As God is my witness, I really thought this turkey could fly: “[O]f all the machines that humanity has created, few seem more precisely calibrated to the destruction of hope than the academic job market”
As God is my witness, I really thought this turkey could fly: “[O]f all the machines that humanity has created, few seem more precisely calibrated to the destruction of hope than the academic job market”
Academia: The obstructive class as opposed to the productive class.
Wow! It sure takes many years of University (and many dollars spent) to meet the minimum hiring requirements to work for McDonald’s. Thankfully I took the 2 year technical college route.
Of course back when I went to school, we were constantly fed that pap that without a university degree you wouldn’t amount to much.
I hate it when people do this, but in this case it fits.
TLDR
I’m too busy working in my non humanities capacity to waste time reading this realization.
Well, yes, but the flip side is that you need overblown credentials to damned near anything.
Wanna cut hair? Need a license that requires formal training.
Wanna wait tables? Need to take a class and pass their exam.
Wanna empty bedpans and change sheets? Need a class and pass a test.
Wanna get a job managing a project? Well, having actually done that work doesn’t mean anything w/o the project management credential.
I think Captain Capitalism would like to point to his book. As this person is finding out. The degree is Worthless. And to the geek49203. Getting formal training in cutting hair or waiting tables takes less time, less money and has better job prospects than a high end PhD. Regarding the PMP designation that has your knickers in a knot. I have to agree, but again, it isn’t a lot of time and there is actually a market for it.
There’s such a thing as overspecialization. For individuals who don’t have any concerns about money, getting a PhD in history is a reasonable thing to do. For those who get a PhD assuming that it will get them a job, forget it. Right now in order to find work one has to be very flexible and the best thing that the struggling PhD in history could do would be to learn a trade. There are far greater opportunities in many trades and one can always switch to an academic position should it become available.
28 years ago I had to make a decision of whether to go into academia or medical school. I chose medicine despite the fact that I really liked doing research but having to apply for grants yearly and not knowing if I’d have a job the following year was something I got fed up with. What also made me think about getting out of academia was when I found out how much programmers were paid in the private sector – about 4-5x what I was making working long hours in a research setting. If I had the time, I’d also get certified as an electrician as a backup plan in case I could no longer practice medicine. Given the extreme shortage of GP’s outside of large cities, I have no worries about being unemployed.
I’d also hazard a guess that the PhD in history didn’t have much in the way of non-academic employment experience. When I was in high school and undergrad university I tried out lots of summer jobs which included timber cruising, tree planting, color checking maps (an incredibly boring paint by numbers job), computer operator, laboratory instructor, organic chemistry tutor, bouncer and lots of various labor jobs. It didn’t take long for me to realize that physical jobs are something one can only do when one is young and I wouldn’t be able to put in day after day of tree planting like I used to do in the early 1970’s. When I got my MSc, my first jobs were labor jobs until I got hired on as an electronics tech at UBC. This became more and more of a research position and wonder where I’d be now if I had completed an interdisciplinary PhD in pharmacology, biomedical engineering and mathematics. The 1980’s were still a time when one could get academic positions, but given the steady increase of moonbats in academic positions since then, there’s a good chance I would be fired for refusing to go along with political correctness which now pervades universities.
Just guessing but maybe the totally useless “studies” – feminist, black, chicano, gay – are gobbling up resources that once supported occasionally-useful things like history.
Best line: “Universities trade on our hopes, and on the fact that we have spent many years developing skills so specialized that few really want them, to offer increasingly insecure careers to young scholars.”
“For individuals who don’t have any concerns about money, getting a PhD in history is a reasonable thing to do.”
It IS, if,say, your Dad was high ranking millionaire politician who left you a trust fund.
But the guy at the link would have been well advised to take his welding pre-apprenticeship, only five months in school, then he’d have had a well-paying fallback position when his dream career didn’t materialize.
Ever considered running for political Office,Loki?
The real irony is that all these putatively smart people are proving to the world how clueless they really are about the things that matter, like market value, paying bills, etc. Next to their diploma on the wall should be another that says “Don’t Ask Me, I’m An Idiot”.
There’s nothing wrong with pursuing something that stirs passion, but it’s really annoying listening to ‘intelligent’ people harp about chasing rainbows to discover there’s no pot of gold. “WTF!? You’re the smart one! You couldn’t see you were being conned?”.
Yet the lucky ones get to join in the scam when they receive their professorships to teach the fresh idiots, and the wheel keeps turning.
I recall the classic story of a PhD student in English Literature at Dublin’s Trinity College, who was having difficulty making ends meet on his paltry stipend as a part-time lecturer. Passing a construction site one day, he noted a sign saying, “help wanted,” and went into the office to apply for a job. The construction foreman looked him over, eyeing the academic robes quizzically. “Do yez have any construction experience?” he asked the grad student. “Er, no,” came the reply. “Well then, do ye know the difference between a joist and a girder?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” said the student, “Joyce wrote Ulysses and Goethe wrote Faust.”
True story for you Webley. I was working in Forestry, and was given a 7th year History Major to assist me for the summer. We needed to drive about 100 miles out of town and do a count of trees that had survived after being planted two years previously. Wooden stakes would be placed where we did our sampling. “John”, I said, “there’s some stakes by the back door. Put them in the truck and take them to the campsite.” Three hours later, I drove into camp myself, finding John sleeping in the sun. “Did you unload the truck?” I asked. “Yes”. “Where are the stakes?” “I couldn’t find any steaks. We’ll have to have something else for dinner.”
I too work in Academia. In 5 months I am eligible to retire and retire I will. The last 5 years have been disastrous for the Academia World with budgets cuts, Federal and State cuts, drops in enrollment and the influx of Foreign Professors and Staff. Unlike the top 5%, many of us have not had raises in almost 6 years and found out real quick if you don’t like it, hit the road. You see, they can bring in a younger hire at 1/2 the cost, or hire a foreigner at 1/3 of the cost. Which means you are in no position to bargain and Administration will be Johnny on the Spot to remind you, ‘you are yearly contract.’ So me, along with hundreds of other baby boomers are just trying to hang on and get the h.e.l.l. out.
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Yes, I know there is fat in Academia, but it’s not at the middle or the bottom rungs it is all at the top of the totum pole. Take a 10,000 student college, with one President, 15 Vice Presidents, 4 Spokesman, 3 Chancellors and 2 Provosts, throw in another 30 Deans, 20 Directors and who knows how many Managers and you got yourself a heck of an upper echelon payroll. And this doesn’t even include the Coaches salaries, the new Stadium, the new Business Buildings, nor your top 20 or so PhD’s that are tenured. And, low and behold, when budget woes come first thing Admin cuts is custodial, maintenance, staff and adjuncts. The very people keeping the boat afloat. The very people who live paycheck to paycheck and probably put more money back into the economy than the 5% ers do, who I may add could all take a 5% cut in salary and save those lower end jobs. At $250,000 a year you could take a $20,000 dollar cut, that Custodian making $25,000 a year can’t.
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You see, Academia is going broke, they have forgotten their first duty was to Teach. Instead, they built high dollar Monumental Establishments that are very expensive to maintain. Academia has failed us, it’s all about the Almighty Dollar now, and be damned with an Education.
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I’ll get off my soapbox now.
If the best job available to you after graduating from a course is to teach that course to others, you best be the best, or your employment prospects are going to be awfully sparse.
Someone with a trade certificate that has dabbled in the humanities is much more employable than someone who majored in the ‘liberal arts’ and dabbled in the trades.
Academia has failed us, it’s all about the Almighty Dollar now, and be damned with an Education.
Someone with a trade certificate that has dabbled in the humanities is much more employable than someone who majored in the ‘liberal arts’ and dabbled in the trades.
Exactly true, along with everything that Loki said. The days of academic overspecialization are gone, and good riddance to a system that only sought to make university administrators richer and tenured, while flogging the myth that any degree was the key to success.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Well said.
well said:-))))
and Loki stole my thunder with his post!!!
The academic life is harsh, yes. Over the years that has been true, with a few green periods.
Except for a person of great ability there is no hope.
The world doesn’t need merely good academics. There are places for the very bright and the
very good scholars. It’s not all that different from pro sports, really.
I worked with one person who, after obtaining an M.A. in the foundations of mathematics,
worked for 16 months on a road crew. He made enough money to train as a physical
oceanographer, in which field he did obtain a position.
But he was tough (intellectually as well as physically) and knew what it was all about.
Incidentally, he said that the money to be made on a road crew is pretty good.
We sent a summer student into a convenience store to pick up some mix. We were going to consume some rye whiskey.
He came back with diet 7-UP…
Doing a Ph.D. in History (or the other humanities subjects) is a very risky proposition, and way too many young people who can’t afford the risk are being drawn into doctoral programs (many far less useful than history). I got lucky with mine, finding a job just as my doctoral fellowship was about to expire and having been able to make a long and generally happy career doing the kind of teaching and research that I had hoped to do. And each of the small number of doctoral students whose work I’ve supervised did good work and each found gainful and fulfilling employment (not all in academic life) after finishing. They were lucky, too. All of us could have made more money by choosing another path, but none of us has any reason to complain.
At the same time, I would recommend doctoral study in the humanities to very few people. Universities have become very disheartening places at which to work, between having students in class who know next to nothing and colleagues who, to paraphrase Dr Thomas Sowell, seem only to know many things that are simply not so. There is a need for good, young scholars, but their chance of finding steady work is limited (and probably more limited the better they are), and young scholars of integrity can expect a good deal of harassment and abuse from their intellectual inferiors.
It is missionary work among the heathens, and one needs that level of commitment and ability to bear hardships before signing on for a Ph.D.