Living in the Past, Preparing for the Future
Robert C. Holub
Abstract of Presentation
Most humanists live in the past. We deal with topics from earlier centuries, or with issues that concerned our societies in earlier eras. Although they suggest mild reforms for the future, they operate almost exclusively with a model of higher education that lies in the past, or at least that has now passed into something that it wasn’ t a few short decades ago – and continues to evolve. True to the genuine humanist credo, they seek to preserve this institutional past as well. The real“ crisis” in graduate humanities education is not a recent occurrence.
Most humanities disciplines have been producing too many Ph. D. s for the available positions for over four decades. We have no national policy on graduate education, no mechanism to rationalize the chaos of programs; nor do we have bodies or professional organizations that have sufficient authority or influence to implement such changes, or to help us implement them. In my research, I give three suggestions for how we can overcome these challenges. v