
Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research - rglovejoy
http://chronicle.com/article/Diminishing-Returns-in/47107/
======
jsackmann
One of the many things I've read since I dropped out of a english lit PhD
program that I really, really, really wish I had read before I applied.

I know now that the information is there for students who ask the right
questions or correctly analyze their surroundings (particularly, the
professional activities of their professors), but it isn't front-and-center.

~~~
applicative
What did you learn from this? He doesn't seem to have any facts except that
ever more pages are published. He doesn't even bother to index the number of
articles and papers published in different decades by the number of profs,
which is certainly much higher now than in the 50's. Nor is there is no
argument that what is published is bad or worse than what came before. One
gets the impression that this is someone who is tired of his field and wants
into politics.

At the end he suggests that all the time they spend on publishing -- not
having proven that it is more than they spent in the 50's -- is somehow
alienating profs. from their students. In this case he has no temporal data,
only a dispiriting survey of the present, so his claim to "know" that the
(unproven) increased absorption in publication is the cause of an (unproven,
even undescribed) prof-student alienation is basically a lie.

He's probably right that what people write is no good; that would hold of most
of what is written, period.

I looked into it recently, thinking about another critique of the depraved
habits of 'academics', by which mostly humanities professors, and particularly
English profs seemed to be meant -- and found that the salaries of the entire
humanities faculty at the local big U. constituted slighly over 1% of the
budget. Much, much less than the sports program...

~~~
philwelch
Big university sports programs have positive ROI in the literal money sense.
Spending more money on a football coach or basketball recruiting makes more
money, not less, for the rest of the university.

It's like complaining that a university spends too much money on parking
enforcement or tuition collection. Or that an Indian tribe spends too much
money building casinos.

------
philwelch
The article is a critique of the increasingly navel-gazing direction literary
criticism has taken.

It would be a mistake to paint all the "humanities" with the same brush,
particularly philosophy (which is more like the wayward, less rigorous brother
of math than any of the other humanities) and history (which actually deals
with factual content). In fact, "the humanities" is probably a mistaken
grouping for these subjects, since they vary widely.

~~~
omouse
Mathematics isn't that rigorous, I think you've been misinformed.

 _history (which actually deals with factual content)_

Uh, not so much. Lots of documents and facts are missing and we have only
guesses to work with. Mind you, they're good or even great guesses, but there
are still some doubts.

~~~
philwelch
_Mathematics isn't that rigorous, I think you've been misinformed._

Compared to philosophy?

------
haasted
A link to this classic XKCD seems appropriate :

<http://xkcd.com/451/>

