'Graduate education in the humanities': a response to William Pannapacker

• Published in: The journal of markets & morality Vol. 15; no. 2; p. 453
• Main Author: Baer, Marc
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Grand Rapids Acton Institute 22.09.2012; Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
• Subjects: Analysis; Debt; Departments; Economic theory; Graduate students; Graduate studies; Graduate work; Higher education; Humanities; Internships; Labor market; Student loans; Studies; Study and teaching; Teaching assistants; Universities and colleges; United States
• ISSN: 1098-1217

Let me begin by thanking my colleague Bill Pannapacker for raising a number of important issues. On several of these I stand in almost complete agreement. Yet his overly narrow focus on one set of factors leaves the student who is considering graduate school as merely homo economicus (in contrast to homo reciprocans). I will narrow the focus of my response to Bill's thought-provoking essay as to how a Christian student might begin elsewhere than the job market by asking, "Is a life lived just for the marketplace worth living?" I would instead urge our audience to think counterculturally in terms of a concept I have extracted from Dorothy Sayers's The Mind of the Maker: that humans were created by the Creator to create. The issues then become, "Where might I create?" and, "What might I create?" I will start by summarizing the issues Bill raises with which I agree and then move on to the potential problems I see arising from his argument. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]