Comments on: Weighing the Market

By: sschnei1

sschnei1 — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:28:15 +0000

I’m in a similar boat with Margaret, I don’t know what path should be mine. But the rational part of me can’t convince the irrational part that academia is a bad idea. I may be dreaming of the kind of career that’s unattainable or even non-existent, but it’s still what I dream of.

I feel like I have more to say, but I think that’s just that I can’t resolve the kind of anxiety that I carry around in regards to this situation.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:16:58 +0000

I’m in an awkward position in this discussion, as a realist who sees the same things you do, Tim, and as administrator of our department’s History MA. Our program is more or less open admission, and its continued existence depends on a steady stream of successful graduates. Since we don’t offer a Ph.D., the expectations are different, and the market our students are trying to reach is different. Still, we’re talking about students who mostly want to be teachers, which is not a growing market at the moment, or who want to be able to move on to a Ph.D., which is not a terribly good bet at the moment. But there are so few options in our area…..

By: Laurel

Laurel — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:38:59 +0000

I read your essay over and over before I applied to social science grad school. (I also emailed you for advice then, and got a very thoughtful, generous, and useful response, even though I don’t think we’ve ever met.)

The job market scares the living daylights out of me, as it did when I applied, and I am not in one of the social sciences where a Ph.D. translates directly into a specific non-academic career.

Still, in the last two years I’ve learned things (mostly transferable) that I would have had an awfully hard time learning any other way. I’ve also gradually cut down on content courses, because I feel like I can learn most of those things on my own by reading and talking about the articles, and shifted to taking mostly quantitative classes. Even if I end up not going into academia — even if I never finish the Ph.D., although I think I will almost certainly finish — those are things I am glad to know. (I wouldn’t have learned the same things from a public policy program, by the way.)

It’s true that most of the transferable knowledge accumulates in the first few years, but I do think there should be a category for fields where a Ph.D. teaches you some useful things that you can transfer, without being a clear professional credential outside academia.

By: Margaret

Margaret — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:09:01 +0000

I read your first post on the subject when I was a senior at Bryn Mawr or maybe just after graduation. It’s funny how it stuck with me. For as long as I could remember, grad school seemed like the default route I would take after college. Some parents pressure their children to be doctors or lawyers; my mother wanted me to be a Classics professor. I knowww. So, your blog post helped me decide to take some time to determine if I really wanted to go down that road.

I’ve decided that academia is not for me, though at 28 I’m still not sure what IS for me. I will probably have to break down and get a Masters at some point, which can also be a raw deal, though in different ways than a PhD. Why learn on the job when you can go into debt for training, right?

But I really don’t regret the decision not to go to grad school.