http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/
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Just how bad things can get
(42 posts) (1 voice)-
Posted 1 year ago #
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I feel for her, but to be clear, I would bail on this career long before things got that bad. Now, if that is the best she can do across all possible job options, in any field, then that's one thing. AZ is a pretty high unemployment state. But even in today's recession I'm pretty sure that I could clear more than $11,000/year doing *something*. My interest in political science is much less strong than my desire to at least be a middle-class household.
Posted 1 year ago # -
yeah..all this shows is that too many lazy-**** mediocre hipsters get on the PhD Dole instead of working as baristas....there is a glut of PhD students.
Posted 1 year ago # -
racist article....they describe her a as a white woman...whats the assumption?
that there are no white people on welfare? that only blacks get food stamps?Posted 1 year ago # -
God, I feel for these people. Keep in mind that all of them (or most of them) probably got into this for very noble reasons; they didn't do it to get rich. There's no schadenfreude in seeing some struggle like this.
Posted 1 year ago # -
"medieval-history Ph.D"
She's a older PhD trying to get a job in what is likely the single hardest sub-field in all the humanities. Combine that with somewhere around 40% more graduated PhDs in Literature per year over total t-t jobs (in good years and I'm underestimating).
I know I got lucky getting a t-t job. I was sitting around teaching a 5/5 and knew that one or two more years and I'm stuck. The differences in what the job can be are staggering. At least I had 10+ classes are year bringing in money.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Polisci is getting there.
Posted 1 year ago # -
This has been pretty common for the humanities for a while.
Posted 1 year ago # -
The PhD underclass.
Posted 1 year ago # -
To blame this on the systematic underfunding of higher education is pretty wrongheaded. This is a product of too many PhDs chasing too many jobs. If people refused to take lousy adjunct positions for these kinds of wages, and went into other fields, there would not be a surplus of job seekers and thus low wages.
Posted 1 year ago # -
^ Yeah, blame the victim. If only blacks were studying and working harder, they would succeed.
Posted 1 year ago # -
^Actually, you're right.
Posted 1 year ago # -
^Racist pig.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Now heYuri, I don't think it makes you a bad person, but you should lighten up. I'm very conservative in my politics and began my career in academia looking down on stories such as these. Then reality hit me -- my father's house was underwater in the mortgage meltdown, my job was at risk in state budget cuts, and my unemployed immigrant wife (also a PhD) was at risk of losing her permanent-resident visa if I didn't fulfill the obligations of the affidavit of support I signed when I sponsored her immigration. I was also supporting two in-laws who didn't speak English in the Los Angeles area and who were struggling to get visas, in addition to my child.
I am proud I didn't go on food stamps. But what did I do? At the age of 37, with a PhD, I had to sign up for the Army Reserves, because I knew that according to federal USERRA law, Cal State couldn't lay me off in the event that the budget crisis worsened and the faculty union voted for layoffs instead of furloughs. The recruiters told me I'd never get deployed, just as my father told me all the money I'd put into his house would never get lost, and just as the PhD program assured me and my wife that we'd get jobs, and just as Cal State had recruited me to LA saying there'd never be furloughs or layoffs.
The recruiter picked me up at my crowded apartment in a Los Angeles ghetto in July 2009, at 3 AM and dropped me off at MEPS, where I couldn't leave and had no food and waited until 3 PM until I could see my contract. My eyes were blurry and I was starving. I just wanted to go home. I signed the Army Reserves contract and said fine, drive me back home. Within six months I was away on active duty and had a closed head injury in addition to physical injuries and stress complications. It's now three years later and the Army medical board still hasn't discharged me.
The good news is, by the time I was released from active duty with a bag full of pills and a head pounding with nightmares, my wife had found a job -- 3,000 miles away. I have a roommate in Los Angeles (another professor who has to struggle with student debt), and we're living the life of two bachelors in itinerant housing. Once he moves out, I'm going to move into a trailer park down the street from my campus. I get to see my wife and family when I can get away from my full-time job in LA, and when I'm not called up for duty. We could have my wife quit her job and move to LA, but then we'd have to get by on one income (mine) and .... we'd be in food stamps territory. Life's a lot harder than you might think.
The bad news is, none of this is fiction, as bizarre as it seems. As Republican as I am, I find I can no longer pretend to be above the kind of stresses depicted in this article and described by Berube and Bosquet. I don't like the fact that this author conveniently focuses ire on a Republican governor (Jan Brewer) rather than going after Democrat governors in places like California and New York, where state cuts are especially hard on people with PhDs because of high rents.
But as for your "zero" pity, that sounds like a problem you need to work on.
I'm telling you all this why? Because you can't go around telling people that they "signed up for it" and "knew what they were getting into" or should have known, or whatever. Unless you live on a trust fund, you could be in the same bind one day.
re's a story of someone who knows how to "nut up." This is really inspiring:Posted 1 year ago # -
^ You are not a Republican but an incoherent
idiot.Posted 1 year ago # -
The minimum wage in Arizona is $7.65 per hour. She makes $11.25 per hour, and that's only 20 hours per week. She'd better better off working at McDonalds, but she's either too proud or too stupid to do it.
Posted 1 year ago # -
She needs to pick up more classes and work a 40-hour work week like the rest.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Any advice on how to get out before it gets this bad?
Posted 1 year ago # -
^Gun to head?
Posted 1 year ago # -
That's a devastating story.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Polisci will get there only if the majority continue to research irrelevant crap such as the sources of partisanship or support for democracy.
Posted 1 year ago # -
The thing is, I totally get why some people stay in academia even if it's not working. You always think you're one break away. Also, the sunk cost argument, while not strictly rational, is very powerful.
Posted 1 year ago # -
"racist article....they describe her a as a white woman...whats the assumption? that there are no white people on welfare? that only blacks get food stamps?"
I think the implication is that white women are welfare queens. It is indeed very racist. Not all white women are on welfare.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I'm outraged. Everyone with a PhD in Medieval History DESERVES to be a professor making at least 80k per year.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Just too many PhD's out there
major glut
do something else...HS teaching, etc.Posted 1 year ago # -
I think that PhDs should get a special, different kind of food stamps for gourmet groceries and microbrew beer.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Tell the truth. The reason there are more PhDs than jobs is because universities deliberately recruit and graduate more PhDs than the market will bear in order to keep their PhD programs afloat. I have been working as an adjunct for the past year. I taught 4 classes at $3,000 a class, because so far, that is the only paying job offer I’ve gotten. So, if there are too many PhDs and too few jobs, why don’t faculty tell PhD students that? No one said it to me until I couldn't find a job. And yes, the rational choice is to leave the field, but having a PhD and no non-academic job experience isn't a recipe for success. If faculty where honest with PhD students, students could prepare themselves for non-academic jobs. But, faculty are not honest with graduate students, because they want to keep their prestigious R1, 2/2 loads. If they quit producing too many PhDs for the jobs, it would be hard to justify their teaching loads. So, faculty admit and graduate more students than will find jobs. Then when students can't find jobs they tell you that you just didn't try hard enough.
Posted 1 year ago # -
"I'm outraged. Everyone with a PhD in Medieval History DESERVES to be a professor making at least 80k per year."
Classic straw man. Where does anyone make that claim?
Posted 1 year ago # -
^^I've never seen anyone state and restate the obvious as much as you in so little space. Now if you can find a market for that, you'll be top in the field.
Posted 1 year ago # -
What's the average salary for someone with a PhD (in any field, academic and non-academic, incl. unemployed)? Is it that bad?
The way some people make it sound, for each PhD lucky enough to have a TT job and make a living, there are scores of unemployed, adjuncts, food stamps PhDs. This would mean that the average salary would be quite low, right?
Now, some of you will say, "no, because many folks in these predicaments don't defend and never get their PhD". So what's the average salary for folks with an MA in political science?
Posted 1 year ago #
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