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16 | <h1>William James - The PhD Octopus</h1> |
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26 | <!-- Page published by Emacs Muse begins here --><p>Thanks to the public domain I have republished the full text of |
27 | William James's article <em><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20768">The Ph.D Octopus</a></em>. It is a rather nice essay on |
28 | the over-reliance on academic accredation as a measure of intellectual |
29 | worth which I find is a particularly relevant issue today.</p> |
30 | |
31 | <p>What makes this most interesting is that it was published in 1903 by a |
32 | man who was seeing our present-day culture form before his eyes. Ah! |
33 | What an exciting—or perhaps, terrifying—time the beginning of the |
34 | 20th century must have been! All of the technological <em>progress</em> in our |
35 | time has been meaningless in contrast to our utter cultural |
36 | stagnation. Perhaps exciting times are here for us now; perhaps the |
37 | time has come to reverse—or transcend—the cultural <em>progress</em> of the |
38 | early 20th century.</p> |
39 | |
40 | <h2><a name="sec1" id="sec1"></a> |
41 | Full Text</h2> |
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42 | |
43 | <blockquote> |
44 | <p class="quoted"> |
45 | Some years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant |
46 | student of Philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by |
47 | literary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach |
48 | English Literature at a sister-institution of learning. The governors |
49 | of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the |
50 | appointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled |
51 | upon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D. degree. |
52 | The man in question had been satisfied to work at Philosophy for her |
53 | own sweet (or bitter) sake, and had disdained to consider that an |
54 | academic bauble should be his reward.</p> |
55 | <p class="quoted">His appointment had thus been made under a misunderstanding. He was |
56 | not the proper man; and there was nothing to do but to inform him of |
57 | the fact. It was notified to him by his new President that his |
58 | appointment must be revoked, or that a Harvard doctor's degree must |
59 | forthwith be procured.</p> |
60 | <p class="quoted">Although it was already the spring of the year, our Subject, being a |
61 | man of spirit, took up the challenge, turned his back upon literature |
62 | (which in view of his approaching duties might have seemed his more |
63 | urgent concern) and spent the weeks that were left him, in writing a |
64 | metaphysical thesis and grinding his psychology, logic and history of |
65 | philosophy up again, so as to pass our formidable ordeals.</p> |
66 | <p class="quoted">When the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it. |
67 | Brilliancy and originality by themselves won't save a thesis for the |
68 | doctorate; it must also exhibit a heavy technical apparatus of |
69 | learning; and this our candidate had neglected to bring to bear. So, |
70 | telling him that he was temporarily rejected, we advised him to pad out |
71 | the thesis properly, and return with it next year, at the same time |
72 | informing his new President that this signified nothing as to his |
73 | merits, that he was of ultra Ph.D. quality, and one of the strongest |
74 | men with whom we had ever had to deal.</p> |
75 | <p class="quoted">To our surprise we were given to understand in reply that the quality |
76 | <em>per se</em> of the man signified nothing in this connection, and that |
77 | three magical letters were the thing seriously required. The College |
78 | had always gloried in a list of faculty members who bore the doctor's |
79 | title, and to make a gap in the galaxy, and admit a common fox without |
80 | a tail, would be a degradation impossible to be thought of. We wrote |
81 | again, pointing out that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little |
82 | anyhow as to one's ability to teach literature; we sent separate |
83 | letters in which we outdid each other in eulogy of our candidate's |
84 | powers, for indeed they were great; and at last, <em>mirabile dictu</em>, our |
85 | eloquence prevailed. He was allowed to retain his appointment |
86 | provisionally, on condition that one year later at the farthest his |
87 | miserably naked name should be prolonged by the sacred appendage the |
88 | lack of which had given so much trouble to all concerned.</p> |
89 | <p class="quoted">Accordingly he came up here the following spring with an adequate |
90 | thesis (known since in print as a most brilliant contribution to |
91 | metaphysics), passed a first-rate examination, wiped out the stain, and |
92 | brought his college into proper relations with the world again. |
93 | Whether his teaching, during that first year, of English Literature was |
94 | made any the better by the impending examination in a different |
95 | subject, is a question which I will not try to solve.</p> |
96 | <p class="quoted">I have related this incident at such length because it is so |
97 | characteristic of American academic conditions at the present day. |
98 | Graduate schools still are something of a novelty, and higher diplomas |
99 | something of a rarity. The latter, therefore, carry a vague sense of |
100 | preciousness and honor, and have a particularly "up-to-date" |
101 | appearance, and it is no wonder if smaller institutions, unable to |
102 | attract professors already eminent, and forced usually to recruit their |
103 | faculties from the relatively young, should hope to compensate for the |
104 | obscurity of the names of their officers of instruction by the |
105 | abundance of decorative titles by which those names are followed on the |
106 | pages of the catalogues where they appear. The dazzled reader of the |
107 | list, the parent or student, says to himself, "This must be a terribly |
108 | distinguished crowd,—their titles shine like the stars in the |
109 | firmament; Ph.D.'s, S.D.'s, and Litt.D.'s, bespangle the page as if |
110 | they were sprinkled over it from a pepper caster."</p> |
111 | <p class="quoted">Human nature is once for all so childish that every reality becomes a |
112 | sham somewhere, and in the minds of Presidents and Trustees the Ph.D. |
113 | degree is in point of fact already looked upon as a mere advertising |
114 | resource, a manner of throwing dust in the Public's eyes. "No |
115 | instructor who is not a Doctor" has become a maxim in the smaller |
116 | institutions which represent demand; and in each of the larger ones |
117 | which represent supply, the same belief in decorated scholarship |
118 | expresses itself in two antagonistic passions, one for multiplying as |
119 | much as possible the annual output of doctors, the other for raising |
120 | the standard of difficulty in passing, so that the Ph.D. of the special |
121 | institution shall carry a higher blaze of distinction than it does |
122 | elsewhere. Thus we at Harvard are proud of the number of candidates |
123 | whom we reject, and of the inability of men who are not <em>distingues</em> in |
124 | intellect to pass our tests.</p> |
125 | <p class="quoted">America is thus as a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things |
126 | in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable |
127 | unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which |
128 | bare personality will be a mark of outcast estate. It seems to me high |
129 | time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye |
130 | upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer terribly |
131 | from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest?</p> |
132 | <p class="quoted">Our higher degrees were instituted for the laudable purpose of |
133 | stimulating scholarship, especially in the form of "original research." |
134 | Experience has proved that great as the love of truth may be among men, |
135 | it can be made still greater by adventitious rewards. The winning of a |
136 | diploma certifying mastery and marking a barrier successfully passed, |
137 | acts as a challenge to the ambitious; and if the diploma will help to |
138 | gain bread-winning positions also, its power as a stimulus to work is |
139 | tremendously increased. So far, we are on innocent ground; it is well |
140 | for a country to have research in abundance, and our graduate schools |
141 | do but apply a normal psychological spur. But the institutionizing on |
142 | a large scale of any natural combination of need and motive always |
143 | tends to run into technicality and to develop a tyrannical Machine with |
144 | unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption. Observation of the |
145 | workings of our Harvard system for twenty years past has brought some |
146 | of these drawbacks home to my consciousness, and I should like to call |
147 | the attention of my readers to this disadvantageous aspect of the |
148 | picture, and to make a couple of remedial suggestions, if I may.</p> |
149 | <p class="quoted">In the first place, it would seem that to stimulate study, and to |
150 | increase the <em>gelehrtes Publikum</em>, the class of highly educated men in |
151 | our country, is the only positive good, and consequently the sole |
152 | direct end at which our graduate schools, with their diploma-giving |
153 | powers, should aim. If other results have developed they should be |
154 | deemed secondary incidents, and if not desirable in themselves, they |
155 | should be carefully guarded against.</p> |
156 | <p class="quoted">To interfere with the free development of talent, to obstruct the |
157 | natural play of supply and demand in the teaching profession, to foster |
158 | academic snobbery by the prestige of certain privileged institutions, |
159 | to transfer accredited value from essential manhood to an outward |
160 | badge, to blight hopes and promote invidious sentiments, to divert the |
161 | attention of aspiring youth from direct dealings with truth to the |
162 | passing of examinations,—such consequences, if they exist, ought |
163 | surely to be regarded as drawbacks to the system, and an enlightened |
164 | public consciousness ought to be keenly alive to the importance of |
165 | reducing their amount. Candidates themselves do seem to be keenly |
166 | conscious of some of these evils, but outside of their ranks or in the |
167 | general public no such consciousness, so far as I can see, exists; or |
168 | if it does exist, it fails to express itself aloud. Schools, Colleges, |
169 | and Universities, appear enthusiastic over the entire system, just as |
170 | it stands, and unanimously applaud all its developments.</p> |
171 | <p class="quoted">I beg the reader to consider some of the secondary evils which I have |
172 | enumerated. First of all, is not our growing tendency to appoint no |
173 | instructors who are not also doctors an instance of pure sham? Will |
174 | any one pretend for a moment that the doctor's degree is a guarantee |
175 | that its possessor will be successful as a teacher? Notoriously his |
176 | moral, social and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him |
177 | for success in the class-room; and of these characteristics his |
178 | doctor's examination is unable to take any account whatever. Certain |
179 | bare human beings will always be better candidates for a given place |
180 | than all the doctor-applicants on hand; and to exclude the former by a |
181 | rigid rule, and in the end to have to sift the latter by private |
182 | inquiry into their personal peculiarities among those who know them, |
183 | just as if they were not doctors at all, is to stultify one's own |
184 | procedure. You may say that at least you guard against ignorance of |
185 | the subject by considering only the candidates who are doctors; but how |
186 | then about making doctors in one subject teach a different subject? |
187 | This happened in the instance by which I introduced this article, and |
188 | it happens daily and hourly in all our colleges? The truth is that the |
189 | Doctor-Monopoly in teaching, which is becoming so rooted an American |
190 | custom, can show no serious grounds whatsoever for itself in reason. |
191 | As it actually prevails and grows in vogue among us, it is due to |
192 | childish motives exclusively. In reality it is but a sham, a bauble, a |
193 | dodge, whereby to decorate the catalogues of schools and colleges.</p> |
194 | <p class="quoted">Next, let us turn from the general promotion of a spirit of academic |
195 | snobbery to the particular damage done to individuals by the system.</p> |
196 | <p class="quoted">There are plenty of individuals so well endowed by nature that they |
197 | pass with ease all the ordeals with which life confronts them. Such |
198 | persons are born for professional success. Examinations have no |
199 | terrors for them, and interfere in no way with their spiritual or |
200 | worldly interests. There are others, not so gifted who nevertheless |
201 | rise to the challenge, get a stimulus from the difficulty, and become |
202 | doctors, not without some baleful nervous wear and tear and retardation |
203 | of their purely inner life, but on the whole successfully, and with |
204 | advantage. These two classes form the natural Ph.D.'s for whom the |
205 | degree is legitimately instituted. To be sure, the degree is of no |
206 | consequence one way or the other for the first sort of man, for in him |
207 | the personal worth obviously outshines the title. To the second set of |
208 | persons, however, the doctor ordeal may contribute a touch of energy |
209 | and solidity of scholarship which otherwise they might have lacked, and |
210 | were our candidates all drawn from these classes, no oppression would |
211 | result from the institution.</p> |
212 | <p class="quoted">But there is a third class of persons who are genuinely, and in the |
213 | most pathetic sense, the institution's victims. For this type of |
214 | character the academic life may become, after a certain point, a |
215 | virulent poison. Men without marked originality or native force, but |
216 | fond of truth and especially of books and study, ambitious of reward |
217 | and recognition, poor often, and needing a degree to get a teaching |
218 | position, weak in the eyes of their examiners,—among these we find the |
219 | veritable <em>chair a canon</em> of the wars of learning, the unfit in the |
220 | academic struggle for existence. There are individuals of this sort |
221 | for whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly |
222 | aspiration. Your private advice does not discourage them. They will |
223 | fail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for |
224 | another ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life. Or |
225 | else, if they are less heroic morally they will accept the failure as a |
226 | sentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men |
227 | thereafter.</p> |
228 | <p class="quoted">We of the university faculties are responsible for deliberately |
229 | creating this new class of American social failures, and heavy is the |
230 | responsibility. We advertise our "schools" and send out our |
231 | degree-requirements, knowing well that aspirants of all sorts will be |
232 | attracted, and at the same time we set a standard which intends to pass |
233 | no man who has not native intellectual distinction. We know that there |
234 | is no test, however absurd, by which, if a title or decoration, a |
235 | public badge or mark, were to be won by it, some weakly suggestible or |
236 | hauntable persons would not feel challenged, and remain unhappy if they |
237 | went without it. We dangle our three magic letters before the eyes of |
238 | these predestined victims, and they swarm to us like moths to an |
239 | electric light. They come at a time when failure can no longer be |
240 | repaired easily and when the wounds it leaves are permanent; and we say |
241 | deliberately that mere work faithfully performed, as they perform it, |
242 | will not by itself save them, they must in addition put in evidence the |
243 | one thing they have not got, namely this quality of intellectual |
244 | distinction. Occasionally, out of sheer human pity, we ignore our high |
245 | and mighty standard and pass them. Usually, however, the standard, and |
246 | not the candidate, commands our fidelity. The result is caprice, |
247 | majorities of one on the jury, and on the whole a confession that our |
248 | pretensions about the degree cannot be lived up to consistently. Thus, |
249 | partiality in the favored cases; in the unfavored, blood on our hands; |
250 | and in both a bad conscience,—are the results of our administration.</p> |
251 | <p class="quoted">The more widespread becomes the popular belief that our diplomas are |
252 | indispensable hall-marks to show the sterling metal of their holders, |
253 | the more widespread these corruptions will become. We ought to look to |
254 | the future carefully, for it takes generations for a national custom, |
255 | once rooted, to be grown away from. All the European countries are |
256 | seeking to diminish the check upon individual spontaneity which state |
257 | examinations with their tyrannous growth have brought in their train. |
258 | We have had to institute state examinations too; and it will perhaps be |
259 | fortunate if some day hereafter our descendants, comparing machine with |
260 | machine, do not sigh with regret for old times and American freedom, |
261 | and wish that the <em>regime</em> of the dear old bosses might be reinstalled, |
262 | with plain human nature, the glad hand and the marble heart, liking and |
263 | disliking, and man-to-man relations grown possible again. Meanwhile, |
264 | whatever evolution our state-examinations are destined to undergo, our |
265 | universities at least should never cease to regard themselves as the |
266 | jealous custodians of personal and spiritual spontaneity. They are |
267 | indeed its only organized and recognized custodians in America to-day. |
268 | They ought to guard against contributing to the increase of officialism |
269 | and snobbery and insincerity as against a pestilence; they ought to |
270 | keep truth and disinterested labor always in the foreground, treat |
271 | degrees as secondary incidents, and in season and out of season make it |
272 | plain that what they live for is to help men's souls, and not to |
273 | decorate their persons with diplomas.</p> |
274 | <p class="quoted">There seem to be three obvious ways in which the increasing hold of the |
275 | Ph.D. Octopus upon American life can be kept in check.</p> |
276 | <p class="quoted">The first way lies with the universities. They can lower their |
277 | fantastic standards (which here at Harvard we are so proud of) and give |
278 | the doctorate as a matter of course, just as they give the bachelor's |
279 | degree, for a due amount of time spent in patient labor in a special |
280 | department of learning, whether the man be a brilliantly gifted |
281 | individual or not. Surely native distinction needs no official stamp, |
282 | and should disdain to ask for one. On the other hand, faithful labor, |
283 | however commonplace, and years devoted to a subject, always deserve to |
284 | be acknowledged and requited.</p> |
285 | <p class="quoted">The second way lies with both the universities and colleges. Let them |
286 | give up their unspeakably silly ambition to bespangle their lists of |
287 | officers with these doctorial titles. Let them look more to substance |
288 | and less to vanity and sham.</p> |
289 | <p class="quoted">The third way lies with the individual student, and with his personal |
290 | advisers in the faculties. Every man of native power, who might take a |
291 | higher degree, and refuses to do so, because examinations interfere |
292 | with the free following out of his more immediate intellectual aims, |
293 | deserves well of his country, and in a rightly organized community, |
294 | would not be made to suffer for his independence. With many men the |
295 | passing of these extraneous tests is a very grievous interference |
296 | indeed. Private letters of recommendation from their instructors, |
297 | which in any event are ultimately needful, ought, in these cases, |
298 | completely to offset the lack of the breadwinning degree; and |
299 | instructors ought to be ready to advise students against it upon |
300 | occasion, and to pledge themselves to back them later personally, in |
301 | the market-struggle which they have to face.</p> |
302 | <p class="quoted">It is indeed odd to see this love of titles—and such titles—growing |
303 | up in a country or which the recognition of individuality and bare |
304 | manhood have so long been supposed to be the very soul. The |
305 | independence of the State, in which most of our colleges stand, |
306 | relieves us of those more odious forms of academic politics which |
307 | continental European countries present. Anything like the elaborate |
308 | university machine of France, with its throttling influences upon |
309 | individuals is unknown here. The spectacle of the "Rath" distinction |
310 | in its innumerable spheres and grades, with which all Germany is |
311 | crawling to-day, is displeasing to American eyes; and displeasing also |
312 | in some respects is the institution of knighthood in England, which, |
313 | aping as it does an aristocratic title, enables one's wife as well as |
314 | one's self so easily to dazzle the servants at the house of one's |
315 | friends. But are we Americans ourselves destined after all to hunger |
316 | after similar vanities on an infinitely more contemptible scale? And |
317 | is individuality with us also going to count for nothing unless stamped |
318 | and licensed and authenticated by some title-giving machine? Let us |
319 | pray that our ancient national genius may long preserve vitality enough |
320 | to guard us from a future so unmanly and so unbeautiful!</p> |
321 | |
322 | </blockquote> |
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