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Post by Miss Anne Thrope on Dec 17, 2014 10:35:50 GMT -5
You could try for research jobs - government agencies/contractors (also looking for ethnographies and qualitative people), think tanks, institutional research at a university, often academic affairs etc- though these may be more in line with PhDs not undergrads.
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Post by none on Dec 17, 2014 10:38:21 GMT -5
Outside academia the concern is less with your major or discipline and more with your skills. If you have a solid methods foundation, know how handle large datasets (especially something that would get into the big data realm), and have some experience writing grants, you can get a job anywhere from a think tank to for profit policy evaluation firms. I even know sociology phds working at start up tech firms.
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Post by Beyond Saturated on Jan 20, 2015 13:32:32 GMT -5
So, we all know that there are far more applicants than sociology positions available right now. People are filling out 50+ applications at the expense of their teaching, research, and personal life. However, there seems to be no effort by graduate programs or professional associations such as the ASA to bring supply and demand into balance. Graduate programs are now admitting large numbers of grad students once again after a dip during the recession.
This is recklessly irresponsible on the part of colleges and professional associations. It's led to the adjunct crisis that we are all, or should be, familiar with.
Graduate programs need to be restructured. Most people will not end up in an R1, so there should be an equal focus on teaching. There should also be an emphasis on developing skills to work in government, non-profits, or conduct market research.
It is unrealistic to continue to emphasize "the discipline" when most people won't get jobs in it. Is anyone at the ASA or in R1 departments seriously discussing this crisis?
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Post by half and half on Jan 20, 2015 15:11:17 GMT -5
So, we all know that there are far more applicants than sociology positions available right now. People are filling out 50+ applications at the expense of their teaching, research, and personal life. However, there seems to be no effort by graduate programs or professional associations such as the ASA to bring supply and demand into balance. Graduate programs are now admitting large numbers of grad students once again after a dip during the recession. This is recklessly irresponsible on the part of colleges and professional associations. It's led to the adjunct crisis that we are all, or should be, familiar with. Graduate programs need to be restructured. Most people will not end up in an R1, so there should be an equal focus on teaching. There should also be an emphasis on developing skills to work in government, non-profits, or conduct market research. It is unrealistic to continue to emphasize "the discipline" when most people won't get jobs in it. Is anyone at the ASA or in R1 departments seriously discussing this crisis? I agree with your point about a saturated market, and I agree that doctoral programs should definitely do a better job of placing students at non academic positions. Perhaps more computational/research evaluation/etc. training. But I disagree that universities should restrict the number of incoming graduate students. That can create a death spiral (fewer graduate students lead to less graduate classes and less faculty at graduate departments, etc.) And I also disagree that there should be a teaching-focused degree. We should certainly make things more flexible, but the nature of prestige is such, and the nature of research is such that if you split the two (research focused degrees versus teaching focused degrees) you'd simply end up with a second class degree. Because even though that liberal arts college or that directional state university will have you spend 70% of your time teaching, they'd still prefer the research focused one (for the same reasons even small departments will have links and displays with books/publications by faculty but not for "pedagogical training.")
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Only 400 positions 2012-2022
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Post by Only 400 positions 2012-2022 on Jan 21, 2015 17:06:06 GMT -5
Perhaps this can add some context to the discussion. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics: "Employment of sociologists is projected to grow 15 percent from 2012 to 2022, faster than the average for all occupations. However, because it is a small occupation, the fast growth will result in only about 400 new jobs over the 10-year period. As a result, candidates should expect very strong competition for jobs." Yeah, I agree that there needs to be restrictions on incoming grad students given the context of the labor market. www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/sociologists.htm
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Post by half and half on Jan 21, 2015 17:42:29 GMT -5
Perhaps this can add some context to the discussion. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics: "Employment of sociologists is projected to grow 15 percent from 2012 to 2022, faster than the average for all occupations. However, because it is a small occupation, the fast growth will result in only about 400 new jobs over the 10-year period. As a result, candidates should expect very strong competition for jobs." Yeah, I agree that there needs to be restrictions on incoming grad students given the context of the labor market. www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/sociologists.htm' Ok. So let's say that the 10 largest programs, which according to the NRC for the 2002-2006 period ranged between Wisconsin (27 a year) to Texas A&M (15.8) decided to cut their enrollments by half. Since a lot fewer graduate classes will be taught, they'd likely would not be able to stay the same size (correlation between total number of graduate students and allocated faculty size is 0.7 in the nrc data). The cut in faculty numbers would likely not be proportional, but faculty sizes would certainly decrease, exacerbating the market situation. And while you are doing that, all that you have managed to do was move the bottleneck earlier. So instead of people complaining in this forum about the market, you'd have a bunch of undergrads complaining about it in the grad cafe or whatever. And that would then create pressure to decrease undergraduate programs. And so now you''ve just created a vicious circle. The solution to the market problem is not to move the bottleneck earlier. The solution is to make sociology degrees more versatile and better suited for non-academic opportunities.
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Post by er on Jan 22, 2015 23:10:16 GMT -5
^ Yeah, like departments actually read or even care about what gets said on the grad cafe forum. Besides, even if they complain for a while, it also means they don't get a PhD that wastes years of their life, and instead go work in insurance or sales or marketing or law enforcement or whatever. How is that even a problem?
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Post by half and half on Jan 22, 2015 23:18:12 GMT -5
^ Yeah, like departments actually read or even care about what gets said on the grad cafe forum. Besides, even if they complain for a while, it also means they don't get a PhD that wastes years of their life, and instead go work in insurance or sales or marketing or law enforcement or whatever. How is that even a problem? As opposed to how much they care about job market forums? And good job ignoring every other point. Because when I think what will make the sociology market really take off is if more of our majors went to law enforcement.
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Versatility of Sociology
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Post by Versatility of Sociology on Jan 28, 2015 13:10:24 GMT -5
Yes, making sociology degrees more versatile would be a great step, but it's not what the scholars in our discipline are focusing on. I don't think that admitting fewer graduate students would necessarily cause a bottle neck. It would actually even it out. You'd just have less over-qualified people working as adjuncts and whatever else they need to do to survive.
Again, you can't look at the numbers and not see the crisis.
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Post by agreed on Jan 28, 2015 14:17:46 GMT -5
Yes, making sociology degrees more versatile would be a great step, but it's not what the scholars in our discipline are focusing on. I don't think that admitting fewer graduate students would necessarily cause a bottle neck. It would actually even it out. You'd just have less over-qualified people working as adjuncts and whatever else they need to do to survive. Again, you can't look at the numbers and not see the crisis. This. I can't recall these numbers (or any current numbers) being pointed out to me during graduate school (I'm a recent grad). It's always been tight, but things have changed for the worse since the economic crisis. It's now time for the discipline to get its collective head out of the sand.
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Post by the funniest thing on Jan 28, 2015 15:04:12 GMT -5
is that this discipline prides itself on 'helping the working poor' , 'fighting the system', etc;. it's lol-zy
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Occupy the ASA/Grad programs
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Post by Occupy the ASA/Grad programs on Jan 30, 2015 19:43:16 GMT -5
Does anyone have #s on how many PhDs are granted/year, how many TT jobs open, and how many people end up as adjuncts? There is a major crisis here.
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Post by occupy data on Feb 2, 2015 22:03:45 GMT -5
^Look for posts by archivist here and read the ASA newsletter back issues for some numbers.
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Post by see the light on Mar 24, 2015 7:12:36 GMT -5
I'm surprised that sociologists would actually think that the academic labor market situation is caused by university departments and professional associations letting in too many students and not "bringing supply and demand into balance". It's surprising that sociologists would misunderstand the situation to be about a supply and demand problem at all. I'd recommend taking into account the larger context and also paying attention to the political economy of that context. There is obviously no demand problem for academic labor, as all of the adjuncts testify. It's not the case that there aren't enough jobs since any sociology PhDs can find work as a contract instructor. The problem is the quality of the jobs, i.e. the working conditions. The academic labor market has been affected in the same ways as all others in North America. There's been a shift to less skilled labor and temporary/short term contracts without benefits or stability. As a business management model has come to dominate university administration, there has been a intentional shift away from TT positions toward the use of contract labor and teaching only jobs (rather than teaching and research). The labor itself is in demand but the conditions of the labor are getting shittier and shittier. The shift from TT positions saves money on labor and weakens the power of academics in university governance. A smaller proportion of tenured faculty means fewer faculty who are not replaceable and have the security to oppose administration. Without a critical mass of tenured faculty, the faculty as a group lose power vis-a-vis the admin.
The solution (if there is one) is not to try and have the ASA bring supply and demand into balance, since there is no imbalance and the ASA has no power to control the admission decisions of individual departments anyway, which are actually determined by internal dynamics of their institutions. The only solution is the same as in any other industry: academics should fight together to improve working conditions for all (i.e. unionize). There is no demand and supply problem, the problem is making the jobs that exist better quality and more often tenure-track.
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Post by nice one on Mar 27, 2015 19:10:37 GMT -5
Completely agree, see the light!
Most of us have just swallowed the economic logic.
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