Guy gets a PHD in a useless major and now is on food stamps

[Anonymous]

OP keeps on trolling, Jeff's hating ...
Moderating, always trying to catch OP posting dirty ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The sad part is that there are so few teaching jobs for people with PhDs now. My husband has a history PhD and I have one in a social sciences field. We are both employable outside academia but there are many people who deeply want to teach and are passionate about their area of specialty, but can't find jobs. Universities used to have mandatory retirement for tenured faculty but no longer; now you can stay in your job for life until you are doddering and senile. Many of senior tenured professors at major universities haven't published anything in DECADES. So the $50k plus tuition per year we will all pay for our kids if they go to private colleges will cover the costs of many unproductive tenured faculty and the workhorse grad students and adjunct faculty who barely make minimum wage. It's a totally absurd system.

And anyone who believes history is useless is incredibly poorly educated herself.

This! But DH and I knew this in graduate school. The Boomer professor aren't retiring anytime soon. Many professors die while teaching! There is a large roving band of adjunct faculty in this country. It is sad but it really wasn't a secret in grad school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If he got a PhD in history, he worked HARD for his $15,000 a year of taxpayer funded stipend. He taught 3+ classes a semester to undergrads who really need to learn history, and probably worked for free assisting his professors in their research. He hoped to get a job teaching full time, but the short-sighted political attacks on education ruined the market for him.

I'd much rather he get the food stamps, than the aforementioned welfare queens who never worked a day in their lives, and never intend to.

This is an important point. Forgive me for not stopping to read the article just now, but OP should recognize that during his student years, this man was probably providing a lot of services to a lot of people with minimal or no direct compensation.

And this is often a problem for recent graduates, even those with advanced degrees. It's a bit exploitative because a lot of companies and especially non-profit organizations are eliminating paying jobs and creating unpaid or small-stipend "internships" to cover so many projects-- even ones that require specialized skills and educations.

This widens the gap between those who start well-off and those who do not even more. Some people who have to support themselves and can't afford to work for free.