Reader B.J. Robidoux writes:
I read your article about landing a faculty philosophy job, and this is what struck me as strange, not being in either philosophy or academia. You say that the research universities produce metaphysicians who aren't prepared to teach undergraduate survey courses, etc. My question is, why does the profession marginalize the students who are developing the skills demanded by the market?
Here's my impression: your business is withering away, sort of like the American auto industry, and there is declining demand for your product at the undergraduate level. The tenured professors resemble the UAW, well paid but aging and rapidly disappearing, and they are being replaced by contract workers. Ultimately this will affect the research programs, which will have less and less justification for producing teachers who will never get a job and don't have qualifications for the jobs available.
And my question: How does the profession justify not training students for the available jobs? And why isn't there more focus on the history of philosophy at the graduate level?
Just my impression. I'd be curious if you had a response. Always enjoy reading your blog.
Here is a relevant portion of the article of mine which prompted Mr. Robidoux's inquiry:
One problem in recent years has been the growing culture gap between the issues that are "hot" in the top graduate programs and what is actually taught at the bulk of institutions of higher education in the United States. Thus, there is a growing demand for the teaching of "applied ethics" (which includes both medical ethics and business ethics), yet hardly any of the top graduate programs boast specialists in that area or train doctoral students in it.
Applied ethics is viewed as unrigorous and philosophically superficial, hence it is largely ignored by the leading programs. Yet according to A.P.A. data for the 1995-96 job market, the ratio of jobs seeking an A.O.S. of "Applied Ethics" to candidates with that A.O.S. was almost 1 to 1. By contrast, for an A.O.S. of metaphysics -- a "hot" area in all the leading departments -- the ratio of candidates to jobs was about 4 to 1.
That being said, it seems perverse to go to graduate school in philosophy and then choose your field based on job prospects. If you wanted to do that, you could have gotten a J.D. or M.B.A., and surely have done very well. You went to philosophy grad school presumably because you loved some aspect of philosophy. The dissertation, if it is to be successful, must reflect where your true interests lie.
But there is a compromise posture. According to A.P.A. data based on a 1994 survey, more than 70 per cent of all U.S. philosophy departments offer the following courses at least once every two years: ethics, ancient philosophy, early modern philosophy, and logic. That is not surprising: any philosophy department, whether at a leading research university or at a small liberal-arts college, needs to offer the courses that cover the core of the discipline.
Relatively few departments can afford to have a specialist in cutting-edge analytic metaphysics, even if they would like to. But a specialist in metaphysics who is competent to cover the basic undergraduates courses in, say, ancient philosophy and logic, might be very attractive. Almost all departments at least aspire to maintain a serious research profile. The metaphysician who can teach the core department curriculum allows a department to meet that aspiration and fulfill its institutional obligations.
I have opened comments, and invite readers to respond to the issues raised by Mr. Robidoux (or to take issue with some of my analysis from the original article). No anonymous postings, of course--and no rude ones, either! Our discipline ought to be able to explain and justify its priorities in response to questions like this from interested observers--or, alternatively, we should change the priorities if these challenges can't be met.
