Noted with interest in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education :

An excerpt from a recent "Association of Departments of English Bulletin":
The English Ph.D. and Small-College Careers

Ed Folsom, a professor of English at the University of Iowa, wonders why there aren't institutions aspiring to become "top 10" producers of small-college professors --and why the question itself would probably draw laughter from his peers. Mr. Folsom believes that the trend in English departments at institutions like the University of Iowa is to accept predominantly Ivy League students into the graduate program, then prepare them for Ivy-League positions upon completion of
their doctoral work. Doing so, writes Mr. Folsom, requires giving graduate students more time for research and lighter teaching loads, leading to "isolation from the departmental community." Though Iowa once focused on producing Ph.D. students who were well adapted to life in most small-college departments, where teaching is a priority, students had now "imbibed a graduate-student version of being a research professor," notes Mr. Folsom.

Now, when heavy competition for posts at research institutions compels these scholars to accept faculty positions at small colleges, the atmosphere there feels nothing less than "alien." He decries the emphasis on rankings that has led to these changes at Iowa and other universities. "Once we determined at Iowa that the top 10 [among public research institutions] was our objective, we realized that we had to be more like the institutions we were told were somehow better," he explains. Thus the production of Ph.D.'s prepared exclusively for research universities by a college "whose niche has always been to turn out good small-college teachers." Mr. Folsom's hypothetical "top 10" program for preparing scholars for careers teaching at small colleges would produce Ph.D.'s who were "broadly educated in the field, theoretically sophisticated, immersed in the latest cutting-edge debates," and ready to carry out an "energetic professional life." The article is not available online, but information about "ADE Bulletin" may be found at http://www.ade.org/