We wrote earlier this week about Brooke Magnanti, the scientist at the University of Bristol who acknowledged that she was the mysterious sex blogger Belle de Jour, whose memoirs became the television show Secret Diary of a Call Girl.
Ms. Magnanti said that she began working for an escort service six years ago after running out of money while working on her thesis in forensic pathology at the University of Sheffield. Today New Scientist features a Q&A with her that includes this exchange:
Q. Should British Ph.D. students be paid a proper wage, as they are in other countries?
A. I’m in two minds about this: if paid a wage, they may also be expected to do more teaching, which would result in the Ph.D. taking far longer, as it does in other countries.
I had offers of Ph.D. places both here and in the US, and chose Sheffield because it would take half the time.
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5 Responses to Let’s See, Fair Wages for Ph.D.’s? Or Prostitution? Hmm …
11147726 - November 20, 2009 at 3:54 pm
So we’re supposed to take the career management advice of a “ho?”
elgato1204 - November 20, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Your headline misrepresents Ms. Magnanti’s comment. She seems pretty clearly to be saying that there’s a trade-off between doing more teaching (to earn more immediate income) or having more time to work on finishing your degree more quickly. People with different preferences make different choices.
lizgibbons - November 23, 2009 at 7:30 am
The use of the pejorataive “ho” to refer to Dr. Magnanti is revealing.
andyj - November 23, 2009 at 10:46 am
If this is what passes for an RA’ship at Sheffield, what about gender equality?
timebandit - November 23, 2009 at 10:34 pm
One assumes you’ll actually be ‘paid’ in ‘fair wages’ in the US. Take a reality check – there are some PhD programs here that don’t even give stipends to everyone. On the other hand, even if you finish quickly in the UK, there is not necessarily the same type of expectation about this being a professional apprenticeship to the professoriate, so you might not get the same kinds of 1) opportunities to coauthor (depending) 2) job market advice 3) personalized job market recommendation letters that are pretty much expected in the US. (They might give you an interfolio letter, but will they, as my committee have done, send their letters to the department secretary to make 50 separate letters addressed to the appopriate search chairs and mail them out for you?)