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12/29/2022

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Alex Grzankowski

From 2013-2016 I worked at Texas Tech which has a terminal MA and (at the time anyway) a 2-2 teaching load. I think this might be just about ideal! The best MA students were excellent and went onto top PhD programs. Seminars were typically of high quality. And I always had teaching assistants to help with grading and discussion sections. MA students aren’t as much work as PhD students and you don’t build a relationship over many years but you still have mentoring opportunities. Writing a letter for a PhD app is much easier than writing one for the job market. And it isn’t heartbreaking to have a student complete an MA and decide to do something else - a 2 year commitment is nothing like what goes into a PhD often leading to terrible job prospects. There are various nice things about working with PhD students, but I’d highly recommend working at an MA only program.

In&Out

I don't know if we count as an R1 but there's certainly a lot of research going on, lots of PhDs in other disciplines, but only MA in philosophy. I'm also kinda new to this gig, so take it with some salt. Here are my observations so far:

- The publication expectation for us is on par to some, but not the very top, R1s, and is certainly higher than SLACs (judging from conversation with friends in those institutions). Stuff like venue and impact also matters more. In return, we also receive better research support than PUIs.

- MA students do occupy a somewhat odd space between very good undergrads and clueless junior colleagues. On the one hand, they are expected to treat philosophy as a full time job and carry themselves as professionals (etiquette-wise). This makes it easy to interact with them as if they're junior colleagues, kinda like how I interacted with junior grad students when I was ABD. On the other hand, they are sufficiently new to the profession that they expect a lot of intervention on core stuff like what AOS to pursue or whether they want to get a PhD at all. You can't always just take their words for it. (E.g., they'd say they're interested in metaphysics when you ask and it's easy to take their words for it because of how colleague-like they are. But that might just be that their undergrad was metaphysics-heavy and it's the only field they know. Part of the MA deal is that you're supposed to encourage them to explore.) I'm still struggling to balance when to accept who they are and when to push on it.

- MA students aren't around for very long. This means you kinda have to pick and choose your battles for what you think is the most important part for them to pick up in the 1 or 2 years that they're here. During my PhD years we had multi-year themed reading groups and writing camps. Those won't work so well here. Student-led events are also harder to come by. This is perhaps my biggest dissatisfaction as I was very active as a grad student organizer and was hoping to be able to mentor other organizers.

- On the other hand, since they're not around for that long, problematic behaviours are less likely to profoundly impact the overall culture. I have seen one or two problematic grad students ruin an entire department's culture for years. I have seen junior grad students being utterly screwed over by senior grad student. (Why didn't the faculty do anything? Because the faculty doesn't always know, and junior students don't always know that this sort of stuff is worth bringing to the attention of faculty. I'm not talking about assault here, but stuff like what is "worthy" philosophy and what's an appropriate attitude in a philosophical discussion.) MA programs have lower risk of that.

Peter van Elswyk

I was at UW-Milwaukee from 2018 until 2022. My experience was the same as Alex describes at Texas Tech. Highly recommended! R1s with PhDs typically offer more as institutions in terms of professional advancement, which is why I ultimately left, but a 2/2 at a terminal MA is nearly ideal from a teaching/advising perspective.

As far as teaching goes, be intentional about how it can contribute to their PhD applications. Their writing sample will usually be one of their term papers, for example, and so the topics you decide to cover will significantly influence what they write about. So if you cannot envision a student writing a successful sample on topic X, you probably shouldn’t teach on X. Similarly, many students will need practice writing philosophy. So requiring regular short essays can really help accelerate their development.

Carissa

I am TT at a R2 university with a philosophy MA program, and I have friends who teach at MA programs across the spectrum. Tenure standards have a range as well, but the lower end of standards are above the SLACs I’m aware of and below the R1 programs with PhD programs. I agree with the commenters above that from a teaching/advising perspective it’s pretty great, though I think it depends on the program how much advising goes on, how frequently you teach grad classes, and how active the grad community is. At some programs, especially those with lots of research money for the department and lots of TAing responsibilities for grad students, students are pretty connected into the life of the department (at the MA program I attended, it was an explicit expectation that students attend the weekly colloquium talks on fridays). At others, students are as involved as they want to be, which varies depending on how far they live away, what kinds of outside responsibilities they might have, and so on. In my current program, some faculty teach in the grad program nearly every year, and some only every 4-5 years,, with the expectation being that any faculty who wants to can expect to teach a grad class about every 3rd semester. I don’t know how much that varies, but I expect at some places it’s a bit more frequent (my current department is large for the number of grad classes we offer, since we are also a service department for the undergraduate core curriculum, none of which are huge survey classes, and we have a fair number of majors as well).

thanks!

OP here: these comments are so helpful, so thanks!

@Peter, Can you say more about what R1s with PhDs typically offer in terms of professional advancement that places with only MAs typically do not?

Peter van Elswyk

The advancement issue isn't tied to whether the department offers MAs or PhDs. It is tied to the institution. Many terminal MA programs at R1s or R2s are incidentally at non-flagship state schools (e.g. Texas Tech, UW-Milwaukee, Northern Illinois, Western Michigan, Georgia State). This impacts salary, research budget, and benefits (e.g. dependent tuition credit, leaves, insurance). Happy to answer more questions about my experience over email!

Anonymous Anon

I'd love to hear more specifics from folks about tenure standards. The SLACs I'm aware of require something like 6 papers (peer reviewed, invited, etc.) in decent places for tenure. When folks here say that their R2s require more than a SLAC, are we talking 10 papers? 12 (what I normally would think of as required for a "Leiterific" R1)? I'd love to apply for jobs with terminal MAs but want to make sure that I'm not setting myself up for unhappines if I were to actually get such a job.

Happy with temrinal MA

I'm at an R1 with a terminal MA and I love it for reasons mentioned above. I am happy to help student figure out when a philosophy PhD isn't for them with no stigma for leaving at the end of the program. I like that success for those staying in philosophy is as easy as getting into a good PhD program (not saying that is easy, but easier than getting a TT job). I think we get better students than we would if we were a PhD granting program, since these students are planning on going on to get fancy PhDs. Regarding tenure, our requirement is the 6 papers (maybe a couple more to be on the safe side).

Tenured SLAC

@ Anonymous Anon Your question about tenure standards is a good one but hard to answer. I am at a good SLAC and I would say 6 papers is on the high end. At a SLAC, teaching and student mentoring are prioritized, and with this comes the understanding that publishing a paper a year would be a nice target but difficult to hit. As well, at least where I am, the external letters in a candidate's file become especially important. At a small college, there will not likely be experts in your subfield in your department, and so the people ultimately making the tenure decision (after your department makes their recommendation) will often lean pretty heavily on what outside experts say about your work. I am not able to comment on expectations at an R1 or a terminal MA program. But I do hope it is helpful--though it can also be frustrating--to learn that getting to tenure can be difficult to quantify. People probably have very different advice than I can offer, but I think a key is always trying to have a pipeline of work that you are excited about, and not taking the inevitable setbacks too hard. Some of my most highly cited papers were desk rejected. It was very tempting to throw in the towel after the initial rejection but I am glad I stuck with it.

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