<p>America's</a> PhDs On Foodstamps | Zero Hedge</p>
<p>" Over the past few years, more and more highly educated people have turned to food stamps and other forms of welfare for help..."</p>
<p>Why are more and more PHD’s being turned out when there is nothing for them after the degree? Study your tush off and become an adjunct?</p>
<p>Well, if they stopped turning out PhDs, then they’d have even MORE PhD’s out of work. ;)</p>
<p>If you have a PhD and can’t find a well paying job, you spent too much time in school and needed to get a job a long time ago. Most of us have found myriad ways to use our education. You just have to “get over yourself.” </p>
<p>It can be difficult. You spend your whole life in school as a superstar and then you find out nobody in the world really cares all that much. Still, you can find work, and you can be happy and productive. You just can’t be the star you were in school. at least not at first.</p>
<p>"Well, if they stopped turning out PhDs, then they’d have even MORE PhD’s out of work. "</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>I don’t have a PhD but I have a Masters. And a job. And a lot of gratitude that I’ve had a pretty easy go of finding work in my career and never had to be on foodstamps.</p>
<p>THe way things have been the past few years, I thank my lucky stars every day.</p>
<p>Bovertine, what is your masters in?</p>
<p>Those numbers were from 2007-2010 so they cover the peak of the recession. In 2009, I knew a few PhDs who were out of work. One was a chemist, two were in environmental science. My ex-husband was unemployed from Sept '09 until last month and he has an MBA and 25 years experience in corporate accounting and finance. All of them had years of prior work experience. But, our unemployment rate then was close to 15% too. Sometimes, people with PhDs and Masters are older and facing the 50+ issue too.</p>
<p>Your Ex husband, that is a long time to be unemployed. Was he going crazy?</p>
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<p>[Table</a> A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization](<a href=“http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm]Table”>Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization - 2024 M01 Results)</p>
<p>Headline unemployment is U3.</p>
<p>Adding “discouraged workers” and “marginally attached to the labor force” adds about 1.5% in recent times. This gives U5 (U4 if you just add “discouraged workers”).</p>
<p>Adding part timers who want a full time job adds another about 5%, giving U6, which is presumably where you got the 15% number from (it was 15.2% in 12/2011).</p>
<p>However, it may be more accurate to consider only a percentage of the part timers who want a full time job, since they are neither fully employed nor fully unemployed. If we assume that they are half time on average but want a full time job, then “U5.5” would be something like 12.5% in 12/2011. But the actual percentage time employed for those involuntary part timers may be different from half.</p>
<p>It is really hard to measure how many part-time employees REALLY WANT to work more. Some really prefer part-time work. Likewise, there are folks with a full time and several part time jobs, as well as more with part-time jobs because no one wants to pay for benefits to hire them full-time.</p>
<p>Older workers can have a VERY hard time getting a new job because they are often considered over-qualified and more likely to increase insurance premiums due to health issues, etc.</p>
<p>I doubt many phds want to be adjuncts.</p>
<p>If someone is smart enough to earn a PhD, shouldn’t they be smart enough to know what their job prospects would be with that degree?</p>
<p>dstark,</p>
<p>They may not WANT to be adjuncts, but for many it is the best deal that they can find where they will still be working in academia.</p>
<p>3bm103 -</p>
<p>“Smart” in the way most Ph.D. candidates are considered to be “smart” is completely different from the kind of “smarts” and vision one needs to successfully transition to the outside world. The Ph.D.s that I know spent their youth and early middle-age in college, grad school, and post docs. In some cases, almost 20 years inside the academic bubble. By the time they figured out that they weren’t going to land that full-time tenure-track position, they truly had no idea what their other options were. Leaving academia is in many ways parallel to leaving a religious order. The people on the inside are living “the right life” and the people on the outside aren’t. Academic detox is challenging and emotionally painful. Some friends have successfully adjusted to the “outside”, but others are clinging to the dream and struggling to re-enter. It is not pretty.</p>
<p>Anecdata only: We recently hired someone who had a Ph.D. (It was irrelevant to us that he had a Ph.D; it just so happened that he did.) When negotiating salary, he truly and honestly thought he should get a premium based on having a Ph.D. I don’t know where he got that notion, since I can tell you in the business world we just don’t care, at all. If you got it for your own personal gratification, great. But I’m not paying you a premium for it. This was not a technical field, but a social science field.</p>
<p>For me, I had offers, but they were just in the middle of **** all nowhere. I preferred, at that time, city life. So, “no go.” I also had a husband with an MBA and was well aware of what the world was going to think about my personal interests (which is how I see it once you get to that point, frankly).</p>
<p>So, I went to work. I’ve been very successful and I can tell you unequivocally that, for me, the education has, and continues to have, immense value. But, it is intrinsic value. Nobody else even cares, and to be honest, very few of the people I’ve met in the last ten or so years probably even know. And, even if they know, it’s interesting in the way it is interesting that a colleague was in the peace corp back in the day. Life altering for him, for sure, but not for us. </p>
<p>that’s the problem. If you go on to do that kind of work believing it means anything to anybody else, or should mean anything to anybody else, you are in for a pretty big surprise, imho. OTOH, if I’d have been willing, or my family had been willing, to move to the middle of cow town USA, I could have made it important, but… just not for me.</p>
<p>Yes, my ex did go crazy. He did work a few short contract jobs in that job and did a stint as a census taker during the summer they were doing that. He also went back to school and got another Master’s degree, studied for the CPA and passed that test. His current job is a contract to hire and it looks like they are going to hire him <em>fingers crossed</em>. He can help pay some of S14’s senior year costs then since I’ve been paying for everything for a long time now!</p>
<p>When I said “our unemployment rate was 15%”, I was referring to Michigan specifically. It was significantly higher than the rest of the country due to the auto industry bankruptcy. At that time, I don’t think I knew a single family that didn’t have at least one adult unemployed. People stopped asking the question “What do you for a living?” and instead asked “Are you still working?” It was pretty nuts. Things have really turned around since then. </p>
<p>As far as PhDs having foresight into job prospects, those job prospects change over time. There are fields that were quite lucrative in the past that have been moved offshore. The needs of the country have changed. Some needs change based on which political party is at the helm.</p>
<p>A good friend of mine had a well-paying professional job with career-advancement potential and then decided to go back to school for her masters and then PhD in a field not known for its growth potential. Most of us thought she was crazy. But she got a job offer as a full-time tenure-track prof before graduating, and then two years later moved to another university, tenure-track position. So, go figure? How are you really supposed to know when you start off on this educational pursuit whether you will be one of the lucky ones, like she was?</p>
<p>Several years ago, we hired a tutor who had a PhD from UoChicago, for $20/hour. Tutor lived with his sister in a lower middle-class neighborhood, drove an old car, and clearly was struggling financially (and emotionally). He’d been an adjunct professor for many years, until he was “released” after a “political correctedness” encounter with students.</p>
<p>A good friend has a PhD in chemistry from Ivy university, and always terms that degree as “ultimately and practically a waste of many years”, and later obtained a MBA from UoChicago. Friend works as a business consultant.</p>
<p>I was offered an opportunity to be an adjunct recently. The idea was exciting, but when it came down to it, the expecation, time demands, etc just werent reasonable. </p>
<p>The job market is scary. Employment numbers are up, but some of that may be fudged because some contracting companies are now being required to pay their staff as W-2 rather than 1099 employees, so it looks like a whole bunch of people were suddenly “hired”.</p>