What PhD Really Stands For

To the Editors:

The case of Antoinette Charfauros McDaniel, the Oberlin Sociology professor dismissed for failing to complete her PhD thesis five years after she was hired, illustrates a dilemma described by Jacques Barzun fifty years ago in Teacher in America, which I first read as an Oberlin freshman in 1954.
In a chapter titled “The PhD Octopus,” Barzun points out that a doctoral degree is a demonstration of a person’s ability to perform academic research, not the ability to teach. Teaching and research, while both valuable, are distinct skills: a person can be good at one but not the other. (For a more modern example, consider John Nash, the subject of A Beautiful Mind — an excellent researcher but, by the book’s account, an abysmal teacher.)
Comparing a PhD to a “trade-union card” (whose purpose is not to assure quality of job performance, but to keep pay levels high by restricting competition) Professor Barzun argues forcefully for re-examination of the degree as a requirement for college-level teaching. He proposes a thought experiment: suppose in order to teach Mathematics or English Literature, a person were first required to demonstrate an ability to paint in oils. The predictable result would be wasted effort, aborted academic careers, the production of many mediocre (or worse) paintings, and no perceptible improvement in teaching quality. In fact, teaching quality would probably deteriorate as talented teachers left the profession in frustration. With tongue only half in cheek, Professor Barzun suggests that if a PhD is so important, perhaps we should simply confer the degree at birth, and be done with it. Professor Charfauros sounds like a typical victim of Barzun’s”octopus.” Given a one-year scholarship with a minimal teaching load (one seminar) and a specific directive to complete her degree, she could have made a “smart” career move by spending minimal attention on her students and cold-bloodedly concentrating on that goal. Apparently, she was too good a teacher for that: she “wasted” valuable time on her students. Although Professor Charfauros argues (with some justification) that her race and gender exacerbated her problem, the basic dilemma confronts many potential teachers, including black men, white women, and even white men. Perhaps, instead of treating this as a race or gender issue, or even as a tenure issue, we should follow Barzun’s suggestion and ask ourselves if the world really needs all those token oil paintings.

–George Hannauer
OC ’58