Accrediting Ph. D. Programs in History
After our exchanges about doctoral programs, I got to thinking a bit more about your suggestion that there should be some mechanism for accrediting them. I second the idea. Indeed, I have long wished that historians had followed the lead of professional schools and established accrediting entities akin to the AACSB or the ABA's committee on legal education. The findings of such bodies give professional schools enormous clout when it comes to leveraging money out of university budgets, state coordinating boards, or legislatures.That said, I do not regard accreditation as a sovereign remedy for the ills of graduate history education. It is is but one in a quiver of tools that could be handy in refitting how and where graduate students are trained, and by whom.
You argued that the AHA might assume that responsibility. As we both know that hoary institution is fearful of its collective shadow and shies off from controversy, which is why I suspect your idea fell into the tares almost the instant it proceeded from your keyboard. I don't know that the OAH or the SHA would be any more willing to take on the task.
Actually, if accrediting graduate history departments were ever to become a reality, there must be a stand alone body like AACSB. That is, an organization of member history departments that subscribe to an agreed set of standards of academic excellence. (See the AACSB standards.)Creating such a body presents a formidable challenge. Although not an impossible task, it is one that would take years, if not decades to bring to fruition. Even so, the time to open a discussion might now be propitious. I say that because departments verge on the huge generational shift imposed by the aging of the baby boomers and because we are at a point where, for the foreseeable future, departments are going to have to make due with less. Moreover, in so far as state universities are concerned, there is growing pressure on departments to demonstrate successful"outcomes" on the investment of public funds in their programs. Capitalizing on that push could give a powerful boost toward accreditation, which might well be sold to the feds, state legislatures, and boards of higher education as a neutral measure of quality control, &c.
Not the least of the obstacles to success is the matter of who would undertake it. I cannot see the so-called leaders of the profession stepping forward. There's nothing in it for them. Advocating for accreditation won't get them on the News Hour, CNN, or the op-ed page of the New York Times. Younger colleagues who involved themselves would likely be slapped down for"wasting" time that they should devote to gaining tenure, reputation, and such like. Old f**ts such as I have no platform from which to engage the larger universe of historians.
A way around such impedimenta might be to interest a foundation--say Carnegie--in exploring the feasibility of establishing an independent accrediting agency and how one might go about it. That approach would give the effort the weight of a respected player in higher education policy matters, so its report would command an immediate hearing. Of course, the key to involving such a foundation, I suppose, is who has enough of its ear to gain sufficient hearing and willingness to invest in such a project.
I suppose, too, one would have to recruit a core group of like-minded professors, from graduate departments great and small, public and private, who favor the creation of formal accreditation and who would speak out in its favor. I have no feel for who any such persons might be, if indeed such there are.
Perhaps the ideal of professional accreditation is one of those that sounds lovely in the abstract but will forever remain impossible to make real. I suspect the members of graduate history departments across the nation are just too fractious and too independent minded to see the advantages that you and I perceive.
I deliberately refrained from posting this to Cliopatria because I'm not certain that it adds a great deal to the discussion that your original salvo elicited. Besides, I wanted to run these rather unconnected thoughts by you before going public.
Many thanks to Warren for these thoughts. I hope that they help to move the discussion of graduate, and particularly doctoral, programs in history forward.