<p>i agree with what you are saying</p>
<p>Pretty much everyone I work with on the commercial side of the pharma industry has an advanced degree. Its hard to even get an interview if you don’t at least have a masters. And we hire lots of outside companies that are staffed by people with PhDs. I have worked with many PhDs in psychology, math, public policy and economics, as well as PharmDs, and Chemistry or Biology PhDs. </p>
<p>But maybe some of the problems that PhDs have with getting jobs outside of academia is that they don’t know how to start, they don’t know what the options are and they may not like the idea of working for a profit making company. A little while ago, I met someone who was about to get his PhD in Health Economics. This is a very hot field. I was able to get him a few leads, but he ended up taking a job working for a local school district scheduling busses. His ideal job was in public policy in government, and he wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of working for a profit making company, so he didn’t really work hard to pursue the opportunities that I was able to identify for him.</p>
<p>MD plus PhDs can be very useful. It is not a waste of time. My husband’s cardiologist is one. They tend to be thought leaders and sought after.</p>
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I agree. Humanities research isn’t perfect, but more often than not you can measure the validity of an argument to some extent through its logic (or lack thereof).</p>
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<p>But let’s continue your analogy. Let’s say that Shakespeare was in fact a feminist after all, but that fact is simply not obvious within his extant writings and his known biography. Then, aside from discovering a copy of his lost works such as Cardenio or Love’s Labour’s Won - plays believed to have been written but which we have no surviving copies - or a lost diary of his, then we have no way to ever prove that Shakespeare was indeed a feminist. </p>
<p>In other words the dataset is fixed. Every Shakespeare scholar knows - or should know - what the dataset is, and is therefore free to ‘overfit’ the dataset through dredging to devise a new ‘interpretation’. But nobody really knows if the interpretation is really true - and man has proven to be exceedingly skilled at discovering patterns in entirely random phenomenon. This is how such superstitious beliefs as the Bible Code or the 23 Enigma can persist. Statistical theory demonstrates that patterns are bound to occur in any collection of text and numbers, no matter how random. Short of reviving the Bard himself, we have no way of determining whether any ‘interpretation’ was intentional or was produced only by pure chance. </p>
<p>Contrast that with the sciences, where new data can be generated, either through new experiments or, in the case of astronomy or evolution, through new observations. Leaving aside the string theory fiasco, to stand the test of time, any new scientific theory must not only retrodictively explain formerly obtained results, but also be able to predict new results. </p>
<p>Put another way, let’s say that today, we discover Shakespeare’s lost works. How many tenured Shakespeare scholars would actually be willing to forfeit their tenure if the newly discovered lost works disproved the interpretations that merited their tenure promotions in the first place? Probably zero. In other words, their interpretations - however erudite they may be - were never actually designed to be challenged with new data, but rather exist only to explain old data. Hence, whether Shakespeare was indeed a feminist or not is unimportant to them - they got their tenured job security for life and they’re not giving it back.</p>
<p>sakky, you are either woefully mistaken or deliberately misinterpretive about what humanities scholars do. It’s painful to read your screeds here. </p>
<p>It’s fine, albeit trite, if you want to argue for the superiority of natural sciences over literary scholarship. That’s pretty much all you are doing. But you are doing it so clumsily that your arguments have no force at all.</p>
<p>A few points:</p>
<p>Yes, no one knows if any interpretation is “really true”. And that would include Shakespeare himself (presuming he existed) if he were to rise from the grave, since authors are far from definitive interpreters of their own works. (They might, if they were honest, be authoritative with respect to their own intentions, but the intentions of authors form a small subset of things that interest literary scholars.) Welcome to a given about literary interpretation since, well, at least Plato, i.e., the entire Western tradition. That’s not a criticism, it’s a fact of life.</p>
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<li> The dataset of Shakespeare’s works may be fixed. (Actually, as you implicitly acknowledge, the dataset of Shakespeare’s works is almost uniquely un-fixed, and remains a subject of almost constant controversy. About which works he wrote, which versions of those works are definitively his, whether one person wrote all of them, and what that person’s biography might be.) So what? People keep coming up with new things to say about them all the time. Interesting things. And Shakespeare’s central works have to be the most studied, picked-over texts, after perhaps the Bible, in the history of the world.</li>
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<p>The dataset of material that bears on interpreting Shakespeare’s works – historical context, predecessor works, influences, rivals – is still very open-ended, by the way. A skit on Saturday Night Live may effortlessly combine references to some current movie, references to a news story from the past week, and echoes of previous SNL skits, and millions of viewers understand what is happening without even thinking about it. Much the same thing may have been going on in lots of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, and maybe we get a quarter of it so far.</p>
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What a specious argument! When we look at works possibly attributable to Shakespeare, part of the debate over attribution is how consistent they are with multiple existing interpretations of the agreed-upon canon, and what types of explanations could be offered for the discrepancies. Existing interpretations absolutely bear on predicting what as-yet unread additional works would look like. But assuming that somehow a cache of definitive works were identified, and they were radically inconsistent with some interpretations, I would expect the interpreters to revise their views or to come up with a credible account to explain the inconsistency. And they would be judged on the skill with which they did that. The standard, in literature as in all other fields, is not never being wrong.</li>
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<p>By the way, how many tenured science professors have forfeited their tenure when new data disproves the theories on which they built their reputations? (How many tenured scientists, sitting on funding advisory committees, have made darn certain no one ever developed data that might disprove the theories on which they built their reputations?)</p>
<p>I have just completed an MSc and am thinking of the PhD as the next big desire, but the job market does put me off a bit… as does the politics of academia, which I saw first-hand in my MSc program. It would be a dream to be able to teach full-time, but I worry about how transferable a PhD really can be these days.</p>
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<p>If they’re so painful for you to read, then how about a bit of advice: Don’t read them. Then, you don’t have to feel pain and I don’t have to put up with your responses, and so everybody wins. Sound good? </p>
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<p>And that’s, frankly, a sad fact of life, for what you’re saying is that even if we could resurrect Shakespeare from the dead, we still couldn’t disprove any particular interpretation of his work. In other words, no interpretation is ever falsifiable, not even by the author himself, which only proves my point. </p>
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<p>But when you say “interesting”, the real question then becomes: “interesting to whom exactly”? After all, how many people actually go around reading interpretations of Shakespeare for fun? I can understand reading Shakespeare itself, but who goes around reading interpretations of Shakespeare? Other than the community of Shakespeare scholars, probably nobody. In other words, the community is merely speaking to itself. </p>
<p>Now, to be fair, obviously practically nobody actually goes around reading scientific research papers for fun either. Nobody is claiming that those papers are interesting to anybody other than the small community of scientists who are investigating the topic in question. But those papers - ideally - actually serve to advance knowledge towards an objective truth. That is to say, ideally, we learn more about how photons, electrons, molecules, or human beings will actually behave. Those objects of study are going to behave the way they do whether we like it or not, and our only task is to discover the rules of that behavior. </p>
<p>But can that really be said about the humanities? Can it really be said that we “know” more about Shakespeare by continuing to interpret it? Because you conceded yourself that no objective truth actually exists regarding Shakespeare - not even from the Bard himself - then we can never be said to actually progress to discovering truth. </p>
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<p>What a specious argument! The fundamental issue that you have refused to address is who decides which arguments to use, which frameworks to invoke, what types of attributions to value - essentially how do you know which interpretations are “better”? And the answer seems to be that the community itself decides. </p>
<p>In other words, the humanities community is essentially speaking simply to itself, and ‘correctness’ is nothing more than a value judgment conferred by the community. If the community decides that your interpretation is wrong, then for all practical purposes, it is wrong. </p>
<p>Again, contrast that with how the sciences work. A photon is going to behave the way it does regardless of the wishes of the scientific community. The prediction of the behavior of that photon is therefore not a value judgment and “interpretations” of photon behavior cannot therefore be vetoed at the whims of the community. </p>
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<p>And that behavior is to be deplored. Nobody is denying that politics infuses the world of science, but at the same time, nobody actually condones its presence. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the humanities community inherently infuses politics into its structure as a direct and unavoidable consequence of its subject matter. You guys keep arguing that certain Shakespearean interpretations can be found to be better, from a qualitative standpoint, than other interpretations, but continue to tiptoe around the fundamental question: who ultimately decides which interpretations are better?. The answer, unavoidably, is that the community decides. Or, in other words, it’s not a simple matter of devising a superior interpretation of Shakespeare - you must then convince the community that your interpretation is superior. That ultimately means that persuasiveness - and therefore political adroitness - is an inherent feature within the humanities landscape. </p>
<p>Look, to be fair, none of this is to say that the sciences provide an inherently “better” method of discovering knowledge than the humanities do. I fully agree that the sciences and humanities are fundamentally different topics of inquiry that require different epistemological methods. </p>
<p>Rather, the whole reason why I entered this thread in the first place was simply to discuss LadyDianeski’s contention that cutting back humanities departments will “come back to bite universities in the butt”. I simply don’t think that it will - at least, not within the time frames that anybody alive today would care about. Like I said, if a top-ranked English department were to greatly reduce its research spending, it would most likely take years if not decades of lag time for anybody to notice - and perhaps they might never notice at all - because no objective truth exists in the humanities and hence humanities research quality is inherently political in measurement, which means that political power serves to preserve ‘rankings inertia’.</p>
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<p>Jorje, neither does anything but a professional degree (and even that is what you make of it). A college degree can help open doors, but only barely, and usually is only very useful if you go into industry specifically related. </p>
<p>Now I agree admissions should be competitive, but it really is quite competitive for many of the top schools, and I think the success rate of obtaining academic jobs is not that bad for those. A tenured position at a respectable university is to be viewed as a top position. </p>
<p>I think it’s fair to say the lower end schools should be made more competitive if you think that would help, but still the point of some of them is that someone who underperformed can still have a shot at the top jobs…and to enjoy the research process. If we really were to harp on what is needed for industry, why do English majors even exist? Just to be English teachers? Oh wait, you can do something totally unrelated, like law school, which brings me back to the point that education doesn’t correlate explicitly with job training on many counts.</p>
<p>I don’t know that I think making things more competitive is the best way, so much as making it more apparent what happens if you underperform during the PhD. I think someone who doesn’t do great in undergrad should have a shot at some (lower-ranked) schools for a PhD, and a shot at a research career. That doesn’t mean it isn’t pretty clear from the hiring records of many universities that going to a top school and showing potential as a researcher doesn’t tend to greatly help in getting jobs (a combo of talent and well-connectedness being the main factors).</p>
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<p>Agreed. </p>
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<p>Are you sure? First off, I hear that there is a healthy skepticism of the mathematical finance graduates churned out within Wall Street. And by extension, I am not certain why it is that you would believe the market for the PhDs has disappeared “in favor” of the more specialized master’s degrees. Are there not quant positions that actually want you to have PhD level training and familiarity with coding, etc? </p>
<p>I know a recent math PhD graduate who had no trouble landing a job in the financial market recently. Now I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that what I hear from talking to people who work in finance is that the success of these specialized mathematical master’s degrees is questionable, and that people with general finance exposure might be more desirable…along with a few extremely talented mathematical finance superstars.</p>
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<p>I don’t know much about this discussion, but JHS, how are you addressing the fundamental point being made (which is not about superiority or inferiority of a subject) but that certain fields are inherently about persuading someone that your way of looking at things is nice? </p>
<p>Now to be fair, in mathematics, to an extent you have to do things people care about. But if you come up with something new that can advance the field as a whole, nobody is going to care that most people aren’t working on what you did – it’s just it is very, very hard to do that, which is why most people ‘resign’ to continuing the work of existing scholars.</p>
<p>I’m just a high school student, but it’s my dream to get a PhD in English. Now, I realize this probably isn’t going to happen. It’s sad for me - creation and interpretation of literature is what I live for. But I have a feeling I’ll probably end up in law school, after reading this thread. If a tenured track position is truly almost impossible to find in the humanities, then I don’t think my parents will be willing to finance my education for a PhD in English.</p>
<p>You don’t need a PhD in English to create literature. You don’t really need a degree at all, and a degree won’t guarantee success as a writer. Some writers get MFA’s, but those are only helpful in that you get a place, people, and a chuck of time dedicated solely to writing.</p>
<p>Standard wisdom I’ve heard is that if you can’t get fully funded for a PhD–any PhD, even in the humanities where funding is harder to find–then you shouldn’t get a PhD, because the job market is hard enough without worrying about enormous debt. However, the job market for English PhDs is absolutely terrible.</p>
<p>[Placement</a> Rates, again. - The GradCafe Forums](<a href=“Placement Rates, again. - Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition - The GradCafe Forums”>Placement Rates, again. - Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition - The GradCafe Forums)</p>
<p>One poster says, “give me a CC job with a little security, and you’ll find me grading papers in a park on the weekend, happy as can be.” But “security” usually means tenure-track, and are CC tenure-track positions that much easier to find than at universities?</p>
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<p>Yes, I realize that. I’ll always write constantly, no matter what my career is, it’s therapeutic for me, I don’t think I could stop if I tried.</p>
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<p>Yes, a little bit of internet research convinced me of that. I wanted to make writing/interpreting literature my job, but I can still pursue it as a side hobby, so I suppose I’ll be alright!</p>
<p>I started my PhD in 01/2011 and therefore have a real interest in this issue. My PhD focuses on a US-Pak bilateral relations. I would love an academic career in a LAC or somewhere in California, but if that doesnt materialize it will still be worth it.</p>
<p>I may call it a day after a few years if I get bored, but I recommend the experience to anyone.</p>
<p>I have to disagree with all those who say that PhD is a waste of time. I believe that the more PhD we have the better. One shouldn’t judge it based on how much material benefits it bring to graduate. A PhD is infinitely more valuable intrinsically because greatly expands the knowledge and expertise of the graduate. The material benefits will always be there. If you are thinking of going to grad school don’t let these talks deter you.</p>
<p>A Ph.D is a huge opportunity cost that makes no sense to pursue unless it’s specifically needed for a career path that the student wants to follow.</p>
<p>Is it only worth while if one wants to enter academe?</p>
<p>I think another poster was right; pursuing a Ph.D can be a difficult endeavor and (many times) candidates can’t handle it. One of the reasons is that it takes total focus for years. So those who go into it half-heartedly, get filtered out at some point. My suggestion to those who “think” they may want to get a Ph.D is that they should not…</p>
<p>For others, who “know” what they want, and have the conviction to pay the dues, a Ph.D may be a wise choice.</p>
<p>Without a doubt, in some fields (sciences), a Ph.D is the basic ticket necessary to join the scientist club.</p>