Loleen Berdahl is a professor of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Jonathan Malloy is a professor of political science at Carleton University. Lisa Young is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. They are the authors of For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities.
In its April budget, the federal government finally increased the stipends for federally funded graduate and postdoctoral researchers, giving them their first boost in 20 years. This is welcome, as PhDs can now be better funded during their studies. But money alone won’t solve the long-term problem of underemployed PhD graduates, especially in the social sciences and humanities, or, as they’re often called, “the arts.” In a perverse way, the new funding could even make things worse.
A 2021 study by the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) documents that most arts PhDs want to be professors, but the jobs simply aren’t there. According to 2022 data from the University of Toronto, arguably the most prestigious university in the country, less than 60 per cent of its humanities and social-sciences PhDs since 2000 ended up working anywhere in postsecondary education; of those working in academia, many were working in administrative and part-time positions, rather than as tenured faculty. A 2022 study by the Canadian Historical Association found that only 10 per cent of Canada’s history PhD graduates since 2016 had found permanent academic jobs. The CCA also found that alternative career paths and destinations beyond academia “have not materialized” in the scope needed.
But Canada needs arts graduate education more than ever. The most difficult challenges of our time are human. Technology can lead to wonderful things, from life-saving vaccines to time-saving AI tools, but these also spur human fears and ethical challenges. The science behind climate change is irrefutable, yet responses to climate change are often inadequate because of human concerns and objections, whether they’re valid or not; the pursuit of racial diversity and Indigenous reconciliation is similarly hampered, and society has grown deeply polarized as Canadians agree on fewer and fewer things.
These challenges are often called “wicked problems” because they defy clear solutions and can’t be solved simply with more effort or money. But they might be solved with a human touch – which is what the arts disciplines are all about. Philosophy, history, sociology and other arts studies are devoted to exploring and unlocking human values and thinking, including how they often seem to defy logic, market forces or scientific facts. It’s why in French, they’re often termed sciences humaines.
We need these disciplines to advance our understanding of the human condition and contribute to solving the wicked problems of our time. Graduate-level arts education has the potential to marry societal challenges with advanced disciplinary training, including critical thinking, analysis and communication – work that is necessary for generating new perspectives and thinking that can capture people’s experiences and voices.
To tackle these social problems, we need the advanced thinking, analysis and innovative research found in arts graduate education. We need more arts graduate students – we’ve just been doing it wrong.
For decades, arts graduate education has primarily focused on producing more arts professors. While there’s been some effort in recent years to develop alternative career paths for arts graduate students, in most cases the curriculum still assumes academia is where students are headed, with anything else a lesser Plan B. And the underlying structures and funding frameworks of arts graduate programs are still built to turn out more academia-or-bust graduates. More students means more tuition-fee revenue and, typically, additional provincial funding dollars. More graduate students means more research activity, which is the crucial factor for improving a university’s prestige and its standing in international rankings. The reward structures of faculty careers remain geared toward research prowess: The more graduate research assistants and supervisions, the better, which in turn only incentivizes their students to seek academic careers of their own.
Any university that decides to discontinue its PhD program on the grounds that its students aren’t getting academic jobs will lose out; it will have less claim on resources, will drop in prestige internally and externally, and faculty will complain their research careers are falling behind. It would be more logical for programs to double down on what they are already doing by trying to boost their graduates’ chances in the academic job market.
Federalism makes this problem particularly acute. Provinces control universities and classroom education, but the federal government provides the vast majority of research funding. There’s often little connection. In the case of the recently increased doctoral scholarships, this means students can now better afford food and rent during their studies, thanks to Ottawa. But finding an academic job afterward depends on the provincial funding of universities, which is typically flat or declining.
System-level change would shift arts graduate degrees to a more deliberate model that focuses on Canada’s public-good needs, and is actually oriented around student skills and careers outside academia. There would still be a place for curiosity-based research – this is why students are applying for PhDs rather than MBAs in the first place – but the current system gives too little direction to students beyond academic career paths, and too often leads them down dead-end alleys and difficult work-force transitions.
What if universities offered a graduate degree in climate-change adaptation? In public opinion and deliberative democracy? An interdisciplinary doctorate in social sciences, targeted at mid-career individuals looking to upgrade their professional impact? There’s still value in traditional disciplinary degrees, but the focus should be on adapting them to what students actually need for career success, and what Canada needs to tackle its wicked problems.
Achieving this kind of change would require reforming underlying structures and funding. Arts departments need incentives for change that allows programs to experiment. Employers, who often lament that university graduates are lacking in the interpersonal soft skills that those in the arts can excel in, need to work with universities to co-ordinate efforts and create opportunities for arts graduate students.
Unfortunately, the cliché of the unemployed arts PhD isn’t going anywhere in the short term. But the reality is that, more than ever, Canada needs people to deeply explore the human condition and the wicked problems that it presents. That means there is a strong future for arts graduate education. Achieving it just requires change and imagination.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a 2021 study on the career aspirations of arts PhDs was conducted by the Canadian Council of Academies. It was conducted by the Council of Canadian Academies. This version has been updated.