Graduate Education in Classics: A Continuing Conversation....

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Does Graduate Education in Classics Need Reform?


Conclusions

Though no formal conclusions were reached, most of the discussion took place within certain parameters. It seems fair to conclude that most of the participants feel that classics as a discipline is in good intellectual health, even if its institutional health as measured by enrollments and so forth is mixed. It also seems that there exists more or less equal support for at least two sets of propositions that appear to be contrary and even mutually exclusive: e.g. that classics is inherently and has been historically the broadest of disciplines, indeed is better described as an interdisciplinary area study, but that classicists should concentrate on what they do best, namely, teach and study Greek and Latin while leaving the study of literature per se, political science per se, and so on to others; that more could be done to equip classics PhDs to succeed in the contemporary pedagogical environment, but that the PhD in classics must not retreat from its traditional focus on research. There was general agreement that the effort to explore these issues should continue.