| There are case studies to illustrate his argument in concrete terms - for example, the case of Frank Bourgin (Pages 12-14), who finally received his Ph. D. in a wheelchair at age 77, the case of George Grinelli (Pages 202-206), who had a long struggle to acquire his Ph. D. because he took an unpopular position, and the case of Bernice Grohskoph (Pages 207-209), who abandoned her Ph. D. studies after failing a Kafkaesque oral examination. Two of the case studies - the murder of his advisor by graduate student Theodore Streleski (Pages 194-200) and the murder of four of his colleagues by professor Valery Fabricant (Pages 114-129) could be considered as the tip of an iceberg of resentment with respect to the Ph. D. and the tenure traps respectively. However any one who makes such an argument is met by as much resistance as those who made the same argument with respect to the events of 11 September 2001. The academy remains unchanged with its twin towers still intact.
Cude recommends that the Ph.D. should not be the exclusive credential for university teaching. The M. A. and the Ph. D. degrees developed independently as credentials for teaching and doing research at the tertiary educational level. Over time, however, because of the relative prestige of research over teaching, of creating new knowledge over passing on old knowledge, the M. A. became subsumed under the Ph. D. as a sort of consolation prize. The author phrases this elegantly in terms of "teaching loads and research opportunities" (Page 95) and argues for the reinstatement of the M. A. and a corresponding respect for teaching.
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