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[lerasmus]

Bijou,
You're right.  People are being over-admitted.

Our grad program (humanities, non-flagship) over-admits grad students based on the number of TA jobs we must fill.  Also, we're under pressure from the administration to expand (!!) our grad program, for ratings/rankings reasons. 

I can't believe a program would stoop so low to admit students just to give them TA jobs.

So how are we defining "over-admit"?

[sibyl]

I can't believe a program would stoop so low to admit students just to give them TA jobs.

Read more authors (Marc Bousquet, Cary Nelson, Gary Rhoades, Sheila Slaughter, Frank Donoghue) about the conditions of the labor market.  Then you will believe.

It is a common fallacy to think that universities try to calibrate their graduate admissions with the needs of the professorial job market.  They admit students for the sake of their own needs -- partly tuition, partly compensation for tenured faculty (in the form of research and teaching assistants), mostly inexpensive teaching labor. 

That's why there's no need for promising young people to enter the humanities: there is a substantial underclass already prepared to fill these jobs.

[lerasmus]

re-read my earlier post with the "irony" filter turned on...

[sibyl]

Ah.  Sorry.  Forgive me; this is a long thread.

[madamesmartypants]

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).

I am a grad student in the humanities who has a full fellowship with health insurance, and I can tell you that sometimes that isn't enough. The problem is that, by the time you get to grad school, you may already have accumulated significant debt to get there. In my case, undergrad student loans + 1-year grad program + interest on loans = $60,000 in debt. One of my loans, which is an unsubsidized Stafford loan, continues to accumulate interest while I am in school--that's about 7 years of accumulating interest on a $20,000 loan at a 4.85% interest rate.

"Full fellowship" can also be misleading. In my case, although all my course fees and classes are paid for, I still have to pay for housing, medical bills, a car, gas etc--in an area in which the cost of living is significantly higher than I would normally live in on my $1700-a-month "salary."  It also doesn't include funding for summers or for study/research outside of the university--all that has to be paid for out of my own pocket or through outside grants.

Lastly, even if you are fortunate enough to come out of higher ed with no debts and enough side-jobs and grants to have kept you afloat for the past few years, you still probably won't have significant savings or a starting salary equivalent to someone in your stage of life. Which means that, as both you and your parents get older, you will still be stretched pretty thin trying to amass the savings you will need for retirement and medical care.

While this alone would not make me totally discourage students from going to grad school, it would make me encourage them to think very carefully about it. It's not a good career path unless you're wealthy or have been fortunate enough to have had all of your schooling completely paid for. Even then, depending on what your family background is like and what their expectations of you are, it may be best just to skip the stress and get some nice, quiet office job.

[virmundi]

While this alone would not make me totally discourage students from going to grad school, it would make me encourage them to think very carefully about it. It's not a good career path unless you're wealthy or have been fortunate enough to have had all of your schooling completely paid for. Even then, depending on what your family background is like and what their expectations of you are, it may be best just to skip the stress and get some nice, quiet office job.

As a veteran of a career involving a "nice, quiet office job," I can tell you that such a thing exists only in the same realm in which unicorns frolic and turtledoves put on nightly performances of "Riverdance." Secure jobs have become more or less a thing of the past in the private sector, and there are few reasons to believe that this is going to change. Additionally, jobs which compensate well also tend to have a commensurately higher level of stress, intensity, and hours than those jobs which are relatively stress free.

As a long-time (ex-)participant in the corporate blood-letting that has characterized the last several decades, I feel well qualified to state that there is very little security in the idealized "quiet office job." A good salary today can become a pink slip tomorrow, and even when the economy was in decent shape, the prospects for getting another well-salaried job were far from certain.

I do agree that all potential graduate students should be advised to consider their options carefully, but they should do so with the full knowledge that office jobs are by no means necessarily less intense, less stressful, or less uncertain than academia. Students should absolutely consider their finances, but making this the sole consideration has the potential to backfire dramatically. If there are any "nice, quiet office jobs" left out there, they are probably even now on a budget shredder's next hit-list.

[lerasmus]

As a veteran of a career involving a "nice, quiet office job," I can tell you that such a thing exists only in the same realm in which unicorns frolic and turtledoves put on nightly performances of "Riverdance."

That is a particularly poetic way of putting it...

[litcrittr82]

While this alone would not make me totally discourage students from going to grad school, it would make me encourage them to think very carefully about it. It's not a good career path unless you're wealthy or have been fortunate enough to have had all of your schooling completely paid for. Even then, depending on what your family background is like and what their expectations of you are, it may be best just to skip the stress and get some nice, quiet office job.

As a veteran of a career involving a "nice, quiet office job," I can tell you that such a thing exists only in the same realm in which unicorns frolic and turtledoves put on nightly performances of "Riverdance." Secure jobs have become more or less a thing of the past in the private sector, and there are few reasons to believe that this is going to change. Additionally, jobs which compensate well also tend to have a commensurately higher level of stress, intensity, and hours than those jobs which are relatively stress free.

As a long-time (ex-)participant in the corporate blood-letting that has characterized the last several decades, I feel well qualified to state that there is very little security in the idealized "quiet office job." A good salary today can become a pink slip tomorrow, and even when the economy was in decent shape, the prospects for getting another well-salaried job were far from certain.

I do agree that all potential graduate students should be advised to consider their options carefully, but they should do so with the full knowledge that office jobs are by no means necessarily less intense, less stressful, or less uncertain than academia. Students should absolutely consider their finances, but making this the sole consideration has the potential to backfire dramatically. If there are any "nice, quiet office jobs" left out there, they are probably even now on a budget shredder's next hit-list.

First, thank you for this post.

Second, rant: there are few things as aggravating to me in these discussions about whether to go to grad. school as these two: 'only if you're wealthy' and 'get a nice office job.'  These are the apex of condescension and academic elitism.  The 'just don't go' articles that started this discussion are so insufferable particularly because their tone is 'worked for me, but it won't for you.'  This is ivorytowerism at its worst.  Now we get two more in-group/out-group gems: grad. school is the prerogative of the wealthy (sorry dear, no room for proles in this business); grad. school is the uber-important work of the Inner Party (the rest of you run along to your little office jobs and make pie charts *slaps ass*).  I know people don't mean it this way when they write it.  But seriously, think about what you're saying.  Surely students can be advised to think through the long-term financial implications of grad. school without being told simultaneously that they should essentially settle for an office job.  And yes, when you say it this way--'skip the stress and get some nice, quiet office job'--any student with half a brain will think you're asking them to settle for a zombie life (one that doesn't even exist, as lordy80011 rightly points out).     

[king_ghidorah]

Interesting turn this thread has taken.  Thank you to lordy for pointing out the obvious (I also fled the "nice quiet" world of "office jobs").

I do not understand people who complain about TAs and fellowships - I got a first rate, expensive graduate education for free and, on top of that, I was able to build a nice little resume of classes taught, tutoring, editing and other sundry professional stuff while getting benefits and an admittedly meager paycheck (and yes I have student loans up the wazoo).  I expect many of you have had the same experience.  This is not to say that the graduate life of the mind is perfect - but please.

It seems so simple.  If hu takes a graduate fellowship hoping for an academic career, hu automatically risks professional and economic limitations.  It should be up to those of us who undertake the life of the mind to find this out as it would be for any career move.  If anything, schools should do their best to professionalize their graduate students, particularly since our degrees do actually limit how we make our livings.

[marigolds]

Graduate schools are *completely* irresponsible in overadmitting students based upon their TA needs (and this practice is surely imbricated with the adjunctification of higher education as well?).  For those that want to pursue graduate studies in the humanities simply for their own personal growth, sure!  Knock yourselves out!  I encourage you, in fact - but sign up as a continuing education student, not as a full-time, degree-seeking candidate.  Departments need to take responsibility for their roles in creating this mess, and attempt to do something to repair it.  I think that public placement records would be a good place to start, as would cutting incoming cohorts significantly. 

I will say that my department is pretty ethical and responsible on the whole in its efforts to alleviate the abuses of the profession as a whole (they have voluntarily cut doctoral admissions by well over half in the past 5 years, employs long-term contract labor rather than pulling from a pool of random adjuncts [and have not let ANY of those lecturers go in the face of severe budget constraints, since they didn't want to cut them loose on a s***ty market], and is overall doing the best they can within the current system.)

Students also should take responsibility for informing themselves about the market before they make their decision, but we all know that undergrads aren't always quite so forward-thinking as that.  I was both naive and misinformed before I entered my program (I was told that going for a terminal MA in order to teach at the CC level was silly and that I should just go ahead and get the PhD - which is true on some counts, as CCs aren't hiring MA candidates, but on another level...WTF?), but I got VERY lucky: my situation turned out to be an alignment of all the humanities grad student stars.  I was 1) waiting tables at the time (so am assuredly not accruing lost income and IRA contributions), 2) had no debt (and still don't), 3) was admitted for a full ride (and I'm in English, so I have plenty of teaching opportunities and make an OK stipend and have delicious health insurance - first I've had since I graduated undergrad, in fact), 4) am married and my husband has a job, so we're not LIVING on that stipend, and (most importantly) 5) figured out pretty damn quick what the real score was and what I needed to do to be competitive on the rotten market. 

Would I tell my brightest students they should go to graduate school in the humanities?  I would, and I have.  I think the humanities are important, and I fully believe in the ideals of liberal humanist education. I do make sure to tell my students the situation in higher education as I see it before I write those letters so that they can make informed decisions about graduate study and employment. 

[lerasmus]

So what exactly is the problem, again?