Most of the bricks and mortar Ph.D. students I talk to are *very* aware of their job prospects after graduate school.
Thanks for posting the article. I knew many people headed down that road (in the field of History), and wonder how many of them are currently driving buses.
To me this is not much different than spending 8 or 9 years in the minor leagues and never making it to the majors. Personally, I would rather try and fail than not try at all. Most of these individuals are only 30 or so years old when they earn their Ph.D. They're still bright people who have the talent to lead a productive life. There are many ways to use a Ph.D. - right Dr. Bear? They can sit around and feel sorry for themselves or look for new opportunities.
I agree with the points made by David and would add a few of my own: There are certainly plenty of schools or components of schools that exist for the purpose of training people to perform certain jobs. That is a good thing and I hope they keep doing it. There are, however, other schools whose primary task is to promote learning of a different sort, the sort that does not require the goal of employment in order to be seen as being of value. The authors premise seems to be that unless a degree ends in a specific and definite job then it is a waste of time and effort. I believe this to be a faulty premise and I feel badly for the person who truly believes this. Secondly, I would challenge the idea that people in doctoral programs do not understand the competitive nature of their chosen field. I believe they are intimately acquainted with this fact and they forge ahead for a number of reasons that might well include optimism and hope, a belief that there is value in expanding the knowledge base of their preferred field, a belief that one ought to pursue ones primary interests in life regardless of personal gain (this is a kind of personal integrity too seldom found IMHO) and perhaps also they believe that life as a bus driver may not be too bad. Finally, I would hasten to point out to the author that those other, more important jobs that she referenced are the prefered careers of another group of people, those who feel best suited for them. If those jobs are SO important they should be filled by people who really really want to do that work, not some frustrated history major who would rather be studying some esoteric aspect of the Peloponnesian War. I believe that there is great intrinsic value in learning for its own sake and I have some genuine admiration for those people who study those offbeat subjects, keeping them alive, etc. I also suspect that the author has never allowed herself to write that novel that she's kept quietly in the back of her mind all these years. Jack
Just a few points: 1) On the "waste of brainpower": The artical equates the earning of a PhD with very high intellegence. Why not use their "brainpower" to find a higher paying job than bus driver. (No offense to bus drivers, some who make very good livings.) 2) On the choosing of a history major: Did the doctor in question choose european history based on the job market? Probably not. It was probably more of a passion. So what keeps her from driving a bus, and writing a book? There are a number of people on the forum who managed to work full time jobs, and complete a doctoral dissertation. 3) This is another example of the disconnection between our universities, and the American society.
Come to think of it - aren't there history teachers in high school? Couldn't she be teaching high school students rather than driving the bus?
Please don't tell me that every history and English major does not know exactly what his/her chances for employment are. They major in those subjects because they love them--or plan to use them as a stepping stone to something else. In my case, I majored in English and then went to library school for my masters. Even those who get advanced degrees know that their employment chances are iffy at best. JOW
Questions regarding this topic that I have read are- Why doesnt the non-academic sector employ more Ph.D. trained individuals? Besides the government there are few Ph.D. trained employees - are businesses intimidated by the knowledge and abilities of these individuals? Indeed it is a waste of brainpower.
Not without more education. Unfortunately (in my opinion), teaching in a public primary or secondary school in most states requires specific education courses which most people with Ph.D.'s won't have. Take more classes to get certified, and yes, they could teach high school students.
The whole idea of wasting brainpower suggests that there is agreement on how brainpower should be employed. That seems to come dangerously close to asking about the object of human life itself, and I'm inclined to think that no obvious answer exists. Is the goal to make money or to accumulate power? Is the goal to raise a family and to provide for them? Is the goal to experience physical and emotional pleasure? Is the goal to add to the stock of human knowledge and accomplishment? Is the goal to try to understand a little about what this life, this universe, this reality might ultimately be? Or is the goal to transcend it all, through liberation, salvation or whatever one's religious tradition calls it? Probably a well-lived life includes all of this. But obviously we weight these things differently: A monk in a monastery, a scientist, a sculpter, a party-animal, a mother caring for her children, a big-shot fast-track business executive. Can we really establish one form of life as normative?
I thought that GENO's article was very interesting, and here's my response to it. Frankly, I thought that the percentage was lot lower than 53%. (I think that it is lower in philosophy.) Of course, if graduate enrollments are cut 50% to reduce the Ph.D. glut, then where are the new tenure track positions going to come from? Teaching staffs would have to fall to reflect reduced enrollments, so a new round of enrollment cuts would be necesary to prevent a Ph.D. glut. So more faculty would have to be eliminated... That's simply a prescription for disaster, a downward spiral to oblivion. But it's even worse than that. The suggestion seems to be that if we won't hire you to teach our subject, then you have no reason to learn about it past the introductory level. That in turn implies that the only reason to pursue our subject is to reproduce teachers. In that case one can ask the unpleasant question: Why should the subject be studied at all? There has to be some value to the subject that transcends the professoriate's reproductive cycle. But if there is, then studying the thing has its own value. This is precisely why I think that these kinds of subjects are tailor made for DL. If people have a passion for studying things that don't have a big occuptional payoff, then what should we do? Should we simply deny people the right to learn? Or should we try to find ways to make their years of study more compatible with pursuing some course in life different than becoming a professor? That's why part-time graduate study that allows students to "keep their day jobs", so to speak, can be so valuable. And what is better suited to that than DL?
