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Getting a Literature Ph.D. Will Make You Into a Horrible Person
An anonymous reader writes "An assistant professor at Ohio State University who recently earned her Ph.D. in literature writes a warning in Slate for others following the same path. She says, 'I now realize graduate school was a terrible idea because the full-time, tenure-track literature professorship is extinct. After four years of trying, I've finally gotten it through my thick head that I will not get a job—and if you go to graduate school, neither will you. ... Don't misunderstand me. There is unquantifiable intellectual reward from the exploration of scholarly problems and the expansion of every discipline—yes, even the literary ones, and even if that means doing bat-s**t analysis like using the rule of "false elimination" to determine that Josef K. is simultaneously guilty and not guilty in The Trial. But there is one sort of reward you will never get: monetary compensation from a stable, non-penurious position at a decent university. ... By the time you finish—if you even do— your academic self will be the culmination of your entire self, and thus you will believe, incomprehensibly, that not having a tenure-track job makes you worthless. You will believe this so strongly that when you do not land a job, it will destroy you, and nobody outside of academia will understand why. (Bright side: You will no longer have any friends outside academia.) ... In the place of actual jobs are adjunct positions: benefit-free, office-free academic servitude in which you will earn $18,000 a year for the rest of your life."
That's a typo, professor.
All the baby boomer professors will keep working for another 10 to 20 years. Until they retire, they are taking up a huge percentage of the available academic jobs. With regards to literature majors, the death of the publishing industry has killed any non-academic work. While there is still some work available, compared to even 10 years ago, it's peanuts.
see also:
Law school
The value of a PhD in the wrong area is nowhere near the value of a master's degree in the right area. Businesses don't give a second glance to PhDs in literature, or sociology, or plant physiology, and the university positions for those are few and far between due to budget cuts. A master's degree in any STEM area will have two or three times the earning potential for a fraction of the cost. That isn't to say that you shouldn't pursue a PhD if you love your subject and love doing research on it. But banking on getting a position within a research university as a result of that degree is dead. (My husband managed to do it, but only by adjuncting at the school for years before he finished his PhD, so that when a full time spot opened up he was the first choice.)
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Huh, and here I thought my Associate's of Applied Science in Automotive Technology was a wasted effort...
The difference being, I realized my degree was worth approximately shit after 2 years.
Pardon me for not feeling sorry for you.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You did a thesis on Kafka. You should have known that the world was a harsh, uncaring place...
After four years of trying, I’ve finally gotten it through my thick head that I will not get a job—and if you go to graduate school, neither will you.
I got my masters between 2005-2007. Before that I had done two internships (while getting my undergrad) and then worked a year without school. When I went back to school my employer completely paid for my masters of science in computer science and, actually, I worked forty hours a week the whole time I was going to school full time. Doctorates are a completely different animal. I wanted to do one and yet the two professors who were interested in me said I would have to quit working my job. No deal, I've been working at least a 20 hour a week job since I was 13 and I think I would go insane now if I didn't have a full time job. And before you ask, academia is a lot of work but it is not a job.
... she understands orders of logic so may be able to learn some of the more friendly computer languages.
A lot of these complaints in this article (though well written and entertaining surprise surprise) are indicative of anyone who takes a career in an entertainment world to the final resting place. What? You think the second trombonist for the Milwaukee Symphony is a bad trombone player? And when he travels to Kansas for an audition and is rejected because some insider got the lead, he's not upset that he's structured his whole life around trombone playing? No, he just picked an entertainment profession which means Pareto Law would be the best possible outcome and you're likely going to be a starving artist. There's just not enough revenue to spread around and when there is it is highly concentrated to a few individuals.
This is why STEM is pressed so hard and fascist leadership in China actually dictates how many STEM graduates their universities will pump out. I don't want that here in the states, what I want is realistic expectations set and delivered to prospective students about what employment rates look like and where the payout in the endgame lies. Don't confuse me some sort of dream crusher rubbing one out to telling people that their passion is a sideshow in the game of life but rather just a realist with production of goods and services in mind.
This story actually sounds positive compared to my friends who got lit undergrad degrees and then went out into the world to use them. My close friend from high school first got a job proof reading SEC filings that had already gone public. He would proof them all night long and then they would go out as updates -- that nobody would ever read. Then after feeling like he was doing nothing, he started delivering pizzas and did that for six years before he finally landed a great job. What job would that be? Well, he works as one of the state's tax collectors who calls people up. He's a genuinely nice guy and has a very friendly voice and talks about tax solutions to people who owe the state money. And he never took a math or accounting course and he does very little writing in his job. That is the reality of a lit degree.
From the sound of this author's research, she could probably get into natural language parsing fairly easily
Reading, writing, making music, painting, playing games are all things that I super love to do. But they're just a side thing to something else that I'm good at that is much more productive and tangible to society.
My work here is dung.
Of course, a PhD in literature (of all things) is not going to be a meal ticket for the vast majority of people. How many tenure track positions SHOULD there be for literature studies? A couple of hundred in the US? It's a tiny, tiny sliver of adult life. If you have a burning desire to expound on the mysteries of "Gravity's Rainbow" and you think you need to devote your life to it, go ahead. The world might be a better place for it. But expecting to get a job doing that? Not so much.
There are PhD level studies that can reliably lead to gainful employment, but that's not what doctorate level education has been about. I think it would reflect nicely on our society if you COULD expect to devote your like to James Joyce and get compensated for your efforts, but we're a long way away from that particular utopia.
If you need money, get a job. If you have money, do what makes you happy and fulfilled. Don't necessarily conflate the two.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
There are people in all branches of academia who have finished PhDs and are not finding meaningful employment. While a while back there was a study that declared that those who hold a PhD are seeing a much lower unemployment rate than the rest of the country (something like 2% vs the usual 9.999%) the problem is a lot of people who have that terminal degree are not getting the job they trained for. Many people are completing multiple post-doc positions and then ending up in dead end positions in academia (or industry) with no chance for professional advancement.
In other words, if the "unemployment" number for those with a PhD included those who are "underemployed" (in comparison to the job they actually aspire to hold), the number would be much, much, higher.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Nope.
I know 2 people with doctorates in science-related disciplines (one in physics, the other mathematics) who've both had very serious battles with long periods of unemployment (in excess of 3 years).
It's not how much you know... it's who you know. And if you don't happen to be connected to the right people at the right time, well then, it's mostly a matter of luck.
But then, so is being connected to the right people at the right time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The number of English Lit and Semiotics types I've encountered in the I.T. field. It's incredible.
As a psychologist in a lot of jurisdictions you *need* a Ph.D. to get licensed and get a job. Lots of people take undergrad psychology and then say, "now what?" That's not a good plan either. I think it pays to research this stuff ahead of time. BTW, you have a degree in literature? Why not become an author? Or, I dunno, get a job at a factory and read books on your lunch break like the rest of us?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
No. This is what we as young academics have been told for twenty years: the Boomers and pre-Boomers are about to retire, and there will be a lot of jobs soon.
The reality is that no, there is no large spike of retirements coming down the pipe, and even if there were, it does not imply there are job openings. Universities rely on large classes, heavy teaching loads, and especially adjuncts / sessionals.
Moreover, it is well-known that in the next decade or so, there will be a slump in the number of students, due to simple demographics. So, fewer, weaker students, and fewer jobs per student.
The OP is not just bitter: this is the honest truth about academia right now. And it includes the sciences and professional studies, too.
well, an literature undergrad degree at least gets me lots of friends - and by friends I mean people who want me to proofread their writing. for free. at work.
It's hard to see the connection between anything mentioned in the article and being turned into a horrible person.
maybe the universities that were turning you down were looking for someone that understands the difference between "you" and "your" in literature... but then again, i'd have to confirm with my academic self.
The issue is that the jobs are taken by the graduates of the elite institutions. I don't know where Ohio State University stands in Literature, but unless it's ranked in the top ten for that field, the chances of getting a job when one opens up is virtually nil.
It's simple arithmetic. The top schools, Ivies and their equivalents produce an equal or greater number of PhDs than there are positions opening in any given year in the humanities. Why would any school that is hiring, when they have applicants from half a dozen Ivies bother looking at someone from a lower ranked program? Sure, there is more to it than simply the program that mints you: how good your dissertation is, if your adviser is friends with the people hiring etc., but remember that the people graduating from the Ivies will also have very good dissertations and advisers who are friends with (or former professors of!) the people hiring!
If you want to be a humanities professor, and think you can do it without going to a top school, then yes, your cause is lost from the beginning. But, if you are as great as you think you are, and can get into a top program, then your chances aren't as bad as people make it out to be.
Looks like somebody is trying to eliminate potential future competition.
This is not news. Plenty of people are already very aware of this, and they don't choose to pursue such a path because of it. The effect of this, is that the best and brightest are quite often scared away from academia.
It's only a few hopeful, possibly naive suckers who do it anymore. Occasionally, someone will get into it for personal enrichment, fully knowing that it's not a rewarding career option, but these people are rare.
It's not exactly specific to literature and liberal arts either. Even in engineering, where I was - PhDs aren't exactly worthwhile and don't really increase the prospects of rewarding jobs. My B.Eng and 4 years of actual work with a decent company makes me more experienced, qualified and employable than any eng PhD I've ever met.
My wife has a graduate science degree, and now she's in trade school doing something completely different.
Education can be both a leisure activity and an investment. When picking a major you have to consider both. If you are rich and are going to school purely for leisure then it doesn't matter. It's like an American that can afford to spend a year in Europe. It is fun and it will lead to personal growth.
But if you don't have the money and are getting yourself in massive debt you better think of it as an investment. Will I get a return on the money I am spending or borrowing? If not pick another subject. You have a lifetime to study for leisure. If you have a well paying job you will have more resources to help you. It's like that trip to Europe. Its fine to go if you can afford it. If you have to put yourself into crippling debt to go it might not be such a good idea.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
In the US and probably in many other countries, it seems neither usable skills or hint of intelligence are required at any level. You get the office and the benefits. The salaries are not commensurate with anything.
>> An assistant professor....writes: "I will not get a job—and if you go to graduate school, neither will you"
Um...isn't she employed...by a Big 10 university...after going to grad school?
>> You will no longer have any friends outside academia.
I wonder why. Must REALLY get under her skin that the only place she gets published is on SlashDot.
An intelligent person comes to recognize that having a LITERATURE DEGREE isn't a route to financial security.
Wow. That's some insight.
(This reminds me of an interview I saw on NPR purporting to illustrate how "hard" times have gotten in Greece, that PhD's were waiting tables in restaurants and barely scraping by. Almost as an aside at the end of the interview, they asked him what his PhD was in - "Russian Literature". I almost crashed my car I was laughing so hard.)
-Styopa
Not to downplay this persons experience ... but, since this is Slashdot, and a tech-heavy web site ... show of hands for people who are shocked a PhD in literature may not be an awesome career path? Anybody?
Universities are pinched, and there's an increasing move among governments to say "why are we training people for stuff for which there are no jobs?". I knew someone years ago who was in his 5th year of university, working on a BA in English, had massive debts, and no prospects -- and the question at the time was, "other than personal interest, what will this degree ever do for you?". He had no idea about that.
Unfortunately, much of the 'humanities' subjects in university are so specialized and highly focused, that it's hard not to see how some of this is relevant to anybody except other people with PhDs in the field.
I've known a few people who studied post-modernism in literature ... and even they couldn't tell me what you'd use it for other than a purely academic discussion. For that matter, they mostly can't even define what post-modernism is to a layman, or why it has to be so incomprehensible that a computer generated paper gets accepted into journals.
Sadly, some degrees can only qualify you for academia, and if those positions aren't available, what have you gained by it? The ability to cite Chaucer while asking me if I want fries?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
People with doctorates in mathematics should not be unemployable given the rise of data analysis. If they can't find a job, then there is likely something else going on. Either they are making bad choices as to where to interview, are just a shitty interview, aren't as smart as they think they are, or they come across as toxic. As someone who has been a hiring manager in tech fields for a while, I see a lot of this. People who on paper look good but clearly can't communicate with another human being or demonstrate any of their supposed knowledge.
good, what exactly would you have added to society with tenure in a university? creating more mindless, morons that think they are so great because they analyzed some books. produce something, write a book yourself
Getting a PH.D. in any science related field will most likely guarantee you a job.
No degree in any field will "guarantee you a job". Science is no exception. Conversely no degree in any field will make you unemployable nor will the lack of a degree. Some degrees make the odds of landing a job in your field better than others is the most you can say. Lacking a degree or having the "wrong" degree makes certain jobs unobtainable (you won't be a physician without a degree) but that doesn't mean you can't find some sort of employment.
The mistake the author made was not pursuing a Ph.D, it was to completely identify with those academic pursuits, only to find that house of cards toppling down when the delusions it was built upon were put to the test of reality. Fall down, get back up and get real.
you wrote "you academic self" in an essay. why would anyone hire someone who wants to teach writing and literature who is that careless about their grammar?
It is hard to get a job anywhere in this economy. Real unemployment is around 15% (not the 7.6% touted by the Feds, that number excludes people unemployed so long they can't get unemployment insurance payments). For a university position, this means there is going to be less funding so fewer tenured positions. Plus the terrible economy means more Ph.D.'s are seeking refuge in universities so the candidate pool is bigger. Back in the '90s with the tech boom, I remember seeing universities advertising professorship positions to CS, Eng. and science Ph.D. fresh out of school, post-doc not required because you could make better money outside acedemia. Now you have to do years of post-docs just to get your foot in the door as an assistant professor of even lecturer. It's worse in the liberal arts.
Getting a PH.D. in any science related field will most likely guarantee you a job.
This is totally false. Getting a Ph.D., having a superstar graduate mentor, a stellar publication record, and demonstrating an ability to obtain external funding *might* mean you're more likely to get a job, but it still doesn't guarantee it.
I have tried twice to get a PhD in math, finally getting it in 2009. I figured out fairly early that a PhD in math wasn't going to go far for me into academia career-wise especially with the weaknesses I have as a researcher and teacher. I did it because partly due to stubbornness and partly because I wanted to learn how to think at a really deep level.
Now, I'm an accountant working from the heart of a supervolcano. It doesn't pay well, but I live in a cool place, have plenty of time off over the year, save a bit of money, and am picking up some useful experience. I do find the occasional use for my mad math skillz, but I accept that I'm not going to be fully challenged at a job like this.
Last I heard complaints pertaining to life choices belong on Facebook.
But it might not guarantee you a job doing what you actually love doing. Yes, you can enter the Dilbertian world of private industry, and make a nice six figure salary by wearing a suit and spending most of your time shuffling paperwork for scientifically illiterate management. There are a few industry positions that actually focus on exciting, rewarding research --- but they're as rare as tenured professor spots. If you actually love doing academic research (instead of inane corporate ladder climbing), then you're in the same boat as the Literature PhD: likely to spend decades in postdoc and associate professor positions, earning less than the median national wage, with no long-term job stability or prospects.
...would you like fries with that? ;p
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
Not to slight any dedication to expand one's knowledge, but a PhD in literature should never be pursued with the belief that a job is at the finish line. I do not understand how one can become "academically valid" a subjective field such as liberal arts or non-quantitative/objective economics. If the body of knowledge gained after a PhD in literature truly has the financial value a tenured position provides, then it should translate to the open market. In this case it obviously does not. Thus, why should more people be paid to train more PhD's if such a field if it is not economically viable?
It's not how much you know... it's who you know
This just cannot be emphasized enough. Knowledge, skills, and experience are only 50% of success at best. The other 50% (or more) is social skills. Take it from a 38-year-old in a dead-end job who used to be very enthusiastic about his work (database programming and system adminstration). After 15 solid years in the real world, this social outcast makes $20/hour.
.
When I got my masters' (1979) I considered getting a doctorate. I asked several friends with doctorates what they thought about pursuing the doctorate. To a person, they recommended against it, for the reasons cited above, plus one more: with a doctorate, it was very unlikely the company would ever promote me or them to management. They needed those doctors doing technical work that they could wheel out before customers, not managing things, where their doctorate had no additional credibility.
Who said I was whining? I'm not suggesting anybody owes a job to people just because they have a particular education, I'm saying that sometimes shit just happens, and getting work is difficult regardless of one's qualifications.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
As an employer, I try to set aside the fact that college graduates have wasted years being spoon-fed when they could have been out in the real world inventing things, learning from experience, etc. That's more difficult for someone with a masters, and almost impossible for someone with a PhD. The number of high end degrees that walk in and end up walking right back out again because they have no real world programming skills is very high. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare. When it comes to collections of practical skills, college grads tend to be on the very short side. Nor does having bulled their way through various useless, unrelated classes help them in any way.
The good news for those people is that there are a lot of other places where hiring is done by HR instead of people who do real work; since HR has no idea how to measure competence, they shoot their own company in the foot by substituting paperhanging. It works for me; it'll be years before those people can do real work at any reasonable rate; in the interval, we always outperform them.
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Well, tenure-track positions in my field have about 150 applicants each. Multiply that 0.6 percent chance of getting any given job by the 10 or so appropriate positions in the entire world, and you have about that same 6 percent chance of “success.”
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By this logic, if there were 200 job opening she'd have greater than 100% chance of getting one.
p = 1/150 = prob of being offered any particular job
j = 10 = # of jobs applied to
The chance of being offered a job is: 1-(1-p)^j =~ 6.47%
Maybe if her math skills were better she might get a job. :-)
> You will believe this so strongly that when you do not land a job, it will destroy you, and nobody outside of academia will understand why.
That is, nobody except Josef K.
I could never understand how academics could get lifetime positions at universities doing what they do - not exactly the kind of work that provides value in a fast paced world. It just seems that getting a degree in philosophy or literature is like getting a degree is making buggy whips. It's so weird. Does anyone stll believe that reading To Kill a Mockingbird is a relevant exercise in the world we live in when we have enough real world examples of social issues? Indulging in classic literature has been mostly a waste of time for at least 15 years. If you want to do it for personal development, go for it. Professionally? C'mon.
That's only true if by "unemployment" you mean a post-doctorate position, which actually is a job.
Your learning experience in college is pretty straight forward. You are building a venn diagram of three sets of information:
1. What you're good at
2. What you enjoy
3. What will make you money
You find what's in the middle and then you work your butt off developing the skills and knowledge related to that field. After a year or two of this, you also work your butt off volunteering or working for crap pay in every internship/apprenticeship/indenturedservitudeship you can find so that you can build your resume and your contacts.
After many years of this, you roll the dice a few times a year and eventually you should have a nice job.
The problem is, many people go into college thinking life is like high school and they will only have to make a few decision per year and then pretty much everything else will be handled for them. The reality is, every year that goes by, you have to take more and more control over your own destiny. There are a lot of people out there who either have very unrealistic expectations for what this should look like or they simply don't do it.
Who you know always is important, but if you get a PhD in some really exotic area of physics, there may not be someone in industry looking for your particular speciality. What you know always counts.
Of course, learning to *sell* yourself correctly counts too. Physics isn't exactly full of people with people skills though.
I've never seen the word "penurious" before:
penurious
adjective formal
1 extremely poor; poverty-stricken: a penurious old tramp.
characterized by poverty or need: penurious years.
2 parsimonious; mean: he was generous and hospitable in contrast to his stingy and penurious wife.
--New Oxford American Dictionary
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
The issue is that the jobs are taken by the graduates of the elite institutions. I don't know where Ohio State University stands in Literature, but unless it's ranked in the top ten for that field, the chances of getting a job when one opens up is virtually nil.
It's simple arithmetic. The top schools, Ivies and their equivalents produce an equal or greater number of PhDs than there are positions opening in any given year in the humanities. Why would any school that is hiring, when they have applicants from half a dozen Ivies bother looking at someone from a lower ranked program? Sure, there is more to it than simply the program that mints you: how good your dissertation is, if your adviser is friends with the people hiring etc., but remember that the people graduating from the Ivies will also have very good dissertations and advisers who are friends with (or former professors of!) the people hiring!
If you want to be a humanities professor, and think you can do it without going to a top school, then yes, your cause is lost from the beginning. But, if you are as great as you think you are, and can get into a top program, then your chances aren't as bad as people make it out to be.
Exactly.
This is the same in every field in academia. There are WAY too many reasonably well qualified PhDs applying for any tenure track position. I know that in physics and astronomy, a small, 3rd rate school might get 300+ qualified applicants for an open tenure track position ("qualified" meaning a PhD in the right field with multiple good postdocs). So if you didn't get your PhD from a very small list of schools (let's say the better Ivy league schools plus Standford, MIT, and Caltech), you aren't getting the job. Period.
I got my PhD from a Big 10 University. Then I looked at where the professors from my university and all the other Big 10 schools got their degrees from. It was all from schools higher up on the list than my (not so lowly ranked) school. That was a pretty good indication of my chances of ever getting a tenure track job.
It's not so much that students from my school were worse than students from places like Harvard. It's just that the people doing the hiring were all from the top tier schools. Plus nobody is going to get flak for hiring a guy with a PhD from Harvard, even if he didn't work out.
Those who succeed will naturally attribute their success to their actions, and mentally filter out just how much luck was really involved.
Yes, working hard gives you an advantage over not working hard. Yes, failing to work hard guarantees failure whereas working hard empowers success.
But it is also true that many, many people who work their asses off never amount to anything because they simply don't have the opportunities that you have had through pure luck.
You don't deserve your success as much as you think you do.
Sounds like she nailed it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So I guess you don't see the value of art in society?
That is a bizarre conclusion and I apologize if you derived that from my post.
I think we are enriched by writing, painting, drawing, sculpting, performance, and the endless ocean that is music. I think a world where we just worry about being "productive and tangible" is a sad grey world.
We are enriched -- I would argue that we're more enriched when we take those things up as a hobby. I will also argue that "being the best lute player in Cornwall" doesn't mean anything when YouTube allows one of the other six billion people to reach everyone on Earth. This is a good thing because it disperses all of the great things we're talking about but it also sets the bar mighty high. Worrying about being "productive and tangible" is not a sad grey world, it's a realistic world! And nowhere did I imply that we should "just" worry about that stuff, I merely questioned what the ratio of employment is. Right now there are too many people gunning for the job of tenured post doctoral thesis literature professor -- as evidenced by her post. There are a limited number of those!
I say this as a developer: a healthy society supports the arts.
As a developer, I'm able to actually earn enough money that I have disposable income to support the arts. Had I pursued my career as a bass player, I might be writing a column right now about how Flea and Paul McCartney are ruining my profession and keep me out of a job. Conversely I'm more than gainfully employed and extremely thankful for that fact!
The ratio of artists to patrons of the arts is important. If one side of the equation grows too large you have problems. We're discussing that inequality here, not talking about exterminating one or the other. The column in this article is indicative of too many people entirely basing their income models off of being artists. In such a crowded market with technology that allows me to select whichever artist I choose, this is not smart!
My work here is dung.
If you manage to get through a doctored program
Indeed, they're difficult enough as it is -- without being "doctored".
I can understand that.
One of my best friends in college dated this English lit major (not sure how that happened) so I was reluctantly in her presence from time to time. Her haughty condemnation and utter disdain for the types of fiction I enjoyed reading was enough to ruin any prospects of friendship. She wouldn't even consider the idea that the concepts of "good" or "bad" as applied to art and literature were subjective. No, her advanced knowledge made her uniquely qualified to provide such assessments. Snotty bitch. Thank $deity they split up.
Of course, a PhD in literature (of all things) ...
Did no one tell her that the literature program is mostly for those on the MRS degree(*) track? So they pretty much only need enough PhDs to supply enough professors to keep the program alive.
(*) That is actually not a slam. If one knows one will be more focused on children and family rather than career, yet still wants to go to college for whatever reason, literature is a good choice for a major. My background is STEM and I know various people that after 5 years on the job are taking a decade or two off for the family. Again, not a slam, if that is what makes a person happy then fine. For some of these peole STEM was a good thing, they had a genuine interest, their interests merely changed over time. For others it was more bending to expectations and pressure than having a genuine interest in the field, perhaps they should have gone literature? Face it, the reality of college for some is to have some fun and to meet some new people to the right of the bell curve.
The author forgot to mention Starbuck's. That's where all the adjunct literary professors that I know work.
It took her 4 years to realize she was in a worthless field. You can't get those years back.
Form a union for TAs, these "adjunct positions" and of course, ALL THE ATHLETES. I can't wait to pop the popcorn for all the tenured communist professors to be opposed to the union, or to accept a contract when all these people go on strike. Either way, it would be just deserts. Of course they'd claim that tuition would have to go up and saddle undergrads with more debt. That's a lie of course. Paying these people fair wages probably wouldn't do that. Answer? Regulate universities. Double-plus funny on the same professors who would be very happy to regulate finance, oil companies, etc.; anybody but them.
Getting a PH.D. in any science related field will most likely guarantee you a job.
...in computer programming ..
Ok, so it sounds like we all agree that a PHD in Literature is not a sure fire road to riches. Not a lot of surprise here.
I suspect that skills learned in the pursuit if the degree might come in handy to someone. For instance, your skill in research. There's often a need for someone that's really good at finding stuff, or at making sense of huge amounts of disparate data. It isn't literature per se, but may engage skills that you developed to get the degree.
Someone else mentioned becoming an author, and someone else said that a PHD in Literature doesn't necessarily make one an author. This is true. It may, however, give one the tools necessary to be an editor.
Daughter was until recently pursuing a degree in art. Then she thought art history, because it was interesting to her. She has finally settled on art business, because it's interesting and more likely to be lucrative. I have not expressed this, but I suspect that if she can't find a gallery to manage, she might find some other opportunity that uses her business knowledge but isn't necessarily tied to art.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
PhD '101' should cover graduate school requirements, thesis writing, teaching, and academic job hunting. When I got mine it was more of an apprentice system: imitate those a year or two ahead of you. Now there are some books and youTubes on the topic.
Students considering grad school should take this seminar.
Baby boomers or not, the number of PhD graduates far exceeds the number of professors due to the simple logistics of teaching. Suppose you start a professorship at 30, and retire at 70. How many PhD students do you advise per year? Let's say 1.5 just to be on the low side. And suppose they each take 5 years to graduate. You just cranked out a dozen PhDs, and created one faculty opening by retiring. One should expect an advanced degree to increase one's job prospects, but it's numerically silly to expect, specifically, a faculty position. This is why every university hires people with degrees from an even better university---not because NIU frowns on NIU grads, but because the market for the teacher's job is so competitive that only the best CVs get in.
...and that's if you want to be a graduate student. In some fields (and some research groups) it's worth it. One physicist's take: http://scientopia.org/blogs/galacticinteractions/2012/01/14/777/
You know what this is? This is economics sending you a message. Let's see if you receive it.
Liberty.
A PhD in literature may turn you into a horse?
I work in IT and have since 1997 or so. When I started in IT there really wasn't a college course in IT available. You learned on the job. Some jackass employers would require a CS degree at the time for simple IT work but that's because IT was semi new and they just didn't know what they were doing.
I didn't go to college until 2005. I was just too busy earning money to bother. I eventually went back to college and got an English degree because I already had a boat load of IT experience. I got my present job specifically because I had an English degree (they were sick of IT people that could barely read and write much less produce any type of legible documentation). I'm probably the exception to the rule but thinking on it, I really don't see the value of an IT degree today. There's literally nothing you can't figure out in IT with just some google searches and on the job training. My English degree however opened up a lot of doors for me, allowed me to pursue things I consider to be fun (working on a novel) and made my resume stand out enough that my present employer took notice.
After all, Dr. Laura's doctorate was in physiology, not psychiatry, and she was reasonably successful.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I didn't know the world owed you that.
I think the error in your thinking is assuming all degrees should lead to a job. It used to be that college was cheap enough, even at the graduate level, that you could pursue it for enjoyment alone. At my Uni there were a large number of professors that didn't even enter graduate school until they were in their mid-40's or 50's and started teaching after that because they enjoyed it.
I myself have an English degree because I wanted one, not because I was going to get rich from it. I lucked out and qualified for state and federal grants that made my education virtually free. I have no regrets.
These people dropping 100k+ on a degree thinking they will become instant millionaires is what is driving up costs and setting unrealistic expectations. Just because you have a degree does not mean you are guaranteed a job, much less a high paying one. That goes for all degrees and all fields. Great, you got a degree. All that tells anyone is that you were able to foot the bill for a time, attend classes and do some homework.
If I'm hiring someone and the job pays a good salary, I'm looking for what they can "do" more than what they "know."
I quickly grew to despise Ohio State after they changed their official name to The Ohio State University. This is literally emphasized by former alums (heh) playing in the NFL when they announce their names and schools.
'The' Ohio State... was there really confusion about *which* state university in Ohio has a stadium large enough to be seen from orbit?
I just hope someday, a cheeky alum (maybe with a PhD in Literature!) will dedicate themselves to always state they went to An Ohio State University.
The purpose of a university education is for higher learning. They were never created to get you a job.
A technical college was created to get you a job. Or more correctly, to fill the technical/vocational needs of employers in the area.
If my memory serves me correctly, the University of South Carolina was originally created to educate the state's lawmakers so they would have a better understanding of the laws they were making. If you look at the mission of many big universities these days, their mission today has changed in a major way from their original mission.
Today, big universities are here to self-serve themselves. Another words, they are a big paycheck for those in administration or faculty or those vendors or consultants hired by the university to perform some job or service.
Yes, they still educate, but the cost is way too high. I predict higher education to be the next bubble to pop. Along with health care too, but that is another story.
So, when you are trying to figure what you want to study in college/university, you have to think am I looking for a degree to push me to learn and contribute in that area in academia, or am I looking for a degree to get me a decent paying career job. A literary degree is just that - a degree for those who want to learn or be a teacher/professor teaching literature. However, you could always apply to Law School.
Saw this on facebook the other day, seems very relevant:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1144
By unemployment, I mean unable to secure any position, either inside of or outside of their field. Outside of their field, they were routinely considered "overqualified" (arguably understandable), and inside of their field, it was simply a matter of not being able to find any openings.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
armed forces should count the same as a Degree and you not be forced to get a 2-4 year piece of paper saying that you can do what you did in the armed forces.
If 100% of the population of the US had Ph.D.'s, someone would still need to drive cabs, clean toilets, and water lawns. And given that IQ is normally distributed, a lot of those Ph.D.'s would be pretty dumb (and not just in the academic sense).
Politicians looked at the correlation between degrees and higher salaries, and erroneously concluded that degrees cause higher salaries. They then went on to subsidize degrees (cheered on in many ways by various interests groups who benefit from such additional funding), creating an oversupply of people with degrees for which there is no market demand. And remember that while you are "underemployed" with your literature Ph.D. that you're still paying taxes to subsidize the creation of the next generation of people who get degrees they don't need.
No one will read this since my karma is low, but this is my experience. I had gotten my masters in EE while working. Afterwards I started a phd in EE while working. I figured I would do one or two semesters, see if I liked it and then I would go full time. During the second semester I started consulting via 1099 for a small company. So at one point, I was working one job, going to school and working a little for a second job. I started thinking to myself. Hmm. I can make X in salary and Y in consulting work or I can make 0 and go to school fulltime. When I get out after 4-6 years I may or may not make more base salary than I currently am making. What is the chance that my new salary will be greater than four years of lost income plus tuition? I figured no chance. So it was an easy decision for me to quit school. Later I was working a job and my peer was a phd. I figured since we were the same job title we were making the same money. One day they had a layoff and they kept me and got rid of him. So from my perspective I think getting a masters degree is pretty much the sweet spot for education versus cash income. If you are born rich or the smartest guy you know, then a phd is best for you. But for the regular smarter than average guys but most certainly not the smartest or hardest working then you are better off getting a masters degree, working and using your spare time to maintain your skills.
trades, apprenticeship and tech schools are needed.
a good deal of college graduates are missing the more hands on skills needed in many fields and the higher up the Ivory Tower you go it's more and more about the Academic side of things.
She gets a PhD in a field where virtually the only job prospects are teaching other poor saps to get a PhD in the same field and she complains that the job prospects are drying up.
Wow, go figure.
All that Kafka will have made you an expert at feeling sorry for yourself.
And before you ask, academia is a lot of work but it is not a job.
If you'd gone on for a PhD, you'd know how absurd that sounds. Dissertation research damn well is a job, probably tougher than any job you've ever had. And I've had plenty of work experience in what people smugly and stupidly call the "real world" (hint: any world where people live and work is just as real as any other) as a basis for comparison.
So you start out how absurd it is for me to say that academia is a lot of work but it's not a job. Then you go on to lecture me about how much more difficult working on a doctoral thesis is compared to just a regular old job. And how different the two things are. Then you assume that I'm going to give you a lecture about the "real world" which I neither did nor have any intention of doing.
From what I have experienced, a doctoral thesis is a highly neurotic and unpredictable world with no guarantees. Infighting and contacts often trump a true meritocracy more so than they would in a normal job. The payout is confusing and pretty much a gamble with much of it being that you contributed to your field. A job, on the other hand centers on providing measured amounts of goods and services for a guaranteed paycheck. It is stable, it is steady, it often comes without fame or press releases.
All I said was that the two are not the same thing and I love having a job. Why are people replying to me like I scoff at these "lazy doctoral thesis" researchers? I do not recall doing any such thing, in fact I had at one time aspired to be one!
I did not attack you or your choices, I did not "smugly and stupidly" say that doctoral thesis folks do not know what the "real world" is -- please stop projecting that onto me. Why are there multiple posts telling me I'm wrong when I clearly stated that "a doctoral thesis is a lot of work?!"
The two things have entirely different means and entirely different goals with entirely different lifespans.
My work here is dung.
It's also a location thing, probably. Big Data is only in the big cities, and people would rather not move if they can help it.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
As a Ph.D. who has spent a 30 year career in an industrial research lab, I have witnessed a saddening decay brought about by margin compression and the continued cost-cutting to attempt deliver continuous growth of quarterly profits. Too many people fail to look at the period from 1950 to 1980 as a historical aberration produced by the destruction of most global manufacturing capabilities by WW-II.
As a result, US profit margins were high and there was significant funding available for wage increases, capital expansion, and corporate R&D. As global competition increased, there have been multiple rounds of cost cutting. At first the cuts were fairly painless (do we really need a lab copy of that journal?" but they got progressively worse (who gets laid off and do we really need to replace that broken hunk of junk in the lab?).
What you see now is corporations closing more US R&D centers and opening new ones in the Pac Rim where costs are lower. It is interesting to note that no corporate board has yet decided to really cut costs by outsourcing management to the Pac Rim.
We have always joked about "the law of conservation of lab heads." When I started work over 30 years ago, there were 65,000 employees in our county. Now there are less than 3,500. Guess what - we have more senior vice presidents now... Go figure...
...because that is how far back in time you need to go for a PhD to be a great investment in most fields.
There were big increases in tenure track jobs when the universities were growing like gangbusters to educate the baby boomers. That door slammed shut in 1970.
When I was in graduate school for physics, I saw the demographic statistics. The median age of tenured faculty in physics steadily dropped in the post-war era down to the low 30s in 1970, and then that trend reversed to start rapidly rising. The median age of tenured physics faculty in the USA climbed by 20 year from 1970 to 1995!
The "Good Times" were long gone, and were in a period of slow organic growth and gentle attrition.
My own adviser had a fairly successful career. Of the 24 PhDs he "fathered" over twenty something years, 1 had tenure and 2 others had equivalent research positions (e.g. NIST). As an (to be generous) average performing graduate student, he took me aside and pointed out the writing on the wall, even if I completed the program. I took the Masters and headed to Silicon Valley...
I have not looked at current stats, but I doubt things have improved for PhDs since the 90s. The median age of tenured faculty probably have drifted slightly downwards since a peak in the 90s, but the overall situation has probably gotten worse.
I tried to play this game. Two years after graduating with a Computer Science degree and working in industry I thought "Hey, I like thinking about, reading, and analyzing books way more than I do anything else. Maybe I should try to be a Literature professor." So, I went back to school to get a BA in English,test the waters, and build the requisite portfolio. I quickly found out why I didn't actually want to go on to graduate school. 1)I'd spend 5-8 years broke completing graduate school if I went down the PhD path. Lots of lost earnings and missed out enjoyment due to my poorness. 2)Even if I finished the PhD path, my best case starting salary would be around $60k. That's the same I made walking out of college with the Comp Sci degree. There is no financial incentive there for me what soever. 3)Because jobs are so scarce, if you get a job as a professor, you have to take it, even if it is in some small rural town. Also, if you get tenured, you're tied there forever. Screw that. I want to live somewhere cool and metropolitan and be able to move if I want instead of being tied to one area until I die. 4)Academic culture kind of sucks. I'm a fantasy/sci-fi geek and no one is all that interested in discussing books that even slightly fun. It's all got to be incomprehensible and angsty. I like a lot of non-geek books as well, but the majority of books academia wants to talk about are not that entertaining. It's all one big intellectual jerk off festival. 5)I'd spent the rest of my life writing books and papers that only Literature academics would read that would in no contribute to anything I considered useful or important. So yeah, I'll just keep making a good wage with flexible job circumstances and save the book talk for my friends.
I picked a career that actually pays! How I chose my career path was simple? What do I enjoy and what does industry require? I have seen everyone in my family (Including Spouses) struggle with huge debts from University. I have heard this argument for years and my income has consistently outpaced theirs. Their advice to their children is: Choose your career and education wisely.
Later,
Your friends need to look nationwide for jobs, If you have a PhD in Physics or Math you probably have a narrowly defined specialty, and the chances of finding jobs that fit are slim no matter where you are located.
And Math and Physics are especially hard phds to use for private sector employment. Because the private sector really doesn't do theoretical research (doesn't pay off fast enough), and getting grant money is hard.
I think its very important to pick an educational path that can translate into some sort of career, or at least has some market demand. I'm all for pursuing ones interests, and learning for learning's sake, but some things are best left as hobbies.
I'm lucky I was able to see first hand at a young age that employers value some degrees more than others. I saw one of my brothers degree in health care administration take him no-where, and had a summer job digging holes (dirty, poor paying, back breaking work, with no power tools) where one of the crew had a masters degree in wildlife management, and another a degree in business of some kind. The market valued their degrees the same as it values high school dropouts. So I made sure that I earned a degree where I had more options and better pay even if it wasn't my passion.
College is a great way/place to learn, but a degree isn't a magic ticket, you need to develop skills that people will actually pay you for.
But at the university where I work, which is a pretty large one (about 40,000 students) "business types" in administration is not the problem, but quite the opposite. Administrative positions get appointed from faculty. Deans are faculty members promoted to administration, the president came from outside but is a PhD academic type and so on.
Some of our problems actually stem from this in that it turns out being an academic doesn't necessary mean you understand how to deal with a budget, or handle personnel issues, or the other kinds of business related things that come with running a large department.
"There is unquantifiable intellectual reward from the exploration of scholarly problems and the expansion of every discipline—yes, even the literary ones, and even if that means doing bat-s**t analysis like using the rule of "false elimination" to determine that Josef K. is simultaneously guilty and not guilty in The Trial."
Intellectual reward to whom? Sorry, I can't agree on the value. 99% of what comes out of the "scholarly problems" aren't problems at all but glorified intellectual masturbation.
No, I wasn't the one with a literature degree, my ex-wife was. By the time she had earned her masters in literature she was well on the way to being a horrible person. She didn't get any less horrible by going to law school in order to make herself more marketable. 11 years in school and $140k in student loans produced a truly miserable human in perpetual therapy. What a way to spend a life.
Proverbs 21:19
marketing. Analytic thinking skills and clear expression of thoughts is well appreciated once demonstrated properly. If that fails, get a trucking license and start packing shipping containers and managing warehouses. In some countries and areas that gives a 50% better salary than a government funded PhD or equivalent requiring job in the field directly related to the subject of the degree.
Of course, you'll likely need to do a few more courses & complete a student-teaching (practicum).
From personal anecdote, well two points.
(1) I know quite a number of literature Ph.D.s who have good and happy lives, some as professors, other doing other things.
(2) I myself have a doctorate in post-structuralist political philosophy. Not really a field better suited to actually getting an academic job than literature is, if you look at it. It's true, for a number of years I had a somewhat distorted notion of my odds of getting a tenure track position doing that. I didn't. And now I get paid quite a lot as a consultant to a computational biology lab that has built the world's fastest supercomputer (at least fastest, by orders of magnitude, for doing molecular dynamics). I'm happy... and specifically, I think doing my humanities doctorate was absolutely delightful, and some of the most fun I've had in my life.
FWIW, I don't have 'Ph.D.' next to my name out of a financial motive. Quite possibly, if I had spent an extra decade slinging code, I might have more money saved (I'm old too, by slashdot standards, late 40s). On the other hand, I probably wouldn't be making more as an actual rate, and specifically those little letters--even when they are in an unrelated field--actually do help my resume/CV float to the top next to ones that lack them. But indeed, money isn't the question for my life--I've done things that are fascinating and rewarding to me instead, and am pleased with the outcomes so far.
Buy Text Processing in Python
http://100rsns.blogspot.com/
The warning is here.
New Economic Perspectives
So you're saying that your personal academic interests aren't necessarily congruent with the REAL WORLD'S needs (and thus compensatory structures)?
That's unpossible!
-Styopa
At least the PhD. comes with a license to use the word "penurious" and not have it sound like you're stretching when you use it.
It doesn't --- but that's no reason to give up and not hope and work for a world where, though not "owed," more people can have enjoyable and fulfilling lives (including through their work). The world doesn't even "owe" us the air we breath, yet with every breath we claim for ourselves a better life than we "deserve."
Not in my experience. And I have a PhD and work as a scientist.
If you have a PhD there are *no* guarantees. It may be the acme of formal education, but it can still be a long way between a PhD and a job. If you work on a PhD, it gives you specialized knowledge and skill in one narrow subject. This will not necessarily be in an employable subject, and even if it is, the competition for what jobs there are may be fierce. While it may be valid to say the odds are much better in sciences than in, say, English literature, that is probably true regardless of the level of education.
"As a psychologist in a lot of jurisdictions you *need* a Ph.D. to get licensed and get a job."
See? The government is creating an artificial demand of PhDs by setting it as a requirement for licensure. Keyesian economics at work here.
There are no academic jobs because there is not enough revenue because enrollment is dropping because tuition is high and student can't afford it because of not enough government financial aid.
New Economic Perspectives
The best job in the world is a tenured professor.
Unfortunately, the worst job in the world is an untenured professor.
Here is THAT PhD's OPENING paragraph to her article:
Who wouldn't want a job where you only have to work five hours a week, you get summers off, your whole job is reading and talking about books, and you can never be fired? Such is the enviable life of the tenured college literature professor, and all you have to do to get it is earn a Ph.D. So perhaps you, literature lover, are considering pursuing this path.
So let me see if I understand this - you didn't want a JOB, you wanted a FREE RIDE? And now you're whinging that your free ride didn't pay off, AND that your 'investment' in the free-ride track turned out to have screwed you.
You're like someone who invests in lottery-tickets and is pissed that they not only didn't get rich, but are now poor.
You may have a PhD, but I have to say it: you're a really stupid bitch.*
*and I mean that in a gender-free sense, but I really do mean it.
-Styopa
She landed that TT job but quit after 3 years because Professors are a bunch of "assburgers" with Aspergers. She's a lawyer now at a big firm and finds it much more pleasant.
You do not need to "secure a position" to get a job.
There are many one-year and two-year contract offers which are relatively easy to get in the academic world.
Getting such short-term jobs for 2 to five years after a PhD is normal.
I'm confused.... you seem to be agreeing with me in your second paragraph, but disagree with me in your first.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why didn't this person research this before chasing rainbows and unicorns for the past 5 years or so?
A literature course is something that is a very enjoyable pursuit. The literature courses I took were full of women who were very friendly. I only wish my engineering major left me more time to pursue these opportunities.
Eventually though I did establish a long term relationship with a PhD candidate in Medieval English Literature. Worked out very well in almost all possible ways. She was apparently more intelligent than the one who wrote this story and got a MLS after she graduated with her literature degree and now has a pretty reasonable job working in a tenured position in a university library. Great job, includes lots of benefits including summers off and free tuition for our kids.
Or perhaps the premise is wrong. Perhaps what really matters isn't what you think you "love doing", but about contributing something that's needed by others and that you are actually good at. But creating a society of increasing leisure and infinite choice isn't going to make that happen.
Of all the commentary offered on this post, I found yours most interesting and valuable. You offered a creative, evidence-based, practical solution without preaching, and you softly supported your view with personal experience and an evaluation of others' successful struggles, no unnecessary judgment included.
I also enjoyed the means by which you chose to embed your social commentary. "...why STEM is pressed so hard..." (I would argue that it's because we need creatively engineered solutions that will connect a desirable future to our present situation. Given our current trajectory, how we characterize the politics of the string pullers will become less important over time.)
Follow your bliss, but be practical. Observe the world and be flexible enough to respond to the opportunities it presents. Realize that loving an activity may not be enough to sustain you in the fashion to which you might like to become accustomed, unless the society you live in values your particular predilection commensurately with the level or your desire.
Observe, evaluate, imagine, respond. (Repeat as necessary.) And reserve the right to be happy, even if it's not for pay.
I imagine that the none-too-distant future will be littered with STEM grads who might benefit from your kind counsel.
I wouldn't have guessed that 240 comments could be posted, on Slashdot no less, in connection with the employment prospects of Ph.D's in literature without the phrase "digital humanities" having cropped up once. For folks with advanced degrees in the humanities plus the appropriate tech cred and skills, there are jobs out there. Most not tenure-track, but generally rewarding, and often in settings where one's colleagues are less ego-driven than in conventional academic departments.
Of course, earning a Ph.D. in say the poetry of Arthur Hugh Clough without having once touched a computer keyboard isn't the route to one of those.
Maybe she needs to study a real book and stop wallowing in self loathing.
I'll put it on the table: I have a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc. - 4 year degree) in Electrical Engineering (more like a CE/EE/CS degree) from The Technion in their Haifa, Israel Campus, and graduated cum laude, and I have a qualified engineer certificate which theoretically allows me to write software for guiding missiles (or other flaw-free software) and give my signature that it is flaw-free. Nevertheless, right now I'm looking for part-time jobs as a seller/vendor in icecream parlours, candy/snack stores, cafés/restaurants/bars/etc. or even as a street sweeper. Lots of places in Tel Aviv, Israel are now advertising for this, and this seems like a good way to earn some money, as well as interact with other people and get inspired which will really help me with my creative writing and my essays. And I can buy an Android smartphone (nothing really better now and some people have successfully installed GNU/Linux chroots there) so I can type stuff for later incoporation into my desktop and laptop devices.
So why not work as a software developer? I don't mind getting a job as a software developer or a hardware developer or whatever, but lately employers in Tel Aviv and vicinity have become extremely picky: you go to an interview, answer most technical questions nicely, and don't get hired. Furthermore, even if they like you they are often very domineering: don't work from home, work 10-12 hours a day, only full time, don't play computer games at all (I only played some card Patience/Solitaire and Sokoban and not for long and still got flack), don't go to Facebook/Twitter/Google-Plus, we don't want you accessing imgur.com (too muchu traffic to there so let's firewall it) etc. etc. Thing is - the junior developers are kings (see the link for the Joel article), and you should leave them alone to their elements to get shit done at their own pace, and using their own resources instead of being a control freak. If, as a boss, my developer watched porn for 6 hours a day, while still being available on the forums for questions, and spent 2 hours creating great code that is functional and beautiful, I would be happy, and give him a full salary. But finding such enlightened employers is a big problem.
Software was the first field where workers were in constant demand, but now it seems that other fields are headed the same way here in Tel Aviv and other major centres of commerce worldwide: the food outlets, the music industry, photography, and soon - writing, acting/drama/film and then hopefully also modelling, and then if we can get past the normal and silly legal barriers - also more brick-and-mortar industries. Right now I've decided to make a transition from a software developer to a writer/Internet-entertainer/amateur-philosopher - a field where I feel I produce better results and also something that people will find cooler and sexier (although like I note in the article, the fact that I wrote a Freecell solver has impressed some really cute and intelligent chicks), and will have a larger influence. I still see knowing programming and other software development as an absolutely necessary means for that, just like I can no longer survive without knowing how to read and write English. Everyone should know at least HTML/XHTML/etc.
What I'm trying to say is that one should avoid Fatalism. People can improve for the better. I spent six and a half year doing my Elec. Eng. degree in the Technion and it cost me a lot of frustrations, but I'm still alive and have constantly become a better person - more competent, more able, smarter, wiser, and with a greate
We have two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. http://www.shlomifish.org/
As a mathematician (now in industry) who knows many other mathematicians, I can assure you many of them are very poorly prepared to handle data or real-world problems.
I'm living proof that a PhD in Literature will make you a horrible person.
I was probably part of the penultimate group of Literature PhDs who got the sweet jobs, and even then, in the early '80s, we could see where the Age of Reagan was going to take the world. We could see that the people who could make a good living, buy a house, raise a family, in a job that didn't require a college degree were in the crosshairs of the economic elite. Those people, like my dad, who came back from the China-Burma Theater of WWII with shrapnel in his hip and a cheap Purple Heart on his chest, and who followed the social contract to the letter just could not be allowed to enter the ownership class. Dad went to work before he got a high school diploma, and then to war after Pearl Harbor, and came back to the possibility (thanks to the GI Bill, veterans' benefits, etc) could improve his life, buy a single family home, a car every 4 or 5 years and put me and my sister through school. Thanks to the union, jobs were stable enough that he stayed with the same, successful company for 40 years and his income was sufficient so Mom could stay home and raise us kids. Thanks to Social Security and Medicare, his parents and my Mom's parents could grow old and die with some dignity, as could Dad and Mom when the time came. There was stability. There was certainty, and that stability - that certainty - created the strongest peacetime economy in the history of the world. Women could enter the workplace and vote and started to gain political power. The civil rights movement saw a time when the Black community became more prosperous and gained political power. And the economic elite saw all of this as a threat that could not be allowed. Enter: Ronald Reagan. Supply-side economics. Peacetime budget deficits. Talk of "entitlement reform". Talk of "welfare reform" to stop what he told people were the greedy black welfare queens who were all eating steak and driving Cadillacs. The beginning of the "Christian Right" and the "Silent Majority". The Reagan Justice Department sought a "constitutional right to own guns" and got Rhenquist to sign off on this new right. And in this way, the seeds of division were sown that would make the increasingly powerful middle class to start eating one another politically. The social contract wasn't worth the toilet paper it had apparently been printed on.
So even back in those early 80's, when AIDS was barely on peoples' radar, while crack was hollowing out the cities, when the "Savings and Loan Scandal" was too complicated for people to see the complicit hand of the economic elite, even then you could see that the kind of stable growth we were experiencing as a nation - as a society - was in danger from the greed and cupidity of the ones Reagan told us would "trickle" their wealth down on the rest.
I could see then that the young grad students in my classes were probably not going to have anything like the experience I had, nor would they have anything like the experience my father had. Gordon Gecko was telling them that "Greed is good" after all, and the inevitable bubble that Reagan's tax cuts for the rich would create was still inflating.
I got out in '04. Twenty years after my first tenure-track position and twenty-five after I got that sweet PhD in a field that would only be worthwhile as long as peoples' souls weren't crushed. By 2004, they were pretty thoroughly crushed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Did he think he'd utilize his mathematics PHD in State Center Iowa? The place has literally two restaurants.
Cry me a fucking river if you don't understand that you have to follow the job. We're not telling you that you need to go live like a gypsy, never establishing roots. (Although if you can do that, there's some great money to be had.) You just have to move once to be in an area that can support you.
I fully understand that it's a lot nicer if you can be close to your family. Especially when there's grandkids. But if the choice is a upper-middle income away from mommy, or AN EXCESS OF THREE YEARS UNEMPLOYMENT, come on dude.
It that you will *think* you're a horrible person. If you can't get a job in an academic tenure-track position, you'll think that you're worthless, a failure, that you haven't lived up to your own expectations of yourself and everybody else's expectations of you.
The tech version...
It's that you will *think* you're a horrible person. If you can't get a job, you'll think that you're worthless, a failure, that you haven't lived up to your own expectations of yourself and everybody else's expectations of you.
That's what it's like being in tech. People - including folks who are also in tech - can't believe it that, if you have *any* programming skills, you should be able to get a job. Show them all the articles about H1-Bs until you're blue in the face, show them the articles about 40-somehtings being left out until you're blue in the face, and show them articles and the ridiculous job postings with the laundry lists of skills that no real person could possibly have and they still think you're someone who just "doesn't want to work".
It's so frustrating!
That's why whenever some employer says that they "can't get anyone qualified" I have to call BS.
It's like my single sister-in-law. She wants - demands- a six foot 4 inch white man, who's 40+, a virgin, Christian, and never has been married.
She won't marry anyone else.
That's American tech employers.
I like the article and think the author is quite accurate that there is little hope if you get a higher degree in literature. However, she does fail to realize that there's also no hope if you don't get a higher degree in literature.
You can't be a half-hearted fatalist, you need to complete the circle.
...pay them for the pizza and tip them nicely.
Commenting on the internet all day will make you unemployable.
Why do you have to work for someone? Work for yourself. Start a website of somesort, write a book, etc. I'm sure all that literature has given you some insights that people are willing to pay for.
I don't have the words a literary professor might have to express it, but there's been a kind of death of excellence in American entertainment. There doesn't seem to be even the illusion that excellence is a goal. The goal is money, even if what's being churned out is absolute crap. Reality TV shows went from being voyeurism to staged clown acts. So, why worship any great works of art or literature when Honey Boo Boo draws more viewers than the State of the Union address?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
well -- I found her writing entertaining. Maybe she could use her degree somewhat and be a sitcom writer.
Post a picture -- I know I'm right.
...MDs, JDs, EE PhDs, ect are raking it in.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Here's a back-of-the envelope approximation: How many profs of lit does your average university need? Maybe 4. (Certainly not needed for remedial writing courses, etc.) How many average universities per state? Maybe 8. Demand ~ 32 state. What is the average career of a lit prof? Maybe 32 years. Conclusion: The demand for new lit profs. is perhaps 1 per average state per year.
So if you want the job, you should be approximately the best rookie in the state. If you're in a highly populated state: NY, CA, MA maybe, then perhaps the demand is five times as great. So if you want the job there, you should be approximately as distinguished as the state 1st team all-star basketball crew.
You can make other assumptions, but they won't change the conclusion much. You can verify the numbers by consulting the (so-called) Chronicle of Higher Education ad pages.
If you're not at all-star level, you accept teaching remedial writing. Or you find a job outside academia. Maybe sad. But true.
It's not how much you know... it's who you know.
Just look at the incompetent people in management positions.
Darl McBride
Stephen Elop
Various former CEOs of HP that wanted to make names for themselves...
The list goes on.
--
BMO
>An assistant professor at Ohio State University who recently earned her Ph.D. in literature writes...
Where I come from, Assistant Professor == Tenure Track. Non-tenure track is called adjunct professor or lecturer.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Those who enter the acting profession also endure rejection and low income. Vast numbers of athletes like minor league baseball players can also train for years without any appreciable rewards.
Evidently those Lit PHD's didn't bring enough passion with them because your post is horribly misspelled, has atrocious grammar, and is just painful to read- much like a collection of incoherant thoughts in a mad man's brain.
I could also throw in that maybe the reason that school got shutdown was because students couldn't pass the mandated exams, particularly in the English department.
Finally, this Grammar Nazi's reply may not be 100% correct either, but it's a hell of a lot more readable than your "Insightful" commentary.
And what are they doing in the military? Twenty years ago when someone left the military they had spent most of that time working in the motor pool, IT field, electronics repair, logistics, etc. Even Beetle Bailey could have run a kitchen, having done so much KP. Today all that is done by contractors from Halliburton and the like. Four years in today's army and all they'll have learned is how to carry a pack and kill people. The security guard 'profession' is flooded with them, since they came out with no other training (and at some bases even guard duty is done by mercs). So what degree do you think they should be handing out to these guys?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
As a retired attorney (or a recovering lawyer, if you will) with an Ivy League law degree, I've been mesmerized by truly wonderful lecture courses available free on the internet. Cf., academicearth.org. among other sites. I have wondered how long it will be before every college student at home takes the same course as everyone else as long as the course does not not require physical attendance, i.e. those involving laboratory work. Having gone to a large public university, I can't deny that the great professors at the great old universities are really better. If they're great professors, that is.
The science, physics and history courses I have audited are the best lecture courses I've ever heard. However, the English literature lectures I think are dreadful. One chaired lit professor featured on academicearth.org would have difficulty passing muster at a local community college. She appears not to understand major features of the novel under discussion. Another's lecture on a favorite modern novelist caused me to disconnect when I found myself starting to hate her and modern literary analysis in general. Perhaps this is another symptom of the increasing irrelevance of English Departments, as exemplified by the Kafkaesque tale of the Kafka scholar. For further evidence in favor of this view, read the hilariously comic novel The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes that as surreal as it is was described to me by a leading light in literary academia as being far more realistic than fantastic,
All my previous study pals who got an MA in literature ended up jobless or somewhere completely outside of their field of study.
If it makes you feel any better I have an MBA and I ended up with only two offers: one as a dishwasher and one as an entry level security guard. The dish-washing "position" only offered minimum wage because I don't speak Spanish; Chinese yes, Spanish no.
I finally left the country and took a position teaching at a small private High School; to add, my students score quite well on the standardized tests. I am frequently asked why I don't stay in America (more frequently by Americans than Chinese). The simple facts are that there were no jobs. It really does not matter that my country paid a lot to educate me and prepare me for the workforce if it then failed to provide opportunities to use that training; I had to do elsewhere.
"Grad school provides exciting new road to poverty": http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-04-20/news/wanted-really-smart-suckers/1/
"Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read. Then it's time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable locations, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at all. You may end up living 100 miles from your spouse and commuting to three different work locations a week. You may end up $50,000 in debt, with no health insurance, feeding your kids with food stamps. If you are the luckiest out of every five entrants, you may win the profession's ultimate prize: A comfortable middle-class job, for the rest of your life, with summers off."
Not that science is much better: ... What about personal experience? The women that I know who have the IQ, education, and drive to make it as professors at top schools are, by and large, working as professionals and making 2.5-5X what a university professor makes and they do not subject themselves to the risk of being fired. With their extra income, they invest in child care resources and help around the house so that they are able to have kids while continuing to ascend in their careers. The women I know who are university professors, by and large, are unmarried and childless. By the time they get tenure, they are on the verge of infertility. "
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
"This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead.
And:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/sep/28/post-doc-research-job-hunt
"After completing my PhD in 2001 I worked as a post-doc researcher in biological sciences in two different labs until 2006. Despite best efforts, the second post-doc didn't work out research wise and after two years of negative results my funding ran out. Even though I applied for other positions, by the time my contract ended I was officially unemployed. To save money I decided to move back in with my parents and claim jobseekers allowance, a galling process when you are 33 and have three higher degrees."
All that to become:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"Who are you going to be? That is the question. In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education an
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
By vote. When a department head position or dean position opens up, candidates, internal and external, apply. The faculty then votes on who they want. Technically the dean appoints department heads, the provost appoints deans, and so on up (the regents appoint presidents) but in actuality they do it based on faculty vote.
If you are implying there's some kind of business cabal that runs things and handles the promotions, no, sorry, it is the faculty. Also, most positions seem to get filled from within, and regardless only a tenured faculty is eligible to apply for the job.
'I now realize graduate school was a terrible idea because the full-time, tenure-track literature professorship is extinct. After four years of trying, I've finally gotten it through my thick head that I will not get a job—and if you go to graduate school, neither will you.
No, you just because you suck at what you insist on doing despite considerable difficulties doesn't mean no one else can do it, or that you should be so bitter about it. Sorry you weren't instantly handed an awesome job immediately upon graduation, but maybe that is on you, not the world. Truth hurts sometimes, sorry about your crappy choice of a career path, and better luck next time.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
That's one of the challenges of specialization in modern society.
Not everybody would prioritize an upper-middle income over proximity to family. Considering that it seems like 90% of the population never moves more than about 25 miles from where they were born, I'd say that those who do are an oddity, even if they probably do make 90% of the income in the US.
It is a great irony that all those revolutions in travel and communication are in some ways making it harder to stay in touch with people you care about...
It's also important to remember, as in any major discipline, that mathematics has numerous components, some of which aren't commodious for many real-world problems; as such, it could take a fair amount of time to train someone so that they would be able to make a worthwhile contribution.
As one example, I have a friend and colleague who focused entirely on abstract algebraic topics for his research and enrolled in an ordinate number of analysis, topology, and algebra classes whilst eschewing ones deemed more practical, like those dealing with differential equations, optimization, numerical analysis, and applied probability; further, despite graduating from an Ivy League institution, let alone being incredibly smart, he has yet to find employment, as most of his knowledge does not translate well to solutions for any of the burgeoning fields, such as data analysis, computer vision, or robotics/autonomous systems. Consequently, in order to even consider a position out in industry, he's looking at spending the next two years diving into a sea of applied math.
I don't know what it is with kids these days...their parents worked hard for a really long time, started at the bottom and made something from nothing. The American dream. All of a sudden, kids think this wisdom of the world has been imparted upon them from school, and kids are in school longer and longer until they think they've become something, only to find out that they haven't been living in the real world for a long time and have no freaking clue.
Well. It ain't about what you know it's about who you know, and if you don't know any one and what you know ain't much compared to the sharpest knife in the drawer then wallow in your sorrows and blame the world...in the meantime all these other folks are going to be doing something. Re-inventing themselves, getting specific training that will get them what they want - aka - money$. But don't think you can just go through the motions as an average bear and end up on top...sorry. The world eats people like that for breakfast.
I look at the sea of comments here and I note how many of you buy into the notion that only that which makes us money is worthwhile, that higher education is just a path to a job. Yes, how unless things like literature, art, philosophy are. How foolish for somebody to think they can make a good living teaching others. College should be for something useful, and teacher deserve less, for that can't do, teach, no?
Thankfully, a few have noted what the point of an education is to be able to think. Critically. You rally against the H1B and the race to the bottom, and then turn around and laugh at someone silly enough to pursue their passions. So what, those classes were useless anyway.
Yes, a population devoid of knowledge of great books, great art, great ideas is a useful one. It's easy to exploit and control. Perhaps you are happy to be a tiny gear in a massive machine. Go on and judge people that think our society has room for more than "practical" economic workhorses that are only temporary distracted by the latest gadget or self-help psychology as foolish.
If you do, realize that they are better off that you, in a way that you will never understand, because you have dismissed the knowledge that made us truly great. You may think you know it all, but you really don't know what you are missing.
Yep, I have a PhD. And it's not in literature. And do regret it at times, but what I truly regret is how devalued intellectual pursuits have become in this century.
You must write a thesis that will draw in 20 more students, or you are worthless. Their fees pay your salary. They in turn must write a thesis to draw in 20 more etc.
As a mathematician (now in industry) who knows many other mathematicians, I can assure you many of them are very poorly prepared to handle data or real-world problems.
As a physicist who's known a few mathematicianns, I can assure you, y'all are an odd bunch.
I just want to say thank you. http://www.avowbd.com/
not necessarily. they might not be able to move to where the work is due to family commitments etc
Didn't the writer realize colleges had been bought off by Wall Street too? Just look at how much is invested in sports and college playoffs. These institutions are no longer useful to our society.
Ripostes among the literati are much better than those among physicians.
a physician
I'm not sure if you were replying to me, since I never insinuated the error you spotted... the article is clearly about finding jobs with a PhD in the humanities, that's what I addressed.
I certainly wouldn't disagree with you about the people taking on debt, in fact I'd go farther and say doing that you have to be stupid to walk willingly into that kind of financial hole. In the humanities, if you go to a top school, the sort that will actually land you a job, you never pay them a dime. I only did a master's at Harvard, not even a PhD, and the degree was virtually free without any help from the state. The PhD I'm starting, like at any good school pays me a significant living and research stipend on top.
I've come to this discussion rather late (one of the problems of only getting the daily digest emails), but there's also another interesting aspect of this: the fate of those Humanities/Social Science Ph.D. graduates who do deicide to look for another job outside of academia.
I know a few of them and it's always the same: saying you have a Ph.D. (in particular, depending of the type of job, a Humanities/Social Science Ph.D.) scares the living crap out of most bosses and/or H.R. personal who will assume that such a graduate is a) likey to get bored with the job very quickly; and/or b) going to get better job/position very soon anyway ("because Ph.D. holders are in huge demand and can name their price, right?" thinks the H.R. drone, et. al.); and, most often of all, c) assume that Ph.D. graduates are really smart and therefore won't be "yes men" and will challenge and boss and the status quo. Yeah, so when it comes down to it, mostly it's "C": pick a drone with a Bachelor's degree, rather than a Ph.D. graduate who might—gasp—lead a mutiny, or something, something. "Pass."
So that's one more humiliation for Humanities/Social Science Ph.D. graduates: the fact that many of them will probably have to delete their Ph.D. off their résumé in order to find a "real" job outside academia. That's really twisting the knife. I suggested to one of my colleagues that filling the chronological gap of their Ph.D. degree in their résumé with "I was in jail for armed robbery" would have, overall, more vocational appeal.
I now suggest to young people in the field to get a Master's degree then get some real world job experience. A Master's degree isn't as toxic on a resume as a Ph.D.—yet. Independently publish research, if that's your wish. YMMV.
Josef K. is simultaneously guilty and not guilty in The Trial.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Making 18,000 a year for the rest of my life would be awesome! The debt would suck, though...
I'm envious. My uncle and me have now spent well over a year reading parts of his work to each other during spare time, over a long distance line and several times a week. Some of the most pleasant time of my life, both in terms of intellectual intrigue and sheer fun. Beautiful, beautiful language, imagination and humor.
As to the topic, if there's no job in academia you probably have to reinvent yourself. Just as so many "theorists" - as in theoretical physics for example - have to once they're entering the job market. It's not necessarily what one has learned at university content wise that counts. It's the method. And the personality, like in proven persistence. You can do anything you like as long as there's any demand and you're willing to make a convincing argument for why you're the right person.