Academic Reference Inflation Has Set In, And Everyone Is Simply Wonderful

As the academic reference season approaches, I am inundated with requests from past and present students, acquaintances whose work I’ve scrutinized, or individuals whom I’ve encountered in elevators for letters of recommendation to back their applications for further studies or academic roles. While I’m typically happy to provide my endorsement, I can’t help but wonder how many of these references in files around the world will go unread.

Writing a recommendation letter is no longer as enjoyable as it used to be. Data protection rules have taken some of the pleasure out of reference writing and reading. There was once a time when you could easily pen a recommendation on a blank note card, such as the one Gilbert Ryle, Oxford’s philosophy professor, wrote to one of his students in the 1960s, saying "Grab him if you can." Or, in the convoluted language of Isaiah Berlin’s recommendation for the brilliant legal philosopher HLA Hart, "What he is tortured by is the thought that he will never be better than [AC] Ewing and will never hold other views than Ewing. He realises himself that this is not a very exciting state of mind to be in … Nevertheless … he cannot be worse than Ewing, who, after all, is … in his own way, not contemptible."

These days, it is crucial to bear in mind that the individual for whom you are writing the letter may eventually read it. As a result, references are now seemingly filled with inflated praise, and everyone is described as outstanding. For instance, one reference writer famously referred to several of his PhD students by saying, "He reminds me of the young Wittgenstein." (That’s right! He can never get his shirt to stay tucked in either!) Or, perhaps the most bizarre statement I’ve seen to date is "Pound for pound she is the best philosopher in the department." What could that mean? Could it imply that the candidate is small and not very good?

The American style of academic recommendation writing needs to be re-examined. Typically, job candidates submit a "dossier" that contains nearly five or six references. If a recommendation fails to fill about three or four single-spaced pages, it ends up appearing half-hearted. In most cases, there isn’t much to say beyond six different versions of the candidate’s CV in literary form, along with brief summaries of their doctoral thesis and some lines detailing why the letter writer is genuinely impressed by the candidate’s achievements.

But as readers of references, we know the process quite well. When reviewing job references, we skip over the bulk of the letter and head straight for the section where comparisons are made. If the letter writer takes a risk and sticks out their neck, the recommendation becomes stronger. If you say that the candidate is good, it carries very little weight. If you say they’re "in the top three of the cohort," that’s hardly a ringing endorsement. But if you say that the candidate is the best of the year, several years, or even a decade, it stands out. Anyone in the comparison group could read this, and it would catch their attention. The most forceful endorsements say the individual is superior to a significant named figure, albeit phrased positively, unlike Berlin’s comparison of Hart and Ewing.

As readers of these references, what do we expect to find in them despite the time and ink spent on them? There’s really only one query on our minds: is the candidate better or worse than what their CV suggests? Nobody will say, "watch out, we shouldn’t have accepted this person into our PhD programme, and their thesis passed only because their supervisor pretty much wrote it." So that aspect of the query is now redundant. Additionally, we are unlikely to take a referee who raves on for ages seriously. As a result, the value we receive from academic references is minuscule compared to the effort expended on all sides.

Perhaps academia should follow the norm in other work environments and only ask for recommendations at the final stage. It could be as simple as a brief document with three questions, such as "Can we trust the person to keep their hands out of the till?" "Did they earn numerous A-stars in their GCSEs?" "Are they organized and tidy?" Responses should ideally be "yes," "yes," and "no."