File this under 'things you never want to hear from faculty'.
With the new semester upon us, old issues with the department are quickly fading into the background as new ones fly in my face. We had our pre-semester department orientation a little over a week ago, during which we were all reminded about degree requirements, given teaching advice, and generally poked and prodded into admitting the semester was about to start. My department offers two different Ph.Ds: musicology and composition. Each program had a faculty representative at the orientation to answer questions specific to their specialty. In general, there were few questions from the musicologists; their faculty have worked hard to nail down degree guidelines, language requirements, and departmental expectations.
Then the composers started asking questions. After the first few "I don't know" answers from our faculty member, the musicologist representative (who also happens to be the director of graduate studies) began to look worried. After a few more, he jumped in and suggested that the composition faculty meet ASAP to actually solidify the program requirements. Our faculty member admitted to being sufficiently embarrassed on behalf of the composition faculty, and promised to take care of the situation.
The composition program has been in existence for about 7 years.
What terrified me the most was the fun reaction to the question of when the MA actually gets awarded along the path to the Ph.D. Both professors piped up at the same time, with two completely different answers: "at the end of the 2nd year" vs. "after comps in the third year". Hooray. No one in my program has ever gotten it before; they all came into the program with MAs and didn't care to have another one. I'm doubly interested in an answer to this question: I came straight from my BA, and I'm planning on leaving at the end of the second year and would prefer to do so with an MA in hand. Luckily, the faculty responded with an answer after only a few days: I'll get an MA at the end of the second year after my huge paper is (hopefully) approved by the faculty.
Our faculty rep was nice enough to meet with the composers after the orientation to see if we had any other questions he COULD answer, and to compile a list of what we all wanted to know. Unfortunately, the only answer he could really give us about all the fuzzy degree requirements was, "Well, we're a pretty young program, we've pretty much been making it up as we go along." I'll reiterate. Seven years this program has been around. If this were an undergraduate program, all of the requirements would have had to be nailed down before the major could even be offered, and the grandfather clause is in full effect should any changes be made during the program's evolution. Why are grad programs held to a lesser standard? The grandfather clause bit especially irks me, but I'll get to that next time.
So, if the faculty gets to make things up as they wish, does that mean I get to make up research, assignments, and excuses too?!
Great start to the year.
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