<p>I agree with Marite, the need for better disclosure of job prospects is in humanities grad schools. A science PhD who doesn't get into academia can probably not only find gainful employment, but can quite likely end up doing significant research.</p>
<p>There aren't many comparable opportunities for a newly minted PhD in English or Art History. I've heard plenty of horror stories about hundreds of applicants for entry-level prof positions.</p>
<p>While it's easy to place the blame on schools that encourage students to enter these programs, I'd have to say that any new PhD that is shocked by the scarcity of tenure-track teaching positions did zero career research before enrolling.</p>
<p>I'm not sure I understand your posts. I don't know how many people go into Ph.D. programs not knowing the realities out there. I know several people who left jobs in Wall Street firms to go back to get a Ph.D. in history. One worked part time to support herself, then had a child, so it took her a long time to get her Ph.D., but she did. No one was more happy than she was. Another left a Wall Street job a couple of years ago, and a starting salary of $170k (including bonus). While her studies are completely subsidized, her living stipend is a grand total of $20k. But she is happy. Another person left i-banking after many years. He'd gone into it at the urging of his family and in order to support his younger brother. He's now a first year graduate student in history. what will they do with a Ph.D. in history? Not earning as much as they did. But a Ph.D. is not just about credentialing. It's about writing a Ph.D. dissertation which is like nothing else, except writing books, if you are in the social sciences or humanities.
Yes, post-docs do not live lives of luxury. What else is new? It wasn't 30 years ago. Is it supposed to be any different? Being a post-doc is a stage. It's not a career.</p>
<p>And yes, there are plenty of occupations where going to college or grad school is not necessary. That, too, is not new. I'm sure that someone with a Ph.D. in English Literature is no better at serving latte than a high-school student. But then,, neither is someone with a B.A.</p>
<p>I think the academia vs industry distinction people make is largely history. There are increasingly collaborations between industrial and academic researchers, industrial funding for academic centers and programs, and many people who go back and forth over the course of a career between jobs in industrial labs and academic jobs. This relationship raises its own issues, but I think that students entering PhD programs now don't necessarily have to make a decision about whether they want to compete for academic or industrial jobs -- just research jobs.</p>
<p>Getting a PhD is not just about getting a ticket to "the good life" in financial terms. At least in my husband's engineering field, he discovered after getting his terminal Masters, that a PhD would enable him to work on more interesting projects and basically have a more interesting professional life. He was in a field that had no specific credential requirements at the start, but as it developed, pretty much required a PhD. This is true of many new fields. He now only hires PhDs, and he can't find enough of them.</p>
<p>It does depend on the discipline as to whether there is a demand. PhDs. in accounting, finance, and engineering are still in big demand. Even those in certain languages such as Chinese, Islamic Studies are in big demand. </p>
<p>However, if you are geting a PhD in History, English, Music and other humanistic areas, it could be tough road for you.</p>
<p>Are things any different now for PhDs in History, English, or Music? It's always been a tough road. On the other hand, there is a whole generation of academics nearing retirement. Perhaps there will be more opportunities for new Humanities PhDs than there have been for a long time.</p>
<p>Half the people who earned history Phds in the last 35 years are employed by universities full time.</p>
<p>Ancedotally, I have the impression that many of the students who are attempting grad school, from a humanities background, do expect to be teaching at a university.
<a href="http://www.beyondacademe.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.beyondacademe.com/</a>
Its great if you already have money put aside and can live on a stipend, most people can't live on poverty level income- particulary once they are trying to raise kids and even plan for retirement.</p>
<p>Ek: How many people have kids at 22? or even 27 or 28? When I was in grad school (er, nearly 40 years ago), there were plenty of stories of unemployed Ph.D.s in English or history driving cabs in the Boston area. They could not earn a living driving cabs these days, considering the number of drivers from the Caribbean and other countries. If people persist in getting Ph.D.s in certain fields, that's because they want to; or else, they can't have been reading the news for the last 40 years.</p>
<p>One of the very best read persons I know works as a building manager. That's how he earns his modest living. His real love is books and he has won national awards for his book reviews.</p>
<p>Fwiw, I've been counseling my twin, soon-to-be (an hopefully not starving) artists to think out-of-the-paint-box as they pursue their passions academically.</p>
<p>To help the picture come into focus, I often read articles like Cornell</a> Engineering : Bridging Worlds to them. This particular piece details the story of an electrical engineering professor that used his passion for art to also become an expert in authenticating rare paintings using signal</a> processing. It's an excellent example of multi-discipline collaboration.</p>
<p>The lesson being that a multidimensional, heart-and-mind, approach to your passion may result in more options.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Because professors are not employed by for-profit corporations, and the results of their govt-funded work are mandated to be in the public domain, not kept secret as proprietary technology.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What, you don't think researchers in industry publish their work? Or collaborate with academics, for that matter? I work in a (bachelors'-level) research job in industry (not biotech), and I assure you, we do both. Some of our government grants even <em>require</em> that we have an academic collaborator.</p>
<p>Sorry, but government-funded work at a university is not in the public domain. What they choose to publish is in the public domain, but that's true for industry types as well. Harvard does not just release its data to anyone who asks.</p>
<p>teriwtt: We've had this discussion, and I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I personally know about 15 unemployed PhD chemists who are still looking for permanent jobs a year after our site closure. These are all top-notch guys with excellent references and impeccable records. Most have 5-10 years of experience and are willing to relocate. I won't even mention those who have 20+ years of experience (or the ones who are significantly underemployed.)</p>
<p>I'm glad it's different for your husband. I've been watching colleagues job-hunt frantically for the last year, and it hasn't been pretty.</p>
<p>In fact, the Wall Street Journal recently (December?) published an article about pharma, hiring, and chemists ("As Drug Industry Struggles, Chemists Face Layoff Wave.") In their associated Health Blog, there's a "Drug industry Layoff Scorecard" -according to those unofficial numbers, about 30,000 jobs were eliminated in pharma last year (2007). The companies listed include Pfizer, Amgen, Astra-Zeneca, and J&J, among others.</p>
<p>Of course, all those jobs aren't science-related (a lot are in sales), but still..... it's something to consider.</p>
<p>scout59 - I didn't say those in pharma who have been laid off aren't having a hard time finding jobs. I'm sure they've flooded the market, but I am saying that H's company is still hiring and have been very aggressive with certain candidates because other pharmas are hiring and offering them jobs, too.</p>
<p>When the economy is bad, everybody is vulnerable to being laid off, whether one has a Ph.D. or not; it's not an argument against grad school.</p>
<p>ClassicRockerDad: Then those Ph.D drivers got replaced by refugees from the Soviet Union who could discuss literature in several languages. I had some very interesting discussions about French and Tolstoy. After them came Haitian refugees. They did not talk literature, but they discussed politics eagerly, switching from Creole to standard French with ease.</p>
<p>I guess I have a different perspective from those who are encouraging their kids to go to grad school after college.</p>
<p>I don't have a college education background & it was a hardship for us to send our daughter to college at all ( and we still have another). We were glad to do it, but I don't see how amassing more loans for something because she likes studying and doing research is going to help her support herself or afford a place to live.</p>
<p>Its great for those who are more familiar with the higher levels of Maslows hierarchy of needs scale, but for those of us whose day to day concerns are more around the meeting physical and safety needs, it can be pie in the sky to conceive of * self- actualization*- not to the point of giving up your livelihood and taking out loans for it anyway.</p>
<p>Even for someone who yet doesn't have big debt- besides college- at 25 years old, who doesn't have dependents ( or savings), I am not going to tell them to go to school for 5 more years-( although they would then be able to get health ins through their school)</p>
<p>By the same reasoning, nobody needs to attend college, especially not a liberal arts college. Can't you read all you want in your spare time? Why do you need to be in a class to learn about Shakespeare or Homer, or the meaning of the categorical imperative, or dark matter or DNA? </p>
<p>The students most likely to amass large debts are not the Ph.D.s; they're the ones in med school or law school.</p>
My qualifying exam presentation is on Thursday! Eek!</p>
<p>
At least in biology, graduate students aren't living on poverty-level incomes -- stipends are between twenty-five and thirty thousand dollars, depending on cost of living in the area around the school. That's not crazy money, but it's certainly enough to live on. When I finish graduate school, I'll have paid off all my undergraduate debt, have a sizable nest egg started for retirement, and have almost enough money for a down payment on a house in Boston.</p>