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Thesis Hatement

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Re: Thesis Hatement

#31

Post by jseliger »

crusso wrote: post #23

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…

Don't most of us think, "Duh?" to an article proclaiming that getting/being a PhD in Literature is hard and mostly pointless?

We should, but too many people don't and keep going into academia anyway (I was one; everyone thinks they're different, but I can at least say I had some ulterior motives).

For at least a decade, lawyers and law students have been arguing that law school is a bad deal, and it really took until 2012 for that to sink in. I think we're seeing a similar process unfolding around grad school more generally.

Academic grad school isn't in most cases as pernicious as law school, because if the school is paying you, even some trivial amount, quitting after two years is easy, but many of the basic supply and demand problems remain.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#32

Post by lhnz »

tokenadult wrote: post #24

For an informative retitle, how about "Literature Ph.D. means no jobs and you become worse person," which is well within the HN character limit for titles? That seems adequately to summarize the article. (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.)

I'm not sure if I'd trust you to do that, because I heard you were a humanities major.

Aside, I'm sure there are a lot of STEM graduates here congratulating themselves on both their employablity and their superior moral character. Upvote!

Your title rewrite is missing a word by the way. :)

Edit; I got downvoted for saying what now appears in the top comment. Tut.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#33

Post by MatthewPhillips »

crusso wrote: post #23

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…

No. Up until very recently (the most recent recession, perhaps), simply having a college degree was thought of as being a road to a comfortable middle class life. To this day career counselling focuses almost completely on interests and lifestyle and ignores salary. Unless a student has a mentor to guide them, it is very easy to go through college blistfully unaware of the realities that exist once you are in the job market.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#34

Post by tatsuke95 »

I can only assume the prospects get worse with the movement towards online classes and learning. How many 101 classes can't be taught nearly exclusively online? That will reduce the demand for PhDs and supply of positions further.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#35

Post by wisty »

crusso wrote: post #23

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…

> Every high school has some sort of career counselor. Colleges have many of them.

They typically won't tell a student "sure, you can go for a PhD, but it's a waste of time." Schools and colleges tend to be biased towards thinking more education is always better.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#36

Post by rollo_tommasi »

knieveltech wrote: post #15
16s wrote: post #7

I know several electrical engineering professors (PhD's from Carnegie Mellon, etc). They have no issue getting jobs at universities or in private sector. They are paid very well too.

I'm glad to hear job prospects for EE's have improved. I remember a time about 12 years ago when a graduate degree in EE and a buck would get you a newspaper and a shitty cup of coffee. Nothing like getting introduced to the new-hire at our shitty 2nd shift call center only to find out they've got a doctorate and 10 years of job experience and ended up having to take a gig in tech support just to feed their family.

This may only be the case for CMU EE PhD's. In today's winner-take-all economy, graduates of top programs have all the options; anyone who isn't a superstar generally has to eat shit.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#37

Post by zerr »

crusso wrote: post #23

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…

Well, there is a PhD requirement wall for many cool jobs out there, including at Microsoft Research and alike.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#38

Post by jpdoctor »

wyclif wrote: post #22
jpdoctor wrote: post #21

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.

The title was too long and exceeded the HN limit.

That's one possibility. The other is that the submitter chose to retain clauses which would increase hits at the expense of wasting a lot of people's time.

How many people would bother with an article telling us that academic jobs for Literature PhDs are hard to find?

Re: Thesis Hatement

#39

Post by crusso »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #33
crusso wrote: post #23

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…

No. Up until very recently (the most recent recession, perhaps), simply having a college degree was thought of as being a road to a comfortable middle class life. To this day career counselling focuses almost completely on interests and lifestyle and ignores salary. Unless a student has a mentor to guide them, it is very easy to go through college blistfully unaware of the realities that exist once you are in the job…

I don't agree with your assessment that this is a completely recent phenomenon.

"Is a college degree enough?" was a pervasive question when I got out of undergrad in 1991 since we were in a recession. My placement center and many magazines had "What is this degree worth?" compilations. This same information has been available online for at least the last 10+ years.

Ironically, I always thought of myself as being pretty blissfully unaware and unthoughtful of my own career and where I was headed... but I knew what my salary and job prospects were for my career before I settled on my major when I was a Sophomore in college.

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