vivodito

Hi, I wanted to add a little perspective as a current PhD candidate at an ivy currently organizing to pressure my department to follow Yale and Chicago in suspending admissions for Fall 2021. The response of most programs to the disruptions presented by the pandemic has been atrocious. PhD students of all disciplines find themselves looking at what amounts to a year loss of progress towards degree--many students have had to abandon research in the US and abroad, obviously library access has been severely limited. Hiring freezes set in pretty quickly after the pandemic's outset, so the class of students meant to defend this year have had to drum up funding to keep themselves afloat, with no guarantee that any kind of job market will exist next year. At my institution, after a flurry of action largely organized by our student union in the Spring, university admin made it clear that the only way departments could issue a blanket funding extension for current grads would be to forgo future admits. Every slot canceled frees up 10 semesters of funding to be redistributed among current students. I imagine the decisions at Yale and Chicago were made under similar conditions. This is a form of austerity, and all evidence points to it getting worse, not better in upper ed, with, as usual, outsize effect on the humanities. I think its quite easy to focus on "how" to get into grad school rather than "why" to go to grad school (which this forum obviously abets). Now more than ever I would urge all prospective PhD applicants to REALLY think deeply about the latter. To be able to ask yourself and answer honestly: am I emotionally, mentally, and financially capable of putting 5-7 years of work into a career path that most likely will not lead to employment in my field? Towards answering this latter question and getting a better idea of the wrecked landscape that is graduate work in the humanities currently I highly recommend perusing discussions on the Chronicle of Higher Education such as: https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-the-coronavirus-will-or-should-transform-graduate-education/ and also discussions on Karen Kelsky's website: http://theprofessorisin.com/ (her 2015 book "The Professor is In" remains a really useful read)