| Expectations in the humanities are totally unrealistic. The humanities are not sciences at all. They are concerned with values rather than with facts. By aping the sciences, they leave no place for values in a world of facts. We "Doctors of Philosophy" have long been embarrassed when hearing "Is there a doctor in the house?". The author argues that we should be equally embarrassed when hearing "Is there a philosopher in the house?". Since there is no concern with values in a fact-obsessed Ph. D., we are not "real" philosophers either. My own university boasts about providing "real education for the real world", and sends students out into the world fact-up and value-free. How then can they pursue idealistic ends (values) by realistic means (facts)?
The problem is not with courses but with the thesis. All but dissertation (ABD) is the consolation pseudo-degree of many candidates for the Ph. D. Since education is viewed as an outside-in process in which the student assimilates information from the professors and regurgitates it in the examinations, it is not surprising that they can deal with the courses which are a continuation of the outside-in system but can't deal with a thesis in which they are suddenly required to turn the process inside-out by generating novel research. Cude points to a surprising finding that GPA predicts success in course work but not in thesis completion (Page 39) and indicates later why this is no surprise - students are put into "a lock step of learning by rote during what ought to be their most creative period" (Page 285).
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