What Happened to the Biblical Generalist?
“There are benefits as well as problems with the modern educational model. On the problematic side, I think we suffer from the lack of biblical generalists in our day.”
Some good points. Part of the dilemma is that terminal degrees are always specializations and institutions of higher education always want people with terminal degrees. So generalists are either going ot have to earn multiple terminal degrees … or be unemployed, at least in academia.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Now given that we’ve got a lot of history that happens as we go, it’s not quite as bad as my title assumes, but back in college, it struck me that especially in the liberal arts and theology, there are only so many ways to get it right, but the Ph.D. generally requires you to get it anew. So if you always require something “new”, you’re creating the setting for a tremendous amount of nonsense to be the (h/T Aaron) qualification for getting a job.
You can probably avoid it to a degree, but that’s a scary thought to me.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Dallas, Clark Summit, and I think TMS still offer terminal degrees in Bible Exposition. Central dropped their PhD in exposition around 2004-2005.
Discussion