Before the U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education (Committee on Education and Labor), Presented by Laura Shanner, Graduate Student and Javitz Fellow, Georgetown University, on behalf of the Association of American Universities and the National Humanities Alliance
June 13, 1991
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee,
Thank you very much for your time. My name is Laura Shanner, and I am speaking to you today as a recipient of the Javits Fellowship and current graduate student in the humanities. It is a pleasure to testify before you today and to represent the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization of 58 research universities with preeminent programs of research and graduate and professional education, and the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) and its membership of seventy scholarly and professional associations, organizations of museums, libraries, historical societies, higher education, and state humanities councils, and others concerned with national humanities policies.
The Javits Fellowship has funded four of my five years of work at Georgetown University, where I am currently writing my doctoral dissertation in philosophy and medical ethics. My fifth year of work (calendar year 1990) was funded by a grant from the ITT Corporation, awarded through the Fulbright Scholarship competition, which allowed me to conduct my dissertation research on ethics and new reproductive technologies in Melbourne, Australia.
My testimony today will focus on three points: the strengths of the Javits Fellowship program; the importance of continued and increased support for graduate studies in the humanities; and some limitations of the current Javits program from the point of view of a recipient, with some suggestion for improving the program.
THE STRENGTHS OF THE JAVITS FELLOWSHIP
First of all, I owe an enormous and sincere thank you to the Congress and the Department of Education for funding and administering the Javits Fellowship. Without your support, I simply would not have been able to pursue my studies at Georgetown, and would almost certainly not have completed the amount of academic and practical work which has been integral to my program.
When I began my undergraduate studies at Knox College in Illinois, I intended to major in biology and pursue a career in medicine. Because Knox emphasizes a broad education in the liberal arts, I was immersed in the humanities in addition to the laboratory sciences. Although I enjoy the sciences and have published work done on an electron microscope, I discovered that the ethical problems in research and medical care are vitally important, enormously fascinating, and largely unresolved. These issues are better addressed, and my talents are better used, in the humanities than in the sciences.
To my knowledge, Georgetown has by far the best program in bioethics in the world. In addition to many staff members in the Philosophy Department, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and the Center for the Advanced Study of Ethics who focus on issues in applied ethics, Georgetown is the home of the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature, and the source of the international database, Bioethicsline. Washington also offers unique opportunities to observe top-level research at the National Institutes of Health and health policy in Congress. Although a number of universities offer fledgling programs in medical humanities, there simply is no other program of Georgetown's caliber.
Were it not for the Javits Fellowship, I would have had to forego studying at Georgetown University for financial reasons. The teaching fellowship offered by Georgetown was roughly half of the scholarship offered by my second-choice institution, Boston University. Financial responsibility was important, as I already owed $11,000 in Guaranteed Student Loans and approximately $6,000 to my parents for my undergraduate education. (Since my parents are retired and not wealthy, I am expected to repay my loans to them in the near future). These debts were incurred even with the one-year support of a National Merit Scholarship. I was therefore about to accept Boston's offer when I received notification that I had won the Javits Fellowship, and would be able to attend the school of my choice instead.
A multi-year grant is essential for all but the wealthiest students to consider graduate work as a reasonable option. It is a daunting proposal to forego regular income and work experience in the attempt to earn a graduate degree, and even more frightening to accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in loans. One must delay gratification in the present, and must often mortgage one's future, in order to conduct graduate study. A multi-year award makes it possible to commit oneself to the program and expect to complete it within a reasonable number of years. Four years of full-time study would be the minimum for a Ph.D. program, and five is often considered the norm.
In my case, as for many other students, it was essential that the grant was portable. Graduate students, or at least the best and the brightest of them, are quite unlike undergraduate students. Undergraduates often do not know what they want to be when they grow up, but attend college as the usual next step after high school. To forego a steady income and to assume the burden of years of further study, however, requires careful thinking and commitment upon the part of the graduate student. Undergraduate work in a field gives the successful graduate a good sense of the direction he or she intends to pursue; one does graduate work in a particular period of history, a specific type of philosophy, or a certain school of art, rather than generalized work in a field as was done during the undergraduate major.
The specificity of graduate interests means that certain universities will offer the ideal program for that student, even when their program overall may not be the best in the country. This was clearly the case for me: Georgetown has a good, but not yet stellar, reputation in general philosophy, but it is unparalleled in bioethics. Grants awarded to philosophy departments or to universities would likely have gone to more highly ranked programs, and I would not have been able to conduct my studies in the best available setting. If the goal is to support the work of the best qualified students, it is imperative that the program allow them to work in the department which best meets their needs and interests.
The Javits program currently supports a number of projects, some of them potentially controversial, in a broad range of disciplines. This is exactly as it should be. I am concerned, however, by the implications of the recent Supreme Court ruling in Rust v. Sullivan, which restricts discussion of abortion in family planning clinics which receive federal Title X funds, and the recent debates regarding the content of projects funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Although Rust v. Sullivan made a specific exception of governmental control of speech in federally supported universities, the breadth of this exception is not clear. Could Javits Fellows be restricted from pursuing such studies as Marxist theory, a philosophical defense of abortion, or other legitimate lines of inquiry which may run counter to the Administration's position? It should be made very clear in the reauthorizing legislation that Javits Fellowships are awarded on the basis of the student's talent and the academic merit of the propsed project, and not on political grounds. Criteria for appointing the selection committee members, and criteria for evaluating candidate's research proposals, should clearly protect academic integrity rather than political agendas.
The benefits, both direct and indirect, of the Javits Fellowship have been enormous. It has enabled me to focus my full attention on my studies and to complete my course work and qualifying exams faster than most students working on a teaching fellowship. It has also allowed me to spend many hours in clinical internships, which have been integral to my studies in bioethics. Finally, winning a prestigious national award creates a snowball effect for future good fortune; I am convinced that having received the Javits made me a stronger candidate in the national competition for the Fulbright/ITT Scholarship, and it is a significant asset on my curriculum vitae as I begin my job search. With the loss of the Mellon Fellowship, the Javits remains the last and only national competition in the Humanities, and its influence on its recipients' careers should increase significantly.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HUMANITIES
As a bioethicist, I recognize that continued and increased attention to the humanities is fundamental to the well-being of individuals, to our nation, and to human beings generally. This benefit is often not immediately obvious; it seems that philosophers, historians, writers and artists have little to offer to a market economy. With the exception of the entertainment value of literature or the decorative arts, we make no widgets to sell, we command little power, and we broker very little money. Our society is technologically oriented, and has little concern for those perceived to dwell in an ivory tower. Thus the natural sciences receive the greatest prestige and support, the economic and political sciences are ranked second in importance, and the humanities are often seen as expendable luxuries or even a waste of time.
The work of the humanities, however, is vital. People like me study what it means to be a human being in the world -- literally, the HUMAN-ities. Literature and the arts give expression to the complex experience of being human: our hopes and fears, our joys and grief, our vision of the good life and the agony of torture or abandonment. We are unable to communicate without languages, and are unable to think coherently without the discipline of philosophy. History is necessary to help us escape a confusing existence in an eternal "now"; we have no past without an understanding of history, and thus little sense of the future. We become disconnected, frustrated people without a sense of our human nature and historical context. The natural and political sciences simply do not, and perhaps cannot, capture the meaning of being human.
The humanities provide the starting point for any human pursuit, including politics and science. What is the purpose of the technology we develop? Is "progress" simply anything that is different from what we have known in the past, or is there some goal which we are striving to attain? What is it that human beings need and want? How would these needs and desires best be met in the structure of a state or government? Work in the natural and political sciences is a waste of time without some prior understanding of what it means to be human, and what goals are to be achieved by one's work.
It would be bad enough if scientists and social leaders were simply ineffective when they lack the insights of the humanities. What happens more often is that, because of a narrow focus on a problem without a broader consideration of the problem's context, people get hurt by the actions taken. Interestingly enough, the humanities are necessary even to recognize a disaster for what it is, and to warn when one is imminent. History reveals patterns of human behavior and the mistakes we often make; as the plaque at Auschwitz warns, those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Philosophers can challenge the assumptions behind a program or project, and attempt to reason through the implications of possible results. Artists give eloquent expression to the suffering of those who are, or who might be, affected by a decision. No action exists in a vacuum; everything we do affects human beings in some way, and we are dangerously mistaken if we ignore the human element of any pursuit. Without the humanities to guide us, we may very well forget what it means to be human. Human living may then cease to be worthwhile, or worse, may cease to be possible.
Our technological society is fascinated by the magic of science, inebriated at times by our feeling of mastery over our environment, and all too often short-sighted in our evaluation of benefits and harms. Bioethics focuses on injury caused to people by overzealous applications of technology -- the trampling of human rights in Nazi experimentation, the nightmare of a patient ready to die but kept alive on ventilators, and the absurdity of using expensive and invasive technology to remedy injuries which could have been prevented by simpler and cheaper means. Our nation must wrestle with long-range problems, including our responsibility to maintain a humane and healthy society for future generations, our accountability to people of other nations as we use more than our fair share of limited resources, and the threat to our own survival through environmental damage. I believe it is impossible to work in pure or applied science without raising serious ethical concerns, and yet the sciences do not teach the skills needed to resolve these dilemmas.
Similar problems arise in politics and social sciences, which are often perceived to be of intermediate importance between the sciences and the humanities. No one can deny the value of understanding social and economic structures, or the importance of organizing a society so that it functions smoothly. These activities are impossible, however, without prior philosophical grounding in the nature of freedom and justice, the legitimacy of power, and the human needs and desires to be met through the social order. Governments cannot reach their goals unless the leaders first have a clear sense of the goals to be achieved. It is also unfortunately common for political leaders to wreak havoc for the people who live under them. How can people who successfully achieve and maintain power be persuaded that some expedient actions are unacceptable? It would seem that the humanities offer the only way to express the suffering of the oppressed, the reasoning to identify unjustified authority, and the history to verify the dangers of careless leadership or unchecked tyranny. The humanities allow people to step away from the pursuit of knowledge or power to ask why we are pursuing it, and what we hope to gain from it.
The need for exposure to the humanities and the skills they develop extends beyond the need for a few experts to act as gadflies in society. Every person asks basic questions about the meaning of life, whether we are alone in the world, and what can give us hope and strength when living is hard. The arts express these thoughts, philosophy and theology search for answers, and history provides the comfort of perspective. Furthermore, every person, and especially every citizen in a democracy, needs the skills of careful reasoning and of viewing actions in a broad context in order to make good daily decisions and to vote for good leaders. We are all at risk for injury through environmental devastation, medical mismanagement, war, and social collapse. The ability to think clearly about needs, goals, and the adequacy of proposed policies is hardly a luxury; it is a necessity for every person.
We do need some experts to act as resources, to focus on difficult issues that most people would not have the time or inclination to pursue, and to serve as teachers for the rest of our society. The best and the brightest minds should be recruited to fill these roles, as they are essential to the well-being of our society and ourselves. The Javits Fellowship is one of the very few programs which encourages clear-thinking people to apply their talents toward the study of the humanities for the betterment of society. For this reason, the Javits program should most certainly be continued. Because of the important role the humanities play in our lives, I believe the Congress ought to take a stronger position in supporting the study of the humanities, both financially and symbolically. Expanding the Javits Fellowship program, and providing greater publicity and visibility for the program, would be a good start.
LIMITATIONS OF THE JAVITS FELLOWSHIP
As a beneficiary of the Javits program, I feel somewhat ungrateful in suggesting that there are limitations to the program and room for improvement. As a student, however, I am sometimes painfully aware of the difficulties and sacrifices which interfere with my studies, and am often frustrated by my inability to change the situation. I am committed to the belief that the Javits Fellowship serves an invaluable role in promoting graduate work in the humanities, and that it enables some of the most able students to develop their talents for the benefit of society. I therefore offer my observations, experiences and suggestions in the hope that future generations of students will profit even more than I have from the generosity of the program.
My primary frustration with the Javits program has resulted from the combination of limiting the amount of the award to a calculation of the student's financial need, and the restriction on outside work or income opportunities. On the face of it, such a program would seem to meet the goals of allowing talented students to work on their graduate degrees without distraction, while avoiding spending public funds unnecessarily. Unfortunately, this structure also traps the student in an inadequate income bracket, with no options for meeting legitimate needs. As adults who have foregone full-time employment in order to pursue graduate work, we find such an arrangement frustrating and often counter-productive.
First of all, the calculations from the financial aid offices are generally spartan. The estimate of need for a single person allows living in a dormitory or shared accommodation, one or two round-trip visits out of state, and food, utilities, and book expenses within a rather strict budget. In my case, the Javits awards based on financial aid estimates of need were as follows:
1986-87: $7,240; 1987-88: $7,878; 1988-89: $9,500.
Fall 1989/Spring 1991: $10,000
For comparison, Georgetown University's estimated expenses for the 1991-1992 school year:
Room and Board: $7,000; Books and supplies: $625; Personal expenses: $2,400; Travel - local and interstate: $975
TOTAL: $11,000
There is no recognition in the Financial Aid calculations of the reasonable needs of people in their 20's and 30's to acquire assets for their own and their children's futures (IRA's, college savings funds, down-payments for property, etc.), or even to acknowledge that living like a college student becomes increasingly unpleasant with age and accumulated years of such experience. It is frightening to realize that I am 27 years old with a debt of $22,000 (and mounting), with no savings and few assets, and with little chance of earning a high salary as a humanities professor. It is also frustrating to realize that I could have completed law or medical school by now and be looking forward to a relatively high income for the rest of my career, that I could have earned a full-time salary and benefits for the past five years, or that I would even have earned more money working at McDonald's or receiving unemployment compensation. If the goal of a program such as the Javits is to encourage qualified people to pure study in the humanities, it must make this career choice an attractive option, and it should ensure that such a decision does not jeopardize the scholar's long-term financial health.
Although likely an unforeseen and unintended result, the tax code revisions of 1986 have been devastating to students, and I think quite unfair to them. I recognize that revising the tax code is beyond the scope of this committee's jurisdiction, but you may ameliorate the effects of the tax bite for students on the Javits program. (I encourage you also to raise the issue of student taxation in other appropriate committees in Congress). Before 1986, scholarships and fellowships were not considered taxable income; my first year of Javits support in 1986 was tax-free under the grandfather clause. The remaining years have been taxed, however, which in the District of Columbia results in a net loss of approximately 19% of each paycheck. The estimates of need from the financial aid office, however, do not take into account that scholarship or fellowship funds will be taxed. The result for the student is that the actual support received will fall far below the estimated basic needs calculated by the university, and the Javits program prohibits outside income to make up the shortfall.
An example of the taxation's effect in my experience is as follows: In 1988-89, Georgetown University estimated my financial need as $9,500 for the school year, to be paid at the rate of $1,055/month. The Javits Fellowship disbursed a check in the amount of $9,500 to meet this calculated need, and because the need estimate had been met, I did not qualify for Guaranteed Student Loans or other funding assistance. After taxes, however, my take-home pay was $855.65 - significantly below the estimated cost of living. I was prohibited from working to earn the remaining $200/month needed to meet regular expenses, and clearly had no room to budget for luxuries or emergencies.
To make matters even worse, the expenses of being a full-time student are to my knowledge not tax-deductible as business expenses. A professor is able to deduct journal subscriptions, travel to conferences, books, computer supplies, moving expenses to accept a job in another city, and even some utilities if the home is used as an office. As a student, however, one may not deduct travel between one's family home and the university, supplies such as books, journals and computers, or the costs of an in-home office (which, since universities generally do not supply offices to graduate students, is the only place we can work). If a Fellowship is perceived as income for the work of being a student, and is taxed as earned income, then it is unfair not to allow deductions for the expenses such a job entails.
The financial limitations of the award have resulted in my being unable to receive regular chiropractic care for chronic back pain, and I have had to work with a toothache for 8 months because my budget did not allow a dental appointment. Other medical necessities which are not covered by my student health insurance, such as prescription drugs and co-payments, mean that medical care must be foregone or paid with borrowed money. I find it hard to believe that relief for pinched nerves, damaged fillings and ear infections should be considered a luxury, and yet it is. It is quite difficult to concentrate on one's research while distracted by pain, making the limitations of support ultimately counter-productive. There should be room in one's budget to remedy unexpected problems which interfere with the work being supported.
There are further aspects of graduate study which are essential to the student's professional development, but which are luxuries far beyond the scope of the current award structure. Talented students and professionals-in-training are expected to participate in the professional discourse of their field. This participation requires membership in professional organizations (in my case, the American Philosophical Association and the Society for Health and Human Values); subscriptions to scholarly journals; and attendance at professional conferences. There simply is no room in the budget for membership fees, journals, or travel and registration fees for conferences to present papers or to hear the most recent work in one's field. Even when a $300 conference registration fee is discounted to a $50 student rate, the budget rarely allows the extra $50 to be spent.
Further, the Javits program does not offer extra funding for summer work, which I have undertaken at my own expense ($850 tuition for a summer French language class, required to pass the language requirement of my program), and at loss of summer employment income (due to clinical internships in New York and Norfolk, Virginia during the summer of 1988). The only mechanism to pay for such opportunities is to borrow money; my debt to my parents has soared to $1 1,000 because of uncompensated graduate school expenses. Finally, much high-level research requires travel to libraries and archives for materials unavailable at one's institution, or to interview people with information integral to one's thesis. The expenses of travel and lodging again stress the limited budget beyond the breaking point. The only options seem to be to do incomplete work because of financial limitations, or to incur significant debt in the attempt to do the best work possible.
It seems truly counter-productive to limit the options of the best qualified students to save perhaps a few thousand dollars per year. I wonder, in fact, whether enough money is saved by calculating financial need for each student to pay for the bureaucratic costs of conducting such an evaluation. If the savings are not significant, then it is a waste of taxpayer's money to pay for bureaucratic analysis rather than to fund the students who are the intended recipients of the support: It might be reasonable to consider a one-time financial analysis during the first year of the student's support, in order to prevent providing federal funding to independently wealthy students. The vast majority of us, however, are struggling just to make our monthly payments, have accumulated debt from our undergraduate work, and have very few assets to use in the pursuit of our academic degrees. You will fail to meet your goal of enticing talented people into the field if you do not provide adequate support during the long yes of study. All but the most passionate, or perhaps most masochistic, of potential humanities students will choose more reasonable and financially rewarding careers.
Finally, the restriction on outside income prevents the student from accepting teaching positions, which are important for career development. The main employment option for humanities scholars is teaching, with academic research. Competition for these positions is intense, and evidence of teaching ability is often a requirement to win an interview. If a Javits Fellow is unable to accept part-time teaching positions during the graduate program, the student may well complete the academic portions of the degree quickly, but may not be qualified to teach a course at the university level. It is unfair to the students to allow them to gain teaching experience only if they are not compensated for their work (as I have done at Georgetown University Medical School), and it is counter-productive to the student's career not to allow them to teach at all. For both financial and professional reasons, I strongly suggest that the restriction on outside income be lifted, or at least be lifted for work related to the studs and professional preparation of the Fellow.
There are a few other administrative complications of the Javits program which have caused some measure of frustration for me, which would not be difficult to improve. Some of these include the following:
First, the program needs greater publicity and visibility in both the undergraduate and graduate settings. I received the application only because the Dean at Knox College happened to see me and pass along the application packet just before our winter break. No one on the campus had heard of the program or recognized the level of competition it entailed, and in my experience it still has little name recognition compared to the Mellon Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, National Science Foundation Fellowship, etc. As the sole remaining Fellowship for graduate studies in the humanities, it deserves to be recognized by the general public as the premier opportunity that it is.
Notification of awards must also be made earlier in the year. As I described above, I very nearly signed a commitment letter to attend Boston University before receiving notification about the Javits Fellowship, which was dated May 6, 1986. A student is under a deadline to accept and reject various offers from graduate schools, and must have as much information available as early as possible in order to make a reasonable decision. (The usual acceptance deadline is April 15, but I received an extension from Georgetown and Boston due to Boston's offer of a special scholarship). It would have been a heartbreaking, career-altering mistake if I had in fact committed myself to attending the wrong school before I received my notification.
It would also be helpful if the stipend were given directly to the student in a lump sum, rather than allowing the university the option of funneling it through the payroll system. In my case, Georgetown's financial bureaucracy caused enormous frustration and numerous financial crises. My fellowship was misdirected each of the five times they had to process it; delays of the first month's stipend ranged from two weeks to two months. As expenses are greatest at the beginning of a semester, a delay in processing is particularly damaging at that time. My studies were disrupted by the time and frustration expended in tracking down the lost paperwork, and I was forced to borrow money and become delinquent on rent and utility payments. Since the problems were within Georgetown's business office, the Department of Education had no authority or assistance to offer, except for sympathy. Javits Fellowship recipients are adults who have made significant sacrifices and commitments to further their education, and it do not seem unreasonable to trust that they would be capable of budgeting themselves. Further, any interest earned from placing the funds in a savings account for part of the year would be needed by the student far more than by the university.
Avoiding the payroll maze does not mean that the Department of Education would lose assurance that the student is progressing in his or her program. The legislation may simply make it standard procedure for the university to accept the funds and verify the student's good standing, and then pass along the total stipend to the student without further delay. If this proposal is unacceptable, then the law should at least include a provision which is binding upon the university to process the fellowship in an accurate and timely manner. Currently, there is no incentive for the university to process the funds, and the only person who is held accountable in the system is the student unable to make payments. The student is the intended beneficiary of the Javits program and so should be protected from bureaucratic mistakes as much as possible.
Overall, my experience because of the Javits Fellowship has been a tremendous success. Again, I thank you for your confidence in my abilities, for your support of my work, and for the opportunities you have provided me during the past five years. I really would not be where I am now without this program. I believe my skills are needed in this society, and I intend to repay your investment in me by working through some difficult problems in bioethics, by stimulating public discussion on values and technology, and by teaching others to carry on the work of the humanities. Your continued support and encouragement of the next generation of scholars is vitally important, and is deeply appreciated.
Thank you for your time, and I wish you the best in your deliberations.
