For most of those who have devoted the better part of a decade to earning a PhD in the humanities, a doctoral degree and the experience of earning it holds a deep, inherent value. And yet, higher education struggles to articulate the nature of that value, often resorting to traditional economic notions of earnings and transferrable skills. In this session, we will explore the concept of value as it is defined within multiple disciplines and contexts to develop a study of humanistic inquiry and career diversity. Underlying this approach is Peter Bansel’s idea of “unbecoming academic” and the attendant question of how we define the value of an academic degree as we “unbecome” academics at work in the world.
This session also featured a podcast about the value of a humanities PhD:
We also did a video from the interview with Peter Bansel:
