Thomas H. Benton (penname of Prof. William Pannapacker)–associate professor of English at Hope College, in Holland, Michigan–writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, says of pursuing the humanities at the graduate level: don’t do it. I disagree, but first, his argument:

As things stand, I can only identify a few circumstances under which one might reasonably consider going to graduate school in the humanities:

• You are independently wealthy, and you have no need to earn a living for yourself or provide for anyone else.
• You come from that small class of well-connected people in academe who will be able to find a place for you somewhere.
• You can rely on a partner to provide all of the income and benefits needed by your household.
• You are earning a credential for a position that you already hold — such as a high-school teacher — and your employer is paying for it.

Those are the only people who can safely undertake doctoral education in the humanities. Everyone else who does so is taking an enormous personal risk, the full consequences of which they cannot assess because they do not understand how the academic-labor system works and will not listen to people who try to tell them.

Read his depressing article in full. It is in two parts; in the followup, he admits that telling prospective graduate humanities students “don’t do it” isn’t terribly helpful, especially to those already in the system. However…

Some may say all the hand-wringing about the majority of humanities graduates who do not end up in tenure-track positions is overblown. I mean, lots of doctors don’t get their first choice of residency. But a more relevant question is, How many trained physicians are never allowed to practice medicine at all? Would we consider thousands of unemployed doctors a waste of societal resources, to say nothing of the costs to the individuals involved? Would they feel sadder about a neurosurgeon who wanted to cure Alzheimer’s disease working as a bartender?

My experience in the humanities began in 2007 when, eyes wide open, I returned to university. I had been working in one field (film and television production) for about thirty years; I quit, cold-turkey, in large part due to professional exhaustion, but also to the realisation that I was going nowhere. I didn’t have a new career in mind, but I did want an MA. I had no idea, at the time I applied for admittance, at the extent to which Graduate Liberal Studies would fuel my intellectual curiosity.

2007 GLS cohort