In two blogs in this space (here and here) that stirred up some interest (80 comments), I presented evidence that a large portion of those receiving bachelor’s degrees at American colleges and universities these days are getting jobs requiring less-than-college-level educational skills. I went on to argue that this is further evidence that the strategy of trying to dramatically increase the number of those with degrees may be counterproductive, and that we in fact in one sense are “overinvested” in higher education—that more people are getting degrees than the number of jobs available that traditionally have gone to college graduates (for a complete study on this topic, click here).
Mentioning this, however, leads to two fears. One is that some people, for whom college is almost certainly likely to be a good investment of time and money, might decide to forgo an education, to their detriment and that of society. There are still a good number of students who benefit from a college education.
However, I have a second, seemingly contradictory fear: that as college grads learn of the job/degree imbalance, they will try to get around the problem in some cases by inappropriately going to school even more, by getting a master’s or even doctoral degree, or perhaps become a member of the professions—becoming, say, a lawyer. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data suggest that the problem of underemployment or over-education (taking jobs requiring vastly less education than that acquired) extends very much to still higher levels of learning, to advanced degrees.
Consider the following. Looking at BLS data for 2008, over 10,500 persons with Ph.D. or professional degrees were employed as “cashiers” (excluding gaming); over 27,400 were retail salespersons; and well over 4,700 were hairdressers, hairstylists, or cosmetologists. My sidekick Chris Matgouranis found 10 occupations like these: the ones listed above plus waiters and waitresses, landscaping workers, amusement and recreation attendants, receptionists and information clerks, secretaries (except legal, medical, and executive), truck drivers (heavy and tractor-trailer) and electricians. Collectively, these occupations had well over 74,000 with doctorates or such professional degrees as a J.D. Other evidence confirms this. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that 29 percent of new lawyers were not doing legal work, consistent with the notion that there is a glut of those with doctorates and some professional degrees. The Economist recently published an article presenting evidence of very dim job prospects for many new Ph.D.’s.
To be sure, some of this is related to the recent prolonged economic downturn. Yet stories of, say, historians, with doctorates doing all sorts of non-history type work, have been around for years. Training Ph.D.’s and professionals is extremely expensive—often six-digit amounts for the post-bachelor’s training, only part of which is billed to the student. Why are we doing this? Why, for example, doesn’t the U.S. go to perhaps 30 or 40 Ph.D. programs in history (instead of 100 or more), to train perhaps one-third the number of students that we train now? That would be enough to keep us from losing touch with our heritage, and would allow us to continually record and analyze our ever-growing past, and continue to disseminate that knowledge to a broader public.
The argument sometimes used to keep graduate programs is they are is that relatively low-paid graduate students are doing a lot of the undergraduate teaching. But does that not really mean that such students are doing work traditionally done by faculty, who don’t want to have to stoop to teaching lowly undergraduates? And the fact that graduate students in some disciplines, including the humanities, often take eight or more years to get their degrees suggests that the true cost of these degrees (including the value of work foregone while in school) is even higher than the mere tuition fees, etc., would indicate.
Many programs are kept, of course, because the faculty members teaching them want to keep their jobs, or simply prefer teaching advanced graduate students. In other cases, the institution equates prestige and status with offering a large number of graduate/professional programs, and thus resists abandoning them. One of the healthy byproducts of the financial squeeze facing some schools as a consequence of weak business conditions is that out of sheer desperation they are being forced to abandon some of these programs that make little sense on any sort of rational cost-benefit analysis.
In a pure unfettered market economy, there are no such things as “shortages” or “gluts” of any type of worker—wages adjust to meet market conditions. If we are turning out too many historians, their pay will reach such low levels that few new candidates will pursue that field. But the combination of subsidies (mostly publicly but some privately financed) and nonprofit institutional status leads us to continue to produce highly trained individuals who do things that society does not find very valuable. When the political process, rather than market process, controls resource allocation and compensation, we tend to get undesirable results.
43 Responses to Too Many Ph.D.’s and Professionals?
more_cowbell - January 5, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Good article. The lack of viable employment options for MA and PhD graduates really points to the failure of depts to adequately manage their student enrolment levels. Realistically, each faculty member should only be producing a handful of grads over the course of their career – not 30-40. Overproduction of grads only guarantees that most will end up in jobs they are far too overqualified for.
What’s needed is more involvement at the administrative level (e.g. setting of maximum enrolment quotas) in order to stem the glut of grads being produced.
cdwickstrom - January 5, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Having obtained a PhD later in life, I am fully aware of its negative impact on professional opportunity. Rather than opening doors, it slammed many shut, to my dismay. Even while working for a heavily science based agency in the Dept of Agriculture, I found that my being a doctoral candidate made my bosses very suspicious of my actions in getting the degree. Almost none of my peers or superiors saw my outside of work efforts as of value to the organization, despite my job being highly research and problem solving in nature. I agree with the author that many jobs today do not require graduate degree qualifications to succeed, however, what is not recognized is that having one can be an asset worth exploiting from time to time.
jshervais - January 5, 2011 at 4:01 pm
We track our MS students closely as part of our assessment process – especially those who graduated over the last 10 years. Almost all are employed in fields related to their degrees either directly or indirectly. Many have 6 figure incomes. Some have gone on to PhD programs, but most are employed (and those who have gone on to PhD programs end up employed in their field).
This problem is endemic to the humanities; we do not see it in science.
amcneece - January 5, 2011 at 4:31 pm
The author hit the nail on the head: PhD programs exist not because of demand for PhD grads, but because faculty want the “status” of being on a doctoral faculty.
Here’s an example of a really absurd situation in professional education: In order to establish a new program in social work, a university has to demonstrate a need (to the Council on Social Work Education). But once established, the program never has to demonstrate that the need still exists during the reaccreditation (or reaffirmation, as they call it) process.
rpm13 - January 5, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Are you seriously suggesting central planning? In the real world, Ph.D. programs will dry up when the student demand dries up. As long as students want PhDs, someone will provide them.
jsnelson - January 5, 2011 at 5:12 pm
Let’s not forget that this data includes “professional” master’s degrees awarded by the for-profit and online world as well. The number of unqualified applicants with for-proft online MBA degrees I receive is staggering! I’m so glad that congress is looking into their outcomes…that scrutiny will be good for the graduate school world overall.
fchacon - January 5, 2011 at 5:18 pm
I am skeptic of the skepticism represented in this paper. The idea of the author is that there is a natural flow from the world of academia to the world of employment, but this is far from reality. All we can say is that, considering annual series, there is some degree of correlation between the graduate outputs of higher education programs, on one hand, and the corresponding input of new employees in different types of jobs for which these studies supposedly provide preparation. This correlation is higher in fields that strictly enforce credentials, such as Medicine and Accounting, and lower in most other fields in which there is a more open view about credentials. When the correlation is lower, we all know from our Statistics class, other variables come into play. Some of these variables have been mentioned in contributions of previous participants in this forum. As result of this, not only there are many overqualified professionals doing menial jobs but there are also many professionals doing high-level positions who are completely unqualified for them. Politicians, managers and college administrators probably rank high in the latter. What graduate programs need is not to reduce the output of PhDs but to educate prospective PhDs on better connecting their assets of knowledge and skills with potential job offerings and managing other variables involved in employment processes.
lindenme - January 5, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Contracting the number of PhD programs in History is not the answer for anyone who is not already a member of the elite. Entrance to the “top” Ph.D. programs is extremely competitive and someone with a degree from a public university is already disadvantaged over those from expensive private institutions. I fear that further limiting the available doctoral programs will make earning a Ph.D. in History (or any non-STEM field) a luxury only available to children of the elite. Some of us have very successful academic careers despite earning a doctorate from one of the “60″ programs that I suspect Richard Vedder would like to see cut from the doctoral pool. Besides, I would be grateful for my graduate education, funded through state support and private foundation scholarships, even if I had not become an academic. Taking on a large personal debt to earn a Ph.D. in the humanities or social sciences is probably foolish, but sustaining a society that provides access to such opportunities for capable individuals who could not afford it without financial support from public and private partnerships is a value we should continue to embrace.
more_cowbell - January 5, 2011 at 6:38 pm
I agree with 3:52. I don’t think professors, students, or anyone residing in the university system can ever fathom the fact that people with PhDs are often turned down for a non-academic jobs BECAUSE of their degree. Yet it happens a lot. And I am not talking about high-paying positions here, but basic entry-level jobs. It’s a brutal fact but it can sometimes be more advantageous to leave that PhD off of your resume when applying for some jobs.
studentperspective - January 5, 2011 at 8:31 pm
jsnelson – you raise an interesting point but there is more to it than unqualified graduate students from the for-profits. Take a look at some of the professional programs such as those in psychology. These programs require internships in order to complete the degree requirements but these internships are in scarce supply. In order to pump up the enrollment numbers to bring profits where Wall Street likes them, these schools must enroll large numbers of students. What happens to those who cannot finish through no fault of their own? I think it’s high time that accrediting bodies and oversight committees looked into what is happening at the graduate level. How many students are led down the primrose path while seeking a career only to find themselves out in the cold with outrageous debt?
iversecb - January 6, 2011 at 12:45 am
Personally, I think that anyone that reads about graduate school has heard this same old song and dance before, or some close variant. As a new graduate student pursuing a PhD in a STEM field, I find the somewhat wide generalizations to be entirely unhelpful. ‘We have an abundance of PhD’s and professional degree holders, many of which are later underemployed.’ My issue is with the lack of definition: PhD’s? All of them? Social sciences? Humanities? Sciences? Physics? Social Work? 20th century irish literature? Who?
If graduate student positions are in, what is considered to be, too high of demand by undergraduates relative to their actual need in society, then informing students of their chances may help depress those aspirations. Whether the all inclusive “PhD’s” is used because there are in fact too many in every discipline — which I doubt — or because it’s difficult to pin down specifics, or perhaps because we don’t want to point fingers, it dilutes the argument to the point that many can ignore it. “Well, I’m not like them, I’ve heard from my professors…” or “That must be another field, I’ve read…” or any other combination of statements upend the premise in the mind of students. I have friends pursuing a wide variety of disciplines, from bioengineering, law and medicine, to art history; where would such broad generalizations fit in when one of them was deciding between a job and graduate school? If they have their minds set on a graduate degree, for whatever reason, they won’t listen to an argument that doesn’t relate well with them. Why should they? The state of “PhD’s” doesn’t matter, what matters is their discipline and their future goals. Especially now, when the options are to join the rough economy or defer loans while getting paid to go to school while waiting it out. (Some of these problems you could say are systemic, and might draw on one of the other two posts, but I didn’t read them.)
Really, I think as long as we simply talk about ‘the humanities’ or all PhD’s, it won’t much matter what is said. It’ll spook some students from going further, but I don’t think it will solve any over-production problems. I’ve read plenty of articles about the subject, and I can’t remember a time when someone gave the green-light to STEM fields either; every past member from my research group has a job in academia or industry, so I just tell myself that I’m OK. I’m not just some PhD student, I’m in a STEM field, there is a good history of employment, …. (do you see where I’m going?)
eudaimon - January 6, 2011 at 12:59 am
If Professor Vedder is correct, then academia must be counted as one of the sectors of the economy that is operating in an inefficient manner. It is producing more products than the economy can absorb, but it can do so because it is being subsidized. Also, too much value is put in its brand. Perfect markets do not exist; market players are often irrational. The academic product is over valued and the market is distorted. Non-market forces have intervened. Whether professor Vedder is correct or not, his argument is confessional. We are not likely to hear corn producers and investment bankers argue that their contribution to society fails to balance against what is allocated to their industries.
11159786 - January 6, 2011 at 7:26 am
I resent the author’s attributing the “glut” problem to the public sector, claiming that “In a pure unfettered market economy, there are no such things as “shortages” or “gluts”. This is silly polemics. The overproduction of high quality Ph.D.’s is a consequence of students’ naivete, on the one hand, and their noble belief that a career in academics is worth seeking even if unlikely to succeed in material terms. This has nothing whatsoever to do with “subsidies” and the like.
22228715 - January 6, 2011 at 7:35 am
Top down: So, if all of those people who are current/future graduate students quit (or don’t start) and go on the market looking for non-advanced-degree-required jobs, what does that do for the big picture of employment? (Employment of would-be graduate students, employment of faculty and administrators and staff and apartment managers and textbook publishers and…) And what, if anything, does that do to the academic knowledge community? (journals, labs, teaching, conferences…)
Bottom up: Sometimes advanced academic study makes one a little crazy (from both the activity and the culture) and the only cure is perspective. As a job or avocation, permanently or temporarily, the best cure is activity that is concrete, has immediate results, is focused on people or things rather than ideas, and reinforces worth in different ways. Besides, who among our greatest heros got to be the person he or she was by taking the least expensive, most logical, least time-wasting, most efficient route to personhood? (When I think of inefficient, time-consuming activities with highly-uncertain payoffs, at the top of my list are parenting, religious devotion, love, social justice work, patriotic duty, moral leadership….)
fullprof99 - January 6, 2011 at 9:01 am
A part of the problem is that completing a PhD or LLD can’t really make a person smarter. Yes, you may be able to get a PhD by just gutting it out, and perseverance is worth a lot, but if you’re not top notch in intelligence your access to and success in top ranked jobs just isn’t going to be the same.
I have known quite a few PhD aspiring students who ended up becoming excellent public school teachers with a teaching certificate and MA degree, but who would have not been able to cut it in an academic job search. These were people in the 90th or 95th percentile in GREs, really great people, but who found a level at which they could do excellent work.
In my PhD program at a large state university, there were a number of students who weren’t enjoying their experience at all, continually sweating papers and exams, simply because they were in over their heads. Quite a few didn’t finish, but some did. One person required four full rewrites on her dissertation, with most of the work really done by members of her committee. She never got an academic job, nor should she have done so.
BTW, this problem exists at lower levels as well, for example the average intelligence person who wishes to become a public school teacher (often for the relatively good salary and “summers off”) but really doesn’t have the native intelligence or enthusiasm for intellectual work to do the job. My children had several of these sorts of folks when they were in school, at what was considered an elite level public high school, and they were just disasters in the classroom.
One of my faculty asked what to do about a teaching student who really wasn’t going to be able to work effectively in the schools, and my suggestion was not give the person a passing grade. This probably could work at many levels.
Incidentally, lest you misunderstand me, this is not an argument against women, members of minority groups or others from groups that haven’t previously had jobs in higher education or the public schools.
anon1972 - January 6, 2011 at 9:30 am
Another way to look at it is that getting a PhD *is* a full-time job for many people (and like many of my colleagues, I’m sure, I advise students never to enrol in a PhD program if they are not offered full finding). In other words, PhD programs are a cheap way to keep people off the unemployment rolls for 5-7 years — and at least SOME of those people do end up finding jobs in their chosen field afterward, while humanity as a whole benefits from their intellectual contribution in the meantime.
No job that you get right out of undergrad is likely to be permanent, and while working at Starbucks might pay more than getting a PhD, which is the more interesting job?
ehyouadvisor - January 6, 2011 at 9:41 am
Perhaps it is a problem of attaining too much education at too early a stage of an individual’s career. People acquiring MA/BS/MBA/PhD’s but having little or no work experience to go along with it don’t offer many of transferable and employable skills to the work force. When job applicants possess lots of background in studying, writing papers, and taking examinations there are few, if any, recruiters willing to pay the salaries now expected to reward those advanced degree holders.
New law school graduates are learning this very hard reality, with current employment rates at extremely low levels.
Seeking employment in between each degree is a really wise and measured approach to knowing how and where opportunities exist after the degree is earned. It would go a long way toward reducing the number of underemployed Doctors and Esquires working at Starbucks. No offense to the Baristas who work there, but taking on a mountain of student loan debt for a position in the food service sector makes little sense!
sccommhighed - January 6, 2011 at 9:46 am
As one who has overseen extensive reviews of doctoral programs across the whole range of disciplines, I can say with confidence that 4:01 p.m. is correct: Ph.D. oversupply is an issue in the humanities and not a significant one in the sciences or (for the most part) in the social sciences. My own view is that Vedder is right that we need far fewer doctoral programs in areas like history. That being said, I really wonder about these data. I have to believe that, for example, quite a few of the 4,700 hairdressers, hairstylists, or cosmetologists who claim to have Ph.D.s are having a little fun at the government’s expense. Taxi drivers, on the other hand…
beulah - January 6, 2011 at 10:02 am
It strikes me that the author’s use of statistics is a little mis-leading. “74,000″ in jobs that do not require an advanced degree or are not related to the graduates’ field of study. Given the number of folks in the U.S. with advanced degrees (a number which is not supplied), this seems like a pretty tiny proportion. According to the Census Bureau, there are over 15 million people in the US with master’s degrees and over 2 million with PhD’s. Let’s put things in perspective, shall we?.
ecelibrary - January 6, 2011 at 11:07 am
@fullprof
Academia is not a meritocracy. We all know tenured bozos, bores, drunks and loonies, and the sheer dreck produced by most of you tells me that the vast majority of profs are mediocrities. These days, i think it’s actually the other way around; that is, only the stupid and go into academia and only the insane stay.
hngjohnson - January 6, 2011 at 12:05 pm
To suggest that we are over-educated in a world that is increasingly technological and knowledge intensive does not make sense. Neither does the suggestion that a PhD research degree is only useful for university teaching. Instead, look at current pedagogy and the predominate disciplinary paradigms in terms of the intellectual value being created. I also like the suggestion to focus on people and concrete activity.
laurajb - January 6, 2011 at 12:10 pm
The primary motivation for seeking a PhD should be to learn more and contribute to the body of knowledge, not to get a job or to avoid figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life. Students who enroll in a history PhD program and don’t realize that the prospects for an academic job are low are simply ignoring an obvious reality. It isn’t the job of their advisors to tell them that. The overwhelming problem is that many of these students do not recognize the crushing burden that $80,000 in loans will be for the rest of their lives and, in the humanities at least, this kind of debt is common. Universities pay minimal support for their humanities TAs and charge them significant fees to enroll in their graduate classes.
fullprof99 - January 6, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Academia is not a meritocracy. We all know tenured bozos, bores, drunks and loonies, and the sheer dreck produced by most of you tells me that the vast majority of profs are mediocrities. These days, i think it’s actually the other way around; that is, only the stupid and go into academia and only the insane stay.
—————————–
I would say about one in 20 is really unqualified, about one in ten not quite up to the job and struggling. Regarding bozos, I had a long time drunk (and sexual user of students) my first year as a chair. I fired him and made it stick. Your mileage may vary.
Regarding “This problem is endemic to the humanities; we do not see it in science,” why are so many scientists doing serial postdocs if there isn’t a problem?
I agree that meritocracy doesn’t always work; the woman I mentioned who got four rewrites of her dissertation (30 + years ago) was a tall, gorgeous redhead. Another student was a former model and thought to be the next great thing but completely hollow intellectually. She never got an academic job, either.
I am arguing for meritocracy.
missoularedhead - January 6, 2011 at 12:34 pm
It would all be academic (ha ha ha) if administrations didn’t demand that departments that have no business doing so increase their enrollments or face funding cuts.
marktropolis - January 6, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Give that Vedder’s work is being subsidized through the magic of non-profits, I think it’s a tad disingenuous for him to use that line on anyone else. In addition, if he were operating in a “pure unfettered free market” I think he’d be out of a job since we already have enough conservatives arguing for the defunding of education.
“When the political process, rather than market process, controls resource allocation and compensation, we tend to get undesirable results.” One of those undesirable results, I would argue, is continuing to see the political posturing (disguised as “research”) that Vedder and his ilk continue to generate. Especially given the fact that his ability to post (both here and at his home base at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity) is made possibile through private actors controlling resource allocation for political purposes.
Pot call kettle black much?
softshellcrab - January 6, 2011 at 4:31 pm
@ marktropolis
Please regard me as one of Prof. Vedder’s “ilk”.
And please also regard me as another obnoxious conservative, saying we waste way, way too much money on education that does not have tangible, or enough, returns. Not just higher education, but at all levels. If you don’t think so, then explain why the rest of the “first world countries” do better on education while spending half of what we spend.
In my discipline, business, my not-overly-prestigious school offers new Ph.D.’s and ABD’s well over a hundred thousand for a nine month contract, and we can hardly even get any of them to interview. There is a shortage of decent business Ph.D.’s, and they already have other job offers and usually deline to interview with us. It’s called the free market! Don’t you hate it?
perpetual_student - January 6, 2011 at 11:37 pm
PhD’s are not commodities, they are pastrami sandwiches:
http://daringnovelist.blogspot.com/2011/01/books-are-not-commodities-theyre.html
@softshellcrab I make almost a hundred thousand/year in a technical field and have decided to get a PhD in English. It’s called humanity! Don’t you hate it?
bigtwin - January 7, 2011 at 12:44 am
Well I have a PhD in history and can personally speak to the subject of this article. Not long ago I was a “star candidate” with a top advisor in a decent school, full scholarships and great marks. Picked a topical thesis subject field even to postion myself better, not some hobby horse project. Every faculty member I met told me the future was bright.
Fast forward a few years…. graduated with flying colors and was on the academic job market for three years. Very few postings to apply for, not a single interview for those I did. Even was denied adjunct work – told there was none to be had.
I wised up and decided to pursue other work. Got to learn what rejection feels like not getting shortlisted for jobs that only needed a BA. Also endured a lot of jokes about McPhDs and how we aren’t “real” doctors. I eventually landed a state job that, ironically, I had turned down five years earlier in order to get a PhD. I also had to pretty much ditch my academic identity in order to get it, and to keep it. I now make a starting faculty members salary but have had to earn my way with hard work. It was like starting over but I enjoy it more than I thought possible.
My advice to anyone contemplating or going down the grad school path in the humanities is to stop now. Skill and talent has nothing to do with success in academia — read the blogs out there and chronicle articles like this. And don’t ever believe what nearly all professors say about careers — you’ll know they drank the cool aad long ago if they say academia is meritocratic in any way. You might as well be rolling dice.
fruupp - January 7, 2011 at 2:27 am
Vedder wrote: “…the strategy of trying to dramatically increase the number of those with degrees may be counterproductive,..”
As Barbara Ehrenreich wrote: “The higher education industry is becoming a racket: Buy our product or be condemned to life of penury, and our product can easily cost well over $100,000.”
Scaring the pants off of the public is a powerful incentive to go to college. Unfortunately, the result is that, with the exception of the elite schools, America’s colleges & universities are jammed with people who don’t belong there, and who benefit little from going.
Our political leaders and their corporate overlords are hell-bent on creating a national security state of low wage, high turnover workers. For that, two years of math and writing skills should be sufficient for a career in banking, marketing, or management (not to mention waiting tables, bartending, and stocking shelves at Wal-Mart). Anything else they’ll need to know they’ll learn on the job.
Colleges is for chumps. And the connected.
becauseisaidso - January 7, 2011 at 10:38 am
Fruup wrote: Unfortunately, the result is that, with the exception of the elite schools, America’s colleges & universities are jammed with people who don’t belong there, and who benefit little from going.
Yes, and the result is that we are hiring hundreds of “support personnel” (advisors, tutors, program directors, mentors, etc) in student services/academic support positions to drag these students by the hand to the degree, whether they really even want one or not.
Why? Because we are evaluated as institutions by retention and production numbers and supported at the public trough to get the numbers high.
So: growth sector for recent grads is…higher education student support jobs. The snake eats its tail and calls it yummy.
midevilprof - January 7, 2011 at 10:41 am
1. What about the MBAs, JDs, and PhDs who are overeducated and underemployed by choice? Just anecdotally, in my small circle of friends and acquaintances, I know of a couple. Certainly more than 5-6 of the 74,000 are such cases.
2. Certainly there ought to be more advanced degrees sought, degrees awarded, and programs offering degrees in the “more valuable” fields. But I always say to students and parents at my small, liberal-arts college that a true education is about life, not just job. So kudos to the high-earning technology pro who decided to go for a PhD in English! So what if you never “use” the degree professionally? But you’ll count as one of the “bad numbers” in these statistical reports. One of the problems with looking at things in aggregate.
3. I have a PhD in history–medieval history, to be precise. One of the most useless degrees possible. I earned the degree from a program that Vedder would probably close down, because it doesn’t rank in the Top 30 overall. But I had a great adviser, good faculty, and (I suppose) a good enough track record to get a job at a place I wanted. I had to move all over the country to end up here. Those who complete the degree and assume themselves well-positioned for triumph in the job market, only to have their assumptions proven wrong may well have a series of factors working against them. Unwillingness to move, perhaps; dreadful interview skills, maybe; or could be that, like a friend of mine, they go into very popular sub-fields that have, by virtue of numbers, very tough competition for jobs. One person’s experience can never serve as the general rule. What worked for me can’t be expected to work for anyone else, and what failed for someone else might be just what worked for me.
3b. While I’m at it, let me speak up for the 100+ PhD programs in history. Surely, some of them shouldn’t exist. Some have been created recently in order to earn prestige and funding for their universities, and some are ranked so lowly, both in media lists and in the minds of others, that their graduates will not be competitive. But even if we followed Vedder’s advice and reduced the number of programs, we’d need more than 30-40. The Top 20 could have people in every sub-field, but we’d need 80 more to fill the Next 20 spots in the various specialties. You see strength at X University for medieval history but not Latin American, which is an area of strength for Y University. There are top-notch faculty at “mid-tier” departments. And so on. I’m sure other disciplines see the same situation. We do need to try to find a way to reduce the number of hopeful PhD earners out there whose dreams will be crushed on the job market (200 jobs for nearly 1,000 history PhDs this year!), but simply reducing the number of degree-granting programs to only those where nobody gets in isn’t the way to do it.
Happy New Year to all!
gypsyboots - January 7, 2011 at 11:38 am
To more_cowbell:
I wrote about how higher degrees can hurt your non-academic employment chances in 2006 at Adjunct Nation (registration required):
http://www.adjunctnation.com/archive/magazine/article/562/oRB!RN68y7vcHfV7IRFbdmsg2mYZH!17/
quidditas - January 7, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Well, let me say this. In order for Vedder–and other proponents of locking out the scum– to have any real credibility with the majority of the public that views education as an “economic cure-all,” they will need to start advocating for a new domestic industrial policy for the 21st century, one that will ensure the scum will still have something productive to do with their lives in the face of 20th century deindustrialization and global labor arbitrage.
With the other alternatives being welfare or police state control of the idle masses, I’ll leave it up to Vedder et al to decide WHAT they want to subsidize, since I’m pretty sure they’ll find themselves subsidizing something no matter what.
Given that corporations, left to their own devices, seem bent on exporting their productive capacities and given that the (already) subsidized banking system still seems bent on turning down old fashioned small business loans as unprofitable given their unregulated potential to engage in further ponzification schemes, I don’t think business interests will be bailing Vedder et al out any time soon.
The bill is in your courts, boys. Use the political process to whack the ball into a more productive court or pay it yourselves.
I just think you need a little dose of reality. (You are academics after all).
loladanss - January 7, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Wow. Shorter Vedder: All you working class kids are harshing our Haight-Ashbury buzz!
I never thought I’d see the day when the Chronicle discouraged access to education.
boiler - January 7, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Whatever the merits of the argument here, I find myself very suspicious of the data. The author never defines “professional degree” here — he mentions PhDs and JDs, but doesn’t say what else counts in his numbers. What exactly counts as a professional degree? What percentage of the 10,500 cashiers have humanities PhDs, as opposed to Masters of Mixology from Leroy’s Bartending University? What percentage of them are doing these jobs as full time careers, as opposed to part-time supplements to another income? (My doctorate-holding neighbor, a stay-at-home mother of three, works as a cashier a couple of mornings a week in a nearby drugstore. It gets her out of the house and brings in a little extra money without any longterm commitment, and she can be home in the afternoons for the kids. It’s not her career.) I’d feel a lot more comfortable with the author’s prescriptions for academia if he weren’t so vague on his underlying numbers.
urth1 - January 7, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Let me start with my conclusion: the academic system is corrupt.
I have a “professional” degree and from my professional POV it is clear that while traditional legal education has little to do with the understanding and practice of law (Lincoln and a multitude excelled without it, others undoubtedly can still do so) a degree from a few elite law schools will open important doors closed to all others. Is this also true for (non-scientific, non-technical, non-engineering) academic programs?
Can social-science/humanities/fine-arts PhDs from non-elite academic programs realistically expect to become employed as academics at any level where such degrees are needed? Are the second tier programs that produce these virtually useless degrees really small parish appointments for second sons of the elite programs?
Hard science programs are excluded from this general observation: the emperor has no clothes.
Do humanities professors delude themselves about the charade using leftist-activist moral principles to divert their own attention from honest self-scrutiny? Has the psychological value of self delusion corrupted the teaching of what actually might be valuable to undergraduates in these subjects? Are there wonderful parallels between the permanent inhabitants of college towns and the village vicars and priests of a time not so very long-lost? I’m sure there are no grants to support research into socially transgressive questions like these. Stendahl would have a ball today in University Park.
godot - January 9, 2011 at 1:01 pm
So, I am to understand that we no longer need an educated populous to remain competitive in the global market? That employers will not, or do not, desire critical thinking and communication skills in their employees? That in the face of growing consumer demand for higher education that we have too many college professors? And that we should advocate the constriction of intellectual thought and exploration? Am I the only one who sees Vedder’s arguments as simply out of touch with the reality of what we in higher education are suppose to advocate? Sure, their are some very real economic issues at play, but we should abandon all progress of the past century and return to an elitist caste driven economic and social system?
res7962 - January 10, 2011 at 12:28 am
“laurajb” writes: “Students who enroll in a history PhD program and don’t realize that the prospects for an academic job are low are simply ignoring an obvious reality. It isn’t the job of their advisors to tell them that.”
What bull****. If informing students about the realities and implications of pursuing a History Ph.D. *isn’t* the job of their advisor — that is, their ADVISOR FOR THAT HISTORY PH.D. DEGREE — then what the hell *IS* that professor’s job?? If you know it is unwise for a student to pursue a graduate degree, and you encourage and enable it anyway, then you can in no sense be said to have competently or honestly “advised” that student, and you have committed gross professional misconduct.
The fact is, it is *critical* to push this information in students’ faces. Many if not most students considering grad school have spent their entire lives in academe. They are all scared, to varying degrees, of leaving that environment. They are strongly predisposed to believe all will be well if they stay in school and keep doing what they already know they’re good at, and to dismiss any warnings they hear as not applying to them for whatever reason.
And faculty, all too often, have their own interests at heart: they need cheap, skilled grad student labor to teach their classes, grade their papers, do their lab work, keep those grants coming in, etc. And rather than forgo these perks and deal honestly with their students, they choose to lie — and whether explicitly or by omission, it’s still deception — and wreck decades of these young peoples’ lives.
paulcheck - January 10, 2011 at 3:43 am
Why is the presumption that there are too many PhDs and not that they aren’t being used effectively enough? For example, how amny PhDs run major/mid-sized companies after working within said companies for years? Why are they not selected for promotion? Despite the name, I would argue that an MBA prepares one for management in a technical field about as well as a PhD does, with a wide variance for the personality to really be the deciding factor. In the private sector, many PhDs could move beyond where they are now, but are not promoted because of a clear MBA bias. Based on my experience, it’s THIS bias that is out of whack.
southbender - January 10, 2011 at 8:49 am
It isn’t that faculty won’t deign to teach “lowly undergraduates”; it is that administrators do not wish to spend the requisite cash to establish new tenure-track faculty lines. The scam is absolutely not on the part of the faculty, but of administrators who want to exploit the cheap labor. One thing I appreciate about my university is that there is no adjunct underworld, and that graduate students really are utilized only in a very minimal and completely appropriate fashion.
fenngibbon - January 11, 2011 at 9:36 am
Contrary to what some are saying here, the problem really does seem to be lack of demand, not quality of supply.
I worked one and two year positions continuously from 2000 until 2009, then in 2009 the total number of jobs I could apply to shrank and several that I had applied to were canceled for cost cutting reasons by the schools. In the 2009-2010 school year I was unable to find a position, and in the fall of 2010 all I could find was an adjunct position that was discontinued at the end of the semester due to budget cuts (at another school I had sent an inquiry to about an adjunct position, I was informed that not only were they not hiring new adjuncts, but that they would probably be cutting their existing adjunct faculty). I was able to find another adjunct job for this semester, but the future does not look good; I don’t keep strict track, but I don’t believe I’ve sent out even half as many applications as I would normally would have by this time of the school year.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the job market since I first entered grad school over 15 years ago, and I have never seen it this bad; the jobs, at least in my field, simply don’t exist. I don’t necessarily think that’s the fault of the various programs (though you’d think the economists, at least, might have predicted it), but they’re not helping matters by continuing to pump out new PhD’s into a glutted market.
waldemar - January 11, 2011 at 5:13 pm
Thank you, Mr. Vedder, for addressing the realities that we in academe are so hesitant to face. The Chronicle should be commended for publishing your perspectives, as well as those of “Thomas H. Benton” and others who have taken a hard look at higher education these past few years.
The recent article in the NY Times on unemployed law-school graduates and the Economist’s recent article on the same fate facing PhDs are indications that the media are finally recognizing the reality of an over-educated but under-employed and under-prepared population. Higher education has focused on its own growth at the cost of luring young adults into debt and onto life paths that end in professional dead-ends.
There are a few voices like “100 reasons not to go to graduate school” (http://100rsns.blogspot.com/) attempting to warn people about the cost of poor individual choices. And there are others, like yours, addressing the costs of the degree glut to society. But it may be a long time before most people are disabused of the illusion of the benefits of most graduate degrees.
22278921 - January 12, 2011 at 1:44 pm
“laurajb”‘s remark about advisors not being responsible for informing aspiring PhD students about job prospects should be read in the context of her other premise, that “motivation for seeking a PhD should be to learn more and contribute to the body of knowledge, not to get a job or to avoid figuring out what you want to do.” Idealistic? Yeah, but appealing to those of us who, in the ever more commercial environment of academe, still cling pathetically to the concept of liberal education. I did not pursue my degree with a particular career in mind; other areas such as publising could have been options. I was young, idealistic, and above all, hungry for a life of the mind; In short, I was the ideal candidate for a PhD in English in 1970. And yes,I collected more than my fair share of sarcasm and ridicule (e.g., “what are you going to do–starve to death while correcting everybody’s grammar?”) Even before completing my degree, I was labeled overqualified for jobs I desperately needed and also accepted some lousy jobs to support my education habit.
I think laurajb is suggesting that students bear some responsibility for learning about their career prospects. Academe is not the only place for PhDs.
No doubt the value of the degree has been cheapened by over-supply; that’s certainly the case for bachelors and masters degrees. And we all know a number of these bright young things who are truly not “college material” but are here because of parental expectations, peer pressure or uncertainty about what to do when they grow up. Yet colleges keep taking them in and turning them out with degrees–fortunately, for us who depend on students for our living. But when advising an intelligent, serious student who loves learning and longs to continue on for an advanced degree, is my duty to say “there are no jobs–go into plumbing instead”? The ethical way, it seems to me, is to help the student understand the realities while also ecouraging them to think creatively about career options. But ultimately I am neither a seer nor a career counselor.