next »

[tigerbear]

Here's the article

I felt compelled to add one other reason to go to graduate school (to the list in the article):

* you get a full scholarship that pays more than you can earn outside graduate school.

If this is the case, what have you got to lose?  It seems that the author is supposing he would have been better off if he'd kept that job selling health club memberships at a local shopping mall. 
Surely that can't be true?

Personally, the three-four years I spent doing my PhD were the best years of my life so far.
(Postdoc-ing is great but I find a little bit more difficult because I can't play the role of the clueless student anymore).  I loved every part of it.  And, it paid more than being a photocopying assistant at a campus library, which was what I was doing before.  In fact, being a PhD student paid more than my mother gets paid doing her office admin job, and it was fun.  So even though I'm nearly thirty with no permanent job prospects I can't really regret it.

And beside, life (especially life in your twenties) isn't just about money and career progression.
Some people travel the world.  Some do meaningless jobs and spend all their money on going out and fancy clothes.  Some people waste their twenties tending to various addictions. Some people do a PhD...  Surely it's not so bad.  :)

Perhaps other people can add their reasons.

[egilson]

Of course, if the only reason you have for completing any course of education is to gain one of a narrow range of material rewards, then graduate school in the humanities is absolutely the wrong choice. This is especially true if you cannot be happy with teaching but must instead hold a tenure-track position, and if you cannot be happy with talking to others about interesting and relevant topics related to your field of study (at, say, a Wednesday-night church study group or a public library event) unless you are pontificating at undergraduates or serving as a plenary speaker.

Judging from the author's graduation date, I am older than he (and not yet a humanities PhD in part because I made the career choices he would advise). Despite that, I can't see this article as anything but bitter, miserable and narrow-minded. There are many things you can do with what you know, and there are many choices (frugality, maybe?) to enable you to make do with what you earn so that you can do what you enjoy. I'm sorry that the author appears to be blind to that.

[baka_janai]

Here's a reason (set of circumstances) I would add which is similar to one of the writer's:

"You already have a fairly well-paid job (in academia) that allows you to spend the approximately $5000 a year it costs to do a D.Phil at a respectable UK university AND you have the reasonable expectation that you can pick up enough extra adjunct classes (because of your degree) so that in a couple of years you will have "paid back" what it cost and be "free and clear" for future choices.  Like staying exactly where you are." 

Hell, my university paid me a $1000 completion bonus and gave me a raise.  That's better than spending the money on a fancy pick-up. 

Of course, if the only reason you have for completing any course of education is to gain one of a narrow range of material rewards, then graduate school in the humanities is absolutely the wrong choice.

Fine.  As long as you don't kid yourself that you really don't care if you get a job or not.

This is especially true if you cannot be happy with teaching but must instead hold a tenure-track position,

But that just it.  You don't get to teach either.  Not if you have to make a living (for yourself and others).

and if you cannot be happy with talking to others about interesting and relevant topics related to your field of study (at, say, a Wednesday-night church study group or a public library event) unless you are pontificating at undergraduates or serving as a plenary speaker.

I'm sorry but there is NO ONE outside of academia (and precious few inside) who is even the remote bit interested in hearing anything related to my subject area.  Luckily, I have a nice hobby (RC airplanes) that I can talk about with real people. 

[greenman]

I agree with OP--the only reason any one should go to grad school in the humanities these days is if they have a full fellowship that pays enough to get by (and with health insurance in the US).

Another issue: I think the number of humanities Ph.D.s getting jobs must be skewed by the fact that there are large numbers of, frankly, superfluous programs in a variety of humanities fields, at obscure, underfunded institutions with questionable admissions standards. Students I have encountered from these institutions are often working full-time outside of their studies, or have some other major commitments besides an academic life. These people are at a significant disadvantage compared to the average fully-funded humanities Ph.D. student from a top-tier institution. So, when these high percentages of unemployed Ph.D.s get tossed around by people like the author of the Chronicle article, I respond: why not offer a more sophisticated analysis? Let's see how institutional affiliation, grad program acceptance rates, and other factors the author could determine influence job placement. Perhaps the issue is allowing way too many third-rate Ph.D. programs to stagger on, while their students take out $100,000 in student loans to receive a degree that, statistically, doesn't help them get a good job.

[ideagirl]

Here's the article

I felt compelled to add one other reason to go to graduate school (to the list in the article):

* you get a full scholarship that pays more than you can earn outside graduate school.

I would go a little further: I don't think it's necessary that the scholarship/fellowship pay more than you could earn outside graduate school. As long as it pays you enough to live on, provides health insurance or gives you access to cheap student health insurance, and the jobs that you're already qualified for that pay more are not jobs you're interested in, go for it.

[baka_janai]

Greenman makes several good (and true) points.  However, I question whether any Ph.D. program anywhere is actually such a full-time endeavor that it couldn't be done while working elsewhere (full or part-time).  From what I can tell, the most time consuming part of being a Ph.D. student in the US is the TAing.  So really US grad students are working full-time.  They are just doing it within the confines of their university.  They aren't being paid to be scholars; they are being paid (poorly) to teach classes that otherwise the university would have to hire "real" professors to teach. 

I've done a number of fairly intensive things in my life.  The Ph.D. process was by no means the most intensive of them.  I do think there's a certain cult-ish quality to grad life in the US and that one of the tenets of this cult is that nothing is as hard as getting a Ph.D.  Bullpucky. 

[frenchdoctor]

Interesting article. However, it doesn't say a word about publishing. It is easier to publish a book with a serious, non vanity press if you have a good academic background. If you like to write and want to be published, the graduate school does help. Personally, I knew my doctorate would not offer me good job opportunities (*). However, thanks to it, I've published a nice book at a great UP, a book that some people actually read, and that is a major achievement in my own eyes. That matters too.

This said, I think the main issue is grade inflation. Everything is a consequence of it. The system is entirely made of unsaid realities and lies : there are good students with good grades, and hopeless students with good grades too. No one will tell the later that they are hopeless, and that they should not go to grad school. They'll have to discover it by themselves when, year after year, publishers will refuse their manuscripts and SC will not even notice their applications. It's a shameful collective behaviour and we are all guilty of it.


--------------------
(*) I didn't go in debt for it, though. I'm not crazy.

[greenman]

I completely agree with what Baka Janai calls the "cultish" aspect of getting a Ph.D. in the US--a Ph.D. is supposed to be super hard, super isolating, and a "higher" quasi-religious form of labor that elevates you above the mere professional. There is the attitude that you must work 24/7, for seven years, and then MAYBE you'll be good enough to count as a "serious" scholar (but probably not). In reality, this is something that most preach and few practice. I doubt many Ph.D. students work a full 40-hour week on their studies, but as has been pointed out, they have to TA or teach their own courses that add to the hours worked. (Yet, it's worth pointing out, teaching a course is not a full-time job, so students at a higher level, better funded program still have an advantage over those working full-time and going to school at a less funded program.) The issue with grad school in humanities, I think, is the length of the programs (seven years is average in my field) and isolation--that is what makes it seem worse than it really is. Many people move somewhere new and have no real support network, most departments are fairly alienating (or completely alienating), and often people in the humanities work on a narrow topic of which they're the expert in their cohort or perhaps their entire institution. My department gives lip-service to "community" but there doesn't seem to be a way to combat the basic issue of specialization and isolation, combined with professional competitiveness. And, of course, the cultish aspect of the Ph.D. doesn't teach grad students to simply see their work as a "job" that ends at 6 o'clock every day, but as something that they must be thinking about 24/7 (I think this is a serious "cultural" problem in the humanities that leads to high rates of alcoholism and mental illness among Ph.D. students--my observation, not based on hard data!).

Anyway, the way I view grad school in the humanities: do what it takes to get the credentials and experience necessary to 1) publish your first book and 2) teach SOMEWHERE. Even a TT teaching job at a remote small college is, realistically, a fairly sweet gig.

[dalekk]

* you get a full scholarship that pays more than you can earn outside graduate school.


Personally, the three-four years I spent doing my PhD were the best years of my life so far.

A few things:

First, he said humanities.  You clearly are not in the humanities if you did your Ph.D. in 3 years.

Second, I did my Ph.D. at one of the top history programs and got a full ride all the way through.  It was about as good a deal as anyone in history could get, but the stipend still came out to the equivalent of minimum wage.  No one will ever earn more on a Ph.D. stipend (in the humanities) than they could earn outside of academia.

Third, I think you guys are missing some of his point.  Academic jobs (in the humanities) are very tough to come by.  Furthermore, most starting salaries are ridiculously low.  I would guess that the average starting salary for historians is right around $47,000.  Economists and scientists probably start at almost twice that.  

Finally, I think you guys are taking the financial devastation too lightly that doing a Ph.D. in the humanities can be to regular people.  If someone has a child for whom they're responsible or debt (like student loans), one's financial situation is much more than merely vulnerable.  I never took out a student loan as a grad student because my funding was very good.  I do however come from a working-class family who was unable to help me at all during college.  I put myself through a 4-tier state school by working and taking out student loans.  My $25,000 in loans has now doubled from the interest accumulation alone.  I'm looking at a $500 a month payment for the next 20 years.  On top of that, I have a niece whom I help financially.  I also require regular medications and monthly bloodwork for a medical condition which is not serious and is easily managed but does require regular maintenance.  Though not particularly serious, it is counted as a preexisting condition, so my private insurance (which I have to buy without a permanent job) is ridiculously expensive.  This is my second year on the market and I still don't have a job.  I've been piecing things together here and there and making ends meet, but I'm always just a month or two from disaster.  I can't keep doing this and at some point I will have to get a non-academic job, which will make it much more difficult to get an academic job in many ways.  

Now I don't regret doing a Ph.D.  I loved it, and I love my research and writing.  And I really love teaching.  But you guys are really underestimating how important money is.  As crude as it may seem to you, money is important.  I don't even mind the idea of spending most of my adult life impoverished.  I'm used to it, and really, I have no real concern for material goods.  I would just like to know that I will be poor and not bankrupt or living in a friends basement or something.  When you're trying to manage huge student loan payments, private insurance, pay your rent, and buy food, a permanent job and money are not insignificant and crude things.  

As the article said, a humanities Ph.D. is something that can cause great financial strain in a lot of ways and it should be undertaken in full awareness of what one's getting into.  I had a lot of grad school friends who came from money and they never had to worry about it, but for normal people, it's a real concern.

[concordancia]

I envy those of you who got through your PhDs without working a full 40 hours a week on your studies. It would not surprise me to calculate that even the "slackers" in my program put in close to 40 hours a week. Most of us put in quite a bit more, above and beyond the time dedicated to TAing, except for that one class where class prep was studying up on the field and, well, at least the first time around grading compositions makes you think about your own writing - then the TAing and the studying got rather blurry. Oh, and the semester I had a pedagogy course - class prep and TAing were also blurry there. The semester I sat exams, wrote my prospectus and applied for national grants was probably the toughest - and the most comparable to the research aspect of my current job, but I didn't even have to juggle the teaching in.

But then, my program has a good reputation and an excellent placement record. Plus, they will not admit you if they are not willing to give you a full ride for four to five years, depending on the year you were admitted. And the brief downturn to four years was so that the university could revamp their funding structure and offer everyone five years, instead of the slipshod department to department structure they had previously.

[psychgrad816]

Tigerbear: Even if you are offered a graduate stipend that is more than you would have made straight out of undergrad, chance are 5+ years later you no longer would have made that little in the "real world," while your graduate stipend will likely remain the same. Just to give an example, a friend of mine with a humanities BA started working in PR right after college. She made about $29,000 to start, which in her expensive city at the time was comparable to my $20,000 stipend in a less expensive place (not to mention that I don't pay state taxes, local taxes, and FICA on my stipend). Five years later, she now makes about $60,000. I'm about to start a job as a new PhD that pays about the same. However, she now has much more in savings than I do, because her salary had progressively risen over the last five years, while mine has been stagnant at $20,000. Time spent earning a PhD results in lost wages.

Also, do you really think that most college grads with a humanities major can't get a job that pays better than a grad stipend would? Many jobs that require a college degree might not pay that much better than grad school at first, but salaries often rise quickly. $20,000 is the equivalent of $10/hr, and I'd imagine that even selling health club memberships is comparable to that. My hourly rate was higher than that when I was a bank teller over the summer in college.

Finally, I think that many humanities grads sell themselves short by believing that they're not qualified to do more than menial work. Even if Benton had continued selling health club memberships for a time, it's very likely that he would have eventually moved on to more meaningful work that requires a BA. I went to a liberal arts school for undergrad, and after graduation many of my friends initially went on to menial jobs. (Which at the time made me feel really great for going to graduate school!) Now, though, they all have meaningful jobs that pay them decently. Often college grads with liberal arts degrees have to suffer through jobs that seem beneath them at first, but that phase does not last forever (and usually does not last longer than a year or two).

[baka_janai]

I also require regular medications and monthly bloodwork for a medical condition which is not serious and is easily managed but does require regular maintenance.  Though not particularly serious, it is counted as a preexisting condition, so my private insurance (which I have to buy without a permanent job) is ridiculously expensive.

Ah, so you also have epilepsy.  I have it.  My wife has it.  And my son has it.  None of the major medical insurance providers would take us.  One company offered us a "deal" for my son for $5000 a year with a $3000 deductible.  Thanks but no thanks.  Then my wife got a minimum wage factory job and suddenly we're all covered by the same company that had denied us coverage the week before. 

So yes there's some big nasty realities out there.   Maybe this is off-topic.  But maybe not.

Regarding the 3-4 year degree, well that's every D.Phil program in the UK and Australia.  I actually took 5 years but that's because my sabbatical which I spent as a visiting scholar at UCLA fell in the 4th year.  (Yes, I know that sounds weird.)

To be honest, I can't even imagine what I could possibly have been doing for 40 hours ever week on my research.   I read vast quantities, did some very labor intensive work with data, but it just didn't come out to 40 hours a week.  But then I wasn't involved with the "bureaucracy" of US grad programs.  The UK model is much more that of the Gentleman Scholar:  Go away.  Study the world.  Come back and show us something impressive. 

[jackalope]

Getting my PhD was a wonderful intellectual adventure that I would not have missed for the world. But I did not borrow any money to do it and was responsible for no one but myself. Right now I would not advise a history PhD for anyone.

[baka_janai]

Plus, they will not admit you if they are not willing to give you a full ride for four to five years, depending on the year you were admitted.

Again, I stress, you weren't "given a full ride."  After evaluating several candidates you were selected and HIRED (at a fairly lowly salary) to teach classes and do a host of other oneous tasks that grad students do at American universities.  In exchange for these services, you were given the opportunity to study as well.

In my UK program I was not paid to teach or do research tasks for senior professors.  Thus I had to pay out of my own pocket to study.

[pournelle]

Greenman makes an excellent point, and all prospective graduate students should inquire about the tt placement rate at any program to which they are admitted. The numbers Benson throws around are meaningless. The full force of his argument applies only to those contemplating PhD's at lower-ranked programs: if no-one from that program gets a tt job, then you should enter it only if you don't expect to get one. When I applied to grad school, I got good advice, and applied only to programs with good placement rates. My selectivity meant I was only accepted into one program (and that off the wait-list). I did my PhD. in a particularly competitive subfield, and got a 2/2 tt job. My case is not unusual for my program, in which roughly 2/3 of those who complete the PhD. get similar tt jobs within a couple years of defending.

Given institutional and economic pressures and trends, there are serious barriers to entering the profession. The time to confront the competition is when applying to grad school, not after graduating from a program with poor placement. This, of course, is hardly ideal, as one's undergraduate record and GRE scores end up significantly determining one's prospects. But the reality is that the greatest predictor of success on the market remains the program you graduate from.

One final note: Benson seems not to understand the reason why so many want to be humanities professors. The reason is that no other job even comes close. (Except maybe an astronaut or a vampire.)