and French Studies and see many benefits in that approach, as it is sort of “the best of both worlds.”
Another route I am considering is getting a Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies before I apply to PhD programs. That way I can get some taste of interdisciplinary studies while trying to decide whether I want to be a Political Scientist or Historian. That is REALLY the question I am having trouble with. I know what I want to study, but I just do not know how I want to study it…
My degree is similar to what you describe in the first paragraph - it was a joint PhD in social psychology and public health. Public health is the interdisciplinary field, and social psychology is the discipline. I would ideally like to teach in a school or department of public health, but I would also like to teach psychology. So I’m not entirely sure yet how successful I will be on the market - I go on in the fall, so fingers crossed. It really was the best of both worlds. I have a friend from my department who has gotten offers from departments of psychology, so I think I should be relatively competitive for those jobs.
But, you don’t necessarily need a joint program either, if your eventual PhD program is flexible and allows you to tailor a program you want. For example, although I did a joint program, my department of psychology was very flexible. There were few course requirements and students were encouraged to work with their advisor to come up with a coursework and examination plan that worked for them. Had I entered the psychology department directly, I probably could’ve taken a lot of the same courses and done the same exact work I did from my public health department (which was technically my home department). In fact, I probably could’ve skipped a lot of the classes I didn’t really want to take that were required by the public health PhD, lol. So let’s say that you decide you want to be a political scientist who incorporates history and historiography into your work - maybe you could go to a political science department that had flexibility to allow you to take a substantial number of courses in political and Middle Eastern history.
If you are really going back and forth and see little difference between them, one thing you could do to separate them is think about job prospects. The job prospects (both in and out of academia) are better in political science than they are in history, currently. However, at a lot of programs you do need to have a taste for quantitative analysis.
Political Science will definitely - at least usually - have more job prospects than History. However, mathematics is not my forte and so I may do better in another field. I bring this up because I have been repeatedly told that Poli Sci at the grad level is beginning to become more like an actual science. But then again, I have begun to - as you pointed out - notice that different grad schools tend to have varying flexibility in requirements.
One thing that I have begun to notice about myself which is starting to guide my decisions is how I really interested in the Middle East, above all else. Meaning, I am not interested in becoming a Political Scientist or a Historian in the sense that I like Poli Sci or History, but I am interested in MIDDLE EASTERN Poli Sci and History. It’s not the “Poli Sci” or the “History” that is my passion but more generally studying the Middle East. I have been seeing this now that I take more interdisciplinary courses right now, like Feminism & Islam which is an upper level seminar Gender & Sexuality Studies course. Unlike a lot of Poli Sci students, it’s not really Poli Sci that I am attracted (although I am a bit), it is really MIDDLE EASTERN Poli Sci. Same goes for History (but to a slightly lesser extent).
Well, one thing to do is look around at departments of Middle Eastern studies and see what degrees the faculty have there. A quick look at the departments that have their faculty degrees easily discoverable reveals that they mostly got PhDs in disciplinary areas - the social sciences (anthropology, political science, occasionally sociology) and the humanities (history, literature, art history, classics, modern languages, music) and occasionally other random areas (music, architecture).
I was curious about whether people who get interdisciplinary PhDs in Middle Eastern/Near Eastern studies get tenure-track jobs. Princeton’s department of Near Eastern studies has some placement outcomes - out of the 70 PhDs they awarded from 2000 to 2014, 41% entered tenure-track positions immediately after graduation, 30% obtained postdoctoral fellowships, 17% accepted non-tenure-track teaching jobs, 3% were hired to university administrative positions, 3% went onto government service, and one went into K-12 education. One was still seeking employment and one was lost to follow-up.
But their current stats (accounting for movement) is that 65.7% of their graduates since 2000 are in tenured or tenure-track faculty positions. Only four (5.7%) were in temporary teaching positions and only one was still seeking academic appointment. The rest were all employed in either postdocs (recent graduates), government or private sector jobs, or K-12 teaching.
UT-Austin’s webpage has a list of where all their recent PhD graduates have been placed: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/mes/graduate/Placement.php. Most appear to be lecturers at universities, which are usually non-tenure-track contingent teaching jobs (some are permanent, though). Some are assistant professors (mostly of Arabic). A couple of them have gone onto non-academic scholarship positions with think tanks.
I definitely am interested in Harvard’s joint program.
This brings me to another question I have been having:
How exactly do I know the stats needed to get into a graduate school program? For undergraduate admissions, everything is easily written all over the web and number ranges are usually given. However, it appears for grad schools, only approximate estimates of what is needed to be accepted are given. Do I just have to annoyingly deal with only having a rough idea of what a grad program is looking for in an applicant?
Yes, unfortunately, you do. The reason is because graduate school admissions are holistic - they might admit someone with a 2.9 undergrad who is otherwise outstanding and maybe has a higher MA GPA, or they might take a very promising student who hasn’t had their normal average level of research experience but who is articulate and clear about what she wants to do.
In general, grad schools want high GPAs, high GRE scores, excellent letters of recommendation, a track record of some experience with the kind of scholarship/research the program requires, and a strong personal statement. Generally speaking, it is said that you should aim for about a 155 on each section of the GRE and at least a 3.5 GPA, but those can be violated - I had a 3.42 when I graduated from college (and now realize that my cumulative GPA must’ve been even lower when I applied, under a 3.4, because I wasn’t eligible for Latin honors until after I finished my last semester). And the GRE scores are going to vary by field - 155 Q isn’t high enough for quantitative fields; and a 155 V might not be high enough for verbal-heavy fields at elite programs.
So basically…do the best that you can. And discuss with your professors. They will have a better idea of what their colleagues at grad programs are looking for - but there are no hard numbers like undergrad.