Against the Very Model of a Modern Major PhD

(If you squint, you'll see NYU philosopher David Velleman front and center, with his trusty side-kick Hartry Field on the right. Actually, I really do imagine that department breaking into song, on occasion.)

So, I don't know how many of our readers are aware of what graduate school admissions are like these days, but if you aren't, you should know that 'brutal' and any number of its synonyms are the only adequate descriptors that come to mind. (If you do have an idea, feel free to commiserate.) Speaking strictly to Philosophy - though, I believe from anecdotal evidence that the situation is generalizable to most other humanities and fine arts disciplines - admissions rates to top-twenty programs are in the neighborhood of 3 to 7 percent. Think, for a moment, on what that means. You're willing to abandon your friends, your family, and your entire present life, devote yourself to a profession that, for at least five years, will keep you bordering on poverty, for a degree that can be called "successful" if it secures for you a solidly middle-class salary. And you're willing to do this, only if you're comfortable saying that, for any randomly selected ten to fifteen applicants, you think none would be better than you are. 'Brutal' somehow don't hardly say it.

Now, I don't want to get in to a drawn out discussion of whether this prospect is sort of something I'm looking forward to. I want to make what I think is a bit of an interesting observation about how this institution - graduate schools and PhD programs - is structured. In Philosophy, currently, New York University is more or less widely regarded as the best graduate school in the U.S. (also, the world, with Oxford University running a close second). Rutgers runs a somewhat distant second, with Princeton running a close third, Pittsburgh (ah, would that they would have me!) a close fourth, and MIT, Harvard, and Michigan rounding out what we might call 'the top handful.' [NB: There are truly excellent philosophy programs admission to which I would give my left hand that are not in this 'top handful.' This discussion is focused on the Philosophical Gourmet rankings. I'm one of quite a few people, including the administrator of the Gourmet, who think that there's only so much that this particular survey can tell us about graduate school quality.]

Now, time was, within the last twenty to forty years, that three schools in heralded unanimity comprised the pantheon of the Philosophy PhD magisterium: Harvard, Princeton, and Pittsburgh. As one pretty quickly notes, only one of these schools (Princeton) is in the top-three presently. And two schools that almost no one once thought of as among the best have (again, more or less) decisively dethroned the giants of philosophy-graduate-school-past. These are wealthy graduate programs, with the wind of historical prestige at their backs. How could they have been o'ertaken by such unlikely upstarts as NYU and Rutgers?

Well, here's a shot at an explanation. I admit, there are other candidate explanations out there, but for my part, the premises here strike me as prima facie true, and the conclusion seems to follow from them naturally. So, here goes.

Philosophy Graduate School Axioms

I. Never hire graduates of one's own program.II. The best faculty members tend to work at the best graduate programs.
III. The best graduate students tend to become the best faculty members.
IV. The best graduate students tend to acquire their degrees from the best graduate programs.

ArgumentA (1) Suppose School A has the best philosophy graduate program.
So (2) The best graduate students will tend to acquire their degrees from School A. [A1 + IV]
So (3) School A's graduate students will tend to become the best faculty members. [So2 + III]
So (4) School A will not hire the best faculty members. [So3 + I]
So (5) School A, eventually, will not be the best graduate program. [So4 + II]

The idea is simply that, if you're the best program now but you refuse to hire your own students, you'll eventually cease to have the best program, since those students you wouldn't hire will eventually become the best faculty members. Capice?

Now, if this argument is right, what sorts of hiring phenomena would you expect? Well, first, you'd expect the one I've already noted: the best graduate programs will cease to be the best graduate programs. Second, you might also expect that the 'formerly-best' institutions would have placed significantly more of their graduate students in the best philosophy jobs than the newly-best institutions. And lo, from Leiter, this is exactly what we find:

Distribution of Faculty Members from Top Philosophy Graduate Programs

New York University PhDs1. NYU: 0
2. Rutgers: 0
3. Princeton: 1
4. Pittsburgh: 1
5. Michigan: 0
6. Harvard: 0
6. MIT: 1
Total: 3

Rutgers University PhDs1. NYU: 1
2. Rutgers: 1
3. Princeton: 0
4. Pittsburgh: 0
5. Michigan: 2
6. Harvard: 0
6. MIT: 0
Total: 4

Princeton University PhDs1. NYU: 4
2. Rutgers: 4
3. Princeton: 5
4. Pittsburgh: 6
5. Michigan: 5
6. Harvard: 1
6. MIT: 5
Total: 30

University of Pittsburgh PhDs1. NYU: 0
2. Rutgers: 3
3. Princeton: 1
4. Pittsburgh: 2
5. Michigan: 2
6. Harvard: 2
6. MIT: 0
Total: 10

University of Michigan PhDs1. NYU: 0
2. Rutgers: 3
3. Princeton: 0
4. Pittsburgh: 2
5. Michigan: 3
6. Harvard: 0
6. MIT: 0
Total: 5

Harvard University PhDs1. NYU: 6
2. Rutgers: 0
3. Princeton: 4
4. Pittsburgh: 2
5. Michigan: 2
6. Harvard: 3
6. MIT: 1
Total: 18

Massachussetts Institute of Technology PhDs1. NYU: 0
2. Rutgers: 2
3. Princeton: 4
4. Pittsburgh: 0
5. Michigan: 3
6. Harvard: 4
6. MIT: 2
Total: 15

As you can see, apart from the little program that could, these results satisfy the prediction that the formerly-best programs would've outperformed the newly-best programs in terms of jobs placement.

But what's another thing you might expect? If these really are estimations of the best graduate programs producing the best students, you'd expect the above trends to begin to shift. And what might mark that shift would be, rather than the numbers of currently tenured faculty-members, an increased number of tenure-track faculty members from the newly-best programs. For while tenured faculty distributions would evidence the historical excellence among graduate programs, tenure-track faculty distributions are closer to graduate school, and so represent a more accurate rendering of the current rankings among graduate schools. And lo, the data confirms this as well. Again, from Leiter:

Distribution of Tenure-Track Faculty Members from Top Graduate Schools

1. New York University (13)2. Rutgers University, New Brunswick (8)
3. Massachussetts Institute of Technology (6)
3. Princeton University (6)
5. Yale University (3)
6. Columbia University (2)
6. Harvard University (2)

The idea here is that newly-hired faculty (untenured-but-tenure-track) are closer to the newer rankings of graduate schools. So, if a shift from the past had manifested itself in the ranking, the distribution of new hires would indicate such a shift. And, it does.

Okay, now, I admit that there are alternative theories that might explain this data. Maybe Rutgers and NYU just outspent the previously-top programs. Or (and this seems likely, to me) most of those 'tends to' in my axioms will allow for excellent philosophers to be produced by a host of programs, and since department sizes relative to the production of excellent philosophers is small-ish, and true excellence usually takes seasoning to emerge, there's plenty of room for programs by a combination of luck, smart hiring, and money to move up. Or perhaps ‘having the best faculty’ isn’t coextensive with ‘producing the best graduate students’ – though, the shift in recent hiring would need to be explained.

Anyway, the point is simply that a university’s commitment against hiring its own students seems, in addition to some pretty reasonable-sounding assumptions – to yield a recipe for the best universities eventually losing their top spots. And, if so, I suspect the recipe has been served in more disciplines than Philosophy.  Sacred Music, even?