I find myself with an invitation to be an external reviewer for a department that I take it aspires to climb the Leiterometer. And I'm hearing word from my own department that it's time to update our own program. Fair enough. Questions especially for those freshly out of school:
What would you say is the purpose of comprehensive examinations? Should they track traditional areas, plausible AOSs and AOCs, problems, or historical periods, or something else? Does it still make sense to group certain areas together such that there's one exam in, e.g., "metaphysics, phil mind, logic" and another in, e.g., "epistemology, phil language, phil science"? What about oral examiantions? Should all comps be oral? None?
Please opine freely.
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17 comments:
Why would the aim of hiring (or whatever activity) in a philosophy department be to climb up the PGR? Is it the case that now we believe programs are excellent because they rank well on the PGR?
Can we not think critically on our own and come up with principles for what we think makes for excellence in a philosophy PhD program.
I suppose playing to the PGR makes hiring easier. No longer is it necessary to actually interview anyone. In fact, applications need only have a name, degree, the PGR-AOS, and rank of PhD program.
Pathetic.
Oy. I should have guessed the mention of Professor Leiter would be a distraction...
Anon 11:04: Any views about comprehensive exams?
From what I can see and have heard, there seems to be a move away from comps at many good departments. This seems to be the trend, for better or worse, along with a shortened time to degree, fewer course distribution requirements, and an ever-loosening interpretation of what counts as a dissertation.
As far as comp subject groupings go, it is my opinion that it is a big mistake to group the broadest general subjects (e.g., metaphysics, epistemology) with areas in which they are applied. I say this as a working philosopher of mind who barely touches the metaphysics but is deep into the epistemology and philosophy of science.
well, I'm still a grad student, but I feel that having comps grouped around subjects such as you mentioned would be a good thing, both for rankings and for hiring the right sort of people.
For example, if a Mind person didn't know Epistemology, that would be a total red flag to me. If someone that did Moral Philosophy wasn't conversant in ethics or Political Philosophy, it'd strike me as pretty weird.
Were it up to me, comps would cover the whole philosophical shebang (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, moral phil, aesthetics, language, etc). Thus, you would hopefully get well rounded philosophers that would both be able to publish in a broad variety of topics (hello better PGR) and be able to teach in nearly all topics.
But maybe I'm just being naive?
OT, but: Anonymous at 1.00, what's the distinction between 'ethics' and 'moral philosophy'?
BOTH Country AND Western!
As someone with a British Ph.D., I have probably a very different view than most fellow Americans. In the UK, there are no comprehensive exams. None. I wanted to study political and legal philosophy...and that's precisely what I did. At M.A. level we already are exposed (in addition to at B.A. level) philosophy in all its branches. I favour greater specialization beyond.
...and while I'm at it, I much prefer the Ph.D. examination approach here: you have an external examiner from another university with an internal examiner from your department (largely to make sure the viva is fair). Neither could have ever supervised you before. Thus, whether you pass is taken out of the control of your supervisors and put into the hands of the external (and, to a lesser extent, internal) examiner.
Having external examiners seems like a great idea. Not only does it eliminate the problems raised by advisors having a vested interest in getting their students through, it prepares students nicely for what they will confront on the job market.
At my grad institution, exams were into value theory and other (ethics, political, aesthetics vs. metaphysics, epist, mind, language, logic, science). You had to take a certain number from each, along with a history course or two. The goal of the exams, supposedly, was to teach you enough of the topic to certify that you were qualified to teach a basic course in it. I'm not sure whether this is AOC-worthy (I didn't take it to be and so don't list Philosophy of Science as an AOC of mine, even though I took an exam in it).
At my institution now, exams are supposed to serve a combined purpose--lead a student to a dissertation topic and certify that they are qualified in the area. The advisor and student work together on a reading list and assembling a exam committee (chaired by the advisor). The committee then sets questions that the student has few weeks to answer. While the dual-purpose exam might seem like a decent idea on the face of it, it has (unsurprisingly, on the slightest reflection) turned out to be overly ambitious. This is true partly because faculty don't quite agree on which of these purposes is more important. So some exams look like exams, while others look like relatively (sometimes very) narrow lit-reviews for a dissertation topic. Coming all the way back to the beginning, it seems to me that relying more on external examiners (for starters) would make exams more consistent.
Our old comprehensive exams were worse than useless. They were in effect a hurdle that prevented many good graduate students from graduating and getting on with their lives. So we eliminated them in favor of an extra course in each of the comprehensive areas (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and a historical figure). However, I now think it might have been a mistake. What comps should be doing (if anything) in our case is determining whether grads have enough breadth to be able to teach effectively where they are likely to land (in our case, regional 4 yr. colleges). Four substantial research papers in each area seems to me to maybe be a better tool for this. In a program turning out researchers, however, I wonder whether comps serve any use at all. I doubt it. They're archaic, in the way that language requirements are.
As a current grad student petrified by the idea of comps, I still can't help but view them as a good thing. They force depth, I contend. For example, I'm currently working in the field of coherentism and foundationalism (and trying to give a more robust defense of foundherentism, in spite of its hideously ugly name). I could easily spend all my time reading and studying only the related literature and produce a strong bit of research (theoretically, that is). Doing so would likely leave me ignorant of many epistemological theories and ideas that one ought to know about as an epistemologist, even though my research might seem to suggest I know tons about epistemology in general. To echo sentiments expressed by anonymous at 1:00, comps in this area would require me to have a depth of knowledge that I could otherwise skate by without.
I also believe it's wise to have a strong understanding of the history of philosophy; general comps in this area, no matter one's specialization, would also seem beneficial. This has much to do with the issues Robert raises. Theoretically, a terminal MA student *ought* to be able to teach any intro course; comps might help ensure that, so long as they're well-crafted. As another example, I would not feel prepared to teach a course on ethics at any level even though I've satisfied the course requirements for that area, and I think that's a significant problem. Perhaps in this latter case the problem is with the department's courses and not attributable to a lack of comps. That said, my lack of interest in ethics would certainly be overcome by paranoia over not doing well on a comp!
I am curious about Spiros's question about oral exams. How do people feel about orals? It seems to me that it would be a good way to test breadth as well as a good way for students to get an idea about how to perform philosophically with serious nerves. Then again, it seems like it may involve so many nerves that it might be counterproductive. Were any of your exams oral? If so, was it a useful exercise? If not, could it be?
I'm an old guy so of course my opinion today probably means squat. But in many ways I'm with Robert on this, though I think written exams such as I had are the best way to go (there is some Baconian idol in my frying pan here, but it smells soooo great even reheated!). The comps in my definitely low-magnitude Leiter star institution were one of the best learning experiences of my PhD education. They required me to get up to snuff in areas where I had very little training even as an undergrad. And they served me well--I got a good job in a good university system and I have to admit that studying for those comps helped me to diversify into the generalist my career ultimately demanded. This may be of no help to you Spiros, because your institution probably trains researchers rather than teaching professors. (However, success rates in placement should drive all discussion on this point, and there's where I agree with Robert--the vast majority of PhD programs will train teaching professors for the most part.) But for the latter to-be teachers--go with tough comps that force students to know something about all the main areas of philosophy. And make them written in that case--orals should be preserved for the final defense IMHO.
My grad program had a lot of comprehensive exams in the traditional areas of philosophy, written and also an oral comp. At the time I was taking them, these exams seemed like a fairly terrifying royal pain in the ass, but in retrospect I'm very glad I had to do them. This gladness has a lot to do with one of your questions: What would you say is the purpose of comprehensive examinations? One purpose, as far as my own experience goes, is to be forced to get one's shit together and perform. Sure, I'd taken a number of classes and read a lot of material in all the various topics, but there's really nothing quite like getting a reading list together, gathering sets of older questions, getting advice from those who walked the path before me, and having to meet the challenge at hand. This is to say nothing about the broad sorts of content I got a handle on when taking my exams, content I became more secure about, and produced an excellent set of notes on for future reference.
I don't really know, though, exactly how many comps are ideal or precisely what areas, periods, or groupings they should have. It seems to me that the exams need to track what is taught in programs, just as there needs to be faculty teaching in these areas and available to *grade* the comps and/or form the oral exam panels. I can imagine a number of configurations that could work.
I'd also note that comprehensive exams serve departments with respect to their self-assessment regarding how well they are preparing their students for the profession, providing evidence about this in addition to dissertation completion and job placement. Certainly, departments' visions of what "the profession" is varies, and likewise comp. exams vary with this vision. Given differences between UK and US systems of higher education, I'm unsure whether Brook's position (increasing specialization, eliminating comps) would be ideal across the board for US graduate departments.
As to the question of orals, I did my masters and phd in continental Europe and had orals at each stage (exams for MA courses, comps, and even a few at the doc seminar level) and I think they prepared me very well for the job market. I learned to think quickly and philosophically on my feet, express myself fairly lucidly verbally and I think it is an excellent way to judge how much someone knows. I've got a job back in N. America now and I use orals fairly frequently (at both BA and MA level). I can tell in about a minute how much the student knows and there are ways of asking questions that get past the nerves that the students feel so as to determine their philosophical knowledge and acumen. I think oral comps, and oral tests generally, are a great way to evaluate. Also, gaining employment (in both philosophy and outside academia) often hinges on performing well, under pressure, with the spoken word. This helps students prepare for those situations well, in my estimation.
I'm from Denmark (now I live in the US but finish my dissertation in Denmark - where it's still free). In my basic program in U of Southern DK we had mandatory classes in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, science theory
& history, logic, language theory and several courses on history of philosophy. Plus of course some voluntary courses. That was the basic program (the bachelor) - after that it was all self-defined.
None of that "applied" stuff (like the near-oxymoron: "business ethics") unless you took it as your voluntary courses (of which you of course also had to take some).
I'd say we pretty much got an overview of most of the fundamentals in "western" philosophy in the mandatory program. Except aesthetics (which is fine with me).
After the basics and fundamentals we were welcome to specialize.
The dept where I did my PhD replaced the comps with 2 qualifying papers a year or two after I took the exams. The point was largely to facilitate specialization and the actual practice of writing (and publications, maybe?). But I was happy to have taken the comps: it did give me breadth and a more synthetic understanding of the history (they were the blanket-coverage type, not divided by field).
As to orals: I would be strongly against that. My comps were written, and I know I would never have been able to pass them had they been oral. The nerves would have killed me then; now, a few years later, with conference, interviews and teaching experience, that would have been ok. But using the comps to also test one's 'philosophy under fire' skills is a bit too much.
Anon @ 3:45:
What if the oral examinatin was generally understood not to test the "under fire" skills, but to test for appropriate depth and breadth-- so the exam was understood to be aimed at making sure the student knows an appropriately broad scope of things at an appropriate level of depth?
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