A Quicker Ph.D.

To get a Ph.D. at Harvard in the humanities or the social sciences takes, on the average, seven and a half years. Many students would like to get the degree more quickly, but there are too many obstacles to sidestep. Some students teach more than they would like to because they need the money. Others cannot refuse a thesis advisor who asks his graduate student to spend "just one more year" as his teaching assistant. And everyone spends a great deal of time working and re-working his thesis because, as Dean Ford suggested, "perhaps we place too much emphasis on the thesis."

With the aid of a $4.4 million grant from the Ford Foundation, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is going to expand its program to award students a Ph.D. in four or five years, depending on the field. For the next three years, one out of every four entering graduate students in the humanities and social sciences will receive a Graduate Prize Fellowship -- a four or five-year grant which commits the student to a well-structured Ph.D. plan. He will be required to complete his oral examination by the end of his second year, and he will not be permitted to teach until his third year. The Graduate Prize Fellow may teach for at most two years, while some graduate students at Harvard feel compelled to be section men for as long as five years.

In exchange for this commitment, GSAS takes care of all the student's financial needs except those he can provide for with his two years of teaching. Since the student does not have to get his fellowship renewed annually, he need not feel pressured to attain especially high grades. A student holding an annual fellowship may lose it if he fails to obtain two A's and two B's.

The combination of long-range financial aid, reduced grade pressure, and a more structured plan of study make this type of Ph.D. reform an excellent idea. But the fact that the plan would work well for some does not mean that it would work well for all. There are some students who want an unstructured, perhaps even relaxed, graduate school career. Some like to teach sections for more than two years, and become very good at it and popular with undergraduates. While some structure is desirable, to attempt to give the Ph.D. program the rigidity of the M.D. or LL.B. is to ignore the distinction between the professional and the academic.

The Five-Year Plan is a fine innovation for those who want it. But a student should not be denied the option of taking one-year renewable fellowships and working at his own pace.