graduate programs

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Grad Programs, Don’t Jump the Gun

I’ve been asked to remind folks that graduate programs are not supposed to be asking their prospective students to respond to admissions and financial support offers before April 15th. There are reports of at least one violation of this practice.

Recall that the practice is the product of a resolution by the Council of Graduate Studies. The resolution includes th..

Negotiating a Graduate Admissions Offer

A prospective graduate student in philosophy writes in asking for advice on “how to negotiate more money from the Ph.D. programs to which I’ve been admitted.” The student adds: “I haven’t found many tips on the internet that are specific to philosophy. I’d be really curious to hear what some admissions directors and other faculty have to say about what works and wha..

Should Philosophers Train Graduate Students to Teach? How? (Guest Post by David W. Concepción)

The following is a guest post * by David W. Concepción, professor of philosophy at Ball State University, which summarizes some of the findings presented in “The State of Teacher Training in Philosophy” (Teaching Philosophy 2016), a systematic look at the training in teaching graduate students in philosophy get (alternative link). In the paper, authors Concepción, Me..

Are There Too Many Philosophy PhDs? It’s Complicated

In light of the previous post, we might ask, are there too many philosophy PhDs? Some people think so, and take that as a reason to think that some departments should stop offering PhDs. Let’s talk about this.

First, a general point: though the number of PhD studentships is not the result of an open market, there are still good Hayekian reasons for caution about ..

APA’s Grad Program Guide Overhauled

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has overhauled its graduate program guide. It used to be an annual publication. Now it is a regularly updated searchable website. Mike Morris, the APA’s communications and marketing manager, writes:

The Grad Guide now offers the ability to search by multiple criteria, including areas of specialization, degrees offered,..

Which MA Programs in Philosophy Fund Students?

As some of you know, Geoff Pynn (Northern Illinois) has over the years provided an important service to the philosophy profession: maintaining a list of master’s programs in philosophy and the kind of funding they offer their students. The list now includes 31 U.S. MA programs:

Brandeis
Cal State Los Angeles
Colorado State
Florida State
Georgia State
G..

Leadership of the Philosophical Gourmet Report

Some readers have recently asked questions about who is “really” running the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), a ranking of the reputations of some doctoral programs in philosophy.

As was reported last October, PGR founder and editor Brian Leiter (Chicago) was to co-edit the 2014-15 edition of the PGR with his chosen successor, Berit Brogaard (Miami), and then ..

A New Structure for Philosophy PhD Programs? (updated)

Under the so-called 5+2 program, humanities graduate students at Irvine will receive additional funding designed to push them through course work and their dissertations within five years. Those who finish within that time frame are eligible to apply for an up to two-year, teaching-intensive postdoc. Assistant adjunct professors, as they’re called, will receive rela..

Grad Programs and Non-Academic Careers

How should graduate programs address the fact that some of their graduates will not find jobs in academia? There was a brief discussion of this here back in the early days of DN, but I am prompted by a reader to revisit the question. He writes:

My department has a terminal MA program. By admitting students into this program, one of the responsibilities that we ta..

Recruitment Weekend & Department Climate

Many graduate programs set aside a time for all prospective students to visit and learn about their departments and universities. Lauren Leydon-Hardy, a philosophy graduate student at Northwestern University, writes in with some information about one aspect of their “recruitment weekend”:

When I visited Northwestern as a prospective student in 2011, I used an opp..

Hanti Lin’s “Doing a PhD and Getting a Job in Philosophy”

Check out “Hanti’s Notes on Doing a PhD and Getting a Job in Philosophy” by Hanti Lin, assistant professor of philosophy at UC Davis. It has a lot of good advice. Of particular value is the “When to do what?” section. Also, I appreciate the “Health maintenance” section, the issues under which do not get discussed as frequently as they should. Throughout the guide, L..

Quantifying the Influence of Prestige

A new study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers focuses on “who hires whose graduates as faculty” in order to “present and analyze comprehensive placement data on nearly 19,000 regular faculty in three disparate disciplines. Across disciplines, we find that faculty hiring follows a common and steeply hierarchical structure that reflects profound social inequ..

PhilWiki News

Shawn Miller (UC Davis) writes in with some news about the good work being done at PhilWiki:

Benedict Eastaugh (Bristol) has created PhilMath.net, which is a wiki that tracks Ph.D. and terminal M.A. programs with strengths in the philosophy of mathematics. He has listed nearly 70 Ph.D. programs. His wiki joins Ted Shear’s Formal Epistemology wiki, Shawn Standefe..

Lessons for Philosophy from Economists on English?

“Over the last 35 years, less than half of graduated Ph.D. students have gotten tenure-track academic jobs upon graduation. The result is a large pool of residual job seekers, which places even more pressure on the job market for existing students.”…

“The data are pretty straightforward,” the paper says. “While students in top-10 programs might have a reasonabl..

User’s Guide to Philosophy Without Rankings

A User’s Guide to Philosophy Without Rankings is a new site “intended for the use of prospective graduate students in philosophy, faculty (including chairs or heads) in philosophy, and deans, provosts, and other administrators, all of whom need resources for the decisions they make about philosophy programs.” It is based on the idea that “currently, there are no ran..

X-Phi Grad Programs Wiki

Another grad program wiki is up — this time for experimental philosophy. It was put together by Joshua Knobe and Christian Mott (both at Yale). Shawn Miller (UC Davis), who created PhilWiki and the template that has been used to make the various subject-specific wikis, writes:

Notable, perhaps, is that the total time it took Joshua and Christian to get the site..

20th Century Continental PhD Programs Wiki

The latest addition to the set of informational wikis about the strengths of PhD programs is on 20th Century Continental Philosophy. Developed by Noëlle McAfee (Emory), in consultation with a number of other philosophers, the aim of the wiki is “to provide an unranked yet searchable list of Ph.D. (and terminal M.A.) programs that have strengths in 20th (and early 21..

APA 2014 Guide to Graduate Programs

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has released its 2014 Guide to Graduate Programs in Philosophy. The guide provides information on faculty, program strengths, placement, financial aid, and demographics. The APA notes: “All data in the guide are self-reported by representatives of the institutions, and data are included only for institutions that complete..

PhD Program Wikis — Information, Not Rankings (updated)

Shawn Standefer has created a wiki of PhD programs in philosophical logic. It “provides an unranked list of PhD (and (eventually) terminal M.A.) programs that have strengths in philosophical logic. Links are provided to the websites, CVs, and PhilPapers profiles of the relevant faculty at each program. Additionally, when known, the specialties and willingness of fac..

Colorado to Resume Graduate Admissions (updated)

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado will resume admissions to its graduate program for the 2015-16 academic year. Admissions had been suspended last year following the site visit report of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Women (previously). From the university press release:

The move follows the enactment..

How Much Weight Should a Candidate’s School Have?

“The next time you do a job search break your committee into two groups. Have one group evaluate the candidates without reference to the institution from which they graduated and have the other evaluate the candidates with all of the institutional information included. I can almost guarantee that the short lists will not be the same. And I believe that anyone who is..

$The PGR’s Technical Problems (updated)$

The PGR’s Technical Problems (updated)

Several recent posts here have discussed questions regarding the leadership of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), the best known ranking of philosophy graduate programs, with some discussion of what an alternative to the PGR might look like. In the meanwhile, discussions continue between the creator and current editor of the PGR, Brian Leiter (Chicago), and rep..

APA Data on Graduate Programs

The APA has released its 2013 Guide to Graduate Programs in Philosophy, and Andrew Carson at Philosophy News helpfully breaks down the information in a couple of reports, one on degrees awarded and time to degree, the other on attrition and placement. A few things to note: participation in the guide was voluntary and some schools did not participate, the data is sel..