Open Letter to My Students: No, You Cannot be a Professor (2011)
northwesthistory.blogspot.se
northwesthistory.blogspot.se
There is an underlying phenomenon affecting an entire generation of kids of educated middle class parents, and that's this: the future of our society is one of fewer jobs and more competition. It's just the structural dynamics of a society that transitions from a long phase of fast growth to an indefinite phase of maintenance.
It's not anybody's fault, not really, and there isn't much you can do about it. A big generation that has a lot of kids creates a high demand for liberal arts education. A smaller generation that doesn't have many kids creates a lesser demand. When that big older generation continues to hold onto jobs, you have a recipe for a job crunch for younger people.
More broadly, as capital shifts and is put to work in Asia, there is less demand for ancillary jobs here in the U.S. That phenomenon affects nearly everyone. Say you're an architect. Where do you think all the jobs are designing big corporate high rises?
If climate change and nukes don't get us first. :)
I'm against cronyism, but an advocate of pure capitalism.
tl;dr: "Pure capitalism is good", as a problem-solving strategy, is not entirely trustworthy; sometimes it leads to horrible horrible things.
The fundamental doctrine of capitalism is that it is just (not merely pragmatic) to let the people with the gold make the rules. This, of course, is the single biggest point of The Wealth Of Nations, and it's an interesting one, and seems to be largely correct. But if you take this to an illogical extreme, you are back in might-makes-right.
I think it's pretty obvious that slavery wasn't defeated by capitalism, but rather by a leftist people-other-than-the-rich-have-rights kind of movement. Master Smith had the capital, he bought the slaves, and now we're going to deny him his property rights, because someone else's rights (to freedom and personal security) are more important.
Feudalism is also basically free-capitalism-plus-ethics. If you conquer some land by the sword, you get to keep it. There are some people living on that land. You tell them "I own this land, if you want to live you can either leave (flee as refugees), or trade me your right to freedom and security for the permission to use my land, with the following caveats". I say "plus ethics" because there was an ongoing debate throughout the feudal period about what obligations the landed class had to the working class, a debate that is taken less seriously today.
And for that matter, cronyism is consistent with pure capitalism; why shouldn't I, the holder of capital, be allowed to allocate that capital however I like, including to my cronies?
I apologize if this is all sort of obvious, or pedantic. And overall, I favor socio-political systems that are more capitalist than anything else. However, as I said in the tl;dr, I believe that the "I favour pure capitalism" mindset is harmful, if you actually try to use it to decide between policy alternatives.
I should have said more about the context in which I'm an advocate for pure capitalism.
Specifically, I'm assuming a context where a strong government is genuinely effective in protecting the rights of individuals. Like you, I reject the idea that might, or wealth, ever makes right.
In my view, abolishing slavery was an example of the government ultimately acting as it should act, as a protector of the rights of individuals.
We might have different definitions of cronyism. I'm most concerned with people in positions of power buying government officials who will ultimately write laws that restrict my freedom of choice. I am not overly concerned about corporations colluding in one way or another, as long as they cannot initiate force or fraud. Again, a strong government that succeeds in protecting individual rights seems critical here.
> genuinely effective in protecting the rights of individuals
> most concerned with people in positions of power buying government officials
Both of those are KEY issues, yes. And in both cases, the modern West is arguably more-or-less the most successful society I know of, across history, and yet simultaneously doing so much worse than it seems like it should be.
Here are some other areas where I think we should limit pure capitalism.
1) Market externalities. The most obvious of these, to me, is pollution. 500 years ago, worrying about mining tailings might have been ridiculous, but it's clear that today, a perfect government will interfere with this in some way (perhaps by allowing pollution but taxing it heavily?). Torturing animals might be another example (as opposed to allowing dogfighting as a market activity). I suppose that most other externalities that jump to mind are arguably covered by "protecting the rights of individuals".
2) Moderating wealth disparity. On the one hand, we certainly see some societal benefits from allowing industrious people to get rich. On the other hand, we know that wealth disparity is directly linked with a variety of social ills. Also many people feel it's reasonable to tax the rich heavily, in order to succor the poor. The main question is one of degree. To my understanding, this isn't incompatible with "pure capitalism", but many people argue for flat taxes on the basis of "pure capitalism", thus my bringing it up.
Sadly, I don't expect any such society anytime soon.
As regards pollution, I think the problem can be solved by respect for property rights. Your life is your property, and if someone harms you by polluting the air you must breathe, I think the government and objective law should come to your defense. At the same time, I think it has to be proven that you were actually harmed by the pollution. I understand that this is a complex matter.
Same deal with water. I don't think anyone has the right to force someone else to provide them with clean water, as that would amount to a kind of slavery. At the same time, I think a rights-respecting government should act, if it can be shown, objectively, that someone is polluting a water source.
I don't think animals have rights, and I think they can be a person's property, so I would say that a person has the right to torture animals. I think that's a horrible thing to do, I think it's sick and pathetic, and I think such a person should be denounced, shamed and shunned to the greatest extent possible. But if asked whether s/he has such a right, I would say yes, they have such a right.
As regards wealth, again, I'm going to point to property rights. I don't think law-abiding people should have their property confiscated, to any degree, or for any reason. I understand that people will point out that of course we must collect taxes to fund the government, and I agree with this today, although I don't agree with the massive bloat in terms of what politicians and many / most in society consider government's proper role.
I appreciate this conversation and it's respectful tone. Ultimately, my bottom line is freedom for the individual and a society that demonstrates real respect for the rights of all individuals.
* Market externalities. You can sell me a car and we'd both make out well; but we're externalizing the cost of pollution onto others. This isn't factored into the costs we pay. Each market transaction's externalities add up. A capitalist society would tend to destroy its own environment. (States try to respond with schemes like "Pigovian" taxes. [1] While anarcho-capitalists mention lawsuits. I mention anarcho-capitalism below.)
* Wage slavery. A feature of capitalist societies is the boss-worker relationship. You rent workers on a market, and command them. At least it's an improvement over chattel slavery, but that's not saying much. (Visit a store or restaurant. Are the people there afraid to speak freely when the manager is present?)
Does "pure" capitalism mean Murry Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism? (He wrote about things like private judicial systems. So, you'd hire a private army to keep me off your road.) I'll defer to Chomsky's claim since he thought about it more: "First of all, it couldn't function for a second—and if it could, all you'd want to do is get out, or commit suicide or something." (http://www.distantocean.com/2008/04/chomsky-on-libe.html)
Also, advocates of pure markets tend to miss that countries like the US rely on state subsidy for its fundamental innovations. Countries don't do well sticking with their comparative advantages; the US would be stuck exporting fish and fur if it did. Mariana Mazzucato and Ha-Joon Chang both wrote about this. If you're in the mood for videos, here's: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyp3Bw5H0VA) and (http://www.newamerica.net/events/2011/23_things)
As regards what you call wage slavery, what you're describing is a contractual relationship. There is some kind of contract between the employer and the employee. Presumably, the employee made the choice to accept the job, and the job comes with terms and conditions. If the employee decides later on that s/he would prefer different conditions, they can negotiate for them or they can quit.
Again, my view is that people should be free to act in ways that they believe will serve them, so long as they are not violating the rights of others. I don't view employment as a kind of slavery, as long as both parties can walk away from the contract under agreed-upon conditions.
I'm not an advocate of anarcho-capitalism. I think the government has an absolutely necessary role to play in terms of protecting the rights of all individuals, equally, and based on objective law, and being the only entity that is authorized to initiate force against others.
Thanks again for good discussion!
It's plenty of people's fault and there is plenty we can do about it. Instead of investing in education, infrastructure, the social safety net, and everything that helps the majority of people, we invest in the military industrial complex, farm subsidies, and rush to cut taxes to the richest people in the country. There is a massive wealth distribution going on right now, I predict history will show the biggest ever, and it's easy to see the repercussions. The rich are getting richer and the rate at which they are accumulating wealth is accelerating. There is plenty we could do, we, as a society, are just to lazy, comfortable, and scared to do it. Let's be honest about it. This is all our fault.
Or to take rayiner's example of lawyers, you can't pin that on a failure to invest in infrastructure, or sending to much money to Iraq, or farm subsidies... or anything else that "Occupiers" like to complain about.
It absolutely does. I have a friend who is a writer. He lives in NYC. When the economy collapsed, so did his audience. He is successful enough to keep working and is lucky enough to have a following in Europe. However, when the people start losing their money, suddenly going for a night out at the theatre is less important than paying rent. All the 'creative arts' people who had jobs could no longer support themselves. This is obvious to anyone who has actually researched what we're talking about.
>Or to take rayiner's example of lawyers, you can't pin that on a failure to invest in infrastructure, or sending to much money to Iraq, or farm subsidies... or anything else that "Occupiers" like to complain about.
Again, you are very wrong. Two of my best friends are lawyers, and they got out of law school just as the shit hit the fan. When our overall economy tanks, thanks to things like "failure to invest in infrastructure, or sending to much money to Iraq, or farm subsidies" and all those real things that contribute to the massive wealth distribution that is going on right now, jobs are effected. Law offices are not getting as much business, they aren't hiring as many interns (internships are usually essential to getting jobs at top firms), they're paying interns less and not hiring as many on. Again, this is basic stuff and it's sad that you have to write it off. Your "Occupiers" comment is telling.
You seem not to prefer the frame of wealth distribution. Instead, your post reframes it into terms that school administrators prefer, as if we are supposed to care what bureaucrats think.
A recent analysis of replacing people with lower-paid workers: "The second claim is that low-wage workers are easily replaceable and offer no benefit to society. This is the argument aimed at service workers, who are on strike because they make so little they cannot afford food or rent." (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/09/20139231015...)
Perhaps professor Vojtko herself saw this as a larger struggle between bosses and workers: "Contrary to what the Duquesne administration would have the public believe, she sought out and strongly supported the new union." (http://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/adjuncts...)
We still spend money — but on administration rather than teaching/research: "The last thirty years have seen a veritable explosion of the proportion of working hours spent on administrative tasks at the expense of pretty much everything else. In my own university, for instance, we have more administrators than faculty members, and the faculty members, too, are expected to spend at least as much time on administration as on teaching and research combined. The same is true, more or less, at universities worldwide." (http://thebaffler.com/past/of_flying_cars)
Hope some of these sources answers your questions, and puts them into the greater context?
This seems like a one-sided and unproductively emotional framing. One could easily flip the emotional bias and say "A job market is where greedy people with skills stubbornly refuse to volunteer their help unless they get paid for it." In fact, I suspect that's exactly how some might characterize the "job market" for independent medical services where the employer is the patient.
Here's my suggestion for a neutral take: a job market is a mechanism where people who are willing to take on responsibilities are paid money by people who would like to delegate responsibilities. The current dynamics of the academic job market (and many other markets for people with conventional liberal arts education) suggest that fewer people want to delegate those responsibilities, and more people are willing to take on those responsibilities. This is not a market-created problem, it is a social problem (i.e. we have somehow encouraged far too many people to invest in educations that don't line up with current and near-future demand for responsibility-delegation).
As to your point about intrinsic antagonism: naturally, in any negotiation there is a zero-sum element on the margin, i.e. while we both benefit we can still argue over how the mutual gains are to be distributed. On the one hand, this is a valid point, and the asymmetry of leverage in this on-the-margin zero-sum negotiation between employers and employees is an excellent theoretical argument for labor regulations and labor unions. On the other hand, framing the labor negotiation as zero sum overall is, I believe, counter to even Marxist [0] analysis of labor relations.
[0] My lay understanding of Marxist labor relation theory is that it argues capital obtains the lion's share of the mutual benefits (or "surplus value") arising from delegation, but it does not argue that the exchange is what we would nowadays call zero-sum on an overall basis.
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More broadly, as capital shifts and is put to work in Asia, there is less demand for ancillary jobs here in the U.S.
Why is this kind of pessimism justified now, but wasn't justified when much the same was said in the '80's and early '90's about the decline of U.S. competitiveness and Japan, Inc.? Or was it justified then, too?
My political biases incline me toward believing that there's nothing fundamentally "structural" about the lousy, slow recovery we're currently enjoying, and that better fiscal and other policies would have lead and can (Secretary Clinton willing) lead to better outcomes. But I am happy to have my biases challenged.
All that's happening now is that the phenomenon is creeping it's way up the ladder. New York and London are healthy, but it's the capital markets in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Sao Paulo that are really booming. If you're an aspiring banker and you want the kind of access to jobs your parents had, you'd better brush up on your Portuguese. There will still be jobs in Chicago and Boston and New York, but with capital being put to work in developing economies where there is a higher potential for return along with less competition, the opportunities are elsewhere. And if you're not in Chicago or Boston or New York, those opportunities will dwindle as increased domestic competition results in consolidation and more of a winner-take-all market. Did you know Johns Hopkins was founded by a bequest from a prominent Baltimore banker. Today you'd ask: Baltimore has bankers?
Finally, with regards to Japan specifically, Japan was and is a relatively closed society that didn't accept much foreign capital investment. That's totally different with China, India, and Brazil.
Really? I think software engineers in San Francisco c. 2013 make far more (in real terms) than Detroit autoworkers did c. 1973. Your view of the economy is too narrow. Yes, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, et. al. were hit hard by the closure of auto, steel and other heavy industry. But San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis are rising on the back of new industries.
>Finally, with regards to Japan specifically, Japan was and is a relatively closed society that didn't accept much foreign capital investment. That's totally different with China, India, and Brazil.
That's not true. In fact, China, India and Brazil all restrict foreign capital inflows to a much greater extent than Japan did. In fact, until very recently, it was illegal for a western firm to own an Indian subsidiary -- subsidiaries had to be at least 50%+1 Indian owned. China still has that restriction in many industries. Brazil has some of the highest import tariffs in the world. To this day, it's very difficult for a foreign firm to get started without a local partner in any of those countries.
Yes, their societies might be more open (though, w.r.t. to China, I find even that assertion to be dubious), but that doesn't mean that they're accepting of foreign capital investment. Capital investment is accepted very cautiously, because all these countries have learned the lesson that the "Asian tigers" were taught in 1997. Foreign capital is fickle, and if it is not properly controlled, it will go away at the worst possible moment.
Lots Detroit autoworkers lost their jobs to robots (lots more to outsourcing), and robot creators hired people (though almost surely not the same people...) However they almost certainly did not hire as many people as lost their jobs. Another industry happened to boom and perhaps did create as many new jobs as were lost (but again, almost certainly not hiring the same people) but those jobs were not born from automation in Detroit.
The common response to "dem robots are takin' our jobs!" is "No they aren't, robots create more jobs!", but while that may comfort some people it does not seem to be the reality. Sometimes more jobs are created, sometimes lots of new jobs are created, but there is no inherent relationship between jobs lost to automation and jobs created.
The more appropriate response is, "Yes they did, we call that progress. You are on the losing side of history if you get in its way, so be light on your feet." It is more appropriate because, although not very empathetic, it is more accurate.
Since 1950, San Francisco has gained 50,000 people. Seattle has gained 150,000. Pittsburgh lost 370,000. Detroit 1,100,000. Minneapolis over 100,000. Philadelphia 500,000. Buffalo over 300,000. Rochester 120,000. Etc.
Austin did gain 700,000, but it wasn't from tech.
You could call this 'delusion', or even a manifestation of 'entitlement culture'... but whatever it is, I think it is a problem. It isn't all just fun and games when young people are getting expensive degrees that cannot be financially justified; their actions don't just effect themselves. A generation of broke disillusioned college educated kids without decent employment prospects isn't exactly something that benefits society. Just for starters, what the hell are they going to teach their kids to strive for? "Don't bother pursuing education kiddo, you'll just end up broke."?
And, people can't stand not being able to tell their children that they can be anything they want, because that would involve admitting that they are part of a failing system.
It's easier to blame the victim, even if you are the victim.
The message we should be sending is in the middle: "Some of you can do what you want, if you try hard enough and happen to want something that society values"
Note: not affiliated, it's just so perfect.
In other words, the same people who are imparting the message - their parents.
If we go with the third option, parents teaching their children to have realistic expectations and forward-looking attitudes towards education, then there is no problem. If people understand that they can succeed if they pick the right field and try hard enough, but should not expect success if they don't, then we are golden.
Right now many people seem to reject the "pick the right field" part not because they disagree with it, but because they disapprove of it.
Yes, realism and awareness are important. But, the reasons they are so important right now are the complacencies and narcissistic ideologies that have inhibited the nation's prosperity.
(Just ignoring the dubious nature of the assertion about declining standard of living, particularly for people other than white males...)
Alternatively it is because all the Baby Boomers are sending all of their kids off to college, pushing it as the only legitimate career path, reducing the relative value of merely having a college degree, and ultimately forcing kids to specialize something actually useful to remain competitive. Improved standards of living (in this case, near universal access to universities) is to blame, but who can really fault an improved standard of living?
If you only have a few lucky people going to college, then a classical or "liberal arts" education is worth something. If these sorts of educations are a dime a dozen, then you need a more specialized degree to compete. A specialized degree in something relevant to whatever you are competing for. It turns out that a history degree isn't something that is valued in that sort of system.
tl;dr: More kids go to college -> Each kid in college has more people to compete with -> More kids focus on classes that will help them compete -> Fewer kids load up on History classes -> Fewer history professors are needed.
"Previously it had been possible for a young man just out of high school to get a good-paying unskilled job in a unionized factory, buy a house in the suburbs, with a federally-insured mortgage, and send his kids to college with government-supported student loans. This was a common road to the success promised in the American Dream. Millions achieved that coveted upward mobility. Under the illusion they were no longer working-class, they thought of themselves as a new class in the middle, somewhere between the poor and the rich - a middle class. It is neoliberal globalization that has now blocked that road for more and more people. For the first time in generations, the next generation has a lower standard of living than their parents."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16291-the-american-dream-...
>Alternatively it is because all the Baby Boomers are sending all of their kids off to college, pushing it as the only legitimate career path, reducing the relative value of merely having a college degree, and ultimately forcing kids to specialize something actually useful to remain competitive.
It's this same complacency at hand - it worked for me, it will work for you.
>Improved standards of living (in this case, near universal access to universities) is to blame, but who can really fault an improved standard of living?
Sure, there are way more people going to college. In a reasonable situation, this would also mean that there needs to be way more professors.
It's the declining standard of living. It used to be that you could get by fine on a professor's salary, and so they hired professors. Now, they can't afford to pay a living wage, and so they don't, and they call them 'adjunct' professors.
Like how they expect Social Security to still be there even if they cut taxes, and how 'Socialized Medicine' is evil but Medicaid is utterly sacrosanct and untouchable, and ...
Oh, wait, that's what old people are on about now.
However young people are the people I am talking about here because they are the ones going into, in, or recently graduate from university. Old farts saying "I am going to study Foo, so I am going to, employment rates be damned!" is not exactly a significant problem.
In the case of academia specifically, it is a very intentional strategy: full-time tenure-earning faculty constituted about 45% of the workforce in 1975 compared with less than 30% now; the gap has been made up by adjunct and other part-time lecturers, typically earning about $2500 per course.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-ever...
In the end: a job was in place before graduation. The same thing was true for most of her friends. In fact, she never mentioned one friend who wasn't able to find employment before taking the bar exam.
I don't doubt any job squeeze, but the horror stories I heard about the job market for law school grads were far from realized for anyone we knew. And this was not an Ivy League school churning out highly credentialed grads. It was a state school that didn't have particularly stringent entrance requirements.
Which, as it happens, was enough of a salary to graduate with zero debt and make a considerable amount right out of college. I do not know may law grads who can say that.
I managed to get out of that situation without any student debt, and I wish I could say that was because I saw through the lie, but the truth is that luck was a big factor as well. My confidence in my conclusion that we were being sold a bill of goods was weak enough that under other circumstances, I could have easily gotten burned badly. I know a lot of people who didn't get so lucky.
Oh man, does this ring true. If I had a nickel for every snotty remark by an arrogant first-year grad student about how they're not going to have trouble finding a professorship, I think I'd have enhanced my earning power more than the actual degree. In academia, everyone is a unique snowflake.
If you ever interview for a PhD program, you may notice that the people at the recruiting party are all first or second year students. There are many reasons for this, but a big one is that there are very few students past the second year of a PhD program who are under any illusions about their specialness in the order of the academic world. These are not the people you want recruiting new grist for the research mill.
and in startups, everyone is a 10x ninja. Guess that's an invariant.
"But I'm super smart and work really hard!"
Congrats, you're not fired.
When I read this, it struck me that I had a very different experience. In my department, the SOP was to wine and dine both the recruits and the graduate students (free steak and all the booze you can drink in one night goes a long way when you're earning 20k/year). But the trick was that not everyone was invited, and, of course, it wasn't very hard to figure out that the best way to be invited back for another round was to forget to mention all things you didn't like about the university (and how long you'd been there).
*E.g. your grandfather is Joe Jamail
For other schools on your list it's a different story. They certainly have a better chance, perhaps even a good chance, of getting the BigLaw job golden ring than most law graduates. But in my observation that's a bit of poisoned chalice. It pays well but the work is mostly tedious, the hours are very very long -- with no slowdown as your career advances -- and the atmosphere is extremely stressful.
There are some good public interest jobs for people who for whatever reason aren't money driven (usually because they have money already!) but the competition is fierce even for Harvard and Stanford grads because of all the burned out BigLaw associates looking to get out. Although the jobs are often interesting and sometimes fulfilling, they almost invariably require long hours. Almost all legal jobs do.
And I actually think paying for certain masters degrees, for example in computer science or engineering, is a better financial investment than paying for most law schools, particularly in the present environment.
I do agree that one should not pay anything for a PhD.
So, the master's is potentially costing you triple - you're paying for it, you're not getting paid, your value as an employee isn't going up as much as someone who is working.
If you can't find a sponsor to pay for a master's degree, then I would assume that nobody values you having that master's degree.
For how long is this true? I mean, at this point, I have "more than a decade" of experience - and, considering, I think I'm likely to say 'more than a decade' even when I have two or three decades of experience; no reason to point out that you are old.
On the other hand, people leave their degree on their resume forever.
My point here is that years of experience seem to have, ah, a diminishing marginal return.
(that said, I'm almost certain that you are correct for the first five years of your career... /if/ you can get a good job without a degree and without experience, which in my very relevant experience, depends a whole lot on the shape of the job market at the time.)
Actually, as someone without a degree... the 'perishability' of my credentials is something I think about often. I mean, i wrote a book, [1] which is a pretty strong credential, but will one obsolete book mark me as 'middle class' 20 years from now? probably not. A masters degree would. (Now, would that masters, if it was fallow for a decade or two, get me a job? probably not by itself. But, my impression is that it keeps it's value as a credential longer than, say, my book, and certainly longer than work experience.)
Maybe. You can't just compare the outcomes of people with these degrees, though, you have to consider their prospects going in. Typically, someone who applies to cs or engineering already has a closely related undergraduate degree.
A history major who attends an elite law school probably does see a pretty dramatic jump in salary prospects. A computer science major who gets an MS? Probably a bump, but the undergraduate degree is pretty employable already.
Considering putting cash under your mattress is a better investment than paying for law school, yes, you are technically correct.
However, I don't know how "worth it" financially even a master's degree in Computer Science is. At best, I feel like it's break even in most cases: the year or two you spend getting the degree might be better spent on the job, especially if you have a decent mentor.
In one case, a guy I mentored directly out of undergraduate ended up going back and getting his master's. I think he'd say that it made him feel more confident with certain concepts, but then, I picked up the equivalent information in the course of my 10-year career with only an undergraduate degree. Any reasonably curious programmer would. It certainly did not make a difference in his income.
As for PhDs, I have never hired one. They seem to universally have an inability to think concretely or in a step-by-step manner. They have the skill set of a junior developer but expect the salary of a senior developer (at least). Ultimately, I can only imagine hiring one if they had significant experience in a very specific area that is difficult to hire for.
Could you elaborate on why you think that "PhDs have an inability to think"? If anything, I would have thought that a PhD will be extremely methodology and think through every step (after all, that is what you are supposed to do in a PhD).
[1] Some Ph.D. programs routinely award Master's on the way to the doctorate; I'm talking about terminal Master's.
Not to say a history PhD is useless for finding work, but its likely more difficult to find work than say a Physics PhD (which has a 96% employment rate 1st year after graduation, according to the APS[1]).
[1]http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/phdinitial.pdf
This is incorrect. It's absolutely possible to earn a humanities doctorate without going into debt (at least for the postgraduate degree(s)).
The 2011 NSF survey reports that 51% of humanities PhD graduates hold no degree-related debt, and that only 22% fund their degrees through their own resources. Compared to life/physical science students, more humanities PhDs fund their degrees by going into debt (by about 25%), but the majority of humanities PhDs graduate without debt and fund their degrees through fellowship grants and assisstantship positions, just like graduate students in STEM fields.
Anecdotally, all the humanities departments I am familiar with fund the vast majority (90%+) of their doctoral students.
I don't mean to imply a STEM major is more valuable than a History PhD either, simply that its (likely) easier to get a job after graduation. Honestly, its a damn shame the public doesn't appreciate both of these areas of work more as they are the cornerstone for improving society.
How is it that so many students are unaware of this until the end of their education? Is it just the quintessential American "you can be anything you put your mind to" wishful thinking? This question goes doubly for humanities PhDs, because at least you can get a job elsewhere.
But that Phd in history....
History - not so much.
Our society doesn't need so many history graduates. History should be a hobby, not something a million kids each year dedicate their life to.
Universities, in pursuing profits, are cutting costs. This no doubt good for their bottom line, but it might be bad for society as a whole. With the downplaying of the value of history and the humanities, perhaps people are less prepared to think outside of their narrow technical specializations.
I'm also acutely aware that while staying in academia would be great (despite all the bad things like crazy hours, crazy people, etc.) there is simply a very good chance it's not going to be possible, or if it is it'll be crazy competitive.
The litmus test I always think about is a colleague [postdoc] I worked with years ago. He was disgustingly smart and capable, and applied for over 100 tenure track positions before getting one. He also had an educational pedigree and publication record most of us can only dream of, and was a great guy to boot. If it takes someone like that 100+ applications what chance do the rest of us have!?
Because of this, I've taken on the rather larger responsibility of running the labs computing resources, both hardware/software. It's a lot of work (I'd estimate I spend maybe 20 hours a week doing sysadmin related tasks) but it does also give me a totally inappropriate level of responsibility which I hope will be valuable either inside academia, or in industry. I also really enjoy it, which is a nice bonus.
I learned a lot and pushed my theoretical understanding during my Phd, and I can not imagine being without that. However, most people is probably better off finishing off with a masters (including my former self) and getting that downpayment instead of a PhD degree.
> unless they are mature enough to consider the opportunity cost and make sounds judgements about it.
This system has already been polluted by the prevalence of corporate funding for research, but destroying it entirely would be a terrible thing for society as a whole. There is certainly waste (and we should try to minimize it), but some waste is worth the benefits in my mind.
CS depts are still growing, and are helped by the growing number of students wanting to major in CS. This is requiring many/most departments to grow further. And the reason why students are wanting to major in CS, is that there is plenty of work to be found. If you are well grounded in basics, and can program well, there is ample opportunity in both big companies, as well as startups.
Because those of us who live in rural areas are worthless degenerates, right?
E.g. the graph here seems typical: http://blogs.census.gov/2012/04/04/how-do-we-measure-urban-a...
In the office next to me there is a PhD in classics, a MA in maths, and a PhD in ancient history. They all make over £150k (that's like $240k).
I don't earn that much as I work in a different part of the firm, so I'm not boasting.
Yes, it is not the case that a PhD guarantees you an academic job without reference to your department, thesis topic, and advisor. Do people actually believe otherwise, though?
Can you be a professor? Yes, but not based on your undergraduate performance alone. You need to do an honest assessment to see if you are on a trajectory to be one of the top people in your field when you graduate. You can see this, in part, by looking at what the current graduate students in your prospective program are doing and where the recent alumni are. If not, then you should absolutely not go into grad school thinking otherwise.
This is more important for future academic prospects than I would have anticipated going into my PhD program. I fit your list of attributes for all other criteria save this one. And without my supervisors enthusiasm for my work or my future prospects I've started losing confidence in myself and in my abilities. More than confidence, I'm missing out on networking opportunities due to his lack of interest.
When I was a phd student I did an informal check on the professors in my department. Even though it was no ivy league school, on average it took them 2.8 years from entry into the phd program to getting a tenure-track position. Now 2.8 is probably the average number of years as a postdoc you need to have.
1: http://floridapolytechnic.org/news/non-tenure-faculty-model-...
Every long-term educational trend points towards the end of the professoriate. States continue to slash funding for higher education. Retiring professors are not replaced, or replaced with part-time faculty. Technology promises to provide education with far fewer teachers--and whether you buy into this vision of the future or not, state legislators and university administrators believe.
Consider the numbers...
A successful professor, who brings in the grant money, can supervise 10-30 graduate students towards their PhDs over the course of their career. Others will supervise fewer, but that is because the money is scant.
The bottom line is that if you are not obviously one of the top 10% students of your program, you are second string. Half the first string players are having trouble finding a professorship. What are your odds?
Sure, in aggregate, let's mourn the professoriate.
But for you, don't buy into the hype too much .., you don't need every job, just one that makes you happy.
This applies to most of lamentations of job markets.
I do wish I had the guts to follow up with his Hell, some of them shoot rainbows out of their butts and smell like a pine forest after a spring rain--and they mostly aren't going to get jobs either.