You can dress me up but you can’t take me anywhere, apparently.
I spent an hour the other day trying to convince a young colleague of mine not to go to graduate school. Well, let me rephrase that. I told him that if what he wanted was the experience of graduate school on its own, well, that’s all well and good. Graduate school is pretty much awesome if you’re a self-starter who can handle living on pennies. If he thought it would lead to a job, though — run away! Right now!
But by the end of the conversation I couldn’t tell him to go to graduate school for the experience, either, because why take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt and lost wages and blah blah blah when you could find a couple of like-minded people, a nice neighborhood pub, and read all the continental philosophy you want while hollering about holes in your friends’ arguments?
What would you tell him? He’s young (24 maybe?), really smart in that perfect-for-graduate-school-in-philosophy way, and thinks he’d like teaching. Inquiring minds really want to know.
Hi from a german reader (who went through grad school hell, and escaped. I definitely have the experience)
For your young friend, I have some reading material. Perhaps you can find one or two points there which will hopefully discourage him from joining grad school. First some brutally honest articles from the highly respected “Chronicle of Higher Education”:
http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Graduate-School-a-Cult-/44676/
http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the-Huma/44846/
http://chronicle.com/article/Just-Dont-Go-Part-2/44786/
Especially the following paragraph might open his eyes:
“It’s hard to tell young people that universities recognize that their idealism and energy — and lack of information — are an exploitable resource. For universities, the impact of graduate programs on the lives of those students is an acceptable externality, like dumping toxins into a river. If you cannot find a tenure-track position, your university will no longer court you; it will pretend you do not exist and will act as if your unemployability is entirely your fault. It will make you feel ashamed, and you will probably just disappear, convinced it’s right rather than that the game was rigged from the beginning.”
A recent article about academic job prospects in the humanities; when you thought that they were already horrible, well, it always can get worse:
http://chronicle.com/article/Dodging-the-Anvil/63274/
And he should start reading the webcomic “Piled Higher and Deeper” (which is already called “the Dilbert of Academia”)
Especially the following strip, which compares the system of higher education to Ponzi schemes (very few on the top profit, and a huge basis has to pay for it):
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1144
I probably would tell him that graduate school is an unprecedented luxury and explain some of the things that are indeed quite fantastic about it. I would mention the potential pitfalls of looking for an academic job, but also note that it’s the primary path toward an academic career even though there’s no guarantee except for the fact that you won’t get to live wherever you want to if you pursue the career. And it’s a tough, tough market in which there are more applicants than jobs, particularly in the humanities.
But, I would probably not attempt to argue with him one way or the other, rather, I would try and ask the questions and provide the relevant data to let him decide for himself.
If he wants to teach, tell him to consider school teaching. Though it is not an easy job (I know; I was a teacher for a while. Loved teaching, but self-entitled parents and a tyrannical admin. made it hell), there are real shortages, and if he goes into the right school, he can make a world of difference, and good teachers are always needed (I am assuming he would make a good teacher. If he is not, then don’t send him to schools. Last thing we need is a lousy teacher coasting). Otherwise, tell him to get out and start looking for work now. Graduate school is indeed a luxury these days, and just not worth it overall.
Best, and keep on blogging.
I’d modify your original advice to “Don’t go into debt to go to graduate school.” If he can get a scholarship that he can live on, then he can think of grad school as a short term career. The point in his life when he gets to think big thoughts, etc. etc.
But otherwise, I think cultivating friends with whom he can discuss philosophy, etc in the pub, going to seminars at the university that are open to the public (lots are), etc. might also nurture his intellectual needs. @ezrabrooks on Twitter reads a lot of philosophy and history and stuff if he wants to start building that community. (And he’s considering grad school for library science.)
Excellent points, all. Steffan, thanks for the links!
Jo, that’s a good revision — not taking on debt would make it more “sabbatical,” and who doesn’t want/deserve one of those now and again? I’ll point him to @ezrabrooks, thanks!
Let me add another article from the Chronicle. The author, writing under the pseudonym Thomas H. Benton, is a professor at a liberal-arts college, and describes here a plethora of pieces of conversation with inquiring wannabe students on exactly this topic (should a young person age 20+ go to grad school in the humanities or not?)
http://chronicle.com/article/So-You-Want-to-Go-to-Grad-S/45239/
Let me quote two paragraphs from this article:
“Remember,” I advise, “that if you go to graduate school, you are contributing to the problem by making it less necessary for universities to hire full-time faculty members at decent wages. If you have a burning passion for Victorian poetry, you can probably satisfy this passion by yourself. Force yourself to read a few dozen academic books before deciding to dedicate your life to a subject. That is what one does in graduate school anyway. Most learning is unsupervised, independent, and onerous. Why pay or work according to an institutional timetable unless one needs an academic credential?
“Also, remember that most grad students start out as dilettantes, thinking they’ll just hang out for a few years on a stipend. But eventually they become completely invested in the profession, unable to envision themselves doing anything else. A few years can become a decade or more. Meanwhile, everyone else is beginning their adult lives while you remain trapped in permanent adolescence.”
In my experience, I find very few graduate students to be dilettantes–either at the beginning or the end of their graduate student careers. They are typically serious about the importance of scholarly work and of universities in general and want the opportunity to be a part of that work. They don’t always have a clear sense of how the academy is structured or of the different ways that power is distributed and are often too idealistic about perceiving the academy as a great democracy of great minds thinking important thoughts. I find in particular that they can tend toward romanticizing “the life of the mind” and not taking seriously that academia is a profession like many others–with some great benefits and some real crap to wade through and definitely not a democracy.
I’m in no way an apologist for some pretty dastardly academic practices; however, it is, IMHO, ridiculous to claim that graduate education facilitates universities not hiring full-time faculty or that you can easily become a scholar independently of a scholarly community by getting your friends together to talk about philosophy or whatever. It’s wonderful to satisfy your passion for something by founding a group to explore it together, but that is hardly the same thing as what you experience in a graduate program. Graduate education COSTS universities plenty, and many universities are looking to cut their graduate programs significantly because of the costs.
Finally, graduate students do in fact get jobs–in the humanities, in places that are not awful, with decent salaries and benefits. Check out the Chronicle of Higher Education’s forums and you can read the stories of plenty of them.
@RQ — I agree that most graduate students are not dilettantes — but I also don’t think most people entering graduate school (especially in the humanities) know what it means to be a scholar. It really is “thinking big thoughts” for many people, especially people who go on right from undergrad, and we all know that’s not what the profession of the academy looks like.
In other words, I think many people’s passion for a subject can be exercised with reading groups and self-study, not because it will make them into scholars but because what most people want is continued deep engagement with a subject they love.
And sure, people do get good jobs in the humanities — but it’s still not the way to bet right now.
I fear that telling him flat-out not to get the PhD might have the opposite effect: what self-respecting young person doesn’t want to flout advice from us cautious old farts?
But what I would have wanted to read before plunging in is Alexandra Lord’s writings, particularly this one: “Every PhD Needs a Plan B.”
http://chronicle.com/article/Every-PhD-Needs-a-Plan-B/44787
This is particularly essential for those who ARE lucky enough to be well-supported with fellowships and post-docs, etc, as gaining additional skills aren’t for us a necessity. My main regret is that I felt too beholden to my funding body to spend their time making myself fit a job description.