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Post by market's fool on Jan 11, 2014 19:48:32 GMT -5
Following up on the McGill thread, I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread on just how surprised many of us, including those coming out of "top" departments, have been when going on the market. Superstars aside, there's just so much competition. When I went on the market a few years ago, I thought I would have a lot of bites (top PhD program, lots of pubs, extensive networks). I was wrong. I made a few long lists, fewer short lists, had two interviews, and one offer. I feel lucky, but, a few years in, entirely insecure about the whole experience. I would like to move up/on in a few years, but I'm not sure I want to put myself or my family through all of that again.
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Post by another fool here on Jan 11, 2014 20:13:07 GMT -5
Thanks for starting this thread. I think it's irresponsible for lower-tier programs to keep producing so many PhDs. It's bad enough that the top programs have giant cohorts and are cranking out sometimes a dozen or more new PhDs each year. Most of those folks will get some sort of job, although perhaps not the cushy R1 gig they envisioned/were promised. But at the lower level, it just seems morally wrong to tell people they'll have a good shot at employment. It's too many years, too much money, too much sacrifice to fool people like that.
The only thing I do to help is discourage all of my students from getting a PhD in sociology. Undgrad, fine, but I try to steer them into graduate training that will help them get a job someday, usually various MA programs, rather than PhDs. The only exceptions are students who can get into top 20 programs. And even then, it's a huge gamble with no promises.
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Post by Yup. on Jan 11, 2014 20:48:28 GMT -5
Another one here who was genuinely shocked by how competitive the market was this year, as were the members of a search committee in my department. We hired well 'above' what we expected to, and the candidates we interviewed but didn't hire were people who we would normally be expecting to reject us. It's sobering.
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Post by cautionary tale on Jan 11, 2014 21:34:09 GMT -5
In many ways I think my story is sort of a cautionary tale of market saturation. First time I went on the market was the year the market crashed. Literally half the positions I applied to cancelled their searches. But I got an on campus interview at a place that offered a masters and had a 3-3 teaching load. I decided I didn't want the position because, honestly, at the time I felt it was beneath what I could get. After all, if I was getting interviews at a place like that as an ABD with a bunch of R&R stuff, I would surely do better later, right? So I went back on the market the next year. Got an offer from a place that was at a more desirable location and with a higher salary than the previous one, though still teaching intensive, but ended up rejecting it, as I also had a postdoc offer. So again I thought "hey, the offers will be even better once I get a few more pubs and a postdoc under my belt." And then I went on the market twice more as a postdoc: no offers the first year, one offer the second. But here's the deal about that offer that I did get: it paid less in 2013 than the ones that I had gotten in 08 and 09, while also being even more teaching intensive. So even as my record became exponentially better, the offers I got became worse (decent masters place as ABD with one pub forthcoming, then decent teaching place as a graduating ABD with 2 pubs, and then very low salary, very teaching heavy place as a postdoc with 6 pubs and 1 best paper award).
I post this, even as it "out" me to people who know me, because I really think people can learn from it. The economy may be better and there may be more positions now, but there is such a glut of people out there that I literally did better on the market as an ABD with a single pub during the height of the recession than I did as an award winning, multi publications postdoc in the middle of the "Recovery." Seeing as things are not about to get better any time soon, I would heavily suggest that people do not put off going on the market or taking positions thinking it will get better, and do not balance their expectations based on what people have said about prior markets.
And I don't want to derail this into another "prestige" debate, I don't think lower tier programs are where people are struggling the most. In my limited experience, most of the unranked programs are very practitioner oriented (criminology/social work/clinical/family) and tend to not have as much of a problem placing people outside of academia. In my experience the places where people seem to be really struggling are the mid-tier programs that have traditionally been academically oriented.
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Post by me too on Jan 11, 2014 22:24:16 GMT -5
I've also been on the market several times. First year: selective search, some long lists. Second year: full search, one interview for a postdoc. I took the postdoc and now I'm on the market selectively again. Next fall it will be a full search again. My postdoc is in a related field-- one where, surprisingly, I am getting a lot of interest. I feel grateful that I have an alternative option to Soc, but I'm also feeling a great deal of loss over potentially leaving Soc.
Anyone else?
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Ethics of Mentoring
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Post by Ethics of Mentoring on Jan 11, 2014 23:25:20 GMT -5
Yes, even teaching at a selective SLAC, I feel it is borderline irresponsible to encourage any students, even the brightest of our most dedicated majors, to go on to PhD programs in sociology. Heck, "borderline" is a stretch. And it becomes a professional dilemma, because I want to encourage our brightest majors to work with me on my project, to want to present their work at regional conferences, to train them in high-quality research, etc. But with what goal? (Aka, what incentive do they have for doing these things?) That they could go on to PhD programs, to then eventually go on to this nerve-wracking job search, with who knows how much competition in another 6-10 years? As someone mentioned above, its a huge investment, and an incredible gamble. Its nice to think this could change, but seems unlikely. Yet it also feels wrong to deny students who want it the encouragement to pursue it. I guess we can only be honest. But I think more often than not, we all get so caught up in how great our own good students are that we lose sight of the systemic problems in academia and our discipline in particular. Just as the job market is glutted, I imagine that brighter and brighter students are increasingly getting in to "mid-tier" schools...that may often train and mentor people just as well as "top-tier" schools. But where are all these fantastic folks to go when the time comes?
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Post by Top 10 blues on Jan 11, 2014 23:25:22 GMT -5
In the last couple of years, I've seen peers in top ten programs thrilled to land a TT position at a community college. I don't have any problem with community colleges, but that scenario would have been unheard of ten years ago. Maybe even five years ago. Things have really changed and reducing expectations seems important.
It would be helpful for departments to reduce the amount of time to PhD, given the low return on investment and the loss of income that goes along with being in grad school for years and years. It would also be nice if top programs would stop denigrating those who take "lesser" jobs. Outside of the superstars, those who can land any TT job in this day and age should be applauded, rather than looked down upon because they didn't land an R1.
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Top 20 is the new Top 10
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Post by Top 20 is the new Top 10 on Jan 11, 2014 23:42:31 GMT -5
I don't disagree with most of what is being said. The interesting thing is that faculty who are partially responsible for this system are not really in a position to see what is going on in the same way as their PhD students will see it. That is, the profs at mid-level PhD programs (let's say 25-60th ranked) have GREAT jobs that are highly sought after, and many of them come from top 20 programs themselves. As such, they don't really understand the experience of their students on the market because they got a great job, probably are well compensated, on 2-2 or better, etc.
As long as at least one PhD student in the program is getting a good job and others are getting any job, and the rest are taking non-academic jobs (because academia isn't for everyone in their minds) then I think they think they can work toward getting their students better jobs with better students, better funding, etc. The reality is that PhD output is expanding while institutions are reducing their need for PhDs, by eliminating lines, or at least not creating new lines, and therefore it remains highly competitive both at the top but also in the middle.
Plenty out there will get jobs and some will get great jobs, but any illusion about getting a PhD and being "set for life" because of that degree is mostly gone.
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Post by Truly stunning on Jan 12, 2014 1:04:09 GMT -5
Just wanted to thank you all for sharing your experiences. It is truly sad to see students with records that would have been unbelievable ten years ago strike out on the market. I agree with an earlier poster that anyone in a position to advise prospective Ph.D. students should tell them just don't go.
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Post by Hopkins on Jan 12, 2014 8:06:20 GMT -5
Johns Hopkins is going to actually try and do something about it.
Basically they are dramatically cutting back on their grad programs, in particular the numbers in programs. They are going to a model of a small number of grads and investing heavily in them.
The Irony is that Grad students and faculty have strongly protested the changes.
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Post by Pyramid? on Jan 12, 2014 12:12:49 GMT -5
Grad programs are a pyramid scheme if the only desirable outcome is a faculty position. Obviously, whatever the state of the academic market, there will always be far, far fewer positions for professors than for students.
So I think the question has to be whether grad school can be justified, for the typical student (or for whatever kind of student one is interested in), for the total benefits it brings to one's life on the assumption that a faculty position is off the table. Obviously, a very key part of that is what other kinds of jobs one becomes qualified for by doing a Ph.D. in sociology.
I don't think it's helpful to view this only through the lens of the academic market, since 1) even in a good market (unless it's a temporarily expanding academic market, as in a brief period of the postwar educational boom), there can never be 'enough' academic jobs for all the grad students, and 2) in general, the academic market and non-academic market will tend to rise and fall together.
I.e., it's fine to say, "Don't go to grad school," but if someone's options in the short term are to work in a coffee shop or have a TA-funded slot in grad school, why shouldn't they go? The question is how grad school can be useful to them. And if the answer is that it would need to be extremely different from the academic-professionalization model that we have, where does that leave us? What should universities do?
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Post by Honestly on Jan 12, 2014 12:35:23 GMT -5
^I think you've answered your own question. It's a sign of the failure of higher ed and our discipline that the decision sociology majors face today is to work for peanuts as TAs perpetuating the academic pyramid scheme or to work as baristas. The worst part is that the blame for this falls squarely on us; as a (former) sociology grad at a major public research university, I saw the sausage being made: big name professors rarely teach, the best grads get NSFs while the 9th and 10th year PhDs become pseudo lecturers living on 20k while teaching year round. I would never let my child major in sociology at a place like that, basically a diploma mill that will credential them to brew lattes and little else.
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Post by Pyramid, again on Jan 12, 2014 13:27:32 GMT -5
I don't think it's right to lay the shitty economy (and thus the shitty job prospects of sociology majors) at the hands of our field. It's true that some majors end up with better job prospects than others (Engineering vs. Classics), but in every field, the best people can find meaningful work and others are ending up, to their surprise, unemployed. I think it makes more sense to ask why we don't have greater national investments in things like education, health services (we spend so much money on health care, but so much is to insurance companies), and other aspects of public infrastructure that would also create many jobs.
My point is that the bad job market isn't just a bad job market for sociologists. It's a bad job market full stop, unless you're in finance. And I don't think it's adequate to then say, "Well, everyone should go into finance instead of sociology!"
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Post by Yes but on Jan 12, 2014 13:41:34 GMT -5
^ The problem is that there are lots of PhDs who are totally qualified but can't find work. It's an oversimplification to say that sociology is a meritocracy where the best rise to the top and those who don't fail. Some of the "best" people find meaningful work, others do not. And there are plenty of folks who manage to get jobs who may lack the qualifications (publication record, teaching history, etc) of those who do not get jobs. Add to that the fact that there is an overproduction of PhDs for these jobs. SCs now receive hundreds of applications for a single position, and many will attest that a huge percentage of these applicants are qualified. There are too many "best" folks out there, given the number of jobs. Departments are being irresponsible and need to address this head on by reducing cohort size a la Johns Hopkins.
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Post by cautionary tale on Jan 12, 2014 13:49:20 GMT -5
Let me agree with Pyramid here. Most non-applied, academically oriented fields are experiencing many of the same pains as sociologists are, be them astrophysics or comparative literature. Hell, in some of the more hyperspecialized fields in the "hard sciences" things are even worse: most universities will at least offer soc 101. If you go through the fields that are struggling, the thing that becomes clear is that the fields that place more people outside academia (business in general, econ, the different engineering fields) are the ones who are in best shape.
I would also like to add that in regards to the "advise students to go to grad school or not" debate, I think it is fairly uncontroversial to say that people with advanced degrees in soc are at least doing better that people with just a BA in soc.
Which to me says that the way out of this mess is not to reduce number of PhDs enrolled (especially since that would also necessarily mean a reduction in PhDs being hired -> fewer grad classes->fewer positions). The way out would be to help students get more jobs outside academia. The explosion in "big data" and "data scientists" would be a good place to start, for example.
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