Date: Tue, 09 Dec 1997 21:14:16 -0500
From: tombrown@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Thomas F Brown)
Subject: Re:  Time limits
To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
Message-id: <199712100214.VAA11258@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
>You know, I've never been very persuaded by individual responsibility / "if only
> you 
>would work harder" / blame-the-victim arguments like Tom Brown's.  While there a
>re 
>certainly those unmotivated students who after so long may deserve to be cut off
>, I 
>suspect from Nandini's, Danielle's, and now Linda's comments, a more common stud
>ent might 
>be the highly motivated but structurally challenged (family, marriage, kids, job
>s, etc.) 
>student.  Like Linda, I too reject the instrumentally rational model that Tom us
>es on the 
>grounds that it is inherently elite-serving, unrealistic, and makes life in grad
> school 
>>harder than it already is.  Tom, I really wish you would lighten up.

You are the third person today to attribute a straw man
argument to me. While my posts to this list take me about
as long as it takes to type them, I think that my points
have been reasonably clear.

I am addressing the policy question of how grad funding will
be allocated. I have made but *one* statement that could be
construed as normative, and that was my statement that students
in my department who take longer than five years in many cases
don't have their acts together. But that is about one department,
and about one category of student within that department.

Other posters have broadened the discussion to include the effects
of students' personal problems and challenges on their academic
performance. Fine, but this thread was started to address funding
policy. How should funding policy deal with personal problems?
I have made no positive assertions on this issue, and I reject
all of the straw men that have been attributed to me so far.

This is an important topic, but no one has yet addressed the
policy issues that have been raised. Of course, some students
are "structurally challenged"--that is obvious--but how should 
policy come to terms with that? That's what's on the table here.