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.