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New York, 2:17 AM
Sun Dec 20
11 posts in the last 24 hours
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This is all true, and I share with many humanities grads the self-loathing necessary to take grim humor in a post like these. What I do want to point out is this: it's only a bad financial decision if you have a reasonable expectation of making any money elsewhere. And I don't. I applied everywhere (everywhere) for two years before I gave myself over to grad school, and I didn't get a whiff of a decent job. The question for me wasn't whether to get a well paying job or go to grad school and be broke; the question was whether to go to grad school and be broke or not to go to grad school and be broke. Between my stipend from school and a part time job on campus, I make more than I did when I was tutoring and subbing. It's still not saying much. But it's not like being in grad is keeping me from untold riches.
Personally, I'm in Rhetoric and Comp, where the job market is a lot better, and because of the focus on pedagogy, there's a reasonable expectation of getting grant funded at some point. Does that mean the odds are good? Hell no. They just aren't as soul-crushingly bad. My R/C department has a near 100% hire rate the last few years, and the small size and insularity of the subdiscipline is a boon. But I don't have any illusions, and I could well end up embittered and working at Borders in five years. But, again, I could do that with or without getting this degree. And all in all I'd rather teach college kids and enjoy real scholarship (and I do) and wake up at 10 than teach high school kids, wake up at 7 and have nothing to show for it down the road. Do I wish I had gone premed way back when? Of course. But I can't go back, and for now, being broke and happy is preferable to being broke and unhappy.
And all of my friends who got their MBA all had to move back in with their parents last year, so at least I have people to commiserate with.
12/18/09
Do these grad students at least receive fellowships, or do they have to take on debt for their virtually worthless degrees? Insult to injury.
12/18/09
By the time you realize that academia is a dead end, you're often too far into it not to finish your four years. At which point the only thing you're qualified for is grad school. Vicious circle.
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Well, at least it's something. It's sad how, the more a body of learning becomes decoupled from the ability to earn a living, people tend to value it less.
12/18/09
That does suck.
12/18/09
I was fully funded and I still have some debt, but, you know, so do a lot of people with equivalent "real world" job skills. If I remind myself to keep this all in perspective, it doesn't freak me out too much. (And of course I don't have kids to feed, so there's that.)
12/18/09
12/18/09
One summer, I had a work-study job in the humanities administration department of a big-three Ivy League University. I got to read and file the letters of recommendation. Heh heh heh.
I was a lot less anal back in the day and I had to retype something like 50 letters because I forgot the final period in "Ph.D." Boy, was I pissed!
12/18/09
As long as you have no regrets, that's all that matters.
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Thanks for the info. Needless to say, nobody gets a Ph.D. in the humanities to get rich.
12/18/09
Lincoln Technical Institute advises me that I can learn HVAC repair in a year.
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12/18/09
It depends. How many jobs require a bachelor's in something...anything?
To go into debt over that, though...enh. How MUCH debt?
I went into the liberal arts because I hated it the least, was decent at it...and now I wish I'd just gone into business. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough/tapping my school's career services enough.
I wonder if people REALLY benefit from going to Phoenix University (or whatever it's called) online, Devry, and any other school that's actually advertised on TV.
12/18/09
I still think that the minority of graduates REALLY do learn something, but it is possible if somebody applies themselves.
Which makes P.U.,DeVry,ITT like all other universities: the actual, individual student effort is what matters. Those schools still have this handicap of accepting last-resort desperate cases and somehow managing to push them through.
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/in Rhet Comp
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Just my wax-impacted ear, but that sounded like a euphemism, as in: "Yeah, I was reduced to driving a cab a few times a week, if you know what I mean.
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12/17/09
I guess in the third term, anything goes.
12/17/09