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festivusaziliHamilton Nolan
4/27/16 1:06pm
I know your preferred solution is typically unionization, but that seems inadequate to handle the magnitude of the problem in higher education. The whole system needs a massive overhaul, or it will keep producing grad students without the money to pay them. It’s far too large in that every teenager feels they need a 4 year degree to get a job (and they probably do even though the education itself won’t help them, just the paper); it’s far too small in that there are not enough educators working with the students. It’s underfunded in that the states have slashed public support; it’s overfunded in that unlimited access to federally backed loans have allowed schools to increase costs without considering the effects on their students.
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  butcherbakertoiletrymakerfestivusazili
  4/27/16 1:15pm
  Also, from every account I’ve ever heard, or read, regarding career problems after graduation, it seems like the entire university system is based on an elaborate con: “when you get a degree from University X, you’ll be able to get a great career!” For a scant few, yes. For the vast majority, not even close. At this point, as much of a supporter as I am of a well-rounded education, I’m encouraging people who are thinking of college to think about a trade school instead. College is no longer for everybody—it’s just too expensive.
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  caekislove-caekingitupfestivusazili
  4/27/16 1:16pm
  Higher education is a bubble. It’s a race to see if it bursts on the student loan side or the lack of degree marketability side.
  
  Right now, if you have a degree in a business or science-related field that isn’t from some obvious degree mill (UoP, Devry, etc), your resume is saved from the round file and THAT’S IT.
  
  When defaults go through the roof because grads can’t get decent jobs and the government starts cutting back on the loan guarantees - game fucking over. Most colleges will collapse before the price war even gets started.
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SprocheteHamilton Nolan
4/27/16 1:03pm
There needs to be a serious discussion with students entering graduate school. The school wants you, sure. They want the money, whether from you/your bank or from a training grant. They will not tell you that there’s a glut of Ph.D.s in almost every field. Matriculating from big-name school like Harvard, Stanford, or Columbia helps, but does not guarantee you a post-doc placement, and a post-doc at one of those schools does not fast-track you to a tenure-track faculty position.

If you’re in the sciences, count on focusing your job search on the private sector, not academia. You’ll get a better-paying job with more prospects for advancement.

I counsel most bright young people I know to avoid grad school and go to trade school instead. People will always need skilled plumbers, mechanics, and electricians.
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  Martin SlagSprochete
  4/27/16 1:12pm
  And nurses. We have a serious shortage of nurses — particularly in Western states. Good pay and excellent benefits. And you can still write novels, or read Neitszche, in your free time (as I do)
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  Sluicer's ghostSprochete
  4/27/16 1:14pm
  Good points all. However, it is my sense that the Masters is a must because there is that glut of BAs out there and you need that extra bit to clear the selection hurdles. Also, if you are smart/lucky, you can still get published and present a paper or two and grab all further qualifications. So I think the Masters is the "goldilocks degree" not too high and not too low because BAs are a dime a dozen and nobody wants to hire a Ph.Ds.
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GrizzlyAdamsBeardHamilton Nolan
4/27/16 12:56pm
I have an undergraduate in accounting and can get paid more working as an accountant for a college than the accounting professor with a doctorate who can do my job WAYYYYY better than I can.
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  Sluicer's ghostGrizzlyAdamsBeard
  4/27/16 1:10pm
  And I would add, in the working world the people in accounting are always the lowest paid of any professional staff. Yet oddly, I have known some who took a perverse pride in that... go figure.
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  GrizzlyAdamsBeardSluicer's ghost
  4/27/16 1:14pm
  Accountants the are underpaid and under-appreciated middle child in the world of business.
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FridayFridayHamilton Nolan
4/27/16 1:16pm
I have a MA in History that I got with the intention to go on for a doctorate and teach. When I saw the brightest, best, most accomplished people in the years ahead of me come out of the program, and not one of them was able to find a good position, I knew I had to let that dream go. It’s worth saying, too, that our program was the number 2 program in the whole country for that specialty of history. So if these guys were’t getting in, nobody was.

Now most of them are either adjuncts, unemployed, or working unrelated jobs that have low pay, and no clear path for advancement. One classmate of mine also decided to leave, but went for a MA in library science. She got that degree, and after being unemployed for 2 years after finished she finally found a job as an administrative assistant at a private school. And she had 3 years experience working in libraries and a special archive when she graduated!

I’m several years into a career in real estate consulting at this point and even though I still don’t make much, and I have huge student loan debt, I know I’m one of the lucky ones. It’s pretty fucked up.
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  nyc123abcFridayFriday
  4/27/16 1:35pm
  Do you really even need to go to school, let alone get a masters, to be a librarian? Serious question, because I think it’s a degree made up by schools to increase tuition and enrollment.
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  FridayFridaynyc123abc
  4/27/16 1:44pm
  You do if you want that to actually be your career. Anyone can work at a library shelving books and whatnot, but that is minimum wage, part-time work. Library science programs do teach valuable things, like how to preserve documents, but there are so many people today with that degree that having it is in no way a ticket to a good job, even when you have years of internships like my friend did.
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SmileyBurnerHamilton Nolan
4/27/16 1:00pm
why do you feel bad for highly educated people who join a bloated market that can’t support them? It’s like you writing an article bemoaning that we have all these MFAs out there, but they can’t get a book deal - how fucking unfair!!! Poor people work for low wages because they never had the chance to better themselves through education and training. Adjuncts (and my wife is one, she teaches one class per semester at NYU for $5K on top of her full-time job in the field she teaches) CHOOSE to enter a market that is so bloated, that colleges, observing the laws of supply and demand, are just making the right financial moves...
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  frenchfartlosophySmileyBurner
  4/27/16 1:17pm
  Education is a not a business, despite your insistence that it has to function and perform like one.
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  MWarnerMSmileyBurner
  4/27/16 1:24pm
  The problem is that higher education is FILLED with market distortions that subvert the normal laws of supply and demand. The financial aid system, GE requirements, opaque fee structure, administrative bloat, etc. All of these things create bizzare inefficiencies and pay inequities that make no sense.
  
  America’s four year universities are like this weird hybrid of a career training center, housing landlord, charity, country club, government regulatory agency, bank, and summer camp.
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under_electricliteHamilton Nolan
4/27/16 1:13pm
“Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here”

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  Sid and Financyunder_electriclite
  4/27/16 1:26pm
  Um, not exactly. That’s an entrance for Yale freshman, who have boundless prospects.
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  under_electricliteSid and Financy
  4/27/16 1:37pm
  “Metaphor. Paging, Metaphor.”
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henwyHamilton Nolan
4/27/16 1:13pm
It’s probably different in some other fields, but I was told by my professors when applying to grad school for PhD programs that I shouldn’t have to pay anything and that was how it worked out. I didn’t understand it at the time, but the idea is that if your application is good enough then the schools will vie to accept you and will find funding for you. I actually made a profit out of grad school and that’s not even counting the money I made TA’ing courses. It always seemed amazing to me that people would actually pay huge boatloads of money for their degrees. It starts to seem more like vanity projects than anything else. My PhD was broadly in the psychology department so I’m not sure how things might be different in the humanities, but I’ve always said the same thing to anyone who’s asked me if they should go for an advanced degree. If you can’t get someone else to pay for it, don’t.
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  henwyhenwy
  4/27/16 1:43pm
  And just to make it clear...I’m NOT talking about just the tuition. That’s a given. If you’re paying tuition for a PhD program you should NOT be getting a PhD. That is, unless you’ve got a trust fund and you simply want to do something to earn a bunch of letters after your name so you can impress your friends with your erudition. I’m talking about your living expenses. All of that should be covered by a stipend. You might be a little short month to month but if you can’t make that up TA’ing classes or maybe a small part time job, you should NOT be going to grad school. People who actually manage to rack up 100k in debt for grad school baffle the hell out of me.
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  LookAtThoseCavemenGohenwy
  4/27/16 1:48pm
  The humanities don't have the money for that. Your experience is the exception, not the rule.
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lewis55number2Hamilton Nolan
4/27/16 7:47pm
Tenure track faculty here. I agree that the system is horrible right now for all of the reasons noted in these posts. And part of the reason its horrible is that there is just a massive massive oversupply of highly qualified PhDs, especially outside the STEM fields, relative to demand for them. I give very concrete advice to students considering a PhD. Three rules: (again primarily for non-STEM fields)

1. Only do it if you get into a top-10 or top-15 program in your discipline. To a Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc. Some absurd percentage of all of the tenure track jobs at the top 100+ places in my field come from 10 or 20 phd programs. Graduates from everywhere else are almost all adjuncts or out of the field altogether (of course with a few very successful exceptions that you can point to anecdotally to pretend there isn’t a problem), even though there are obviously many other excellent programs at other universities.

2. Only do it if you are fully funded (whether through fellowships or teaching positions or some combination). Under no circumstances do it if you have to pay any of your own money. (Most PhDs at the top-10 programs (at the Harvards and Stanfords) are fully funded, so nobody is getting any debt there to get a PhD.)

3. Google the concept “opportunity cost” and think about it a lot.

If you can’t satisfy the first two conditions under no circumstances do this. Its just a terrible, terrible career decision otherwise.

Does this mean we just get increasing stratification and elitism in our scholarly communities and university system? Yes, it does. And that’s bad. But its not clear what other advice you can possibly give to students and be honest. Should you get a PhD in anything in the humanities or social scientists at even a major R1 state university that is not so prestigious, like say a University of South Carolina or a University of Colorado or a University of Iowa? No. Don’t do it. You’re simply not going to get a tenure track job (at least in my field you’re not). Faculty at those places should stop pretending otherwise to their admitted students. Its deeply unethical to do so in my view. You’re leading them on into making a bad life decision, when they are perfectly talented smart people who could be productively doing something else that’s better for them and better for society.

I get very depressed every time I go to our field’s big annual conference and see so many eager graduate students from these random universities with their University of Utah name tags and what not running around under this delusion that its going to work out for them in academia. I know this might sound very insensitive coming from someone who has “made it”, but I think its just being painfully realistic.
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  TheDogIsStillBarkinglewis55number2
  4/27/16 8:03pm
  And, have a realistic idea of what ‘making it’ means. I’m also tenure track, though I don’t have a degree from a top ten department. I knew, going in, that I wouldn’t be getting a job at Yale when I finished my PhD. I was hoping to work at a SLAC, and that’s where I ended up. I have a 4/4 load and don’t make much, but it’s what I wanted, so I can’t complain.
  
  My peers in graduate school not only believed they’d have no trouble getting a job, but that they’d be competitive for a position at any school with an opening. One was offered two tenure track positions, but turned both down in the hopes of getting a better one at an ivy. He’s still on the adjunct path, six years later.
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  lewis55number2TheDogIsStillBarking
  4/27/16 8:05pm
  Very important point, I agree completely.
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caekislove-caekingitupHamilton Nolan
4/27/16 1:04pm
People are incredulous when they find out that someone with a graduate degree in math lives like I do.

But I thought having a STEM degree was like having a license to print money!!
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  Engineer_I_amcaekislove-caekingitup
  4/27/16 1:17pm
  It is. Wall Street loves some quants—if the degrees are from fancy schools.
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  Sluicer's ghostcaekislove-caekingitup
  4/27/16 1:21pm
  No, that's plumbing and electric work... ooops! they forgot to tell you?!?
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Sid and FinancyHamilton Nolan
4/27/16 1:04pm
“My quality of life is garbage. I share a two-bedroom apartment with three other people and I can’t afford to get a haircut.”

Get a haircut and a job, hippi— oh.
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  BSTrainerSid and Financy
  4/27/16 1:59pm
  I learned to cut my own hair.
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  TheRealKnutsenBSTrainer
  4/27/16 5:52pm
  Buzzcut myself every few weeks for the the last couple years. Helps I don’t have much for hair in the front anyway.
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