Job security is a relatively new concept in the ancient field of teaching art. Historically artists have created, and been judged on, their own credentials — that is, their art. And the master of fine-arts degree, often described as a "terminal degree," or the endpoint in an artist's formal education, has long been sufficient for artists seeking to teach at the college level. But significant change may be on the horizon, as increasing numbers of college and university administrators are urging artists to obtain doctoral degrees.

We shouldn't be surprised; the M.F.A. has been under attack for some time now. The M.F.A. has become a problem for many administrators, who are increasingly uncomfortable with different criteria for different faculty members. They understand the lengthy process required to earn a doctorate — of which the master's degree is only a small, preliminary part — and see hiring a Ph.D. over an M.F.A. as the difference between buying a fully loaded showroom automobile and a chassis. Administrators like the background Ph.D.'s have in research, publishing, and grant writing (though if their principal concern were the teaching of studio art to undergraduates, they wouldn't focus so much on the doctorate).

Holders of M.F.A.'s — often adjunct instructors or would-be instructors at universities — have noticed the trend, and many believe that their degree holds them back in a realm where advancement and larger salaries go to Ph.D.'s.

The most recent development in the studio-doctorate trend is the creation of the new Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in Portland, Me., which offered its first classes this past May for a Ph.D. program in philosophy, aesthetics, and art theory. A studio M.F.A. is a prerequisite for admissions, and the institute's president claims that the program "will provide rigorous training that will help artists expand their studio practice." His aim is to turn artists into theoreticians of art, fully versed in critical theory and able to teach it at the college level, but still be practicing artists.

Other doctorate programs can be found at the University of Rochester, Ohio University, and Texas Tech University (though a large percentage of their students have performing, literary, or studio-art backgrounds). More may be on the way: The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the California Institute of the Arts, and the Rhode Island School of Design are expected to be offering studio doctorates within the next several years.

Studio doctorate programs do have high-minded and practical aspects. They try to make artists better versed in critical theory, which would presumably be helpful for their art, and to help graduates get and keep university jobs. Another benefit of a doctoral degree, artists and university administrators say, is the ability to teach a wider variety of courses, such as classes in art theory and history, previously the province of art historians. However, the first goal has yet to be achieved — can anyone name a great Ph.D. artist of our time? — and the second merely indicates what is wrong in academe, which is that it elevates credentials over everything else.

And what of the students? Students by and large want their studio instructors to be working artists. In fact, art schools and university art departments promote their studio faculty members to prospective students in terms of those artist-teachers' presence in the art world, their commissions, or their work in the realm of nonprofit and for-profit galleries.

I am not opposed to artists who want to pursue doctoral programs in critical theory. My complaint is that, without a doctorate, professional artists are finding it increasingly difficult to get and keep a full-time job with benefits teaching B.F.A. and M.F.A. students.

M.F.A. and Ph.D. programs move in different directions. Earning an M.F.A. means spending another year or so in the studio, developing a body of work that, ideally, prepares students to enter the art market. The program is a timeout from the world of galleries and selling that helps graduates re-enter that world more successfully after graduation. Doctoral programs, on the other hand, are research-based.

Pushing artists toward doctoral programs fundamentally changes their focus and goals. The Ph.D. says to the university, "I am committing myself to aca-deme," whereas the M.F.A. primarily reflects a commitment to developing one's skills as an artist. Requiring studio artists to become researchers as well would diminish their ability to keep one foot in the exhibition world. Some might be able to do it all — teach studio art, research, publish, and exhibit — but not many. There are only so many hours in a day.

Devaluing the M.F.A. or making the doctorate the fine-art world's terminal degree is likely to drive away professional artists who have a lot to offer in terms of guidance and example. Having active, commercially viable artists working in colleges and universities is something that should be encouraged. Are we likely to have artists of high caliber employed at the college level if they are required to undergo an academic program that takes five or six years, rather than just one or two? Requiring a Ph.D. is also likely to drive artists away from art, as time spent working on the dissertation equals time away from the studio. Some artists may leave the field of fine arts entirely, becoming theoreticians, historians, and fine-arts scholars instead of practitioners.

Inevitably, the years spent focused solely on theory will diminish other areas of instruction. The training of artists has already largely moved away from techniques and skills — how many artists now can mix their own paints or even know what is in the paints they buy? — and toward theory. Concept-based art is what a good many schools already encourage their students to create. The current training of artists barely maintains a delicate balance of studio practice and art history, criticism, and theory. Could such a balance be maintained with professors whose education is weighted so heavily on the side of theory? It hardly seems possible.

Another scenario is that the same type of instruction currently offered will continue to exist but will be provided by overqualified instructors. Aestheticians, rather than working artists, will teach basic drawing. Performing-arts faculties at some universities are already seeing plenty of this. (A friend of mine, a pianist who studied at the Juilliard School, Oberlin College, and the New England Conservatory, needed to obtain a Ph.D. in music to get a job as an adjunct teaching students at the University of Vermont how to play the piano.) Writers, too, are being told to get doctorates in order to teach college students. The M.F.A. in creative writing is losing its hold, as more and more writers seeking college-level teaching work are choosing doctoral programs that have a "creative dissertation" requirement.

The shift toward requiring Ph.D.'s is likely to be slow and uneven, as some institutions will balk at the trend while others jump in with both feet. But ultimately more graduate schools will have to create studio doctorate programs to meet the demand.

We are already on the slippery slope. Before we slide any farther, we should set out what is actually desired in the education of artists; what is the balance of manual, perceptual, and conceptual skills that artists need to have; and to what ends are those artists being trained. Judging artists on the basis of their academic credentials rather than of their art, and devising programs that lead them away from making art, is absurd and ahistorical. University departments of art history, the likely employers of this new hybrid group, should reconsider this focus on academic qualifications. Do we really want to turn the creation of art into a thing of the past?

Daniel Grant is a contributing editor for American Artist magazine and author of Selling Art Without Galleries: Toward Making a Living From Your Art (Allworth Press, 2006).