I generally try and keep up with the very interesting Confessions of a Community College Dean blog, hosted at Inside Higher Education.
This week, an interesting piece by the unnamed dean on his preference for hiring Ph.Ds for full-time teaching positions at the community college. Dean writes:
Certainly, the single clearest criterion we look at is teaching ability, especially in the areas we need taught. I’ve seen Ph.D.’s fall flat here, and the degree won’t save them. I’ll grant that good-faith observers can differ on the relative performance of one teacher as against another – that’s one of the reasons that we have search committees. But a demonstration that fails to show, say, mastery of the subject matter, or the ability to speak clearly enough to be understood, is the kiss of death.
All of that granted, though, the preference for doctorates isn’t just arbitrary.
Although our degrees top out at the two-year level, our students don’t. A gratifying number of them go on to four-year degrees and beyond, up to and including medical school, law school, and grad school. I believe that part of the job of a cc is to prepare those students to succeed at the next level(s). To the extent that we can give the students exposure to the same faculty they’d get at the next level, I think we do them a service. (Honestly, in many cases, I think we do better than some of our four-year competitors at teaching intro courses. The four-year schools sometimes treat intro courses as afterthoughts or grudging obligations; they’re our bread-and-butter. Our intro classes are small, and taught mostly by full-time faculty. That certainly isn’t the case at, say, Flagship State.)
The sentence I placed in bold is an argument I’ve never considered.
As I’ve written before, I didn’t start graduate school at UCLA intending to teach permanently at a community college. I hadn’t ruled out the possibility either. My late father was a professor at UCSB, my mother a (now-retired) instructor at Monterey Peninsula College. Throughout my childhood, I had both parents as role models — and each taught at a different level in the state system of public education. When I started the pursuit of the Ph.D., I certainly expected to follow more in my father’s footsteps than my mother’s.
It was only when I started working as a teaching assistant (back in early 1991) that I realized that being in front of a classroom was electrifying and thrilling; doing research and writing was dull by comparison. I’d always known I was more of a performer than a deep thinker, and doing research and TA work at the same time made it clear that my future preference would be for a job at an institution where good teaching was the sole criterion for success.
When I was hired full-time at Pasadena City College in 1994, my dissertation adviser told me I would be “a fool” if I took the job. He had invested a lot of time in me as his protege, and wanted me to continue to do the research I had started to do on late-medieval English church history. I assured him that I would finish the dissertation I had started, but that teaching was my first love. He, a two-time winner of UCLA’s distinguished teaching award, pointed out that research excellence and outstanding teaching were not mutually exclusive. And I admitted he was right — but the shot at “instant financial security” that the PCC job offered was too tempting to decline, especially as I was about to get married for the second time.
Slightly fewer than half of my full-time colleagues at PCC have their Ph.Ds. I certainly didn’t have mine when I started. Though I was ABD (”all but done”, or “all but dissertation”) by 1994 when I started on the tenure-track, it took me another five years to finish the doctorate. It wasn’t until August 26, 1999, that I walked out of Powell Library with a little slip in my hand indicating that all the requirements had been met, the dissertation signed and filed, and the Ph.D at last in hand. Teaching full-time, going through a divorce and two severe mental breakdowns in the mid-1990s had slowed the pace of my writing.
When I finally got the Ph.D., my colleagues threw me a small party. My friend Marc Dollinger (now a professor of Jewish ethics at SF State, and himself a Cal undergrad, UCLA Ph.D.), put up signs all over the department — including the men’s restroom — saying “Hugo is Phinally PhinisheD.” It was very sweet. The congratulations I got from my mother and father and brother — all Ph.Ds themselves — were of course the sweetest. I felt as if I had finally gained membership in the one club to which I had most aspired to belong.
But my teaching didn’t change as a result of my getting the Ph.D. My students called me “Hugo” when I was a fresh-faced 27 year-old; most still call me “Hugo” now as I head into middle-age. The plaque on my door was changed by the college from “Mr. Hugo Schwyzer” to “Dr. Hugo Schwyzer” but that was not at my behest, and it seems to have had no impact on the respect I receive from my students. While “phinally phinishing” the Ph.D. felt good emotionally, it had very little connection to my work in the classroom.
I don’t think most PCC students know which of their professors have doctorates and which don’t. I certainly see no evidence that they have more automatic respect for those of us with Ph.Ds than for our colleagues with terminal M.A. degrees. Because my dissertation topic (the role of the bishops of Durham and the archbishops of York in providing for the defense of northern England during the reign of Edwards I, II, and III) has nothing to do with anything I teach at the college, I very rarely reference my own work while I am teaching.
The dean’s point in the blog that community colleges ought to offer future transfer students exposure to the same sort of profs they will encounter at the next level is a valid one. It makes sense, too, to counter the argument that the two-year colleges lack the academic quality of four-year institutions. Whether or not the Ph.D. means much in terms of improving teaching, it certainly means something to the public. My college, as far as I can tell, likes to tout the relatively high percentage of Ph.Ds on the faculty. To the extent that that assuages the anxieties of parents and students about the quality of the two-year professoriate, I’m willing to believe that possession of a Ph.D. ought to be a tie-breaker in hiring — but only when all else is truly equal. Beyond the “PR value”, I’m not sure the doctorate means much at our level.
I’m glad I have my Ph.D. (My diplomas are all in a box somewhere, mind you. OKOP never put degrees on the wall, after all; it seems showy and aggressive.) If a student comes to visit me and tells me that he or she is considering a Ph.D. in history, I’m very encouraging. I make it clear that the road to a doctorate is long and challenging. I tell them that though I personally loathed doing the research I had to do to produce my dissertation, I was elated when I finished. I did feel validated as a scholar and an intellectual, and even if I intended to walk away from the ivory tower, I knew I carried with me everlasting evidence of at least a basic level of skill and tenacity. I tell my students that a dissertation of hundreds (even thousands) of pages is written a sentence at a time (in my case, over nearly five years). And I do tell them that if they intend to teach at the four-year level, the Ph.D. will be indispensable. Going through the hoops to get that highest of degrees does, I tell them, prove something to those who make hiring decisions. It establishes credibility as a scholar in a way that few other things do.
The subjects I most enjoy teaching these days (ancient near eastern religion, contemporary gender studies) are more than a little far afield from my dissertation work. If those three little letters after my name increase my credibility in the eyes of my students, I’m at best ambivalent. If that increased credibility for me is linked to doubts in the skills of a colleague with a terminal M.A., that’s troubling.
Many of my students, I think, don’t know I have a Ph.D. unless they scrutinize my nameplate outside my office or look in the college catalogue. And though I am moderately proud of what I was able to do, that pride is almost entirely private.
I go to a four-year college (not university) and most of my professors have been doctors, but I do know which are which. I don’t automatically trust someone with a PhD more, but it does matter to me, and it gives them a leg up in my estimation.
It’s sort of an odd claim, in context. First he says that exposing students to faculty like those at major research universities is a good thing, and then he (correctly, in my experience) adds in parenthesis that many of those faculty are crappy teachers of the sorts of classes in question. I’m left uncertain exactly which qualities are those that (a) come along with a Ph.D and (b) are good qualities to which students should be exposed.
I’m even more uncertain based on the five years I’ve spent closely connected to three different Ph.D programmes. In each case, the departments are research departments, rated in the top 30 or so in their disciplines across the US for the quality of research done by the faculty. And in each case, the teaching of intro classes is uniformly regarded as a chore to be foisted off onto the graduate students except to the extent that faculty are expected to model teaching for graduate students during the first few years of the Ph.D programme. In other words, teaching into classes is the sort of drudge work grad students have to do.
And also in each case, teaching is not something grad students are taught. My `TA training seminar’ consisted of two days of boring and pointless lectures covering such useful topics as True Stereotypes About Notre Dame Undergrads (they like football and don’t do all the suggested reading, wow) and What to Say on the First Day of Class (talk about the syllabus, share your name and why you study whatever it is you study). While we do have a center for university education that offers one-day seminars on, eg, The Discussion-Based Class, these seminars are, in my experience, often useless, and, as grad students, we’re not encouraged to take them anyways. Teaching is largely regarded as a skill we’ll either pick up — or not — on the job, and as justification for our stipends rather than an important part of becoming academics.
I consider this attitude spectacularly misguided. I recently read in the Chronicle of Higher Ed that even science Ph.D.s from prestigious departments are having trouble `finding jobs’ — meaning finding jobs that involve a minimal teaching load at four-year universities. The ratio of applicants-to-positions at `top schools’ in philosophy is above 2-to-1 again. And yet community colleges, small liberal arts schools, private high schools, and other teaching-intensive institutions are hungry for talent. At bottom, I think, there is a definite prejudice against teaching based on a (I think, false) idea that the life of teaching professor is more constrained, more burdensome, and less autonomous than the life of a research professor.
I’m in a precarious position within my programme right now, and I’m seriously considering taking a MA and leaving for a job teaching in a community college or private high school. While my peers — uniformly in much better standing within the department — are anxious about the tight job market at the upper echelons of academia, the possibility of finding an enjoyable teaching gig at a community college is incredibly liberating.
the possibility of finding an enjoyable teaching gig at a community college is incredibly liberating.
And for me, that sense of liberation has not dissipated after thirteen or fourteen years, even as I’ve watched my friends from grad school publish monographs and do first-rate work at four year schools.
Wow, you are indeed a man with an ego the size of a pea-nut. I admire your willingness to be a “man of the people”. I find it a bit annoying to see professors who put themselves on a pedestal when I see all their degrees hanging on the wall on an overly fancy frame.
When you did research on medieval English history, was it obligatory for you to travel to the UK and delve into fact finding there? You should write a post one day about the research methods you used for your dissertation!
YNWA, I assure you that most folks don’t think my ego is peanut sized, unless it’s the size of a prize-winning peanut from Plains, Georgia. I have a blog post in mind about displaying degrees — and about reverse snobbery.
Yes, I did go to the UK for research — mostly at the Durham Cathedral Library. I also ordered microfilms, and did a lot of work with manuscripts and printed rolls at the nearby Huntington Library.
On an unrelated topic: Hugo, today I found this site and immediately thought about the poems you post. Probably you will like the Translations of the Poems of Vladimir Levi (selected): http://www.levi.ru/houses/poetic_berth/inna_kogan.php
The best quote that sums up reverse snobbery comes from dear ole C.S Lewis: “If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.”
you and mystery college dean echo a lot of the same sentiments that my cc professors tell us often. don’t ever stop. many of us students in cc’s initially feel ashamed to be going a non-four-year college. i’ve gotten the looks, and the judgy attitude when i tell people i’m a transfer student. but you guys have been through it all, and you know that the c-word makes us no less inferior to others. so keep telling us, and tell us often.
Jeez, the guy has a PhD in History, not in Biochemistry or Mathematics. This is something to be only moderately be proud of. I have met advid watchers of the History Channel and readers of David McCullouch who know more about history than most history PhDs. This guy would not last 5 minutes in a lower level statistics course in any EdD program.
PS, I assure you, I am indeed at best “only moderately” proud.
The history channel (of which I too am an “advid” watcher) and the likes of David McCullough serve an important purpose — to popularize history. McCullough is a great friend to the profession, and relies heavily on professional historians to help shape his works. Most professional historians have no animus towards him or those who do as he does.
I don’t have my diploma in my office (as it happens it’s a Ph.D. in biochemistry, but I would be equally proud of one in history, since I’ve done both original research and avid TV watching and am aware of the difference), but do have a champagne bottle from my thesis defense, signed by members of the lab, on a shelf. I don’t know how common that practice is, but my thesis advisor did that and I’ve seen some others do the same. I think I would like to have my diploma (and the frame I purchased three years ago but haven’t yet used) up in my home at some point, for reasons that Dr. S in the other post gave. For now, though, there isn’t an appropriate wall space (I’m thinking of a home office).
The point of hiring someone with a PhD instead of an MA is that a PhD is, presumably, more knowledgeable about the subject matter, particularly in her specialty, and is more willing to do research to find the answers to questions posed by students.
Or maybe it’s that PhDs have proven themselves more willing to suffer abuse at the hands of arbitrary and capricious academic authority.
Hugo, I see a point to your article and I see valid arguments. A degreee doesn’t necessarily change a person, it simply changes your colleague’s view/opinion of you.
P.S. Marc Dollinger was one of the best professors that I ever had in my entire academia. While I took his classes at PCC, I always felt as though his teachings were of intergral quality equivalent to upper-grad studies.