Since most professors and students did not notice the prospective drop in demand for college teachers, applications to and enrollments in doctoral programs did not begin to fall off until late in the decade. The basic question is this: How many will drop out? An estimate for current years beyond turns on the answer to a two-part question: How many new students will enter Ph.D. programs, and how many of them will complete the degree? Whatever the total numbers of Ph.D.'s, where will they come from: all schools, only the better schools, only the poorer schools?
Unlike questions about numbers of teaching positions, questions about numbers and characteristics of graduate students cannot be addressed by straightforward statistical projections.
Every year there will be many more humanities Ph.D.'s than there are career openings in college teaching, unless the proportions of first-year graduate enrollments and of graduate students completing the Ph.D. drop below any levels known since World War II. It appears that the "surplus" English, modern language, history, and philosophy Ph.D.'s could run well over 25,000. If so, the figure would actually be much larger, for many of the career openings would go to people without Ph.D.'s.
Although the birthrate can be said largely to determine college enrollments and enrollments in turn largely to determine openings in college teaching, numbers of B.A.'s merely contribute to setting an upper limit on numbers of first-year graduate students and numbers of first-year graduate students to setting an upper limit on Ph.D.'s. They are not controlling factors.
To guess how many B.A.'s will go on to graduate school and how many will complete Ph.D.'s; one has to make assumptions about attitudes and motives. If people pursue graduate training in the humanities primarily to prepare for careers as teachers, then evidence of poor job prospects in academia should shut off the flow fairly rapidly. If they enter graduate school primarily for other reasons but complete the Ph.D. chiefly to pursue employment in teaching, then graduate enrollments might remain high but fewer and fewer students will stay to earn their diplomas. On the other hand, if non-vocational motives are strong all the way through, then trends in numbers of both graduate students and Ph.D.'s might correspond only faintly to trends in the academic labor market. The mix of motives could also influence student choices of graduate schools.
A survey conducted sheds light about the graduate student population of the future. Half were men, half women. Three-quarters were in their twenties, and most of the rest were in their thirties. Half were single; half were or had been married. Not surprisingly, they had many academic honors. More than half had graduated cum laude or better. More than a third had held some kind of merit-based scholarship in college. Almost a quarter belonged to Phi Beta Kappa.
On the whole, however, they had not done much by way of extra-curricular activities. Only one out of eight or nine had been involved in student journalism, debate, dramatics, or music; fewer still had held any elective class office. These returns were consistent with the stereotype of graduate students as "grinds."
The majority of these students had not just floated from college to graduate school. Over half had interrupted their education for a year or more, usually between college and graduate school. For the most part, however, they had not been exploring possible careers.
Those who were interviewed during the survey told of clerking in stores, waiting on tables, or otherwise earning money in routine jobs not unlike those they had held in summers while in college. Most had thought of themselves as taking time off from school rather than trying out an occupation. They planned all along to enroll in graduate school and gave little thought to alternatives. In the survey, less than 1 in 6 even considered a professional school. Only about 1 in 20 thought seriously of going to work for government or entering business.
In a different survey of graduate students, three-quarters of doctoral candidates in the humanities were from families at or below the median-income level. One in five came from a working-class background. The percentages were higher than among students in professional schools, and, although nearly all said they were in graduate school for intellectual growth, 70% added that they wanted to increase earnings and almost half said that they wanted a prestigious job. These returns suggested a high proportion of students who expected a graduate degree to improve their social and economic status.
Only one-fifth described their families as below the middle-income level. Almost a third characterized their families as upper middle in income or even as rich. Since the questions were not the same, the returns are not perfectly comparable. Half of respondents put their families in the middle-income group, and some proportion would, if asked, have placed them below the median.
To be sure, the family income estimates are not comparable, and allowance has to be made for a general increase in numbers of college graduates old enough to be parents of graduate students. The two sets of data nevertheless suggest that the population of doctoral candidates in the humanities may have changed. The proportion who were upwardly mobile, either economically or socially, may have diminished as dark prospects in the academic job market began to be publicized. Comparisons also suggest a decrease in the proportion of students entering humanities graduate programs for reasons other than self-gratification.
When interviewed, many students spoke of deliberately forgoing material rewards. From one of a group of doctoral candidates at Georgetown came the comment, "Anyone in the room could accept a job that paid $90,000 a year, but by choosing philosophy we have taken ourselves out of competition for such high salaries."
The survey results can be interpreted as showing in themselves an increase in the proportion of students doing graduate work just because they enjoy it, for newly enrolled students put more emphasis on "knowledge for personal satisfaction" than did more advanced students, and they put significantly less emphasis on the use of the degree for a career in teaching.
Reinforcing such an impression are three disquieting pieces of evidence. The first is that, though numbers of new humanities graduate students have remained high, they have come from an applicant pool that has been rapidly drying up. The pool of talent became shallower.
The second piece of evidence shows that a large number of students were going for graduate study to institutions that were not as selective as the ones where they earned their B.As. One-third was in universities where SATs were low, one-third where they were average, and one-third where they were high. Many students, to be sure, may have been turned down by departments that already had strict limits on admissions.
One-quarter of those in the early years of graduate work said that they were pleased with their field of study but wished they were in a different institution. Even so, for a large number of humanities graduate students the move from college to graduate school involved a move to a less competitive environment.
The third piece of evidence indicates that, although the more recent crop of graduate students seems not to think much about levels of future earnings, they are very responsive to short-term financial incentives. A few students in the survey sample attended institutions where they had to pay their own way. Most, however, were subsidized by graduate assistantships or university fellowships. Only one in eight had used any savings or borrowed any money to underwrite his or her education.
Every student who was interviewed said that he or she would not stay in school if forced to borrow. Many indicated that they would not have come at all if they had not been sure that some form of university financial support would materialize no later than the second year. Quite a few testified that their choice of school had turned on the size of a fellowship offer.
Taken as a whole, survey and interview data and other pieces of evidence suggest that graduate enrollments in the humanities will remain at higher levels than would be the case if they were strictly responsive to conditions in the academic labor market.
