Too many overpaid PhDs in humanities

For example, the American Historical Association reported last week that for every history position posted in the U.S. there were 84 job seekers with PhDs. Canada is experiencing a similar glut, but comprehensive numbers are difficult to come by.

Such a situation is not limited to recessionary times. In 2007-2008, there were still 57 candidates for every position, despite being considered a banner year for hiring. Similar trends have been identified in philosophy, literature, and other fields.

The AHA notes that despite warnings, dating back to the early 1990s, for universities to scale back the number of PhD students they admit, enrolment has continued unabated. There are periodic spikes in new students going to grad school when unemployment rises, but the trend holds in good times and bad.

"The primary problem today, as it was a decade ago, seems to lie on the supply side of the market -- in the number of doctoral students being trained," the AHA concludes.

So what causes this oversupply? Simple. Humanities professors are paid a premium for their work that does not reflect market reality, but encourages students to try to win the keys to the palace.

It is true that humanities faculty, particularly at the assistant professor rank, will often earn half to three quarters of what their counterparts in professional disciplines will earn. Some people are uncomfortable with this and are immediately attracted to the view that humanities faculty are some disaffected underclass.

After all, don't literature professors do the same basic job as law or business faculty? As a society should we not recognize their value and compensate accordingly?

Speaking to the differences in pay, Rosemary Feal of the Modern Language Association said in 2007, "We ought to be rewarding those who help us learn the lessons of Shakespeare's plays just as we reward those who can teach us the lessons of Enron."

This is a lovely sentiment, but to view wages in this way simply does not make sense. Humanities faculty earn less, not because we value them less, but because they are replaceable. There are countless numbers of often-miserable PhDs just waiting to get their shot. They have nowhere else to go. Business and law faculty, on the other hand, have opportunities outside of the university. A higher wage is needed to keep them.

In fact, humanities faculty might actually be paid too much. While the average business -faculty member at the rank of assistant professor will earn approximately $96,000 in Canada, a professor at the same rank in the humanities will earn about $70,000. Certainly nothing to sneer at.

In his book, Filthy Lucre, Joseph Heath, a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, uses the academic job market to illustrate the supply and demand of labour. Philosophy professors earn the wages they currently do because of two "equalizing tendencies."

First, because wages have been rising across society due to "increased productivity in completely unrelated sectors," universities benefit, even if their productivity does not greatly increase. The second, and, key reason, why philosophy and other humanities fields have seen increased wages, is that "wages for highly skilled employees have been rising even faster." This ultimately provides greater earning power outside the university for people in engineering or law.

The university then raises everyone's wages to "avoid bitter infighting and recriminations." Of course, wages are not entirely equalized, but they are brought close enough together to avoid conflict.

The consequence, however, is: "The wage rate, which should be sending the signal to the effect that 'the world does not need more philosophy professors,' is sending the opposite message."

The unemployment of countless doctorates is all that there is to communicate to students that they might be better off doing something other than academic research. It hasn't worked very well.

Now, if wages for the humanities were cut in half, then that might go a long way in deterring people from trying to enter the academic labour market.

As that is unlikely to happen, we might be stuck with an oversupply of doctorate holders, perhaps indefinitely.

Carson Jerema has an MA in politics and is a past editor of The Manitoban.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 11, 2010 A10