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If a job is all you're after, the disappointing paycheck you will be very lucky to receive as a newly minted assistant professor will not make graduate school seem "worth it." Yet I can say without blushing that my experience of life is infinitely richer for having spent the last seven years thinking as hard as I can among some of the smartest "suckers" I have ever met. For me, graduate study was like getting fitted with a second nervous system—I feel that much more acutely alive and responsive to the world. I will try to pass that vividness along to my students as long as this broken education system allows me to. In the end, I may well have to walk away from academia, but, if so, I suspect I'll feel more regret for those students than I will for myself.—Cristin Ellis is a Ph.D. candidate in English (ABD) at Johns Hopkins University. She is an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi.
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<p>So sad that this door to a full life will be closed to so many who are led down the path of college as career preparation and nothing more.</p>
<p>Come on, one of the greatest joys in life is the joy of finding things out. Those “eureka” moments are the best. I love how Dr. Richard Feynman put it: “Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”</p>
<p>I’m a humanities professor, and I agree with Pannapacker. There are not nearly enough jobs for all of these Ph.D candidates. There is also a huge opportunity cost to spending 7 years of your adult life on a nonmarketable degree. Pursuing a Ph.D. in the humanities can be a wonderful way to spend your young adult life, but not if you need stable renumerative employment or you lack family support. I could only do it because I was married to someone who made most of the the money we lived on (and I had a fellowship). Most young Ph.D. candidates overestimate their chances of landing a tenure-track slot. In this, they are like young artists or musicians pursuing a passion in the face of common sense. </p>
<p>Pannepacker is just telling the truth. He’s not saying that humanities have no value. He’s pointing out the reality of the profession today and the fact that many graduate students delude themselves. By the time these students realize what they are up against, they are in their 30s with a lot of debt and have to start all over again at something else. This sad situation makes them bitter. I can see the idea of a B.A. in literature as life-enriching even if you don’t use it on the job. I can’t, however, see applying that same argument to a doctorate, which, as I mentioned, has a much larger opportunity cost than a B.A.</p>
<p>If you get your humanities PhD at one of only a handful top universities in the US (think along the lines of HYSP, Berkeley, etc.) and are published, you have a decentish shot at a tenure track job. Because the top schools either fund programs, or give grad students plenty of opportunities to teach/do paid research, odds are good you can graduate without debt. The tenure-track job you get might be at Podunk U, but it will be a job. </p>
<p>For everyone else the odds are staggeringly against them. The degree can be hard to finance and job prospects are bleak. For the few openings they have, colleges are filling the vacancies in humanities with revolving one-year appointments, non-tenure appointments and adjuncts. Sadly, that’s reality.</p>
<p>"Come on, one of the greatest joys in life is the joy of finding things out. Those “eureka” moments are the best. I love how Dr. Richard Feynman put it: “Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”</p>
<p>Feynman was a physicist - and jobs in physics, along with other sciences, math, business, economics, etc - is a whole other matter.</p>
<p>^^^^^
There are also plenty of Phds from HYPSM schools who are adjunct professors. Schools hire them because they look good. My child has had many of these newly minted Phds who were the worst teachers. And not so newly minted.</p>
<p>They may be “the worst teachers” (IDK) but as you say, they look good. So they get jobs others won’t. And if they publish enough, they will keep their jobs, eventually.</p>
<p>Some colleges do not want to hire Ph.D.s with degrees from elite places for lower-ranked adjuncting or instructorships because they fear that these hires don’t fit in and will be always dissatisfied and wanting more than the institution can give them. If I hire an adjunct, I want someone who understands the limitations of a part-time, contingent position and isn’t always going to be pushing me for a full-time job that I can’t give. It is extremely, extremely rare for adjuncts to be hired into tenure-track jobs at the same institutions at which they have been adjuncting. People mistakenly believe that you can “get your foot in the door” by adjuncting. It is not true. There are so few jobs, and the searches, even for a limited-contract lectureship, are national in scope. </p>
<p>Many colleges want people who actually like teaching and are not going to be complaining about not getting funding to go to conferences, have sabbaticals and what not. The life of a graduate student is very different from the actual activities of working as a full-time professor at most colleges, which are not research institutions of the type that confers Ph.Ds. Pannapacker also points out the disconnect between Ph.D. training and professional reality, which is huge.</p>
<p>If you have been adjuncting for more than a couple of years post Ph.D., you have very little chance of getting a full-time position anywhere. It is better to try for the one-year instructorships. That requires a willingness to move constantly.</p>
<p>Not in some fields. Some of the very top Ph.D. programs in the US graduate 6-8 Ph.Ds a year of whom only 1 or 2 will get college teaching jobs. A friend of my kid’s is getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from a top program. He’s done very well in it, but has been told that he has no chance of getting a teaching job. He has several job offers, so he won’t starve, but none are teaching jobs.</p>
<p>That is why I said ‘decentISH’ shot at a tenure track job, and yes, it depends on the field. </p>
<p>I know a published Princeton PhD in history of science who had no job offers - tenure track or otherwise - in the US when she graduated 2 years ago. She’s currently teaching at a mid-tier in Canada. Her husband (not a humanist) has a tenure-track job at a respected LAC in the Northeast. They live hundreds of miles apart.</p>
<p>In academia, as in life, there are no guarantees even with an Ivy PhD.</p>