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I wish HN admins would require approval on any sites with submitted content like slate, extremetech etc. Those guys are a whole lot of noise without much signal.
GMAFB, the HN title omits the word "Literature" from the "Getting a Literature PhD" This looks a lot like the folks at slate are blogspamming. I wish HN admins would require approval on any sites with submitted content like slate, extremetech etc. Those guys are a whole lot of noise without much signal.
Upper level education costs a lot of money and involves years of time, don't these people think about what they want to do with their lives? Don't they do at least cursory research into what that degree will mean to their careers?
Every high school has some sort of career counselor. Colleges have many of them. These days, research on the Internet (these are pre-PhD Lit students, don't they know how to Google?) makes it simple to look up salaries, opportunities to be hired, personal stories from those in the career, etc.
Maybe this trend toward people realizing that many degrees are near useless is just a result of the economy and tougher times finally making the practicality of education paramount. It seems a shame that you need bad circumstances for people to evidence some common sense, though.
(I had to try this, because rewriting a title is a mere exercise for a humanities major like me who used to work as an editor.)
Sensational and over generalizing title. This should be downvoted for being misleading. Of course a PhD in literature is going to have almost zero prospective jobs. There's no demand. I'm a EE and in the engineering world this is certainly not the case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Germany there are plenty research-jobs, but most of them in civil service, so no CS-PhD want it. The industry just pays much better. Last year there was something in the news about the payment of professors, which was about $5000 a month. This is an entry level pay of a software developer (without Master or PhD) in Germany.
There are lifestyle considerations too. Academic work year, no crazy work hours, etc.
Working all days of the week is incredibly common.
And, unfortunately, crunch time specially near major conference deadlines is almost becoming the norm. Of course, the focus on publication is another problem related to that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we should clarify that the research-job outlook is not rosy in CS. There are plenty of corporations that want to hire CS PhDs for non-research work. And there is always the entrepreneurial route (the smart VCs aren't going to hold the PhD against you).
That's true, though if you want a job in industry doing non-research CS work, the case for going beyond a B.S. or an M.S. in the first place is considerably weaker. You could do a PhD if you want to spend a few years in grad school out of personal/intellectual interest, presumably the same reason one would do the same in literature, but it's not going to really open career doors unless you're interested in research.
One other point is that resources like YC did not exist when I started my PhD. I was about to finish as YC came out and I felt finishing up my PhD was the better option. I had some friends who had just started their PhD programs and they quit to pursue startup opportunities (undoubtedly a good move for almost everyone). Timing and luck I guess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 3 people I know with lit PhDs had full-time jobs/careers and did the PhD for love of the subject rather than anything else. None of them expected to get a tenure-track faculty job - an adjunct teaching appointment at the local college from time to time was more in line with what these people wanted.
Don't most community colleges accept a Master's for adjunct positions? Not that love of subject is a bad reason to get a PhD, but if the end goal is teaching a local course every now and then, you could presumably do that after you have the MS and (potentially) while pursuing the PhD, right?
Don't most of us think, "Duh?" to an article proclaiming that getting/being a PhD in Literature is hard and mostly pointless? Upper level education costs a lot of money and involves years of time, don't these people think about what they want to do with their lives? Don't they do at least cursory research into what that degree will mean to their careers? Every high school has some sort of career counselor. Colleges h…
Yet lots of people smoke even though they're fully aware of the risks. It appears that the author knew of the job outlook for a Lit PhD all along but chose to ignore it. I think we all exist in that optimistic dream-world state of mind at some point.
I wonder if her perspective were different had she graduated from an Ivy.