Interesting e-mail from a senior philosopher who earned a PhD at a top 50 department:
One thing that bothers me about the analysis that CDJ [Carolyn Dicey Jennings] presents, and I agree with you that it doesn't make a lot of sense, is that unlike the PGR which is just about faculty quality as it guides placement, placement itself is about candidate quality. Sometimes well trained candidates are just bad interviews. Sometimes people decide they don't want to do philosophy after graduate school. Sometimes people get married and don't want to live in another region of the country. Some people don't want to risk a wandering life on the job market. Lots of things happen that are beyond the control of the program. And after doing an adjunct search this year, those are not unreasonable things to think as a candidate (from a marginal program at least). The pool of candidates for our shitty 4/4 low paying job in the middle of nowhere was amazing.
When I was a graduate student at [school name omitted], we hired a Ph.D. [from a top five department] and she told me once there that you aren't allowed to drop out of the program. She said that they will give you every opportunity to get your life together and to get the degree done. I'll never forget what she said: "Quitting and not completing the program reflects poorly on their judgment, and for that reason they want everyone to stay and finish."
CDJ is well meaning, but her analysis leaves a lot to be desired. People from great programs have great training and get jobs. People from less great programs have adequate training and often get jobs, but often they don't. And for good reasons. Programs at the bottom of the PGR have poor placement for lots of reasons (the lower you go, the more likely other things will push you out of the profession). But the kind of correlation CDJ is trying to force really isn't useful in any way. Ultimately it doesn't take into account candidate factors when trying to correlate with PGR quality rankings. And that's one thing that no one in this business wants to tell people. Sometimes it's the candidate and not the program.
These are interesting points, and, of course, given the small numbers, a couple of people who fall into some of these categories could make a significant difference. As longtime readers know, I have occasionally linked to other efforts to aggregate placement data that were more sensible than CDJ's, though in one case the underlying data turned out to be sufficiently unsound that I withdrew that link. I think the model I provided yesterday is a good one to follow for anyone who wants to pursue this. But I also think it is very important to emphasize that, as with mutual funds, past performance is no guarantee of future success, and prospective students should scrutinize with care not just the on-line placement data at each program, but also the results for individual faculty. Unfortunately, there is no substitute for doing this as part of the search process for a graduate program (assuming your goal is academic employment); even rankings of placement that aren't nonsensical are no substitute for doing this.
UPDATE: [The misrepresentations to which I had responded have been removed, so I am removing the original update.]
Recent Comments