Dear Colleagues,
this article appeared in the November 2, 2007 issue of the US Chronicle of 
Higher Education. You may find it of interest and relevant to the debate in 
the UK about practice-based PhDs. Please respect their copyright.
best wishes, Sylvia Harvey


HOW EDUCATED MUST AN ARTIST BE?

By Daniel Grant



Job security is a relatively new concept in the ancient field of teaching 
art. Historically artists have created, and been judged on, their own 
credentials - that is, their art. And the master of fine-arts degree, often 
described as a "terminal degree," or the endpoint in an artist's formal 
education, has long been sufficient for artists seeking to teach at the 
college level. 
But significant change may be on the horizon, as increasing numbers of 
college and university administrators are urging artists to obtain doctoral 
degrees.

We shouldn't be surprised; the M.F.A. has been under attack for some time 
now. The M.F.A. has become a problem for many administrators, who are 
increasingly uncomfortable with different criteria for different faculty 
members. They understand the lengthy process required to earn a doctorate - 
of which the master's degree is only a small, preliminary part - and see 
hiring a Ph.D. over an M.F.A. as the difference between buying a fully 
loaded showroom automobile and a chassis. Administrators like the 
background Ph.D.'s have in research, publishing, and grant writing (though 
if their principal concern were the teaching of studio art to 
undergraduates, they wouldn't focus so much on the doctorate).

Holders of M.F.A.'s - often adjunct instructors or would-be instructors at 
universities - have noticed the trend, and many believe that their degree 
holds them back in a realm where advancement and larger salaries go to 
Ph.D.'s.

The most recent development in the
studio-doctorate trend is the creation of the new Institute for Doctoral 
Studies in the Visual Arts in Portland, Me., which offered its first 
classes this past May for a Ph.D. program in philosophy, aesthetics, and 
art theory. A studio M.F.A. is a prerequisite for admissions, and the 
institute's president claims that the program "will provide rigorous 
training that will help artists expand their studio practice." His aim is 
to turn artists into theoreticians of art, fully versed in critical theory 
and able to teach it at the college level, but still be practicing artists.

Other doctorate programs can be found at the University of Rochester, Ohio 
University, and Texas Tech University (though a large percentage of their 
students have performing, literary, or studio-art backgrounds). More may be 
on the way: 
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the California Institute of the 
Arts, and the Rhode Island School of Design are expected to be offering 
studio doctorates within the next several years.

Studio doctorate programs do have high-minded and practical aspects. They 
try to make artists better versed in critical theory, which would 
presumably be helpful for their art, and to help graduates get and keep 
university jobs. Another benefit of a doctoral degree, artists and 
university administrators say, is the ability to teach a wider variety of 
courses, such as classes in art theory and history, previously the province 
of art historians. However, the first goal has yet to be achieved - can 
anyone name a great Ph.D. artist of our time? - and the second merely 
indicates what is wrong in academe, which is that it elevates credentials 
over everything else.

And what of the students? Students by and large want their studio 
instructors to be working artists. In fact, art schools and university art 
departments promote their studio faculty members to prospective students in 
terms of those artist-teachers' presence in the art world, their 
commissions, or their work in the realm of nonprofit and for-profit 
galleries.

I am not opposed to artists who want to pursue doctoral programs in 
critical theory. My complaint is that, without a doctorate, professional 
artists are finding it increasingly difficult to get and keep a full-time 
job with benefits teaching B.F.A. and M.F.A. students.

M.F.A. and Ph.D. programs move in different directions. Earning an M.F.A. 
means spending another year or so in the studio, developing a body of work 
that, ideally, prepares students to enter the art market. The program is a 
timeout from the world of galleries and selling that helps graduates re-
enter that world more successfully after graduation. Doctoral programs, on 
the other hand, are research-based.

Pushing artists toward doctoral programs fundamentally changes their focus 
and goals. The Ph.D. says to the university, "I am committing myself to aca-
deme," whereas the M.F.A. primarily reflects a commitment to developing 
one's skills as an artist. Requiring studio artists to become researchers 
as well would diminish their ability to keep one foot in the exhibition 
world. Some might be able to do it all - teach studio art, research, 
publish, and exhibit - but not many. 
There are only so many hours in a day.

Devaluing the M.F.A. or making the doctorate the fine-art world's terminal 
degree is likely to drive away professional artists who have a lot to offer 
in terms of guidance and example. Having active, commercially viable 
artists working in colleges and universities is something that should be 
encouraged. Are we likely to have artists of high caliber employed at the 
college level if they are required to undergo an academic program that 
takes five or six years, rather than just one or two? Requiring a Ph.D. is 
also likely to drive artists away from art, as time spent working on the 
dissertation equals time away from the studio. Some artists may leave the 
field of fine arts entirely, becoming theoreticians, historians, and fine-
arts scholars instead of practitioners.

Inevitably, the years spent focused solely on theory will diminish other 
areas of instruction. 
The training of artists has already largely moved away from techniques and 
skills - how many artists now can mix their own paints or even know what is 
in the paints they buy? - and toward theory. Concept-based art is what a 
good many schools already encourage their students to create. The current 
training of artists barely maintains a delicate balance of studio practice 
and art history, criticism, and theory. Could such a balance be maintained 
with professors whose education is weighted so heavily on the side of 
theory? It hardly seems possible.

Another scenario is that the same type of instruction currently offered 
will continue to exist but will be provided by overqualified instructors. 
Aestheticians, rather than working artists, will teach basic drawing. 
Performing-arts faculties at some universities are already seeing plenty of 
this. (A friend of mine, a pianist who studied at the Juilliard School, 
Oberlin College, and the New England Conservatory, needed to obtain a Ph.D. 
in music to get a job as an adjunct teaching students at the University of 
Vermont how to play the piano.) Writers, too, are being told to get 
doctorates in order to teach college students. The M.F.A. in creative 
writing is losing its hold, as more and more writers seeking college-level 
teaching work are choosing doctoral programs that have a "creative 
dissertation" requirement.

The shift toward requiring Ph.D.'s is likely to be slow and uneven, as some 
institutions will balk at the trend while others jump in with both feet. 
But ultimately more graduate schools will have to create studio doctorate 
programs to meet the demand.

We are already on the slippery slope. Before we slide any farther, we 
should set out what is actually desired in the education of artists; what 
is the balance of manual, perceptual, and conceptual skills that artists 
need to have; and to what ends are those artists being trained. 
Judging artists on the basis of their academic credentials rather than of 
their art, and devising programs that lead them away from making art, is 
absurd and ahistorical. University departments of art history, the likely 
employers of this new hybrid group, should reconsider this focus on 
academic qualifications. Do we really want to turn the creation of art into 
a thing of the past?

Daniel Grant is a contributing editor for American Artist magazine and 
author of Selling Art Without Galleries: Toward Making a Living From Your 
Art (Allworth Press, 2006).


Copyright © 2007 by The Chronicle of Higher Education