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Against Reducing The Number of Philosophy PhDs
Here’s our situation: for many professions—actor, artist, astronaut, athlete, musician, novelist, philosopher, just to name a few—there are more people who aspire to enter them than succeed in doing so.
How bad is this? There are some problems with it, of course: mainly the disappointment of and opportunity costs borne by those who are unable to join what is ..
Earnings and Occupations of Humanities Undergrads
Data about the earnings, occupations, and unemployment of humanities undergraduates (as of 2013) is featured in a new report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Robert Townsend, director of the organization’s Washington office, writes:
As usual, the main narrative is about the humanities as a whole—where we can at least demonstrate that overall earn..
A Prospective Grad Student Says “No Thanks”
I am not sure what I expected when I applied to PhD programs. But when April rolled around, I began to ask myself what kind of future I was signing up for, and how different it would be from numerous other paths. After all, horror stories abound about the process of getting a PhD, and the terrible job market afterward. At best, I could hope to be turning 40, with a ..
Philosopher Attributes Job Loss To Challenging White Hegemony (updated)
Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, a research associate with a term appointment at University College London, is claiming that his contract was not renewed “because his plans to ‘put white hegemony under the microscope’ were considered too much of a challenge to white-dominated academia,” according to an article in The Independent.
Coleman, who crosses out his surna..
Grad Programs and Non-Academic Careers
How should graduate programs address the fact that some of their graduates will not find jobs in academia? There was a brief discussion of this here back in the early days of DN, but I am prompted by a reader to revisit the question. He writes:
My department has a terminal MA program. By admitting students into this program, one of the responsibilities that we ta..
Lessons for Philosophy from Economists on English?
“Over the last 35 years, less than half of graduated Ph.D. students have gotten tenure-track academic jobs upon graduation. The result is a large pool of residual job seekers, which places even more pressure on the job market for existing students.”…
“The data are pretty straightforward,” the paper says. “While students in top-10 programs might have a reasonabl..
Are Terminal MA’s Part of the Solution?
My proposal, if I had a magic wand to make it happen, would be to not to make PhD admissions out of college. Turn a lot of PhD programs that aren’t serving their graduates well into MA programs, and have PhD programs accept students from the MA programs. Then the PhD programs would be evaluating applicants who’d spent a couple of years doing graduate-level work. The..
Professors in Poverty
A few weeks ago Salon published “Professors on Food Stamps: The Shocking True Story of Academia in 2014.” The article shares the plight of adjunct instructors, a lot of whom teach many courses at multiple institutions for minimal compensation.
“The most shocking thing is that many of us don’t even earn the federal minimum wage,” said Miranda Merklein, an adjunct ..
Advertising Exploitative Positions
Derek Bowman, a recent philosophy PhD who is currently employed as a part-time lecturer, writes in with a suggestion for addressing the increasingly prevalent practice of hiring part-time or adjunct faculty to meet teaching needs. I present it here for your consideration and discussion.
In recent years, the philosophy blogosphere has done an admirable job mak..
Hiring and “Unofficial” Information
The recent story about East Carolina’s offer to Colin McGinn has generated a variety of reactions, some of which concern what kinds of information it’s permissible for academic employers to take into account in deciding whether to make someone an offer. Of particular concern here is the status of information about a candidate’s past behavior that could be categorize..
Helping Those Who Leave: What Can Departments Do?
For various reasons–personal, institutional, cultural, structural, etc.–some academics decide that the better course of action for them is to pursue careers outside of academia. Most PhD programs in philosophy, as far as I know, are not particularly interested in, or well set-up to be, helping their current students or recent graduates pursue non-academic careers…