The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education by Leonard Cassuto and Robert Weisbuch

Graduate school trains scholars to work at research universities, even though only a small fraction of them will ever gain a permanent position at one of these institutions. For most doctoral students in the humanities and allied fields, the jobs they are being trained for don’t exist. In their recent book, The New PhD, Leonard Cassuto and Robert Weisbuch seek to overturn conventional wisdom in a clarion call for student-centered, career-diverse graduate education. I sat down with the authors, one of whom was an influential figure in my own doctoral program, to hear their take on how to fix the problems of a PhD that “turns inward,” rather than one that “looks outside the walls of the university.”