Friday, May 25, 2007

And Don't Get Caught on the Wrong Side of That Line

I came across this quote yesterday, and it's been stuck in my head since:

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. . . .


That's Leiter, talking about the number of PhD programs in the US in relation to the job market. He's saying, if you could make the bottom third of PhD programs in the US--nearly 40 programs--just disappear, the profession wouldn't notice. Everybody would still have all the new hires they needed. He's saying, for almost all of the grads from those programs, they will never find jobs. (Leiter again: "there are surely PhD programs where "one in five" would overstate your prospects. . .")

God damn.

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