Late-Life Ph.D.’s

Here’s a story from the Chronicle of Higher Education by Political Science Professor Stan Katz from Princeton for all of our readers who engage in self-sabotage, thinking that you somehow can’t start down a new career path or degree program simply because of age. Think again.

We have posted Katz’ entire story here, because we think it’s that important (and because it may now be gated): 

My friend Michael Ebner of Lake Forest College recently sent me an article from The Chicago Tribune that relates the story of Mark Horowitz, who last week received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago at the age of 58. It seems that he has set something of a record for length of time as an ABD, since he began his graduate work in 1974 and passed his orals in 1976.

I may have known him, in fact, since I was teaching in the Law School and History Department at Chicago during those years, but I cannot remember him. Thirty-two years is a long time to work on a dissertation, even one on law and statecraft under Henry VII, the great Tudor king of England. Good for you, Dr. Horowitz.

But I doubt that Horowitz is the all-time record holder for longest (successful) ABD experience. When I was a graduate student in history in the late 1950s, I engaged a dissertation typist — and it occurs to me that only my oldest readers will have submitted mechanically typed dissertations! — an expert, confined to a wheelchair, who made his living typing Harvard dissertations. I can still remember one on the shelf over his machine — many inches of paper, entirely yellow at one end, and bleaching to white at the other. This was the dissertation in progress on Rufus King that I believe was begun in the 1930s by a man who was his lineal descendant. I received my degree in 1961, and my memory is that Mr. King actually finished his dissertation shortly thereafter. But the story has an ending less happy than that of Dr. Horowitz. King had apparently not kept up with modern historical scholarship and failed his dissertation defense. The Harvard history department was apparently not long on empathy in those days.

But a close friend (from Harvard College days), Charles Booth, has had a much happier experience. Charlie decided to take early retirement from a banking job (at which he had been brilliantly successful) in his late 50s, and asked me if I could arrange for him to audit history classes at Columbia, since he had realized that his deepest interest was in studying history. I encouraged him to be more ambitious, and to apply for a Ph.D. He was skeptical that any department would accept a graduate student his age, but in fact he was admitted to the New York University doctoral program in American history, specializing in diplomatic history. Along the way he had to learn how to use a computer, and to remind himself how to sit in lectures. But he perservered, and, under the direction of Marilyn Young, wrote a brilliant dissertation on the United States’ response to the Greek War of Independence (disclosure: I served on his dissertation committee). Charlie received his Ph.D. at the age of 71, I think he was at the time, a few years ago, the oldest person to receive a Ph.D. at NYU. Horowitz is, comparatively, a spring chicken.

These men give new meaning to the idea of “lifelong learning,” and I say bravo to all three of them!