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[clinton/website/site/unknownlamer.org.git] / William James - The PhD Octopus.muse

Thanks to the public domain I have republished the full text of
William James's article *[[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20768][The Ph.D Octopus]]*. It is a rather nice essay on
the over-reliance on academic accredation as a measure of intellectual
worth which I find is a particularly relevant issue today.

What makes this most interesting is that it was published in 1903 by a
man who was seeing our present-day culture form before his eyes. Ah!
What an exciting--or perhaps, terrifying--time the beginning of the
20th century must have been! All of the technological *progress* in our
time has been meaningless in contrast to our utter cultural
stagnation. Perhaps exciting times are here for us now; perhaps the
time has come to reverse--or transcend--the cultural *progress* of the
early 20th century.

* Full Text

<quote>
Some years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant
student of Philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by
literary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach
English Literature at a sister-institution of learning.  The governors
of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the
appointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled
upon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D. degree.
The man in question had been satisfied to work at Philosophy for her
own sweet (or bitter) sake, and had disdained to consider that an
academic bauble should be his reward.

His appointment had thus been made under a misunderstanding.  He was
not the proper man; and there was nothing to do but to inform him of
the fact.  It was notified to him by his new President that his
appointment must be revoked, or that a Harvard doctor's degree must
forthwith be procured.

Although it was already the spring of the year, our Subject, being a
man of spirit, took up the challenge, turned his back upon literature
(which in view of his approaching duties might have seemed his more
urgent concern) and spent the weeks that were left him, in writing a
metaphysical thesis and grinding his psychology, logic and history of
philosophy up again, so as to pass our formidable ordeals.

When the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it.
Brilliancy and originality by themselves won't save a thesis for the
doctorate; it must also exhibit a heavy technical apparatus of
learning; and this our candidate had neglected to bring to bear.  So,
telling him that he was temporarily rejected, we advised him to pad out
the thesis properly, and return with it next year, at the same time
informing his new President that this signified nothing as to his
merits, that he was of ultra Ph.D. quality, and one of the strongest
men with whom we had ever had to deal.

To our surprise we were given to understand in reply that the quality
*per se* of the man signified nothing in this connection, and that
three magical letters were the thing seriously required.  The College
had always gloried in a list of faculty members who bore the doctor's
title, and to make a gap in the galaxy, and admit a common fox without
a tail, would be a degradation impossible to be thought of.  We wrote
again, pointing out that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little
anyhow as to one's ability to teach literature; we sent separate
letters in which we outdid each other in eulogy of our candidate's
powers, for indeed they were great; and at last, *mirabile dictu*, our
eloquence prevailed.  He was allowed to retain his appointment
provisionally, on condition that one year later at the farthest his
miserably naked name should be prolonged by the sacred appendage the
lack of which had given so much trouble to all concerned.

Accordingly he came up here the following spring with an adequate
thesis (known since in print as a most brilliant contribution to
metaphysics), passed a first-rate examination, wiped out the stain, and
brought his college into proper relations with the world again.
Whether his teaching, during that first year, of English Literature was
made any the better by the impending examination in a different
subject, is a question which I will not try to solve.

I have related this incident at such length because it is so
characteristic of American academic conditions at the present day.
Graduate schools still are something of a novelty, and higher diplomas
something of a rarity.  The latter, therefore, carry a vague sense of
preciousness and honor, and have a particularly "up-to-date"
appearance, and it is no wonder if smaller institutions, unable to
attract professors already eminent, and forced usually to recruit their
faculties from the relatively young, should hope to compensate for the
obscurity of the names of their officers of instruction by the
abundance of decorative titles by which those names are followed on the
pages of the catalogues where they appear.  The dazzled reader of the
list, the parent or student, says to himself, "This must be a terribly
distinguished crowd,--their titles shine like the stars in the
firmament; Ph.D.'s, S.D.'s, and Litt.D.'s, bespangle the page as if
they were sprinkled over it from a pepper caster."

Human nature is once for all so childish that every reality becomes a
sham somewhere, and in the minds of Presidents and Trustees the Ph.D.
degree is in point of fact already looked upon as a mere advertising
resource, a manner of throwing dust in the Public's eyes.  "No
instructor who is not a Doctor" has become a maxim in the smaller
institutions which represent demand; and in each of the larger ones
which represent supply, the same belief in decorated scholarship
expresses itself in two antagonistic passions, one for multiplying as
much as possible the annual output of doctors, the other for raising
the standard of difficulty in passing, so that the Ph.D. of the special
institution shall carry a higher blaze of distinction than it does
elsewhere.  Thus we at Harvard are proud of the number of candidates
whom we reject, and of the inability of men who are not *distingues* in
intellect to pass our tests.

America is thus as a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things
in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable
unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which
bare personality will be a mark of outcast estate.  It seems to me high
time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye
upon this decidedly grotesque tendency.  Other nations suffer terribly
from the Mandarin disease.  Are we doomed to suffer like the rest?

Our higher degrees were instituted for the laudable purpose of
stimulating scholarship, especially in the form of "original research."
Experience has proved that great as the love of truth may be among men,
it can be made still greater by adventitious rewards.  The winning of a
diploma certifying mastery and marking a barrier successfully passed,
acts as a challenge to the ambitious; and if the diploma will help to
gain bread-winning positions also, its power as a stimulus to work is
tremendously increased.  So far, we are on innocent ground; it is well
for a country to have research in abundance, and our graduate schools
do but apply a normal psychological spur.  But the institutionizing on
a large scale of any natural combination of need and motive always
tends to run into technicality and to develop a tyrannical Machine with
unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption.  Observation of the
workings of our Harvard system for twenty years past has brought some
of these drawbacks home to my consciousness, and I should like to call
the attention of my readers to this disadvantageous aspect of the
picture, and to make a couple of remedial suggestions, if I may.

In the first place, it would seem that to stimulate study, and to
increase the *gelehrtes Publikum*, the class of highly educated men in
our country, is the only positive good, and consequently the sole
direct end at which our graduate schools, with their diploma-giving
powers, should aim.  If other results have developed they should be
deemed secondary incidents, and if not desirable in themselves, they
should be carefully guarded against.

To interfere with the free development of talent, to obstruct the
natural play of supply and demand in the teaching profession, to foster
academic snobbery by the prestige of certain privileged institutions,
to transfer accredited value from essential manhood to an outward
badge, to blight hopes and promote invidious sentiments, to divert the
attention of aspiring youth from direct dealings with truth to the
passing of examinations,--such consequences, if they exist, ought
surely to be regarded as drawbacks to the system, and an enlightened
public consciousness ought to be keenly alive to the importance of
reducing their amount.  Candidates themselves do seem to be keenly
conscious of some of these evils, but outside of their ranks or in the
general public no such consciousness, so far as I can see, exists; or
if it does exist, it fails to express itself aloud.  Schools, Colleges,
and Universities, appear enthusiastic over the entire system, just as
it stands, and unanimously applaud all its developments.

I beg the reader to consider some of the secondary evils which I have
enumerated.  First of all, is not our growing tendency to appoint no
instructors who are not also doctors an instance of pure sham?  Will
any one pretend for a moment that the doctor's degree is a guarantee
that its possessor will be successful as a teacher?  Notoriously his
moral, social and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him
for success in the class-room; and of these characteristics his
doctor's examination is unable to take any account whatever.  Certain
bare human beings will always be better candidates for a given place
than all the doctor-applicants on hand; and to exclude the former by a
rigid rule, and in the end to have to sift the latter by private
inquiry into their personal peculiarities among those who know them,
just as if they were not doctors at all, is to stultify one's own
procedure.  You may say that at least you guard against ignorance of
the subject by considering only the candidates who are doctors; but how
then about making doctors in one subject teach a different subject?
This happened in the instance by which I introduced this article, and
it happens daily and hourly in all our colleges?  The truth is that the
Doctor-Monopoly in teaching, which is becoming so rooted an American
custom, can show no serious grounds whatsoever for itself in reason.
As it actually prevails and grows in vogue among us, it is due to
childish motives exclusively.  In reality it is but a sham, a bauble, a
dodge, whereby to decorate the catalogues of schools and colleges.

Next, let us turn from the general promotion of a spirit of academic
snobbery to the particular damage done to individuals by the system.

There are plenty of individuals so well endowed by nature that they
pass with ease all the ordeals with which life confronts them.  Such
persons are born for professional success.  Examinations have no
terrors for them, and interfere in no way with their spiritual or
worldly interests.  There are others, not so gifted who nevertheless
rise to the challenge, get a stimulus from the difficulty, and become
doctors, not without some baleful nervous wear and tear and retardation
of their purely inner life, but on the whole successfully, and with
advantage.  These two classes form the natural Ph.D.'s for whom the
degree is legitimately instituted.  To be sure, the degree is of no
consequence one way or the other for the first sort of man, for in him
the personal worth obviously outshines the title.  To the second set of
persons, however, the doctor ordeal may contribute a touch of energy
and solidity of scholarship which otherwise they might have lacked, and
were our candidates all drawn from these classes, no oppression would
result from the institution.

But there is a third class of persons who are genuinely, and in the
most pathetic sense, the institution's victims.  For this type of
character the academic life may become, after a certain point, a
virulent poison.  Men without marked originality or native force, but
fond of truth and especially of books and study, ambitious of reward
and recognition, poor often, and needing a degree to get a teaching
position, weak in the eyes of their examiners,--among these we find the
veritable *chair a canon* of the wars of learning, the unfit in the
academic struggle for existence.  There are individuals of this sort
for whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly
aspiration.  Your private advice does not discourage them.  They will
fail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for
another ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life.  Or
else, if they are less heroic morally they will accept the failure as a
sentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men
thereafter.

We of the university faculties are responsible for deliberately
creating this new class of American social failures, and heavy is the
responsibility.  We advertise our "schools" and send out our
degree-requirements, knowing well that aspirants of all sorts will be
attracted, and at the same time we set a standard which intends to pass
no man who has not native intellectual distinction.  We know that there
is no test, however absurd, by which, if a title or decoration, a
public badge or mark, were to be won by it, some weakly suggestible or
hauntable persons would not feel challenged, and remain unhappy if they
went without it.  We dangle our three magic letters before the eyes of
these predestined victims, and they swarm to us like moths to an
electric light.  They come at a time when failure can no longer be
repaired easily and when the wounds it leaves are permanent; and we say
deliberately that mere work faithfully performed, as they perform it,
will not by itself save them, they must in addition put in evidence the
one thing they have not got, namely this quality of intellectual
distinction.  Occasionally, out of sheer human pity, we ignore our high
and mighty standard and pass them.  Usually, however, the standard, and
not the candidate, commands our fidelity.  The result is caprice,
majorities of one on the jury, and on the whole a confession that our
pretensions about the degree cannot be lived up to consistently.  Thus,
partiality in the favored cases; in the unfavored, blood on our hands;
and in both a bad conscience,--are the results of our administration.

The more widespread becomes the popular belief that our diplomas are
indispensable hall-marks to show the sterling metal of their holders,
the more widespread these corruptions will become.  We ought to look to
the future carefully, for it takes generations for a national custom,
once rooted, to be grown away from.  All the European countries are
seeking to diminish the check upon individual spontaneity which state
examinations with their tyrannous growth have brought in their train.
We have had to institute state examinations too; and it will perhaps be
fortunate if some day hereafter our descendants, comparing machine with
machine, do not sigh with regret for old times and American freedom,
and wish that the *regime* of the dear old bosses might be reinstalled,
with plain human nature, the glad hand and the marble heart, liking and
disliking, and man-to-man relations grown possible again.  Meanwhile,
whatever evolution our state-examinations are destined to undergo, our
universities at least should never cease to regard themselves as the
jealous custodians of personal and spiritual spontaneity.  They are
indeed its only organized and recognized custodians in America to-day.
They ought to guard against contributing to the increase of officialism
and snobbery and insincerity as against a pestilence; they ought to
keep truth and disinterested labor always in the foreground, treat
degrees as secondary incidents, and in season and out of season make it
plain that what they live for is to help men's souls, and not to
decorate their persons with diplomas.

There seem to be three obvious ways in which the increasing hold of the
Ph.D. Octopus upon American life can be kept in check.

The first way lies with the universities.  They can lower their
fantastic standards (which here at Harvard we are so proud of) and give
the doctorate as a matter of course, just as they give the bachelor's
degree, for a due amount of time spent in patient labor in a special
department of learning, whether the man be a brilliantly gifted
individual or not.  Surely native distinction needs no official stamp,
and should disdain to ask for one.  On the other hand, faithful labor,
however commonplace, and years devoted to a subject, always deserve to
be acknowledged and requited.

The second way lies with both the universities and colleges.  Let them
give up their unspeakably silly ambition to bespangle their lists of
officers with these doctorial titles.  Let them look more to substance
and less to vanity and sham.

The third way lies with the individual student, and with his personal
advisers in the faculties.  Every man of native power, who might take a
higher degree, and refuses to do so, because examinations interfere
with the free following out of his more immediate intellectual aims,
deserves well of his country, and in a rightly organized community,
would not be made to suffer for his independence.  With many men the
passing of these extraneous tests is a very grievous interference
indeed.  Private letters of recommendation from their instructors,
which in any event are ultimately needful, ought, in these cases,
completely to offset the lack of the breadwinning degree; and
instructors ought to be ready to advise students against it upon
occasion, and to pledge themselves to back them later personally, in
the market-struggle which they have to face.

It is indeed odd to see this love of titles--and such titles--growing
up in a country or which the recognition of individuality and bare
manhood have so long been supposed to be the very soul.  The
independence of the State, in which most of our colleges stand,
relieves us of those more odious forms of academic politics which
continental European countries present.  Anything like the elaborate
university machine of France, with its throttling influences upon
individuals is unknown here.  The spectacle of the "Rath" distinction
in its innumerable spheres and grades, with which all Germany is
crawling to-day, is displeasing to American eyes; and displeasing also
in some respects is the institution of knighthood in England, which,
aping as it does an aristocratic title, enables one's wife as well as
one's self so easily to dazzle the servants at the house of one's
friends.  But are we Americans ourselves destined after all to hunger
after similar vanities on an infinitely more contemptible scale?  And
is individuality with us also going to count for nothing unless stamped
and licensed and authenticated by some title-giving machine?  Let us
pray that our ancient national genius may long preserve vitality enough
to guard us from a future so unmanly and so unbeautiful!
</quote>