Two Audio Interviews: Rethinking the Constitution and The New PhD
I thought readers would enjoy the following two interviews.
The first is with Mary Anne Franks: The Cult of the Constitution. The discussion is titled: Rethinking the Constitution. She gets into the first and second amendment. What I found thoughtful was her presentation of the Constitution being viewed as a sacred document. Think the Bible etc. Considering the influence of the Evangelical Right in the Republican party, it put clarity to the Right’s arguments involving the Constitution. This discussion coincides with Peter Dorman’s post: We need a Plan for Militias.
The second interview I heard a bit ago: The New PhD, How to Build a Better Graduate Program. Leonard Cassuto and Robert Weisbuch. What they suggest is that the Graduate programs have to change from their conservative (not political conservative) historical approach to this aspect of the education and make it more relevant to what is present for such students in today’s world.
Both interviews are about 1 hour long. Enjoy.
Thank you for plugging these, especially Lenny’s. He’s a great guy, good scholar, and fine writer.
Franks for this. Abby Adams was hot too.
My favorite line in Cassuto’s “The Graduate School Mess” was when he described humanities PhD programs as “minting expired passports.”
it takes me about an hour to listen to an hour long program.
i can read a transcript of an hour long program in about three minutes.
Joel,
I think I understand your comment. So does my daughter,PhD. Me, I saw the handwriting on the wall and saved myself about ten years. Wish I’d thought of that sooner.
@Dale,
The PhD joins a long list of credentials that are no longer meal tickets. with the widespread adoption of AI, I expect the MD degree to follow.
The point of the interview is that the PhD is exactly that–a doctor of philosophy. Properly trained, a PhD is broadly adaptable to a variety of careers, not just the academic ladder. And as with every degree, a significant number of PhDs really have no plan for what they want to do with it. PhD mentors (and I’ve trained 7 PhDs myself), know how to train mini-mes, but don’t have a cosmopolitain view of the job market.
Joel:
Almost did it. Too many kids came along and I needed to be home. My Masters kept me employed, I adapted, and stayed relevant.
Joel
i think there is a bit of an oversupply problem too. and I don’t think most people go into PhD programs looking for a ticket. They believe they have something to contribute to science or scholarship.
I honestly don’t know what the out-of-academia job market is for PhD… except for really outstanding people with in-demand specialties. I know I couldn’t imagine being happy in “business.” And even as an undergraduate I encountered some contempt for “philosophers.”
I was lucky (so was my daughter) and eventually found the job I should have been looking for in the first place.
Could be sour grapes, but I think “education” is oversold in popular culture. At least I could see no reason my students (when I was a teaching assistant) should be in college. They agreed with me, except…”a job.” And at least the jobs I got that “required” a college degree did not actually require a college education.
@Dale,
WRT the BA degree vs high school diploma, I think the value of the BA credential (outside of applied fields like STEM) is that it demonstrates that you are a “finisher.” If you can graduate with a BA after four years, you had to *complete* many courses, some outside your major, and do so while meeting a minimum standard of performance. Employers want employees who are capable of sticking with the job, managing multiple challenges, learning new things and maintaining some degree of competence. Most or all BA programs at accredited colleges and universities require that. The field doesn’t matter as much.
Not to say a high school grad cannot possess these qualities, but the BA credential increases the odds that the holder can meet these criteria.
Joel
I suppose that’s true. Or at least what they believe. I have hired people, and supervised people hired by others. I have never noticed that a degree of any kind guaranteed even reasonable performance. Nor that lack of a degree indicated an inabilty to learn the job and carry it through with honesty and that extra edge of competence that makes the difference in anything that matters.
there are subjects/jobs that require an advanced level of knowledge that can’t reasonably be learned on the job…but can be learned by an apprentice who has the desire to learn them.
siince “industry” farms out job training to the schools, i think it would be entire justified to expect industry to pay for the schools (as opposed tothe taxpayers). a hidden cost of “schools” is that they are (or were in my day) run like cattle drives with whip and threat and the promise of rewards in the sky. this pretty much guarantees that good people will drop out, and in the case of the meritocracy only the most ambitious and ruthless remain.
@Dale,Your college experience was obviously quite different from mine.
Joel
actually, it was different from my daughter’s too.
In fact, I believe that education is good for people and the country. But despite the good experiences some people have, I think my reservations about the way we do it are worth thinking about.
What was a reasonable ticket to a good job has become an absolute bar to a good job for people unable to demonstrate a-priori that they would be valuable workers. and an irresistible opportunity for business owners to avoid thinking about the people they hire.
Joel
“Not to say a high school grad cannot possess these qualities, but the BA credential increases the odds that the holder can meet these criteria.”
this is just the problem. we are now a society of “the odds” instead of knowing people as individuals.
what i find funny here is that this is why friends told me i “had to” read The Fountainhead. of course what struck me was that all these would-be First Raters were not in fact first rate. I don’t hold that against them… i am not especially first rate myself. But that they believe their first-rater status entitles them to step on the second-raters.
the players of “the odds” are guaranteeing themselves a second-rate outcome.. by definition.
@Dale,
“we are now a society of “the odds” instead of knowing people as individuals.” I don’t know when you think “now” began, but it has been true all of my life, and I’m 66 years old. Of course, I’ve only lived in America. It might be different in other countries.
Joel
i am considerably older than you. It may be that the generation who were students when i was a student got sick of the cattle drive, and resolved to do better in their turn.
At least some of them. But I still think we are entering a “programmed” world where “nothing can go wrong,,,go wrong,,,go wrong” because no one will admit it, and no one can do anything about it.
thing is, people pretty much adapt to the situations they grow up in, so I expect the video-gamers to be happy in it.
until it goes beyond the point of no return.
@Dale,
“The odds” have governed life on this planet since it began. All life plays the odds every day. Each time you climb behind the wheel of your automobile, you play the odds that you will get where you want without being maimed or killed by a stranger. I consider safe arrival a first-rate outcome. YMMV.
But I don’t look to the fiction of Ayn Rand or the bloviations of her followers for authority on this topic. Rand is for teenage boys and arrested development cases. Instead, I recommend “Origin of Species,” by Charles Darwin. It is a work of non-fiction. Darwin lays out in rich detail the role that odds play and have played on our planet. Successful players of the odds leave descendants. The unsuccessful ones go extinct.
Joel
i am getting used to being completely misunderstood. and the futility of trying to crawl out from under it. i certainly do not recommend Ayn Rand for anything. on the other hand some of those teenagers are now running the country.
as for “chance” running the universe, i think i understand that theory too. but that doesn’t make “improving the odds” of getting an acceptable employee a brilliant hiring strategy. human beings are, as far as i know, nature’s answer to entropy.
my daughter reads me Origin of Species every night while i am falling asleep.