Editor's note: Recent reports warn that the country's universities may be graduating too many Ph.D.s. The seemingly obvious solution--reducing the size of programs--isn't always the best answer. This is the first in a two-part series on the topic that first ran in the UC Davis Magazine's spring edition. Colleges and universities across the country advertised a total of 885 job openings for English professors this fall, and though there were probably several times that many recent Ph.D. graduates who wanted one of those jobs, that number of openings is still good news. It's 28 percent higher than last year, reported the Modern Language Association, the field's professional organization. In contrast, the situation in 1997 was so dire that the MLA called on English departments to examine their programs and consider trimming enrollments if their students were failing to find the jobs for which they were trained. The recommendation was made in a report authored by UC Davis' own Professor Sandra Gilbert on behalf of a special commission; it noted that, in the first half of this decade, 55 percent of Ph.D. recipients in English and foreign languages failed to find a tenure-track job the year they graduated. And though 1998's increase in job openings offers a glimmer of hope, MLA Executive Director Phyllis Franklin cautions that "this is still a very tight job market." Indeed, across disciplines, the news for Ph.D. recipients has not been particularly good. The Association of American Universities, a group that represents 62 leading institutions, including UC Davis, acknowledged in October that an increasing number of Ph.D. recipients in all fields were having difficulty finding permanent employment in academia. This association also called for universities to take a closer look at their graduate programs and provided some guidelines for improvements. Likewise, the National Research Council examined employment in the life sciences. Predictions made just 10 years ago warned of an upcoming shortage of graduates in this area. On the contrary, the council noted in September, one study found more than a third of Ph.D. recipients in this field still had not found permanent employment in the sciences even five to six years after graduation. Meanwhile, American universities awarded a record number of doctorates in 1997-more than 42,000. Are these desperate times? Well, perhaps--or perhaps not. Just as the news in English is a mix of good and bad, other indicators point to some improvement in the situation: to a slowing of Ph.D. growth, robust employment of Ph.D.s in jobs outside of academia and better placement rates at the stronger institutions like UC Davis. Degree growth is slowing Though nationwide, according to the most recent figures available, the number of doctorates awarded in 1997 was an all-time high, the rate of growth is declining, with 1997's increase the smallest since 1985, up only 290 since 1996. Graduate enrollment declined in the last two years surveyed, 1996 and 1997, and the number of applications to graduate programs has dropped. While the number of newly minted Ph.D.s entering academia has been only a small percentage of those graduating, the overall unemployment rate of recent graduates has been consistently low: Only 2 percent of 1991-94 Ph.D. recipients were unemployed in 1995, the AAU report noted. The situation at UC Davis reflects these national trends. The number of graduate students enrolled has declined since 1992--from 2,937 then to 2,841 today. Employment rates, when jobs outside academia are included, are good. In the English department, for example--with 90 Ph.D. students, the campus's largest humanities graduate program--a recent census showed that more than 50 percent of its graduates found a job in academia on graduation, a rate slightly higher than the national average. The department reports that only a small percentage fails to find appropriate employment a year or two out. And then there are fields like engineering, where UC Davis has occasionally struggled to fill all its graduate student teaching assistantship positions as the high-tech boom gobbles up bachelor's-degree recipients before they can enter grad school. Recently the college was pleased to receive $1.5 million from the federal Department of Education to try to attract engineering students into graduate programs. Dean Alan Laub points out that those students who do pursue graduate degrees in engineering generally do not want to teach, preferring a job in industry. So amongst all these numbers, what's to be made of the state of affairs? First of all, that it's incredibly complex with many variables. The extent of the problem, and even whether there is one, varies from discipline to discipline. It varies from university to university. It depends on whether nonacademic career choices count as appropriate employment for people trained to do doctoral-level research. And what's not apparent from all these numbers is the fact that there really aren't enough of them--so it's difficult to pin down the problem with any exactitude. National figures are often based on surveys of a select number of institutions, or information is collected so broadly that it's of little help to individual institutions. Colleges and universities across the country lack mechanisms to systematically track their own Ph.D. graduates. At UC Davis, tracking is done only by individual departments and in ways that don't lend themselves to campuswide compilation. What is clear is that the situation warrants attention--and it's getting it at UC Davis. This year's Chancellor's Fall Conference, an annual event devoted to a significant topic in higher education, focused on graduate education. "We can't take graduate education for granted anymore," Dean of Graduate Studies Cristina González told conference participants. "We must bring it to the fore, decide what to do, and then do it." Imbalance dates to postwar boom "You have to remember," says González, "that the percentage of students obtaining faculty positions at research universities has always been very small. The number is something like only 3 percent to 5 percent of the total [teaching positions]." The growth in numbers of Ph.D. students began after World War II, fueled by the GI Bill, Cold War competition and increased federal funding for expanding doctoral programs. And although universities have never hired all the Ph.D.s they've produced, supply better matched demand until the 1970s, when the number of teaching positions began to decline just as Ph.D. production peaked. The past decade has also been a period of Ph.D. growth as the number of institutions offering the doctorate has increased and existing programs have grown. As biological sciences dean Mark McNamee points out, "It's very common for new graduate programs to be created over time. And it is uncommon for graduate programs to go away." The poor economy of the early '90s contributed to the problem. "In bad economic times, undergraduates complete college and don't know what to do--they don't have jobs," says González. "So, many decide they need a higher level of education and go to graduate school. If they finish when the economy is still bad, there are few jobs. And that's when people start talking about a glut." Students apply despite warnings Students, surprisingly, seem undeterred by an uncertain future. Applications for doctoral programs often remain high despite poor employment forecasts. The students come despite the warnings. Degree inflation may be part of it. For many, a bachelor's degree is no longer enough; they are seeking a more advanced credential. Often it's simply that students are drawn to Ph.D. study because of their strong interest in a field, says David Gilchrist, chair of the UC Davis Graduate Council, the group responsible for overseeing graduate programs on campus. "They are there because it is exciting." Melinda Milligan is one of those students. A UC Davis sociology student who finished her dissertation in December 1997, Milligan is entering her second year of the job search, looking for a faculty position at, preferably, a research university. When she entered the Ph.D. program after getting a bachelor's degree in political science, she was aware that finding a job would be difficult. "It just didn't bother me because that's what I wanted to do," she says. Her field is fairly specialized--the sociology of the built environment--which makes the job search even more challenging, but she remains confident. "I've been getting positive feedback [from prospective employers], I've made 'short lists,' so I know I'm doing something right. It's just that I've never been the exact person that they want because they generally have a specific interest and I haven't quite fit." Fewer tenure-track positions Of course, the problem isn't simply the result of an oversupply of Ph.D.s. It couldn't exist without a concomitant undersupply of jobs. And that's a hot topic. The population grows, undergraduate enrollments increase; don't we need more teachers? The number of tenure-track faculty has not increased as universities had hoped, says González. The MLA made prominent mention of that in its 1997 report. It notes that, as the cost of higher education has increased and as entitlement programs have taken increasingly larger slices of the public-funding pie, lawmakers have called for greater productivity on campuses and downsizing has been counseled. The result, the report contends, has been an increase in lower-paid, part-time faculty: "In 1970, 22 percent of [college and university] faculty nationwide consisted of part-timers, but in fact, as we assemble this report, the face of higher education has changed so drastically that part-timers constitute 40 percent of the faculty." Part-timers' plight This year members of the MLA--spurred on by its Graduate Student Caucus--passed a motion requiring the organization to collect and publish data on the salaries and working conditions of part-time faculty members. One member of the caucus and chair of the UC Davis Graduate Student Association, Sonja Streuber, bristles at the use of the word "oversupply" in connection with Ph.D. recipients. "There's been a lot of talk nationwide about the 'oversupply,' about the 'overproduction' of Ph.D.s. And coming from the humanities, of course, I look at how people phrase things," says Streuber. "We are really dealing with corporate rhetoric here, and that really disconcerts me." Linda Morris, professor and chair of the UC Davis English department, also points to the "corporatization" of universities as a contributor to the problem. As corporate downsizing sweeps the country, trustees and legislators exert pressure on university administrators to implement similar cost-cutting techniques, she says. She knows of other English department chairs who are allowed to hire only 49 percent-time instructors for positions not to exceed three years. The UC Davis English department does not impose similar restrictions; all lecturers are allowed to work full time if they so desire, with benefits. After six years, they must pass a review to continue. Still, says Morris, "these people all have Ph.D.s and all anticipated when they received those degrees that they would have a formal academic career and did not imagine themselves being lecturers. Even for the people who are most successful and have created for themselves a very good situation, there is underlying resentment."