Thoughts on newer Religion PhD programs?

[lroma1949]

I'm creating my list of schools to apply to and stumbled upon the University of Georgia and the University of Southern California. They seem to both be relatively new programs. Does anyone here have any insights/thoughts about these programs? Or how well-regarded they are?

[xypathos]

USC has had a PhD in Religion at least since the 70s but become increasingly constricted over the years in what you can study. Being where they are and their funding package, the only way you can survive there is being independently wealthy, a partner working, or student loans. As such, they're a small program and largely focus on Asian religions and Islam. If their current graduate student list is up to date, it looks like they take a Christian-focused student every other year. I've never met anyone from USC but that doesn't mean anything, I don't work in Asian religions or Islam.

UGA is super new, I think they took their first cohort in 2017/8? If that's right, they haven't graduated anyone yet. My concerns there is that UGA relies heavily on instructors (non-tenure eligible faculty) and a number of their faculty have doctorates from conservative theological schools and they're working in a public university. For me, that raises a serious red flag. Also, a number of their research interests that they're capable of supervising don't have faculty listed with any expertise in that field. Also, a number of their faculty haven't even built a faculty page so you don't know what they're working on unless you go digging for publications - maybe a yellow flag but it's lazy on their part. Given the state of the job market in religion, I was shocked when they announced they were opening a program - I don't think the market will be kind to their graduates.

[cdhtrigger]

UC Davis has a pretty new program so I was thinking of applying there next year.

[cdhtrigger]

On 9/25/2020 at 8:29 AM, xypathos said:

USC has had a PhD in Religion at least since the 70s but become increasingly constricted over the years in what you can study. Being where they are and their funding package, the only way you can survive there is being independently wealthy, a partner working, or student loans. As such, they're a small program and largely focus on Asian religions and Islam. If their current graduate student list is up to date, it looks like they take a Christian-focused student every other year. I've never met anyone from USC but that doesn't mean anything, I don't work in Asian religions or Islam.

UGA is super new, I think they took their first cohort in 2017/8? If that's right, they haven't graduated anyone yet. My concerns there is that UGA relies heavily on instructors (non-tenure eligible faculty) and a number of their faculty have doctorates from conservative theological schools and they're working in a public university. For me, that raises a serious red flag. Also, a number of their research interests that they're capable of supervising don't have faculty listed with any expertise in that field. Also, a number of their faculty haven't even built a faculty page so you don't know what they're working on unless you go digging for publications - maybe a yellow flag but it's lazy on their part. Given the state of the job market in religion, I was shocked when they announced they were opening a program - I don't think the market will be kind to their graduates.

I thought USC funded you and you just needed to find housing? I ask because I work in Islam and I may apply next year.

[xypathos]

10 hours ago, cdhtrigger said:

I thought USC funded you and you just needed to find housing? I ask because I work in Islam and I may apply next year.

Yes they fund you but getting by on that is another issue.