Indiana University political science placement director writes scorched earth letter to PhD students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did a Ph.D. in a humanities field at UofC. They didn't even need all of us to teach, but R1 professors need students to supervise. It's a total racket.

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did a Ph.D. in a humanities field at UofC. They didn't even need all of us to teach, but R1 professors need students to supervise. It's a total racket.

At Chicago, it was unusual for grad students to teach much in the undergrad programs. They were smart and started a PhD post-doc program and hired all the recent grads for "finishing" school and *they* were the ones who were exploited to teach undergrads. Of course, a lot of them went on to take the tenure-line jobs (having a few years of experience at Chicago, and getting a book out during that time).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even our DD who is doing a post grad work year at HYP school in chemistry says the PHD students have warned her off getting one. She doesn’t plan to go into academia if she gets one.

How will the US stay competitive with this type of system? HYP fully funds these types of PhDs!

The pharmaceutical industry needs medicinal chemists badly. It's a great career with great benefits, lifestyle and salary. Yes, I'm a PhD working in the industry. Come play with me Johnnie.

Compared to software tech, pharmaceuticals does not pay well or give good benefits. You go into big pharm as a scientist with a PhD with the same starting salary as a fresh out of undergrad kid going into software development. (90-120k). Software dev pay scales a lot faster as well. And I’m not sure what good benefits you’re talking about, but companies only give average benefits in my experience.

Source: I am a STEM PhD student and DH has a PhD from an Ivy and 6+ years of experience in pharma. We find our friends with no name college degrees are out earning DH easily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even our DD who is doing a post grad work year at HYP school in chemistry says the PHD students have warned her off getting one. She doesn’t plan to go into academia if she gets one.

How will the US stay competitive with this type of system? HYP fully funds these types of PhDs!

+1. It is not just humanities PHDs who have trouble finding jobs in academia. Academia is basically run by the elderly now. Both of my parents are PhDs and professors at a university. They are 78 and 76 and have no plans to retire yet. Most of their colleagues are boomers or older. I"m a gen-xer with a PhD and am a SME at a think tank. I've never been interested in being a professor (I've done adjunct work like lots of folks in DC to pad my resume), but it is brutal out there. I think they should have mandatory retirement ages for professors (not just tenured ones, but any full-time faculty).

PP, what are your thoughts here about your parents still teaching while your immediate peers and even younger ones languish because of no openings? I think the LAC where I attended appealed to professors in the upper end of Baby Boom age range to retire by at least 70, if not earlier, in order to create openings for younger staff. A couple of my classmates who were profs and are not yet 65 retired when they hit 30 years in order to do this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lots of people make bad decisions. Our child was a serious musician but basically decided that she would apply only to top 10 conservatories and if she was not accepted then she would not pursue music. It's like saying law school is a waste of time if you can't get into a top law school. People do this all the time. Anyone who goes to a nonranked PhD program or even worse self-funds that PhD program has only themselves to blame. If you're not good enough to get a full ride at a top program then you're not actually good enough to be a professor. It's like being a mediocre athlete and wanting to play pro ball.

Law school is a waste of time if you can't get into a top law school.

Retired attorney.

This is so untrue and out of date. My post-college boyfriend said the same thing to me but luckily I ignored it and went to a middling public law school, kicked ass, and got a job at a top firm with all the ivy leaguers and have had a great career. I would hire a scrappy lawyer from a middling law school who works hard and has common sense over some of the lily livered, overly brainy lawyers from “top law schools” that I’ve worked with over the years.

[Anonymous]

I am independently wealthy and want to get a PhD. So I guess it works for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bottom line: We suck.

The bottom line is that 99% of universities suck at placing PhDs into academic jobs. If you aren't studying at somewhere like Harvard or unless you have very interesting research that has resonated enough to get you funding, you aren't getting a tenure track job.

I have at two friends with PhD's from Harvard who are quite underemployed in their respective fields, Art History and Psychology.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a professor and I advise my students to only get a PhD if they don't have to go into debt or if they're independently wealthy. Graduate programs will provide fellowships and stipends to MA/PhD candidates if they think they are stars; capable, but not the best, students are viewed as cash cows.

Bless you. I had a prof talk me down from getting a Pol Sci PhD and I am so glad she did that for me. Went into the Foreign Service instead after getting a Master's. Much more interesting and got to travel a lot and become more adaptable as a person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lots of people make bad decisions. Our child was a serious musician but basically decided that she would apply only to top 10 conservatories and if she was not accepted then she would not pursue music. It's like saying law school is a waste of time if you can't get into a top law school. People do this all the time. Anyone who goes to a nonranked PhD program or even worse self-funds that PhD program has only themselves to blame. If you're not good enough to get a full ride at a top program then you're not actually good enough to be a professor. It's like being a mediocre athlete and wanting to play pro ball.

Law school is a waste of time if you can't get into a top law school.

Retired attorney.

This is so untrue and out of date. My post-college boyfriend said the same thing to me but luckily I ignored it and went to a middling public law school, kicked ass, and got a job at a top firm with all the ivy leaguers and have had a great career. I would hire a scrappy lawyer from a middling law school who works hard and has common sense over some of the lily livered, overly brainy lawyers from “top law schools” that I’ve worked with over the years.

hat

I agree with the notion of getting a tough, hard minded practical lawyer over some of the top law school types I went to law school with. Identifying them is key. The problem ist hat your personal anecdote does not address is that Big Law - a highly imperfect complex to the say the least - tends to hire from the top schools, and when they don't, people from so-called middling law schools must be very high in their class to get jobs. My firm (back in the 90's) would only hire from the Law Review (and top 3%) at my top 10 law school, opting for Harvard Yale and Stanford grads. I don't think I necessarily received better training that that at a middle market firm, (in fact, it is much harder to get courtroom time at a big firm) but learning to compete around incredibly bright people was a real plus. It helped my career terrifically down the road. But law in general has a lousy ROI. And playing the game (even for very bright people) is rife with risk and opportunity cost.

Mid grade law schools might make sense in terms of having a goal to be proficient in court. They historically have been a pipeline to prosecution positions, and there is no substitute for getting into court early in a career and often. I just don't see incurring lots of debt to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even our DD who is doing a post grad work year at HYP school in chemistry says the PHD students have warned her off getting one. She doesn’t plan to go into academia if she gets one.

How will the US stay competitive with this type of system? HYP fully funds these types of PhDs!

+1. It is not just humanities PHDs who have trouble finding jobs in academia. Academia is basically run by the elderly now. Both of my parents are PhDs and professors at a university. They are 78 and 76 and have no plans to retire yet. Most of their colleagues are boomers or older. I"m a gen-xer with a PhD and am a SME at a think tank. I've never been interested in being a professor (I've done adjunct work like lots of folks in DC to pad my resume), but it is brutal out there. I think they should have mandatory retirement ages for professors (not just tenured ones, but any full-time faculty).

PP, what are your thoughts here about your parents still teaching while your immediate peers and even younger ones languish because of no openings? I think the LAC where I attended appealed to professors in the upper end of Baby Boom age range to retire by at least 70, if not earlier, in order to create openings for younger staff. A couple of my classmates who were profs and are not yet 65 retired when they hit 30 years in order to do this.

I picked up a visiting guest lecturer for our department at the airport yesterday. He is 80 years old! He got his PhD before I was born! But yes, he's definitely the dude we should be spending our money flying around the country. In a lecture this morning he refered to an Asian-American philosopher as "an Oriental." It's hard to believe there's no way to address this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even our DD who is doing a post grad work year at HYP school in chemistry says the PHD students have warned her off getting one. She doesn’t plan to go into academia if she gets one.

How will the US stay competitive with this type of system? HYP fully funds these types of PhDs!

The pharmaceutical industry needs medicinal chemists badly. It's a great career with great benefits, lifestyle and salary. Yes, I'm a PhD working in the industry. Come play with me Johnnie.

Compared to software tech, pharmaceuticals does not pay well or give good benefits. You go into big pharm as a scientist with a PhD with the same starting salary as a fresh out of undergrad kid going into software development. (90-120k). Software dev pay scales a lot faster as well. And I’m not sure what good benefits you’re talking about, but companies only give average benefits in my experience.

Source: I am a STEM PhD student and DH has a PhD from an Ivy and 6+ years of experience in pharma. We find our friends with no name college degrees are out earning DH easily.

NP
Let him try to be consultant good money but it involves a lot of travel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even our DD who is doing a post grad work year at HYP school in chemistry says the PHD students have warned her off getting one. She doesn’t plan to go into academia if she gets one.

How will the US stay competitive with this type of system? HYP fully funds these types of PhDs!

+1. It is not just humanities PHDs who have trouble finding jobs in academia. Academia is basically run by the elderly now. Both of my parents are PhDs and professors at a university. They are 78 and 76 and have no plans to retire yet. Most of their colleagues are boomers or older. I"m a gen-xer with a PhD and am a SME at a think tank. I've never been interested in being a professor (I've done adjunct work like lots of folks in DC to pad my resume), but it is brutal out there. I think they should have mandatory retirement ages for professors (not just tenured ones, but any full-time faculty).

PP, what are your thoughts here about your parents still teaching while your immediate peers and even younger ones languish because of no openings? I think the LAC where I attended appealed to professors in the upper end of Baby Boom age range to retire by at least 70, if not earlier, in order to create openings for younger staff. A couple of my classmates who were profs and are not yet 65 retired when they hit 30 years in order to do this.

f

In my post I said there should be mandatory retirement ages. I have been bugging my parents to retire since they turned 70. My mom has had two colleagues who the department had to appeal to family members because these folks were still working with early dementia. Their research (and teaching) is their life. It is great that they still love it, but, I think it is time for them to move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even our DD who is doing a post grad work year at HYP school in chemistry says the PHD students have warned her off getting one. She doesn’t plan to go into academia if she gets one.

How will the US stay competitive with this type of system? HYP fully funds these types of PhDs!

+1. It is not just humanities PHDs who have trouble finding jobs in academia. Academia is basically run by the elderly now. Both of my parents are PhDs and professors at a university. They are 78 and 76 and have no plans to retire yet. Most of their colleagues are boomers or older. I"m a gen-xer with a PhD and am a SME at a think tank. I've never been interested in being a professor (I've done adjunct work like lots of folks in DC to pad my resume), but it is brutal out there. I think they should have mandatory retirement ages for professors (not just tenured ones, but any full-time faculty).

PP, what are your thoughts here about your parents still teaching while your immediate peers and even younger ones languish because of no openings? I think the LAC where I attended appealed to professors in the upper end of Baby Boom age range to retire by at least 70, if not earlier, in order to create openings for younger staff. A couple of my classmates who were profs and are not yet 65 retired when they hit 30 years in order to do this.

f

In my post I said there should be mandatory retirement ages. I have been bugging my parents to retire since they turned 70. My mom has had two colleagues who the department had to appeal to family members because these folks were still working with early dementia. Their research (and teaching) is their life. It is great that they still love it, but, I think it is time for them to move on.

DCUM ageism never fails. I know a woman in her 40s with long Covid memory issues. You think she should be told to retire?

So frustrating to see this generation fight so fiercely for human decency toward “others” yet proudly and with zero self-awareness, discriminate, insult, and devalue older people. Your Tik Tok videos making fun of “boomers” go viral but god forbid we accidentally mess up your preferred pronoun. Hypocrites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bottom line: We suck.

The bottom line is that 99% of universities suck at placing PhDs into academic jobs. If you aren't studying at somewhere like Harvard or unless you have very interesting research that has resonated enough to get you funding, you aren't getting a tenure track job.

I have at two friends with PhD's from Harvard who are quite underemployed in their respective fields, Art History and Psychology.

I have a friend with an Art History PhD from a similarly regarded university who teaches at a high school.

[Anonymous]

I know a woman in her 40s with long Covid memory issues. You think she should be told to retire?

Yes, if you can’t do your job, go away and make room for someone who can.