

Don't Go, Part 2: The Perils of Grad School in the Humanities - jseliger
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/03/2009031301c.htm

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jleyank
This can be extended beyond the humanities... Science and Engineering graduate
schools are under increasing risk as the job possibilities of their output is
reduced - reduction in DoD funding, outsourcing/offshoring, reduction in
commercial R&D funding, etc.

Yeah, the Boomers' retirement will help, but that's not going to occur in the
near term. Countries, somehow, have to be net job creators if they want to
keep the tax revenue coming in and the government cash going out.

~~~
jerf
It's just as skewed a perspective to look only at the negatives as it is to
only consider the positives.

Science and engineering may not be the paths to easy street, but at least
there's some sort of perfectly rational story as to how an engineer can get
paid: Someone pays the engineer to make stuff, and make stuff better, then
sells the stuff. Engineers can actually expand the economy, with new
resources, new things to do with those resources, better ways to use those
resources, and so on. Yes, there's up-and-coming competition, but it's not as
if we're going into that competition empty handed or as if the other side is
populated with some sort of superhumans or something (yet); it's just
_competition_. Cry about it if you must, but then get back to work.

For those with humanities degrees, and especially the PhDs we're really
talking about in the context of this story, they are, not to put too fine a
point on it, luxuries. Expenditures. Ones we're a bit overstocked on, too. And
they do _not_ grow the economy, their sustenance comes from producers.

This is not intrinsically bad. We have humanities PhDs in general for good
reasons. I am not trying to draw intrinsic "goodness" judgments from this
point, because that depends too much on your personal definition of goodness.
The point I _am_ trying to draw is that going into science and engineering in
general is going to be a stronger bet over time, because you're much closer to
the parts of the economy that generate economic value. The humanities majors
are at the end of a much longer chain, with every middleman taking their cut,
and too many of them trying to drink from the same hose. And what they
generate may be valuable to humanity, but... it's hard to eat a thesis on the
philosophical similarities between Marxist dialectic and Dingbellian
Hypertrophisms as manifested in the movie Titanic. And that's before we talk
about "oversupply", which drives the economic value of such things even lower.

I don't think science and engineering are particularly "increasing" in risk;
they've never been perfectly safe and they continue to not be perfectly safe;
I'm unconvinced the magnitude has changed much, it's just the delusions of
safety have been replaced by reality. Humanities is at increasing risk,
because in a contraction they're really, really easy to cut off, especially
when there's more than we need. And contractions happen.

(Remember, as raw and as rough as it may sound, _nothing_ is perfectly safe.
When something is portrayed as perfectly safe, _run screaming_. Someone is
either lying to you, or deluded, and neither is good. Engineering and science
are as good a bet as you're going to find over the next 25 years, but in
general, the closer you can get to generating value the better. You may get
parasites, but try to find ones smart enough to realize they have to let the
host live for it to work.)

~~~
timr
It's wrong to equate science and engineering in terms of productivity. They're
both technical disciplines, and a lot of what you learn as a scientist can be
applied to productive endeavors, but science in itself isn't inherently
productive.

Science is speculative. A good scientist is answering questions for the sake
of the questions, and doesn't expect anything for answering them. She
certainly doesn't expect to make something that can be sold for a profit.

~~~
jerf
Who's equating? I just said they're both more reliable than humanities; that
does not imply they are equal. You can overspecialize yourself out of a job in
science and engineering, but at least you stand a chance.

~~~
timr
You're implicitly equating them every time you use the phrase "science and
engineering", as if they were a dual entity. They're very different, and
you're _far_ more likely to be employable as an engineer than a scientist.
Totally different beasts.

~~~
jerf
No, I'm not.

My explicit disavowal trumps your implicit-ness argument.

Go back and read it. I haven't edited it since you posted this, and it's not
actually part of the point. It reads just fine without that.

~~~
timr
It doesn't really matter whether you explicitly made the comparison or not.
Science and engineering are totally different things, but you drew a bright-
line distinction between them (as a group) and the humanities.

It's far easier to find a job as an engineer than as a scientist. That's all
I'm saying.

------
jseliger
This, by the way, is of particular interest to me because I'm ignoring the
advice given in the article and am in grad school for English lit, as I
discuss tangentially <a
href="[http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-
di...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-distraction-
hardly-a-surprise/).

