Completing your PhD can actually put you at a disadvantage on the job market, because the best window of opportunity for securing an assistant professorship is in the months before your dissertation defense. This was among the findings of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Academic JobTracker project, a study of 2,500 tenure-track job searches from the 2013-14 academic year. (Incidentally, there is probably no better incentive to complete a PhD than the deadline that comes with a job offer. See Reason 46.) The Chronicle study found that only 47 percent of the jobs in history, 35 percent of the jobs in communications/ media studies, and 27 percent of the jobs in composition/ rhetoric went to candidates with a PhD more than one year old. To discourage people with stale degrees from even bothering to apply, some job announcements now specify that applicants be “new” or “recent” PhD recipients. Keep in mind that working in a non-tenure track faculty position will not prevent your degree from going stale (see Reason 14). No matter how much professional experience you accumulate after completing your doctorate, your toughest competition for academic jobs will always come from the endless supply of fresh and relatively inexperienced PhDs and ABDs (see Reason 81) who enter the job market after you. In academe, experience can work against you.
Today I attended a beginning-of-the-year college meeting where each department chair introduced the newly hired faculty members. Every single new faculty member was a fresh PhD.
ReplyDeleteThe amount of time and work that the academic track requires and the risk of failure are incredible. After the long trek to a Ph.D, it's too easy to become stuck in the perpetual adjunct track, continuing to while away your years in the forlorn hope of grasping that elusive brass ring. But that's just throwing good money after bad.
ReplyDelete"In academe, experience can work against you."
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't always the case. When I was an undergrad in engineering 40 years ago, most of my prof either had industrial experience or worked with people who did. The knowledge and insight that they acquired was greatly prized not just by the students but the university as well.
That changed in the early 1980s. The emphasis was, instead, on hiring fresh graduates direct out of school. That's like taking a newly-minted officer who just finished at a military academy and putting him or her into a senior command position--not a good idea.
I spent several years in industry working in the field, in design offices, and in labs. I also received professional registration in 3 provinces. While I was finishing my Ph. D., I've had the misfortune of dealing with profs like that. Simply because they had the magic title, they thought they could tell me what engineering really about. None of them had ever worked on a shop floor or ever got themselves dirty, but, because I didn't have the same letters behind my name, they expected me to shut up and know my place. Personally, I thought they were so dumb that I wouldn't have trusted them to design a simple circuit.
By the time I finished my Ph. D., I was in my mid-40s and no academic institution wanted to hire me, even though I had taught for several years at a technical college.
I eventually went off on my own and continued with my research. I had some of my own money, which I accumulated over many years, so I could afford to do that. Because my work is largely numerical simulation, all I needed was a computer, so funding wasn't much of a problem.
Since then, I've added to my credentials on my own, I live comfortably and can still pay my bills. In addition, I'm required to report my professional development hours so my degrees, as such, could hardly be considered "stale".
If no institution wants to hire me, it's their loss, not mine. Fortunately, I'm in the position that I really don't need their money, though if one did offer me a job, I'd put my earnings to good use.
From what I hear about what's going on in academe, what I've got now is probably the better deal.
It's not just practical professional experience that works against you, but practical ACADEMIC experience doing EXACTLY what the tenured/ tenure-track people do. It makes no sense.
DeleteWell, yeah. One needs to know valuable skills such as how to be a professional prima donna or how to properly stick one's snout into the golden hog trough, right?
DeleteWhile one hears about a critical shortage of scientists and engineers blah-blah-blah, the hiring system is a good way of causing one's degree to become "stale".
ReplyDeleteHiring quotas ensure that one will never get the job unless one happens to be a member of the desired category. Ads for academic positions are subtly worded to make that perfectly clear. When they state that they will accept applications from all "qualified candidates", they mean that they'll accept them from members of whichever special interest group whose slot they want to fill.
It's also frustrating to apply for a position in one's own country only to find it'll go to a foreigner, even though one's qualifications and background experience are superior. That's hardly an endorsement of the post-secondary system of one's country and, yet, universities wonder why enrollments from citizens are declining. Then again, all they want is people's money.
being a member of a (as in ONE) category isn't enough anymore! Look at Elizabeth Warren, being a women wasn't enough she had to add Native American in order to get her teaching job.
DeleteThis is pure BS.
DeleteAds will say that they want "diversity" but will end up hiring yet another white man.
I assume you're one of the delusional and ignorant Americans voting for Trump?
One reason it's hard a white male to get a faculty position is that not just available tenure-track jobs but grants are catered to specific groups.
DeleteI know someone who's a prof in the other end of the country who got her job and her funding because the government mandated that they went to "women and visible minorities". She was Asian and female--how could she fail to get hired?
@8:01,
DeleteExcept in STEM, where a given woman is twice as likely to get a professorship than a given man. Thanks for substantiating your position, though!
@8:01
DeleteYou're wrong - except when it comes to Asians:
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/tenure-not-hiring-bottleneck-to-stem-faculty-diversification/97321?cid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en
"When it came to landing tenure-track jobs in their field, women and members of minority groups considered underrepresented appeared to be at a significant advantage. Black and Hispanic doctorate holders were both quicker and, respectively, 51 percent and 30 percent more likely than their white counterparts to obtain such positions. Asian doctorate holders were slowest to land such positions and 33 percent less likely than whites to obtain them. Women were quicker, and 10 percent more likely than men, to get tenure-track jobs."
This post pretty much seals the deal of why someone should not get a PhD, expecting to get a tenure track professor job later.
ReplyDeleteYou'll work 5-10 years on a PhD degree only to find out that all your hard work and money spent is worthless one year out.
This fact alone should scare most people away from the PhD programs.
yep.
DeleteThis is absolutely correct. Now that I have been out of School and in the real world for a while, I watch forlornly as my hard-won, costly degrees, and all that I learned in the pursuit of them, irretrievably recede into the mist. The farther back in time, of course, the worse this phenomenon becomes. Virtually everything I learned in my intensively competitive, academically oriented college-preparatory boarding school, for example--in the days of the Cold War and before Google--is now either outdated or not even emphasized much anymore. Occasional visits to the school have confirmed this suspicion. Curricula are revised and priorities change. Resting on pretty yet stale degrees will turn one into a fossil.
ReplyDeleteYou can be totally up-to-date in your field, but that doesn't matter if someone with a fresher degree goes up against you for a job. You're toast.
DeleteThat's because that other person will likely be cheaper. It's all about $$$$.
DeleteThe biggest mistake of PhD wannabes is...the University isn't a marvelous place! Duh! Quite the contrary. I quit my PhD instantly when I saw that it was a waste of my time and went straight into real estate where I made oodles of money and live on a big property in a big house with a big car, a big dog and three bossy cats! And got to do whatever I pleased, too, being my own boss.
ReplyDeleteI quit as a lab tech before I even got to the Master's. I own a landscaping company now and bill for 40$ an hour. That's more than any of the PhDs in my lab were paid...
DeleteThank you so much for this blog. Don't wait another year man.
ReplyDeleteAmen!
Deletewow. this is an unbelievably backwards reality. do you feel this is true across all fields, including STEM areas?
ReplyDeleteIt's especially true in engineering. One works hard, gets a good education, and the jobs one is qualified for either don't exist or go to certain people in order to fulfill a politically-imposed quota. Of course, how much one wants to be paid for one's work has a lot to do with it, if you know what I mean.
DeleteUnless one has imagination and a lot of ambition, though opportunity and some money help, and take the initiative to head out on one's own, those degrees will be wasted.
And, oh yes, politicians insist that there's a shortage of scientists and engineers and more schoolchildren should consider careers in those fields.
It's all about politics and cheap labour. Why bother when someone in Coleslawvania will do the same work for pennies a day?
Depends on the particular STEM field.
DeleteIt is a common misconception that there's an abundance of academic jobs in science. The sciences are on the same level, or maybe even worse, than the humanities. Chemistry is probably the worst - it's nearly impossible to find a tenure-track position.
Technology and Engineering fields also suffer from the trendiness phenomenon. Academics are encouraged to research popular trends if they want funding. The biggest difference between STEM and the humanities is that STEM professors are valued by how much grant money they bring in (though the humanities are slowing warming up this trend). This often results in professors conducting research that leads to grant money instead of researching what they're actually interested in.
Degrees don't go as stale in math as they do in the other STEM fields due to the fact that it's not a field that's prone to following trends.
Post-docs are also much more common in STEM. It's common for someone to complete multiple post-docs before landing a tenure track position. There's some post-docs in the humanities, but they are largely exploitative - you usually teach a lot and don't have time to focus on conducting research, which is supposed to make you a stronger candidate. I advise humanities PhDs to avoid post-docs unless they get a prestigious one like the ones at Rutgers and Princeton, where they're paid $60,000-80,000. I saw a post-doc the other day that paid $35,000 and required a 2-3 teaching load. Ridiculous.
According to Academic JobTracker, math Ph.D.'s stay marketable for 3-4 years rather than 1-2 years. That's better, but not great considering the low odds of landing a job in any given year.
ReplyDeleteFundamental science such as math hardly goes stale easily, since concepts in math almost never change. Unlike in physics where fundamental paradigms may change every 50-100 years (as with black holes recently). Social sciences and humanities are easily spoiled material, goes rotten like vegetables, whenever political situation turns.
DeleteExcellent reason to avoid grad school.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that the humanities and social sciences are obsessed with trendsetting. Your degree becomes worthless if your field decides to hop onto the next big theory train rolling by. When I first started, our department encouraged everyone to gravitate towards global and postcolonial literature since that was where the jobs were at that moment. 7 years later, digital humanities is all the rage and most jobs want a DH scholar.
This phenomenon is even worse in fields like rhetoric and composition where they change their theory and methods monthly. Now they're obsessed with assessment and student learning goals.
The rush to adopt new trends means that less jobs are available and it's difficult to predict what direction the field is going in. There might only be 6 tenure track positions available in a particular specialty and those jobs will inevitably go to ivy leaguers (see the reason about the significance of your degree institution).
Being obsessed with assessment and "learning goals" is nothing new. I went through that nearly 25 years ago when I was an instructor at a technical college.
DeleteActual talent and ability were secondary--keeping the kiddies happy was the sole objective.
I often asked myself why I bothered getting the education that I had. It didn't seem to make any difference in that place. Talk about stale degrees.....
Jesus, what a crapshoot. I know there are some services, like what "The Professor Is In" offers, that give really in-depth advice on how to position yourself in a variety of ways to get a TT job in the humanities. But still, what happens if your area of expertise, one you selected at least four years ago, simply isn't in vogue when you arrive on the market?
ReplyDeleteVery glad I decided to stop at the M.A. level. I'm starting work as a grant writer soon. I'm quite pleased I can work on behalf of institutions of higher learning in a meaningful way without completely surrendering future career viability and earnings.
great. Don't even go to graduate school- it is a complete and absolute waste of time and their reasons for accepting you, funding you, and keeping you are always 100% self-serving. They are USING you for cheap labor and to fill enrollment of stupid classes on ridiculous topics no one would ever take if they were not being paid to. It's a total scam
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, that seems to be the case.
DeleteMy first supervisor treated his grad students like hired help and acted like it was out of his own generosity that we were paid. (Sorry, mate, that money didn't come out of your pocket. It came from your *grant*, which you applied for and received from another source. It was your money to the extent that you were in charge of how it was spent, but it wasn't your own personal cash.)
He had a tendency of hanging on to those students who produced lots of data that he could publish. One stayed for the full time the university allowed for him to finish his Ph. D.
Another came from overseas with a master's in his discipline. He was scuttled in his Ph. D. defence and ended up with another M. Sc.--in the same discipline. The poor guy started again from scratch and finally got his doctorate 12 years after he arrived in the country. He apparently stayed on at the university for a while longer but never got a tenure-track position, though I don't know why--maybe it was his choice. The last I heard, he got an academic position in his home country about 20 years after he left.
He was lucky. Nowadays in this country, he might have ended up on the academic scrap heap. Universities, like many employers, want their faculty young and impressionable, just smart enough to do their jobs but maybe not smart enough to figure out what's really going on and that it's really a sucker's game.
Nice system, isn't it?
The academic system is going through collective (symbolic) death right now: some people are purely in denial about it and will dismiss everything on this blog and every one of us who comments on it as Pessimism Pornographers, others are simply angry and searching to vent at administrators politicians or the tenured, others are bargaining (if I just completely sell out and do my research on topic X will I get a job???), others are trapped in debilitating depression, others, like me, have finally accepted it is all a waste of time and have moved on to more productive things and more interesting sectors of the world that have nothing to do with all this bullshit.
DeleteCheers to this awesome comment. It is time for everyone to move on. Let the last and most delusional defenders hold down the fort and revel in it. Everyone who still retains some semblance of health needs to cut their losses, take a breath, and pivot toward something more functional with some confidence that there are sectors of the world where effort and outcomes, input and output, are more closely related than they are in academia.
DeleteAcademia is a religion. The irony is that, for a bunch of people who fashion themselves "way too smart to believe in religion," they are every bit as much held hostage to their cult as any other. To you, smart person reading this comment: if you could not imagine yourself joining a group of Rapture Awaiting Biblical Fundamentalists or Polygamous Mormon Fundamentalists, then please apply that same level of intellectual integrity to the cult you are currently in, which is arguably even more constricting, abusive, self-serving, and based in nonsense (the Pseudo Science of "Critical Theory" is a far cry from the kind of serious work that, for example, goes into curing cancer) than any of them. If you can't step away from that cult, you have no right to criticize any of the other ones.
DeleteThis reason is very accurate.
ReplyDeleteMy former advisor told me that after earning a PhD, a person only has a 3 year window to receive a tenure track position. He said that if I did not receive an offer while ABD, I should find a visiting assistant professorship or a post-doc because adjuncting is the kiss of death, which is depressing when we consider how adjuncts greatly outnumber tenured/tenure track faculty. It is nearly impossible to transition from adjunct to assistant professor due to the unfair burdens placed on them. It's difficult to stay up to the date on the latest academic trends when you're teaching 5 courses on 3 different campuses for $2,000 per course.
As another poster suggested, trendiness contributes to degrees going stale, as the academe is unpredictable and destabilized. A topic that someone may have spent the last 4 years researching will suddenly go out of vogue, and there may be few positions in that area of specialty.
Tangentially related, but the job market is truly a special kind of hell. Applicants are expected to jump through fire laced hoops at the initial stage. Why are schools asking for so many materials when they barely even look at everything? A few years ago, my former department held a job search for an assistant professor and received 600 applicants. They asked applicants for a cover letter, CV, teaching statement, research statement, teaching portfolio, writing sample, diversity statement, AND recommendation letters. One search committee member admitted to me that they automatically threw out any applicant who did not have a book contract and at least one publication. Nowhere in the job description did they specify that, so they wasted most people's time and money. The candidate they chose was a friend of the search committee chair, whose research I'm honestly not impressed by, and the department gave so many applicants false hope that they had a chance. A pipe dream indeed.
Worse is that, in many cases, one needn't bother going to any interviews because the preferred candidate has already been selected.
DeleteThat happened to me several times, and not just for academic positions. I was brought in for an interview and was made to perform my required "circus dog" tricks. But, based on the questions I was asked, and how they were asked, I sensed that the interview committee already knew which person got the job. I was simply there to comply with laws and regulations that all "qualified" candidates be considered. (Yeah, right.) Since I was going to be turned down anyway, the interviewers had to find something that disqualified me.
In some cases, I never heard back and I didn't think it was my place to contact the employer. In others, I did call after their "we'll call you in a week" time period came and went and I didn't hear anything. When I called, I got the laughable "oh, we were about to call you" response. (Uh-huh.)
What irritated me about this is that I spent all my time and effort for those interviews and the reasons I was there were completely bogus.
By the way, it's almost always a committee that conducts the interview. The official reason is that the employer wants a variety of perspectives and such, but the real reason is simply CYA. If a newly-hired employee doesn't pan out, no one individual will ever be held responsible or lose their job over it--and the employer will *never* fire the committee as that would often mean losing its top management.
It isn't any better in industry. One can have a good background, with suitable qualifications and experience, but if one doesn't know, say, certain software--and it almost always has to be the current version--forget about it. Either the application is chucked out with the day's trash or the interview is over then and there. Don't think that offering to spend a few hours learning how to use it will help, either, even though one's background indicates that one could easily do that.
And don't think that doing that on one's own time at one's own expense will do anything, either. Any weakness or deficiency in any other part of one's background or qualifications, like I described earlier, results in.....well, you get the picture.
On that bit about it not being any better in industry- all sympathies for the bs experiences you’ve had, there is bs all over without a doubt.
DeleteI also had a friend recently tell me about how the same thing happened to him- got interviewed as a formality because the candidate was already chosen, and the interviewers were especially obnoxious digging for reasons to explain the rejection.
But that same guy got another interview 3 weeks later, and was hired. Also, these interviews took place within a 20 minute radius of his house. There is something especially obnoxious about the academic job market, which makes it virtually impossible to have an on-going search outside of the once a year fun bonanza, and also that people pay thousands to take cross-country trips for the mere possibility of being interviewed.
The sub title of this blog mentions the focus on humanities and social sciences- for anyone reading these comments who is young and at the stage where you have to yet to jump into this abyss, please DO NOT buy into the reasoning that because there is bs in every industry, all industries are created equal. Just because it is “bad all over” as many comments here attest to, all badness is not equivalent. There can be more badness in some places, lol. If you are about to embark on a PhD in the humanities, you are entering an alternate universe which demands incredibly extensive circus tricks with virtually no remuneration. If you truly can financially afford to do immense amounts of work without real compensation for the love of it, great! For everyone else, figure something else out on your own steam before you are forced to by a completely broken system that will break you in the process.
"27 percent of the jobs in composition/ rhetoric went to candidates with a PhD more than one year old"
ReplyDeleteColleges rely heavily on contingent employees to teach their writing courses, but they almost never hire those same people for tenure-stream positions.
Yes, Writing Programs are the biggest exploiters of adjuncts. They need them to teach the endless amount of required courses they offer. In my former grad program, there were only 2 tenured professors who taught College Writing. The other 200+ sections were taught by adjuncts. This was also a very "student centered" school, meaning that adjuncts were kicked to the curb if their evaluations weren't high enough, and they can easily do this because there's always going to be hundreds of desperate academics fighting for whatever scraps the ivory tower throws their way.
DeleteIf you think about it, it doesn't even make sense to have tenure-track composition instructors. Tenure typically suggests research requirements, which get in the way of the grunt work of grading loads of student papers.
Delete@Anon 12:19
DeleteThis largely depends on the type of school. If it's a community college or non-R1, they emphasize teaching and have little or no research requirements for tenure.
The problem with tenure at these schools is that they place too much weight on student evaluations, so professors do whatever they can to keep the kiddies entertained and satisfied.
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/pima-college-boss-violated-civil-rights-of-ex-employee-judge/article_78f4f548-026d-5e6b-a7e9-9f0a366772ef.html
ReplyDeleteCheck this out.
How is this not age discrimination?
ReplyDeleteAge discrimination is extremely common in higher education. Highly accomplished candidates get passed over for academic jobs when they are up against younger candidates.
DeleteThe super-prestigious universities offer the most funding to their grad students and require the least labor from them, so they graduate people faster. Their graduates have the double advantage of being young and having the best names on their diplomas. Sometimes they are hired despite having barely taught or published anything.
Inside Higher Ed has published a couple of pieces on this issue over the years.
https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2014/08/13/essay-age-discrimination-faculty-hiring
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/12/17/age
One of the commenters under the second article called this "academia's dirty little secret," but there is nothing little about it.
Here is reason #97: Trump won. On the other hand a lot of tenured professors will off themselves, so maybe some slots will be opening up?
Delete@AnonymousNovember 10, 2016 at 5:24 AM
DeleteWon't happen, they'll replace them with adjuncts.
Reason #98: the tenured professor gravy train financed by federal guaranteed student loans has just derailed.
DeleteReason #99: You will never have to read the 'Chronicle of Higher Education' ever again.
Reason #100: The students and faculty of the University of Virginia, the first secular university in the world, have come out against Thomas Jefferson.
You're between a rock and a hard place when you do a Ph.D. If you hurry to get done but don't find a job ASAP, you look like a screw-up because nobody wants you. If you try to time the job market by waiting things out in grad school, you look like a screw-up because you took too long.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous August 31, 2016 at 8:01 AM
ReplyDelete"This is pure BS.
"Ads will say that they want 'diversity' but will end up hiring yet another white man.
"I assume you're one of the delusional and ignorant Americans voting for Trump?"
You're a racist liar. Colleges have been known to refuse to fill a position for years, in order to avoid hiring a white man.
And how would voting for Trump make one "delusional and ignorant"? Go ahead, make up another racist lie!
Nicholas Stix, Uncensored
Hi Nick: You sure are famous. I'm impressed.
Deletehttp://americanloons.blogspot.com/2014/10/1178-nicholas-stix.html
This has to do with his point....how?
DeleteHey Stix, take your bigotry and hit the road.
DeleteAnonymous Coward,
DeleteYou sound like a racist to me. You need to drink a nice, hot cup of STFU. Unless, that is, you can learn to offer facts and logic, instead of mindless hatred, epithets, and intimidation.
Nicholas Stix, Uncensored
Thanks for that link. After reading Nicky's comments, all I can say is it figures.
ReplyDeleteThe point made by Nicholas Stix is legitimate. White men once dominated the academy, but that has not been the case for 30 or 40 years. White men are not favored by any federal, state, or institutional hiring policies anywhere.
DeleteThat is just reality.
As for Republicans (male, female, white or nonwhite), they are just plain unwelcome in the academy. This 2016 study of 40 universities (located in states where voters register by party) found that, in history departments, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 33.5 to one!
http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/12/14/langbert-quain-klein-faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-law-and-psychology/
Republicans are not inclined to become academics; they're more likely to go into fields where you make money, like accounting, finance, engineering, and the like. This is primarily a case of a natural sorting, not discrimination by hiring committees. I'm not denying that the latter happens, but the notion that it's the prime reason for Republicans on faculties is dubious.
DeleteAs far as whining about white males being discriminated against, I'm a white male. I make a nice chunk of change, I'm at the right level of responsibility where I should be given my good (but not great) ability, and I've never ever been discriminated against. I had the great foresight to be born a white male in the United States of America. If you can't do well with an advantage like that, you don't deserve to make it.
"If you can't do well with an advantage like that, you don't deserve to make it." This sounds a lot like the victim-blaming that Boomers engage in against Millennials who end up with worthless Ph.Ds and have no career options afterwards. Both academia and industry are more competitive than ever and many deserving people fail to make it. Putting it down to matters of "deserving" to make it is the kind of moralization that we really don't need to fix this problem.
DeleteTo Anonymous at 2/8/17 12;43pm......The Millennials stayed on the PhD track despite a vast amount of evidence that it was fools's gold. There is an awful lot of information out there about the lack of jobs for PhD's, and brutality of tenure-track, and the life of the adjunct. Despite all this, they stick with it, seminar after seminar, year after year, and then.....SURPRISE, there's no brass ring waiting for them. It takes roughly eight to ten years of grad school to get a PhD in the humanities; do you mean they were oblivious to their fate all that time? No one forced them to stay the course; they did so despite all the evidence it was the wrong path.
Delete@12:41,
DeleteI do agree, but this point is tangential to what I was getting at. There are tons of people from any background who work hard and are very talented, but are sunk because they made poor decisions. Being a white man doesn't magically give you the ability to come out on top of the pyramid scheme of academia.
"Being a white man doesn't magically give you the ability to come out on top of the pyramid scheme of academia."
DeleteSo switch your career path. That's what I did. Is the academic shtick the only thing you can do?
You spent all that time & effort getting something you had amble evidence wouldn't pan out, than you're bitter when it doesn't pan out. And I'm supposed to feel sorry for you? Geez.
One reason degrees go stale is that they're designed to be. The reason is to force people to keep going back to school for what's euphemistically called "upgrading".
ReplyDeleteThis is discussed on the following podcast from "The John Batchelor Show":
https://audioboom.com/posts/5672072-lower-ed-the-troubling-rise-of-for-profit-colleges-in-the-new-economy-by-tressie-mcmillan-cottom.mp3
Note what his guest says about life-long learning. Is it any wonder that the post-secondary system has become ineffective?
Anonymous Coward, February 1, 2017 at 3:58 P.M.
ReplyDeleteDo you even realize that your “argument” is entirely specious?
“Republicans are not inclined…” is a pure assumption.
“I'm not denying that the latter [political discrimination against Republicans] happens, but the notion that it's the prime reason for Republicans on faculties [?] is dubious.”
So, you admit that such discrimination occurs, but then try to say—in upside-down English—that it doesn’t occur.
“As far as whining about white males being discriminated against, I'm a white male.” [Irrelevant.]
“I had the great foresight to be born a white male in the United States of America. If you can't do well with an advantage like that…”
Mr. Sophist, I have no reason to believe anything you say, up to and including that you’re a white man. You need to get your lies straight.
Nicholas Stix, Uncensored
Stop your perpetual crying and get some marketable skills; you might actually get a job.
DeleteI'm afraid Nicholas is living proof of reason # 95 "Academics are Unhappy."
DeleteUnhinged
ReplyDeleteI applied for a master's with Michael Mayer from Waterloo, and honestly he was just a creepy old man who rode a scooter to work and pretty much just wanted to get a student to drink with each night.
ReplyDeleteSome good points here about job prospects, if one only aims for the tenure track professor position, but there are other professional options. After completing my PhD in 2010, I found success and happiness teaching at a private boarding school, then working in state government. I still research and publish. New PhD's must look broadly. Also, I disagree that graduate school is "giving up ten years of your life." Those (six years) were some of the best of my life.
ReplyDeletePhDs, especially in the humanities, are not encouraged to find professional options outside of academia. We're still being trained for the elusive tenure track position even though those positions are few and far between. PhD programs do not teach their students how to navigate the nonacademic job market.
DeleteAlso, let's be honest: PhD programs don't WANT their students to leave academia because they need people to join the adjunct cycle. The academe has brainwashed students into thinking that it's academia or bust.
I'm glad that you had a gratifying grad school experience but most people haven't.
My first graduate supervisor didn't want his students to finish. He saw us as cheap labour for his research and behaved as if he was paying us out of his own pocket. As a result, he laid claim to whatever data students produced. (One such case nearly ended in litigation.)
DeleteAnyone who actually did finish their degree on time did so by accident and he took measures to make sure that didn't happen too often.
I dropped out of grad studies at that institution over 35 years ago and I still cringe whenever I think about him.
Why did the mysterious author of this blog give up at 96. Can't make it to 100?
ReplyDeleteWhy do you have to comment mysteriously.
DeleteThis is a great blog.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, this is entirely true especially if you consider or factor in the financial conditions of PhD holders vs those who dropped out of school and founded a company e.g Mark Zuckerberg
ReplyDeleteAlso, SUGGESTION FOR REASON 98
Failure while pursuing academic status can lead to suicide. In the Nigerian medical school that I am in, someone committed suicide because he couldn't pass MBBS exam.