<p>My daughter has just really completed the process of applying to grad schools for biomedical science (neuro). She was blessed to have several excellent offers, including one which had added an extra sum of money to regularly offered stipend (making the total stipend $35,500 per year for the duration!!). Her first choice program let all the interviewed candidates know that this year, due to financial considerations, they would be making fewer offers of admission (by almost half) than before, and absolutely would not be offering to more than they could accept (evidently they have a pretty high matriculation rate). So it was tense there for a while, but she did get an offer and plans to accept it.</p>
<p>That being said, I think her field will be a relatively stable one during this time. I am sooo thankful she is not among those who seek to earn PhDs in the humanities. That is going to be rough for quite a while, I think. Very, very sobering…</p>
<p>Yeah, that article was really more for the people in the humanities not those of us in the biomedical sciences where we have options for careers in government, academia or industry. I can almost feel the contempt of the recent grad that talked about how the university system was treating him/her as though it was his/her fault that they were unemployable. Poor humanities people.</p>
<p>On a different note, where did your daughter get offered 35,500 for a grad school stipend? That is substantially higher than anywhere I have heard of, even with top up bonuses or outside fellowships. It is interesting that the programs your daughter was interviewing at elected to take fewer individuals this year (I guess some programs suffer the ups and downs of NIH funding more deeply than others).</p>
<p>Misleading title. This article is referring to humanities PhDs. Heck, I thought the nonexistant job market has always been an issue for those who chose to spend yrs getting this kind of a PhD.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean it doesn’t refer to science/engineering PhD’s. I know my department is doing well placing people still, but I know other departments at other universities that have their PhD’s in a holding pattern.</p>
<p>Actually, sociology and history are usually considered social sciences, not humanities. There have been some articles that have concentrated on humanities, noting that MLA job openings are down 20+%, etc. This article’s concrete examples (students) are primarily in the social sciences. It talks in general terms about humanities, but doesn’t draw the disinction between the humanities and the social sciences. It would be more complete if it also discussed the academic job market in the sciences. Some of the same factors, such as professors delaying retirement, endowments plunging, university funding being cut, will affect all disciplines, at least for those looking for tenure track academic positions.</p>
<p>People with humanities PhDs do get jobs - the job market isn’t “nonexistent”, it’s just limited. Part of the problem is that many people going into these fields assume that they are going to be able to get a tenure-track position straightaway which, since the market is limited, is not likely.</p>
<p>i feel lucky to be going to a department that has a really strong record of finding its students positions in government, museums, NGOs, and the like. while i’d love to be a professor and teach, i’d be pretty happy with an array of jobs related to my field of study (latin american history).</p>
<p>i heard/read somewhere that, even before this crappy economy, only 40% of history grad students get their PhDs, and only 20% of them find teaching jobs, so if i can finish my degree and get a job somehow related to latin american history, i’ll be good to go. sure, things are worse in this economy, but prospects were never great to begin with.</p>
<p>i do feel really bad for the humanities students that enrolled in programs 5 or more years ago and, now that they’re graduating, the job market has completely dried up. they weren’t anticipating this sort of market and now they have to scramble. at least people applying this year and next year know what they’re getting themselves into.</p>
<p>However 5-8 years from now the market may be better.</p>