<p>I don’t think that degree has been very helpful to me.<br>
I got it in my 40s - mainly out of general interst in how business and computers and all that stuff went together.</p>
<p>I have bachelors in EE and Physics and those helped more. But probably what helped most was lucking into an internship in college that allowed me to build a work history. Plus, I think I’ve just been lucky in general.</p>
<p>I was out of work a few months during the big aerospace layoffs around here in the late 80s, early 90s, but I found something before things got dire. Fortunately, the big drop in defense jobs sort of coincided with teh tech/dot-com boom, so at least in California many engineers were okay.</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>I understand. </p>
<p>2016BarnardMom, good luck to your husband. </p>
<p>Jym626, A friend of mine was offered a job to teach a course at a university. Somebody got sick and the school needed somebody. $5,000 to teach the course. After looking at the time involved, and the costs of teaching the course, he decided against it. I could see somebody else who didn’t need to make much money take the job. Maybe, that is one reason adjuncts don’t make much.</p>
<p>Bovertine, I have to admit, I had to look up your your masters to see wth you studied. :)</p>
<p>Reading about your layoff, it is amazing to me, and maybe it shouldn’t be, how many well educated smart people have been laid off during their careers.</p>
<p>$5K is twice what this position offered. It was a 16 week class (grad level), across town in rush hour traffic (night class). It was a new class with no syllabus yet, so would have required all the research and planning to develop the curriculum, and the textbook they recommended was 7 yrs old and out of date. </p>
<p>I really looked forward to the opportunity to teach, but this was not the way to do it. And no, they were not going to consider a fulltime position for any of their adjuncts.</p>
<p>I was also asked to fill in for a faculty member on sabattical for an undergrad class at a LAC across town, but the class was 3 days/week for several hrs each day, and I couldnt make it work with my current schedule. Both opportunities paid $2500. Total. You dont do this stuff for the pay, thats for sure. No wonder MA and PhDs are on foodstamps.</p>
<p>** wait, dstark-- bovertine wasnt laid off, I dont believe. But yes-- many well educated and highly competent/successful people, including friends and family, have been victims of layoffs. It is really unfortunate.</p>
<p>“I really looked forward to the opportunity to teach, but this was not the way to do it. And no, they were not going to consider a fulltime position for any of their adjuncts.”</p>
<p>" Both opportunities paid $2500. Total. You dont do this stuff for the pay, thats for sure. No wopnder MA and PhDs are on foodstamps"</p>
<p>Yeah…</p>
<p>"** wait, dstark-- bovertine wasnt laid off, I dont believe. But yes-- many well ecucated and highly competent/successful people, including
friends and family, have been victims of layoffs. It is really unfortunate."</p>
<p>Ok…</p>
<p>I think we should remember the above when our grown up kids get out
in the workforce. Doesn’t seem to be much security these days, and parents want their kids to be safe and secure…</p>
<p>Based on personal experiences, I don’t think a master’s degree hurts your chances of getting a job – except perhaps in the first year or two after you get the degree, when people might be reluctant to hire you for a job unrelated to the field in which you got your master’s because they are afraid that it would be just a stopgap for you until you can find a more relevant job.</p>
<p>Beyond that time, though, there’s no downside that I can see. I have a master’s degree in a field unrelated to the work I’ve been doing for the past 30 years. It has never hurt me, and it has helped me to get jobs and freelance assignments. All I learned while earning my master’s degree is that I hated doing research and definitely did not want to go on for a Ph.D., but the seemingly worthless piece of paper I got at the end of the process has served me well. </p>
<p>A Ph.D. is a completely different animal. I have seen people who do hiring express reluctance to hire a person with a Ph.D. for a job that does not require one because they feel that the person will not stay at the job long enough to become an asset to the employer. A Ph.D. makes you overqualified in a way that a master’s degree doesn’t.</p>
<p>The Census Bureau survey that collects this information for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Current Population Survey, asks specific questions that determine this. Anyone who works less than full time is asked if they want to work full time. They are asked why not if they say no. People who are unemployed are asked what they have been doing to look for work, when they last worked, and why they think they can’t get work, and so forth. It really is very thorough. (People who say that they are retired are also asked if they would like to work.)</p>
<p>As for being laid off in your 50s…the 40s is just about as bad. We can attest to that. H has an MBA from a top 10 program that kids here are always hoping to get into, is a CFA, and had 20+ years of experience with well-known companies when his department was liquidated after a takeover. He was grossly underemployed or unemployed for roughly 12 years. He now has a satisfying job in his field again, but makes about what he did in 1995. Possibly less, since there isn’t a bonus. Some kids my S knows are making more money than he does straight out of college with no MBA or CFA.</p>
<p>I have a BIL in Michigan who is a CPA who hasn’t been able to find anything other than short term contract work for a decade. And often couldn’t get that.</p>
<p>BTW, H worked as an adjunct teaching two courses at a local college at one point. I believe that the compensation was something like $1800 per course. He also worked as a tutor for $20 per hour.</p>
Yeah. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t too helpful to me. Nobody knew what it was. :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I suppose technically I wasn’t laid off., but pretty much the same thing. They had a mandatory RIF - reducton in force - and they offered a “package” to people if they volunteered for the layoff. One time deal - if you didn’t take it you took your chances with the layoff and no package. It was a pretty good package so I took it. So I wasn’t technically laid off, but apparently they felt my position was expendable or they wouldn’t have made the offer. It was a pretty brutal time at that company.</p>
<p>I think people are reluctant to hire PhDs only in so much as how this degree effects a person’s presentation, and how the individual presents the PhD, itself. For me, I was never that impressed with it and didn’t expect anybody else to be, either. (though, looking back at the offers I got, I really now see how much I undervalued those, too, having never heard of some of those LACs)…</p>
<p>Look, if you have your doctorate and you go into an interview as if this is some sort of credential in the real world, then it’s off-putting to those who have been working in that field for the last ten years. If you go in as if you have this and it means you know alot about a lot of stuff that person doesn’t even care about, and if you have a good sense of humor about it, getting a job is no problem. The issue I see is that some overvalue their own worth and intellect and the degree itself.</p>
<p>it’s a tough paradigm shift. You have been in school since you could read. You have always been advanced and had a lot of attention for this. For me, I was in a top 5 program, and so…we were 'special." I see it on here a lot, too. But, school is just this one skill set and it’s not better than having been, say, an amazing tennis player. I still read and enjoy the arts at a level I think others do not. I have so many references and such clear understanding of what so much of the stuff means that the average person does not. My neighbor plays tennis at a level that gives her pleasure at a place I will never attain (time is limited for us all). But, she enjoys the arts and I enjoy my tennis.</p>
<p>All of this will get you what it gets you. Just not, maybe, the job title you think all that reading, research and writing ought to get you at that age. Still, it is worth it, imho. Nobody can take that away from me, and the older I get, the more I enjoy these pursuits. It’s added to my quality of life tremendously.</p>
<p>"Look, if you have your doctorate and you go into an interview as if this is some sort of credential in the real world, then it’s off-putting to those who have been working in that field for the last ten years. "</p>
<p>Yes. Poetgrl, I like your post.</p>
<p>Bovertine, </p>
<p>“Yeah. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t too helpful to me. Nobody knew what it was”</p>
<p>The PhD I’m referring to didn’t have any degree (bach, master’s, PhD) from any school that was “impressive” on its own. So I didn’t even take the PhD as evidence that this was some super-de-duper smart person. I cared more about his past experience in my industry.</p>
<p>I recently did a phone interview of a PhD candidate at a HYPS type of school. The position was for a summer internship, which could be filled by a BA. I really liked her on the phone. I asked her if she would consider to forego her PhD if we wanted to make her a full time offer. She said she would consider it because she is not sure what she is going to be able to do with her PhD. She is Asian. She said she is going to have to convince her parents because they had the misconception of better educated you are more employable you are. After 2 years in this country, she realized it wasn’t the case.</p>
<p>I was once semi-offered a job to teach architectural history at a local college. It didn’t take me long to figure out that by the time I’d come up with slides for the course, a syllabus, done the research for the lectures, written the exams and read whatever papers I’d assign that I’d be lucky to make minimum wage. I said no thanks.</p>
<p>I’ve told this story before but: For 20+ years I worked in pharmaceutical research. Seven years ago my Very Large Employer suddenly close down the entire research site where I worked. More than 2000 people were out of work, and of those, many had PhDs and Masters. (In my division - chemistry - everyone had at least a masters.)</p>
<p>I know many, many chemists and biologists who were unemployed for more than a year; I know several who STILL have not found gainful employment, except for gigs at Home Depot. Many of us collected unemployment and several have been on food stamps. Those who found other jobs with other pharmaceutical companies have had mixed luck, but many are now laid off from their second or third employer. I’d say the vast majority of those people I know who did find jobs are now underemployed - and most are making much less money than they did before the site closure.</p>
<p>How many chemistry/biology tutors does an area need? How many adjunct professors can one geographical region sustain?</p>
<p>For those of us who did land jobs (albeit at lower pay and usually less-than-ideal working situations) - the masters didn’t seem to hurt, but it didn’t help, either. I heard many more hard-luck stories from the PhDs I know.</p>
<p>Now if only more students and parents would connect the dots and realize that the common “all STEM majors have good job prospects” belief is not true, especially since biology is the most popular STEM major.</p>
No need to apologize, jym. I was just clarifying. Fortunately I was able to get back on the horse with no harm done. </p>
<p>I have several colleagues that never really recovered from that long ago defense downsizing. Went through a number of jobs and ended up taking early retirement. You never can tell I guess.</p>
<p>This is anecdotal, but my husband, who has a PhD from an Ivy institution, did not have trouble finding a non-academic job after he received a negative tenure decision at a top-20 university. He found a non-academic job by using the career services/old boy network at the Ivy where he got his degree. He ended up in a management training position at a large bank (he was clearly one of the older trainees); he did well, became the head of a profitable lending group in the bank within 5 years, and from there went to a small company with which he had done business. A few years later, he became the CEO of that company. </p>
<p>I believe that his good fortune was due to the fact that he is a very smart guy–the Ivy degree and being a professor weren’t crucial to his success. They simply confirmed that he’s a smart guy. The other factor was “luck”–he happened to be in the right place at the right time (e.g., he became head of the lending group at the bank when his boss, who was 50, died of a heart attack.) That being said, H worked to make things happen and didn’t depend on luck. I don’t think he’s unique. There are people who decide what they want and go for it. I think it’s a personality trait–folks like my H tend to make their own “success”.</p>
<p>I agree that there is some luck involved, but I also think that hard work does not necessarily lead to success. Obviously it’s important, but hard work is no guarantee of anything.</p>
<p>I have some anecdotes from my cohort of unemployed PhDs, too: the one who had a CalTech PhD and an Ivy postdoc who landed a job at a start-up biotech, held on to that for a few years until it went belly-up, started his own consulting group, and is now struggling mightily to keep afloat. I know another really smart, talented guy with all the bells and whistles on his academic and professional CV who is now on his 3rd pharma job with progressively lower salaries (this after multiple relocations and uprootings of his family.) I know of several bright, hard-working, hustling, terrifically talented people who have done okay and several who are equally smart, hard-working, and talented who are really really struggling.</p>
<p>I do know some who have thrived in their own consulting jobs. They seem to be no smarter or harder working than their less successful colleagues - for the life of me I don’t know what has distinguished them from the others. The ones who seem happiest, actually, are those who were close to retirement anyway and who are now in completely different, non-science fields.</p>
<p>I think my story speaks more to the glut of chemists (in my sub-specialty of chemistry anyway) and biologists than anything else. That, and there are no guarantees in life, especially your career-life!</p>
<p>There is a lot to be said for a person that makes things happen and has a little luck too.</p>
<p>Scout59, you don’t paint a pretty picture with your last two posts.</p>
<p>Oldfort, I have really mixed feelings about asking somebody would she cut her education short for a job. Then again, if that person is getting that education because of her career, I guess it makes sense to about phd plans if the hd doesn’t help.</p>