It depends on what we are counting as administrators, doesn’t it? I’ve never been of anywhere that has a PhD-less Dean. However, at my current university, student advising is run by people hired as student advisors. (non-PhD as far as I can tell) We have a student/faculty ratio of ~8, so it isn’t as if the faculty would be overburdened handling this ourselves. Plus students would be able to get advice from people who actually are familiar with the field they are trying to enter.
I’m finishing my Ph.D. this year (fingers crossed). My program is in the top 15 nationally, so I’d actually be pretty competitive on the academic market. But I’m currently employed in software sales (not remotely related to my research) and when I do the math, it just doesn’t make sense to go into academia. It’s a hard fight and it takes about 10 years before you make really good money. I’m in my late 30s. If I was 10 years younger and single, I’d give it a go, but at his point, I don’t think it’s worth the fight.
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“top-heavy cohort of administrators who know little about scholarship and scholarly endeavors”
So. you’ll have noticed, by my actually quoting the blog entry that I did read that part and it was to that part that my comment was directed. To use the position of an elite to downvalue the work of those that don’t belong to that elite does - at least to me - smack of elitism.
I made no reference to what others had said in their comments - opinions are like a**holes - every one has one - if you think I was responding to you, you were mistaken, but I am responding now.
Seems to me you have walked straight into your own hole with that one.
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Sorry, but you either didn’t follow the discussion, or willfully misunderstood it. I fail to see how that’s anyone’s problem but your own.
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I studied to be a psychologist (ABD), however I had two other great careers before this which lead me to the career I’m in right now.
Becoming a pure academic would be a downgrade in my position as an ‘administrator’ both in money and position…most of the folks in my office have terminal masters or a doctorate. My boss is considered ‘faculty’ but it is mostly honorific. The rest of us teach every now or then when needed and are ‘administrative staff’.
I don’t think Cory understand yet another subject that he needs to make proclamations about because this is pretty much the case in universities across the world.
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I think you really misread the entire discussion. Nobody is using the position of an elite here to belittle anybody.
@anon61221983 may be correct that this is one of those discussions where the details and nuances of the arguments may not make a lot of sense to those outside of academia. Possibly even more so if you are not faculty. Cory’s recommendation does not make a whole lot of sense to me because it is largely what we have been doing for centuries. The difference is that some administrators now have degrees in education administration which is just…
Anyway, my advice to you is:
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I agree. That was my inner Colbert, sorry.
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When there’s a post about high tuition and student loan debt and bloated university administration expenses, I’m right on board. Not one should expect a typical college-bound high school student to be aware and knowledgable and self-confident enough to overrule every authority figure in his or her life and avoid the trap that some degrees can sometimes be.
And yes, there are plenty of PhDs with no hope of ever landing tenure-track professorships and yes, the academic path for non-tenured folks is absolutely awful. But I have a lot less sympathy for this crowd. I can’t blame high school students for their college debt situation, but I can blame PhDs, especially science and math PhDs, for not being able to perform and extrapolate from basic estimations, and for not being mature enough to plan for life after graduation.
In the universities I have spent time at, the average professor graduates maybe 1 PhD student per year (maybe a little less, but not less than 1 per 2 years). Is the number of tenure track positions at your department doubling every 1-2 years? No? Then you already know the vast majority of PhDs your field graduates won’t become tenured professors. Are you at the top of your class at a top institution? No? Then you probably won’t be in the group that does get those positions. Are you in a field in high demand in industry? No? Then what job are you hoping to get after graduation?
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Your insights on these matters is really helpful. Thanks!
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So, I maybe noticed that you’re disagreeing implicitly by being disagreeable explicitly. It’s okay, like you say, everyone has an… opinion.
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You can blame PhDs? For aiming and missing, which clearly you’ve never done.
Did you personally lend them this money, or did the high horse just break free and run wild today?
Anything to say about, say, bailouts of the financial companies where almost nobody got blamed, or that maybe at least PhDs add something to the world, unlike the boards of your Goldmans?
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I’m an undergrad in an R1 and I know what the employment outlook is for my field… not great. Consolidations and mergers are shutting down departments (c.f. Dow and DuPont) in the private sector, and many a disillusioned post-doc will tell you that research is a tough gig. Here’s the problem: You start in a field and quickly discover that a B.S. is no longer enough. It just isn’t. Not if you want to spend your life doing more than running a bank of GC-MS machines in some company’s QC department. So your options come down to sinking a ton of time and money for a degree in an allied field, for which you have no training, and discover rapidly that it will take you longer and it will be harder because you have to play catch-up because you never took a course in elementary statics and dynamics, or classical mechanics, or pole-vaulting. Suddenly, the STEM degree everyone told you was a sure thing sure as hell doesn’t look like one- because by now you’ve realized that in life- there are no sure things.
But, you’ve looked at the statistics, and those show that a B.S. is a solid investment. It’s as they say with statistics, the race does not always go to the fastest or the strongest, but that is how the smart money bets. So you put your money on the line for the remainder of your degree. The instant you finish, it’s very easy to have nothing lined up. Internships end, research apprenticeships evaporate, and chances are that there are no jobs in your field at your level of education. In fact, there will never be good jobs at your level of education in your field. What to do?
You can find another field in which you have no knowledge and try to make a go of it. You have a piece of fancy paper, so they’ll take you in at a bottom rung. Great. We’ve demonstrated the manner in which most employment opportunities don’t need specific degrees and exposed the whole canard that a degree in musical arts is not, in fact, useful. You do however discover that your pay does not match your loan debt in any way that is desirable or proportionate. Whoops. Suddenly you’re looking at other degrees and certification programs to enhance your marketability, and your pay scale. You quickly find that job requirements for really good jobs increasingly want degrees beginning with the letter M. Suddenly the stats literally don’t matter, because your situation in its particular context becomes the driving force for grad school. You’re not engaged in the fallacy of sunk cost as much as you are looking for the shortest path to dry land. If you have a B.S. in something, chances are that path runs straight through an M.S. in that same thing.
None of this addresses the following issue: Academia is an actual legitimate set of professions in which to work and people do die. There will always be people entering the academic workforce. People do occasionally try to seek professions that fit their personality and talents. None of that is ever going to change. Me? I’d like to do research and I don’t much care whether it’s public or private sector. Realistically? I don’t know if it’s realistic! I have a few different backup plans, but if you have a goal, there are associated opportunity costs. Most students, even great students, don’t receive enough training at the undergrad level to know if they’re going to be at the top of their graduate level classes or not. A lot of very smart people trip up on this immediately and a lot of class clowns discover they have quite a knack for understanding organometallic chaperone activity and protein folding mechanisms and they’ll probably go on to cure Alzheimer’s. Most, like me, fall squarely in the middle. But by all means, prognosticate my life. Not only do I appreciate drinking from the infinite fountain of your clarity and wisdom on this subject, but if you’re indisputably right about it, then I don’t have to make any hard decisions in my life.
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This particular article is dealing with the number of PhDs, not the expansion of administration.
I believe the article correctly links the increasing problem of employment of PhDs with the expansion of administration. For example: “[O]ver the last several decades, universities have gone about expanding the ranks of professional administrators mainly by replacing permanent faculty with low-wage contingent faculty, a consequence of which is that a significant number of PhDs can no longer find employment at a living wage.”
When I did my PhD one of the administrators at the research office at the university (who made sure all the money you bought in with grants was mostly consumed by them instead of the actual research) had a PhD. It didn’t seem to make her more sympathetic to research problems though.
If someone with a PhD is looking for secure work you could always come to NZ. All our universities are pretty good and we don’t have tenure because in NZ once you have a job you can’t be fired anyway so a job you get is permanent from the get go. There are heaps of American lecturers working in our universities, and people from other countries also. Professor is a merit title here so you’d be known as lecturer until you climbed the hierarchy, or can come into the hierarchy at that level.
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My brother spent a year making fudge and being terribly embarrassed by everyone treating him extra nicely because he had a PhD. He got utterly sock of universities a few years later and now he’s a primary teacher.
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@AcerPlatanoides @ActionAbe
I apologize for the derisive tone of my previous comment.
Acer, I’ve certainly made mistakes and misses, this just happened not to be one of them; I dropped out of my PhD program after getting my MS (and yes, I do consider that a miss, even though I never expected to become a professor) for reasons unrelated to the academic job market. And I completely agree with you about PhDs versus bankers. I would much prefer to live in a world that had its priorities in order.
Abe, I agree about ridiculous job requirements pushing grad school on everyone who has that option. You clearly have your (primary and backup) plans in order, I didn’t mean to insult you. But there are plenty of people who never take the outside view, never consider the statistics, before deciding what risks they are comfortable with when making major life plans, and that is much harder for me to understand in a 22 year old prospective PhD student then it is in an 18 year old high school student.
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Kids! Save hundreds of thousands of dollars and improve your job prospects by learning a trade.
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I’ll only speak for history, but counted against tenure track jobs in the past couple of years vs. number of PhDs conferred, that is indeed the case. In their monthly magazine, the American Historical Association estimated that in recent years, while the degrees conferred are getting as high as almost 1200 a year, there are only about 600 or so tenure track jobs. I’m not sure if it includes primarily teaching positions at liberal arts schools (which may not have even MA programs in history, or at least MA terminal programs) or places like community colleges. And note here, that there was a recent study that noted that some half of the tenure track jobs are not going to people coming out of public institutions like me, but to people at elite schools. If you can have Yale, harvard, and Stanford grads on your faculty will make you look better to prospective students (no matter if these profs even know how to teach large survey courses to kids at public universities… )
Now, keep in mind, these are very specific jobs, at research universities, a lower teaching load (typically 2/2), and more expected research (here it’s writing a book and 2 articles - but everywhere is different), usually research funding, a sabbatical year to research/write, etc. The truth is not everyone wants a research heavy position, but are more than fine with teaching being their primary work. Honestly, the profession is still focused on that being the reality when for the majority of it, it’s not.
As for who is paying - the university is, often. How much they pay depends on how much they have to spend. I did not get a living wage for my stipend, so it’s lucky I’m married. The more phd students you have, the better you can look to the rest of the profession.
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First off, good luck! I too hope to finish this year! We should throw a party-thread when we’re both done dissertatin’!
Yeah, I’m sort of nervous about being older. I’m just hoping I can find something nearby!
