And that seems to be the magic number that some medieval academic bastard thought would mentally torture students sufficiently. This hazing has been passed down generation after generation through the centuries so that every fucking grad class is really a bunch of meetings in a room to eventually write a 30 page paper. Thus, FLG isn't fit for graduate education and the admissions committees can smell it.
MSI asks a related question:
How can I write four serious, 30-page papers in one semester?
Who the fuck knows?
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15 comments:
Profanity watch! I'm telling you--try forcing yourself to use other words. It is a writing-improving exercise. Maybe one day, you'll even learn so much substitute vocabulary that you'll be able to write 30-page papers without saying a single substantive thing.
It wasn't the medieval bastards; it was the modern bastards who imported the German model of the university to America at the end of the nineteenth century. Now almost everything written in academia is at least a third longer than it needs to be.
Mind you, you could get a PhD a century ago for a modern MA paper; the only reverse of grade inflation known.
My grad schools only had three classes at a time; and 20-25 page papers; now we know the difference between them and Hahvahd.
The key is organizing your time; start writing at once, finish the first paper by the end of September, etc.
FLG: It's true; if you don't have anything to say that's 30 pages long, you shouldn't be in humanities PhD program grad school. This is not moral condemnation, but a question of temperament, etc.
MSI:
Use other words? Fuck that noise.
Alpheus:
You're right. I should've remembered. Plus, it makes sense. Sadistic Germans.
Withy:
This is not moral condemnation, but a question of temperament, etc.
Oh, I completely understand. I am, however, going to force myself to finish the hypothetical seminar.
MSI:
Also, in regards to "Maybe one day, you'll even learn so much substitute vocabulary that you'll be able to write 30-page papers without saying a single substantive thing. "
Why would I want to? That seems like a huge waste of time.
if you don't have anything to say that's 30 pages long, you shouldn't be in humanities PhD program grad school.
But why does length matter so much? What if you have *brilliant* things to say that can be expressed in 10 pages? Aren't we just encouraging people to pad their writing?
Nobody would ever think of judging researchers in the sciences by how long their papers were. Nobody would claim that scientists ought to have published a book in order to get tenure.
The fact that we judge academics in the humanities so much by quantity of output measured in pages is, I think, prima facie evidence that the research model shouldn't apply to the humanities.
Alpheus: A genuine contribution to scholarship - persuasive in that it is creative, lucid, rigorous, complex, and taking part in the conversation of scholarly tradition - does take a certain minimum amount of time to make. 30 pages is a reasonable proxy. The genius who can do all that in 10 pages shouldn't have that much difficulty in writing three closely unified articles in 30 pages, pretending to be one article that busts the field wide open. If you can't do 30 pages, then it is 1) a sign not to be an academic; 2) a sign to divorce research requirements from teaching requirements; but not 3) a sign to pad their writing to attempt to fill a requirement beyond your capacity.
FLG: I was just kidding. But not about trying to say things without fuck.
Withywindle: "The key is organizing your time; start writing at once, finish the first paper by the end of September, etc."
I'm doomed.
As likely the least formally educated visitor to this page, I am somewhat confused at the value of current MA's to begin with. The trend seems to be toward ever more specific and then esoteric topics rather than an expansion into broader knowledge, depth over breadth. Where is the study track (and of interest mostly to me, the VA funding) for what would amount to an MA comprised to two or more BA degrees? Instead, the narrowing of focus, the pursuit of depth, leads to an advertisement in this week's City Paper for an "Accelerated Master of Tourism Administration." Within this overly broad and important area of study, students may choose from the concentrations of "Event & Meeting Management, Sports Management, and Sustainable Destination Management." The need for a MA-level knowledge in these seemingly narrow and ridiculous fields is made obvious when one sees the program is offered by none other than George Washington University.
Alan:
The reason for more narrow fields of study is a function of continuously increasing of human knowledge. As I wrote previously:
"Human knowledge continues to increase at an increasing rate because each previous discovery helps us make new discoveries faster. And if we assume the human mind can only learn so much information from both the perspective that there is probably a maximum capacity of the human mind and also simple time constraints on learning, then isn't the logical outcome that our most knowledgeable people will be become ever more knowledgeable but in narrower and narrower fields?"
Now, you might not be interested in a Tourism degree, and it probably is not very difficult, but I'm sure people who wish to start an ecotourism company would find value in studying "Sustainable Destination Management."
That being said, there does seem to be considerable room for overlap as well by following any one of the plethora of joint degrees programs offered by schools and even some multidisciplinary MAs.
I don't know that the result "our most knowledgeable people will be become ever more knowledgeable but in narrower and narrower fields" is a goal in a field that is not widely open to new discovery, i.e. not science. Indeed, more knowledgeable in narrower slivers of fields is at risk of being an oxymoron. How much more detailed study of the classics do we need? Are we meaningfully increasing "human knowledge"?
Can a person who studied "global politics" provide a better education for others studying the same by entering a narrower MA program (global politics in the 19th century) or by completing a second BA in History or Philosophy, etc.? Why shouldn't the latter approach also lead to a teaching position? Wouldn't a classics professor, reasonably well trained, be more effective if he or she had complimentary BA degrees rather than a 30-page paper on Homer's meaning behind the use of (pick any symbol)? I get that we need a hierarchy, that more educated people should teach less educated, but I wonder if we are logically approaching that or simply issuing licenses to teach in exchange for 30-page papers that only in rare occasions are widely enough read to claim to increase human knowledge. (And, I mean no insult to the professors here.)
Sure, knowledge about sustainable destination management would be useful as you note, but at a Master level?! I am sure you are correct that the course is not especially challenging, but why then call it a Master's? Simply because one already has a BA? Simply because it is more limited in scope? Why move up when moving laterally is appropriate? It seems rather like universities have gotten into the business of manufacturing higher-level degrees, and industries have bought into it without reflecting on the actual value. Or, perhaps the latter do.
"I have an MA in Event and Meeting Management from GWU's Master of Tourism Management program."
"Huh. We foolishly had been using a person with a degree from the local community college to manage our events. Who knew a skill required so much in-depth knowledge! We've were paying her $30K a year? How much do you want?"
If you can't do 30 pages, then it is 1) a sign not to be an academic; 2) a sign to divorce research requirements from teaching requirements; but not 3) a sign to pad their writing to attempt to fill a requirement beyond your capacity.
As a matter of principle, of course I agree with you. In practice, I think a lot of people are padding their writing, even to the extent of producing whole articles and books that say very little of value. Like it or not, these are the consequences of focusing on quantity of scholarship instead of quality.
Could I also suggest that writing about the classics is not so much about "increasing human knowledge" in the scientific sense (since, typically, writing in the humanities is intended to refute previous writing in the humanities) as to argue about the present? Only a small fraction of humanities scholars are people like archivists and philologists whose job is actually to find new humanistic knowledge--uncover manuscripts, translate archaic languages, etc.
But who would want to increase knowledge in the scientific sense?
History is weirdly in the middle, since archival research is semi-scientific in your sense.
Scientists? I don't know, not me.
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