Man, Mungowitz knows me so well and trolls me so hard!
He pointed me to this Onionesque piece from the mighty Chronicle of Higher Education, requesting that journals please refrain from publishing papers written by grad students for (wait for it), THE GOOD OF THE GRAD STUDENTS!
I am not making this up. You gotta go
read this piece.
Here's how I responded to Mungo when he befouled my Facebook feed with this drivel:
"LOL, sure let's ban the one thing grad students can do to empower themselves and keep them dependent on our recommendations and the rank of the school they attend. It has the side benefit of reducing competition in the publishing market too. Genius!!!!"
The argument, if you can call it that, is that students spend too much time trying to publish and not enough on their dissertation so they end up staying in grad school "too long".
And the only solution that occurs to the petitioner is to ban student publications.
I expect my students to publish AND finish their dissertations in 5 years. Many do. I work with them to make journal articles and the dissertation be complements, not substitutes. This is a common practice in economics and a fairly obvious solution to the alleged problem haunting the author of the Chronicle piece.
I've had some late blooming students who could benefit from a 6th year in terms of bettering their job placement, but since they will get some type of job anyway, I leave that decision up to them. It's a pretty tough call and I try to respect their decisions whatever my own personal take may be.
