Slashdot Mirror
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."
I'm an electrical engineer and software developer, and I find your comment incredibly ignorant and offensive. Once a society gets above the level of mere subsistence, culture is pretty much the entire point of human existence. The extreme materialism and utilitarianism implied by your post shows how poor and undeveloped your worldview is.
I'm also an electrical engineer and software engineer. I find *your* comment offensive; to suggest that I should subsidize someone else's folly is ridiculous. I've no problem with people studying art or literature at a collegiate level, as long as they pay for it themselves. That said, one of the best software devs I've had the pleasure to work with had a degree in philosophy. He was a good dev, but he wasn't employed because of his degree in philosophy. Unless you're wealthy and you're going to college a couple of factors to consider: does this degree impart valuable skills that make me employable somewhere other than as a fry cook? Are there employment positions external from academia with this degree? Certainly ask these questions before you pursue a PhD.