--- /dev/null
+The full text of William James's article *[[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20768][The Ph.D Octopus]]* which is
+conveniently enough in the public domain, and worth republishing.
+
+<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>
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