Volume XCIII, Number 19
University of Southern California
Monday, February 7, 1983
Humanities depts seek improved job prospects for postgraduates
By Annette Haddad
Assistant City Editor
Lanny Buettner could be considered the typical graduate student. He rides his bike everywhere and has no plans for buying a car; he supports himself by working as a teaching assistant; he opts to wear recycled jeans rather than the latest in designer fashions, and he carries the usual number of classes.
But Buettner is not like the majority of graduate students who attend the university. Buettner is in the minority because he is a graduate student in the humanities, and, unlike his peers in business administration and engineering, the chances of getting a job after he receives his doctorate next year in religious social ethics are very slim.
Since the 1970s, the trend in graduate school education has been attracting more business-minded students. As a result, enrollment in the humanities and social sciences has declined dramatically and so have the job prospects for those holding Ph.Ds.
As stated by a Time magazine survey last month, the number of doctoral degrees awarded in the humanities has dropped from 5,049 in 1972 to 3,745 in 1981. These national figures reflect a similar trend that is occurring at this university.
In the fall of 1982, there were 1,270 students in the 18 graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences. By comparison, there are close to 1,200 graduate students in just the master's program in business administration.
David Malone, acting dean of humanities, admits that humanities graduate programs are not attracting large numbers of students.
“There is a steady but diminished flow of students,” Malone said. “We need to keep the (graduate) programs alive.”
Malone added that though the job market for
Cardinal Gardens parking lot opens
humanities doctoral students may be limited, there is still a place for the humanities graduate in the business world.
“The highly trained people in the humanities have valuable skills for management." Malone said. “We are developing programs to prepare graduate students for careers in other fields. There continue to be places for the best and the brightest students.
“We give priority to (improving) the quality of education that will attract better graduate students,” he said.
But the low enrollment figures in the humanities and social sciences are not a reflection of the faculty quality in these departments. In a recent national survey published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the university ranks highly in the area of faculty’ improvement in some of the humanities programs.
Three graduate programs in the humanities and one in the social sciences were ranked in the top 10 of 106 universities. Linguistics was rated third as the most improved because of faculty quality; philosophy was tied with Syracuse University for second; and the English department was rated sixth in improvement. In the division of social sciences, economics was rated as the most improved graduate program of all college programs.
"The hard work of the former presidents is beginning to show,” Malone said.
Graduate students in the humanities and social sciences realize that these are not the best of times for scholars.
Lois Lorentzen, a doctoral candidate in religious social ethics who plans on a career as a college professor, said she is very much aware of the income potential and the limited job market in her field.
“It’s demoralizing and very discouraging. You have to examine very closely what you want,” she said. “You have to push harder, (and) the competition is very fierce. You hope that you’ll be that one out of 100 that makes it.
“I wouldn’t be happy in business,” she added. “I’d rather have a chance at happi-
By Steve De Salvo
Assistant City Editor
Residents of the Cardinal Gardens apartment complex will now be allowed to park their cars in a nearby university-owned lot that has been closed for the past two months.
City officials agreed Friday to temporarily suspend legal action which had prevented the university from operating the parking lot, clearing the way for students with parking permits to use it.
The parking lot, which is designed to hold about 75 cars, was ordered to close its gates two months ago because the city said it was located in a “restoration area” — a section of town that the city is trying to improve and preserve. In addition, the city’s zoning ordinance for the area prohibits the presence of parking lots.
The North University Park Community Association (NEPCA), a community-based group, had convinced City Councilman Robert Farrell to order the action.
When Dan Dunmoyer, president of the student senate, learned of the action two weeks ago, he contacted Farrell and asked him to reconsider the decision to close the lot.
“I explained to him there was a shortage of parking for the (Cardinal Gardens) residents, that they were either double parking or having to park a long distance away,” Dunmoyer said. “I told him I would hate to see somebody get raped or mugged just because a parking lot was closed down.
“I asked him to talk it over with (Anthony) Lazzaro (vice president of business affairs),” he added.
Last Friday afternoon, after having discussed the issue with Lazzaro, Farrell decided to allow the university to reopen the parking lot until after the 1984 Summer Olympics. The decision became official when the city attorney’s office temporarily suspended the legal action against the university.
Lazzaro said parking bars and striping, which had been ordered removed by the city, would have to be reinstalled before students could park in the lot.
“I expect that the Cardinal Gardens residents should be able to use the lot by Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday,” Lazzaro said.
ness than security.”
For some, the cost of a graduate education is a deterrent to choosing sheer academics over a marketable profession.
Time magazine reported that one out of every two graduate students is borrowing money from the Guaranteed Student Loan program. However, a majority of graduate students in the humanities and social sciences at the university are recipients of fellowships or get paid a salary for being teaching assistants to supplement the cost of tuition.
Malone said many humanities departments rely on their graduate students to teach the lower division requirement courses and to teach in the Freshmen Writing Program.
Some university graduate students have an optimistic view on the state of the humanities and social sciences graduate programs.
Paul Bohannan, dean of social sciences and communications, said he feels the trends in certain graduate programs are always changing.
“The number of social sciences students goes in cycles,” Bohannan said. “Pressures from the ecomony (help determine) subjects that are stylish.” Bohannan referred to
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AN ESTIMATED 150 Vietnamese gathered in front of Bovard Auditorium Sunday to voice their displeasure with Vietnam's ruling communist regime. See story page two.
First lessons at Vietnam conference
By Susan Shaw
Staff Writer
Sunday marked the opening of a four-day conference— "Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War.” Hosted by the university, it attracted many journalists and artists, who came to share not only their experiences in covering the war but also their sometimes divergent viewpoints.
The opening day provided an overview of the print and broadcast journalism experience in Vietnam.
Though this first day was largely a preface for discussions to follow, it is evident, from the various viewpoints of the panelists and the variety of people in attendance at Bovard Auditorium— Vietnam War veterans. South Vietnamese political groups — that the conference will indeed attract much discussion and debate.
A news conference was held at the Annenberg School of Communications. There, Harrison Salisbury, former editor and correspondent for the New York Times, when asked if the conference was not more "picking at old scabs,” replied, “What we want to accomplish is not just more talk about it, not just personal experiences, rather we want to take a penetrating look at what we actually did do, journalistically or militarily in Vietnam.”
His viewpoints were expressed by those who watched the conference. They spoke of a desire to get away from didactism, to get at the real lesson of Vietnam.
Joyce Rosenberg said she is attending the conference because, “I w'ant to knowT what wrent wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. There is,” Rosenberg said, “a parallel between Vietnam and El Salvador.”
Roger Rowe, a Vietnam veteran said that on his return to the U.S., he tried to forget about Vietnam, but has, because of increased media attention, become curious about the war. The conference, Row'e said, will give him an opportunity to "stand back and look at the war.” He said the war left him stigmatized and, because of the stigmatism, scarred.
Although many people at the conference expressed strong opinions about the war, overall, most felt a desire to come away with a new and fresh perspective on the war that claimed over 57,000 American lives.
Highly vocal in his desire for some new and interesting dialogue was David Douglas Duncan, a war photographer who was on the panel discussion of war photography held later in the day. “I just want them to get on with it. I want to hear something I haven’t heard of. I didn’t come all this way to hear what I already knew."
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