Replace "history professor" with "any traditionally stable white collar job" and you can re-post this same article on websites for bright, aspiring young people in many different fields. Certainly, I've said more or less these words to aspiring lawyers.<p>There is an underlying phenomenon affecting an entire generation of kids of educated middle class parents, and that's this: the future of our society is one of fewer jobs and more competition. It's just the structural dynamics of a society that transitions from a long phase of fast growth to an indefinite phase of maintenance.<p>It's not anybody's fault, not really, and there isn't much you can do about it. A big generation that has a lot of kids creates a high demand for liberal arts education. A smaller generation that doesn't have many kids creates a lesser demand. When that big older generation continues to hold onto jobs, you have a recipe for a job crunch for younger people.<p>More broadly, as capital shifts and is put to work in Asia, there is less demand for ancillary jobs here in the U.S. That phenomenon affects nearly everyone. Say you're an architect. Where do you think all the jobs are designing big corporate high rises?
<i>"The thing about grad school is that everyone else is at least as special as you, and most of them are more so. They all had 4.0 GPAs, they all have gone through life in the same insulating cocoon of praise, they all really, really love history. Hell, some of them shoot rainbows out of their butts and smell like a pine forest after a spring rain--and they mostly aren't going to get jobs either."</i><p>Oh man, does this ring true. If I had a nickel for every snotty remark by an arrogant first-year grad student about how <i>they're</i> not going to have trouble finding a professorship, I think I'd have enhanced my earning power more than the actual degree. In academia, everyone is a unique snowflake.<p>If you ever interview for a PhD program, you may notice that the people at the recruiting party are all first or second year students. There are many reasons for this, but a big one is that there are <i>very few</i> students past the second year of a PhD program who are under any illusions about their specialness in the order of the academic world. These are not the people you want recruiting new grist for the research mill.
With the exception of a professional school (medicine, law), do not pay to go to graduate school. If they're not paying you, something's wrong.
I am currently about a year away from my PhD in computational physics and chemistry and looking out towards the future I have very similar sentiments to this professor. Finding a decent job in academia is very very difficult. Even when you do get one it really won't be worth the work and time you have to put into it. At least in my field it is much better to develop your skills elsewhere and use that to enter into industry. I just wish someone had told me this 4 years ago.
It would be the time to discuss or even revamp the tenure system of the professorship at universities, just like what happens to the NYC public school teachers. The tenure system of the job protections for the past 200+ years of the Western higher education system is based on the low supply of advanced degree holders, which is just the opposite to today's situation. There are a lot of very good tenured professors doing amazing academic works and teachings even at their old ages. But I believe everyone knows one or two such tenured professors just doing sloppy works or not publishing for a long while. You want to complaint about those kind of professors? Try ratemyprofessor or FB and that would be it. The only winners of such university tenure system are the tenure holders who view their professorships as entitlements, rather than try to advance the human knowledge or educate the next generation. The losers? The schools, the students and the new crops of PhD graduates with mountain high of passions.
The article is funny, and the cynicism adds to the humor. But as someone who was on the faculty market last year, I have to say it is not at all representative of Computer Science.<p>CS depts are still growing, and are helped by the growing number of students wanting to major in CS. This is requiring many/most departments to grow further. And the reason why students are wanting to major in CS, is that there is plenty of work to be found. If you are well grounded in basics, and can program well, there is ample opportunity in both big companies, as well as startups.
"you will find yourself...banking on the thin chance of landing a job in some part of the country usually only seen on American Pickers"<p>Because those of us who live in rural areas are worthless degenerates, right?
I work at a private intelligence firm in London. We provide intelligence and risk analysis to oil companies, banks, insurance firms etc.<p>In the office next to me there is a PhD in classics, a MA in maths, and a PhD in ancient history. They all make over £150k (that's like $240k).<p>I don't earn that much as I work in a different part of the firm, so I'm not boasting.
I think there is an important missing caveat. Yes, everyone might be really bright and have 4.0 GPAs, but there are signs that you might have a real chance. Are you not just bright and have a 4.0, but did you also get into more than one of the top 5 departments in your field, giving you the pick of the litter and some negotiating power when you enter? Is your prospective advisor high profile and genuinely excited about you? Are you entering the program with an NSF GRFP fellowship or a Javits? If you are answering yes to these kinds of questions, you will most likely be able to get an academic job at a research university or a major liberal arts college. Seriously. I fit into this profile, defended in 2012, and have a tenure track job. I was in a small cohort--three people--but two of us have tenure track jobs and the other is in a high profile post-doc. I looked at all the PhDs from the last 5 years of my program. 8 people have TT jobs, 1 has a post-doc, and 3 have industry jobs, but 1 of those 3 really wanted an industry jobs when he entered. No one is unemployed, and we're talking about the roughest years from 2008 on.<p>Yes, it is not the case that a PhD guarantees you an academic job without reference to your department, thesis topic, and advisor. Do people actually believe otherwise, though?<p>Can you be a professor? Yes, but not based on your undergraduate performance alone. You need to do an honest assessment to see if you are on a trajectory to be one of the top people in your field when you graduate. You can see this, in part, by looking at what the current graduate students in your prospective program are doing and where the recent alumni are. If not, then you should absolutely not go into grad school thinking otherwise.
I sometimes wonder whether there is indeed less need for professors or whether it is easier and cheaper to use postdocs, adjuncts, "research professors", etc. for the work that professors are supposed to do. It appears that universities are trying to avoid offering tenured positions at all costs. Florida polytechnic for example adopted a non-tenure faculty model which according to its Board of Trustees <i>will help recruit and maintain top talent</i>[1]. I wonder if they actually believe that.<p>When I was a phd student I did an informal check on the professors in my department. Even though it was no ivy league school, on average it took them 2.8 years from entry into the phd program to getting a tenure-track position. Now 2.8 is probably the average number of years as a postdoc you need to have.<p>1: <a href="http://floridapolytechnic.org/news/non-tenure-faculty-model-and-bog-work-plan-approved" rel="nofollow">http://floridapolytechnic.org/news/non-tenure-faculty-model-...</a>
What's really heartbreaking about this is growing up in high school, the most respected older adults in my life -- indeed, the ones most responsible for steering me out of the abyss -- where high school history teachers, and local university history professors.<p><i>Every long-term educational trend points towards the end of the professoriate. States continue to slash funding for higher education. Retiring professors are not replaced, or replaced with part-time faculty. Technology promises to provide education with far fewer teachers--and whether you buy into this vision of the future or not, state legislators and university administrators believe.</i>
The problem with this kind of advice and the fairly overly confident advice over here at HN is the individual, in my view, should not pay a terrible amount big attention, sure read and think about but this kind of thing applies in <i>aggregate</i>. For <i>you</i>, things could be very different because of various situations, opportunities, etc. You could sit and ready stories of upset adjuncts or you could just be tenacious keep jabbing and find a way.<p>Sure, in aggregate, let's mourn the professoriate.<p>But for <i>you</i>, don't buy into the hype too much .., you don't need every job, just one that makes you happy.<p>This applies to most of lamentations of job markets.
I've never understood the argument that getting a PhD is worth it because education is worth it on its own. The premise is correct, but the conclusion doesn't follow. A PhD used to mean a qualification you had to get for a specific set of jobs or careers, now a lot of people argue for it as some culturally enriching experience. If you look carefully at this assumption it masks a pretty insidious elitism, which is that you can only truly appreciate culture and art via qualification. This is bogus. As Will Hunting said,<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZI1vgJwUP0&t=2m25s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZI1vgJwUP0&t=2m25s</a>
I was originally going to comment that it was more accurate to say they shouldn't try, but he's right. In history, they just can't. The academia machine has screwed up incentives. Schools and professors are individually incented to produce more candidates than the market needs. It's up to people to say "No, I won't do it." or "No, I don't expect to get a job after 5 years of service and learning."<p>I do wish I had the guts to follow up with his <i>Hell, some of them shoot rainbows out of their butts and smell like a pine forest after a spring rain--and they mostly aren't going to get jobs either.</i>