
Thesis Hatement - jseliger
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/04/there_are_no_academic_jobs_and_getting_a_ph_d_will_make_you_into_a_horrible.single.html
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crusso
Don't most of us think, "Duh?" to an article proclaiming that getting/being a
PhD in Literature is hard and mostly pointless?

Upper level education costs a lot of money and involves years of time, don't
these people think about what they want to do with their lives? Don't they do
at least cursory research into what that degree will mean to their careers?

Every high school has some sort of career counselor. Colleges have many of
them. These days, research on the Internet (these are pre-PhD Lit students,
don't they know how to Google?) makes it simple to look up salaries,
opportunities to be hired, personal stories from those in the career, etc.

Maybe this trend toward people realizing that many degrees are near useless is
just a result of the economy and tougher times finally making the practicality
of education paramount. It seems a shame that you need bad circumstances for
people to evidence some common sense, though.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
No. Up until very recently (the most recent recession, perhaps), simply having
a college degree was thought of as being a road to a comfortable middle class
life. To this day career counselling focuses almost completely on interests
and lifestyle and ignores salary. Unless a student has a mentor to guide them,
it is very easy to go through college blistfully unaware of the realities that
exist once you are in the job market.

~~~
crusso
I don't agree with your assessment that this is a completely recent
phenomenon.

"Is a college degree enough?" was a pervasive question when I got out of
undergrad in 1991 since we were in a recession. My placement center and many
magazines had "What is this degree worth?" compilations. This same information
has been available online for at least the last 10+ years.

Ironically, I always thought of myself as being pretty blissfully unaware and
unthoughtful of my own career and where I was headed... but I knew what my
salary and job prospects were for my career before I settled on my major when
I was a Sophomore in college.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Sounds like you were a much better planner than most college students. I don't
think that salary research is of much help for 18 year olds. It's hard to
gauge what a good salary is at that age. This is where mentorship and
parenting can be of great help. But we're still at a point where a minority of
adults have college degrees so many parents believe sending college is the
silver bullet to a good life.

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pc86
To be fair, this post is about a _literature_ Ph.D., not one in a field like
Mathematics or Computer Science. Not that the job outlook is a lot rosier on
that side, but it's an important distinction to be made.

~~~
throwaway1979
I think we should clarify that the research-job outlook is not rosy in CS.
There are plenty of corporations that want to hire CS PhDs for non-research
work. And there is always the entrepreneurial route (the smart VCs aren't
going to hold the PhD against you).

~~~
as_if
In Germany there are plenty research-jobs, but most of them in civil service,
so no CS-PhD want it. The industry just pays much better.

Last year there was something in the news about the payment of professors,
which was about $5000 a month. This is an entry level pay of a software
developer (without Master or PhD) in Germany.

~~~
roel_v
"...which was about $5000 a month. This is an entry level pay of a software
developer (without Master or PhD) in Germany."

Where? I'm near what, as I understand it, is considered a good area for high-
tech workers (Ruhr area), but I don't see many jobs paying this much (maybe
I'm looking in the wrong places?)

~~~
as_if
I'm from Stuttgart, made my B.Sc. in 2011 and make about $5500 (~4220€) am
month as a GUI-Dev. When I read the "IT-Payment" polls in the news I get the
impression this isn't nearly as much as it could be. :D

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tokenadult
For an informative retitle, how about "Literature Ph.D. means no jobs and you
become worse person," which is well within the HN character limit for titles?
That seems adequately to summarize the article.

(I had to try this, because rewriting a title is a mere exercise for a
humanities major like me who used to work as an editor.)

~~~
lhnz
I'm not sure if I'd trust you to do that, because I heard you were a
humanities major.

Aside, I'm sure there are a lot of STEM graduates here congratulating
themselves on both their employablity and their superior moral character.
Upvote!

Your title rewrite is missing a word by the way. :)

Edit; I got downvoted for saying what now appears in the top comment. Tut.

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Millennium
Going full academic can indeed ruin a person, but there's a way to prevent
that: a social circle that includes at least some people who are not
academics. They can provide emotional support while you're earning your
degree, drag you out of the ivory tower every once in a while (kicking and
screaming, if they must) both before and after the degree, and generally keep
you grounded enough to remember that you are not, in fact, on a higher plane
of existence. That's valuable.

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throwaway1979
What a bad article. First, a humanities PhD has little relation (from a career
and financial perspective) to a STEM PhD. So I don't understand why this link
is on Hacker News. Second, while I complain about the relatively-not-high
compensation and limited opportunities available to CS PhDs, it isn't that bad
if you graduated from a top 10-20 program. Lets stop it with the PhD bashing
already.

\- a CS PhD

~~~
lallysingh
The article is specifically about literature PhDs. I don't know why that isn't
in the title here.

~~~
throwaway1979
The 3 people I know with lit PhDs had full-time jobs/careers and did the PhD
for love of the subject rather than anything else. None of them expected to
get a tenure-track faculty job - an adjunct teaching appointment at the local
college from time to time was more in line with what these people wanted.

~~~
pc86
Don't most community colleges accept a Master's for adjunct positions?

Not that love of subject is a bad reason to get a PhD, but if the end goal is
teaching a local course every now and then, you could presumably do that after
you have the MS and (potentially) while pursuing the PhD, right?

~~~
throwaway1979
True for community college. Universities typically prefer PhDs when they are
hiring adjuncts. Also, to reiterate, for the lit PhD people I knew, the end
goal was personal satisfaction - not a lucrative adjunct job :-p Some people
just love their subject and share it with others. Teaching is a wonderful
opportunity to do that.

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16s
I know several electrical engineering professors (PhD's from Carnegie Mellon,
etc). They have no issue getting jobs at universities or in private sector.
They are paid very well too.

~~~
knieveltech
I'm glad to hear job prospects for EE's have improved. I remember a time about
12 years ago when a graduate degree in EE and a buck would get you a newspaper
and a shitty cup of coffee. Nothing like getting introduced to the new-hire at
our shitty 2nd shift call center only to find out they've got a doctorate and
10 years of job experience and ended up having to take a gig in tech support
just to feed their family.

~~~
rollo_tommasi
This may only be the case for CMU EE PhD's. In today's winner-take-all
economy, graduates of top programs have all the options; anyone who isn't a
superstar generally has to eat shit.

~~~
16s
Grads from big state universities with a technical focus do pretty well too.

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bjourne
The point of life is not maximal profitability. Well, it is ok if your life
is, but other people may have other viewpoints. Thankfully, the world is set
up in such a way that I can easily derive a living from coding which I love to
do. Are my contributions to humanity; optimized database queries, gui fixes,
systems that my employer sell, etc more valuable than what a literature PhD
does? Is it only the work that generates the most profits that is valuable?

If one adheres to the utilitarian philosophy, I think it is easy to see that
there is a problem. If the goal is to maximize happiness, then it would
clearly be better if people who love to read and discuss books can do that as
much as possible instead of doing something that makes them unhappy. How would
you solve the problem?

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georgecmu
She goes on about her hopeless job search, but she never mentioned _where_ she
got her degree (Department of German at the University of California-Irvine).

I wonder if her perspective were different had she graduated from an Ivy.

~~~
freyr
"After four years of trying, I’ve finally gotten it through my thick head that
I will not get a job—and if you go to graduate school, neither will you."

Clearly, her personal experience can be extrapolated to everyone everywhere
looking for a tenure track literature professorship. If she can't do it,
nobody else should bother trying.

I wouldn't have hired her either.

~~~
cdjk
True, the article is heavy on personal experience, but the numbers really
don't look good if you want to be a tenured professor in the humanities. Just
look at the number of open positions each year compared to the number of
graduates. And don't forget to include the graduates from all the previous
years who also want the one tenure-track job in early modern literature (or
whatever your field is).

Yeah, the success rate for startups is low, but at least there are different
routes to success (side project, bootstrapping, angel, VC, etc). If you want
to be a professor the only option is to get a job at a university.

------
rmk2
This is the perfect article to be submitted to HN. Because it brings out the
worst in HN. The saturated, self-congratulatory, better-than-thou crowd that
is smug about their income, prospects and _worth_. Many here already believe
that everything that isn't programming or engineering is virtually worthless
and should be killed. This reinforces them.

But credit where credit is due: Academia, especially in the humanities, is
everything but cosy. There is little money in it, there are few available
positions.

However, being a slight bit along the same way as the author, I can only relay
what I see around me every day. From the group of PhD students around me, how
many hold any illusions as to what academia means? None that I have met. Out
of a group of ~10 people, some almost finished, some at the beginning (this is
not in the US, so everyone has done a masters or equivalent before), nobody
wants to become a professor. One wants to become (and judging by how she's
doing, she will be) a curator, I see people interested in broadcasting,
teaching (as in: school), publishing and politics. It might be different in
the US, I do not know. But here, it is painfully obvious to everyone I meet as
to what the chances are to land a faculty position.

Do _I_ care? To a degree (no pun intended). Would I like to go into academia?
Yes. Do I know what that means? Yes. I write quickly, I enjoy a wide range of
topics, I don't mind giving talks etc. I am flexible. Would I have to move if
I wanted to go down that route? Yes. Does that bother me? No, it really
doesn't. I will give it its fair shot, I will finish the PhD, and I will have
a look around for post-doc positions. If it doesn't work? Fair enough,
publishing or IT or something else it is.

I am not terribly bothered about money, not because I am somehow well off, but
because I do not particularly care. I don't need that much to be happy. As
long as I will be able to buy books and music here and there, go out every now
and then and have a somewhat nice flat somewhere, I will be fine. I would like
to be able to have dog, though.

I don't understand the vitriol on HN, I really don't. Everytime the humanities
come up, there are the same type of comments, comparing software development
entry salaries to professors, talking about student debt etc. Many here seem
to be _incapable_ (or unwilling) to even acknowledge that their own set of
values is _not universal_ , that not everybody wants to make it or even cares
about making it.

In many ways, I qualify for things here, I dabble in programming, I use
LaTeX/Emacs/org-mode for all my work, I use Linux permanently, write my own
shell-scripts, report bugs etc. That does not mean I would necessarily like to
be a programmer. HN is obsessed with making money and in doing so forgets that
not everyone shares the same worldview.

I'm sure I will be fine. I do not have any student debt, I will start doing
whatever it is I will be doing with a clean slate, I owe no money and I see my
experiences as everything but lost time. I love what I am doing, and It would
be a pity to give it up. If I have to, I will, but until then, I'll see where
it'll take me.

P.S.: I'm doing German now (though I have done other European languages
before). Just like the original author. Her choice of topic probably didn't
help her overall feelings about her position, either. Kafka is one of those
authors about whom so much has been done that it is hard to approach him
without a huge amount of preconceptions.

e: syntax

~~~
michael_miller
Very well said. At the risk of taking away from your original point, going
into academia (especially a non-engineering field) can give you a very
different perspective and release you from the tech mindset. As an example,
the CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, has a PhD in German social philosophy. How the
hell did he end up leading a billion-dollar tech company? Basically he was
really smart, and his PhD gave him the framework to think about privacy and
civil liberties concerns, something the company desperately needed. The
humanities often give us the scaffolding we need to answer really hard social
problems which are neglected by the tech community, but are extremely
important.

~~~
droithomme
"the CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, has a PhD in German social philosophy"

To be fair we should note that Palantir is a CIA operation whose job is to
help the US military destroy indigenous peoples world wide in prep for western
corporations to come in and exploit local resources.

Pretty much everybody at Palantir (such as Mr. Miller) reads HN regularly
though since they post here all the time to promote and justify their
company's fine work in suppressing people. The German social philosophy angle
fits right in there.

Love the work you guys do attacking journalists and threatening their
families. Real classy.

<http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/palantir/>

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jpdoctor
GMAFB, the HN title omits the word "Literature" from the "Getting a Literature
PhD" This looks a lot like the folks at slate are blogspamming.

I wish HN admins would require approval on any sites with submitted content
like slate, extremetech etc. Those guys are a whole lot of noise without much
signal.

~~~
wyclif
The title was too long and exceeded the HN limit.

~~~
jpdoctor
That's one possibility. The other is that the submitter chose to retain
clauses which would increase hits at the expense of wasting a lot of people's
time.

How many people would bother with an article telling us that academic jobs for
Literature PhDs are hard to find?

~~~
wyclif
While that's possible, I thought HN was being a lot more strict about
submission titles lately. I know I've had a few of mine changed immediately
(and I'm talking about those I edited for clarity, not linkbaiting).

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omnisci
Uhh, I may get hated on for this one and it doesn’t help that I just got out
of a meeting with a bunch of academics, so I’m kind of annoyed right now, BUT,
take note that I'm a PhD working in an academic environment.

[angry bold]Stop whining and start working. [/]

This article is one of the many articles, blogs, etc I’ve read from academics
complaining that there are no jobs and how it's so hard, and OMG the hours are
long, and why is this happening to me, and waaaaaaaaaa, I'm a victim. I
_literally_ have 2 of them talking about this right now across from me as I’m
typing this. You know what they aren’t doing? Working (says the guy who is
typing on hacker news:) ). Stop complaining and start being the best. Every
academic that I have a lot of respect for was able to get a job. They are also
the ones that work their asses off, networked, give talks, and play the game
correctly. Being “smart” doesn’t get you a job, regurgitating papers isn’t
what makes a good faculty member and thinking that you deserve a job because
you have PhD does NOT quality for a job. Simple as that.

Yes, there are very few jobs and way to many PhDs. But, I’d bet that statistic
would look much different if you looked at people who actually work smart
,play the game and have some business sense. When you have no business
experience at all, and only have been through school with your parents paying
your way , well..yeah, it’s an eye opening experience that working is hard.
Deal with it, stop complaining and go work harder/better than anyone in your
field or work at starbucks.

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jseliger
This is my own essay on grad school in English lit:
[http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-
kno...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-before-
you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and-
opportunity-costs/) , the short version of which is "Don't go, and friends
don't let friends go."

~~~
CurtMonash
You might want to clean up the "being to be" typo. :)

~~~
jseliger
Thanks! Done.

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lallysingh
Yikes. Applying FOL to Kafka, how... well let's just say recursive.

I think a labor shortage in some academic fields is a good thing. CS has been
good to me, and I may eventually get over what I had to do to get my PhD, but
if there wasn't a good job waiting for me, I don't see why I'd blow the
opportunity cost on it.

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kyle_martin1
Sensational and over generalizing title. This should be downvoted for being
misleading. Of course a PhD in literature is going to have almost zero
prospective jobs. There's no demand. I'm a EE and in the engineering world
this is certainly not the case.

~~~
wyclif
Read the title and subheading on the original article, not the HN parent. It
was too long and exceeded the HN character limit, and had to be edited. This
is about Ph.Ds in the humanities, not the Ph.D in general.

~~~
kyle_martin1
Well then the HN title should've reflected that somehow...

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liedra
Sounds like someone's bitter. Or trying to stave off competition. :)

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dmm
> the disciplines that comprised a college education in its > entirety for
> thousands of years, but whateve

I would love to study the humanities. One of my favourite classes in college
was British Lit. But universities are just too damn expensive. If I'm going to
spend ten of thousands on an education it's going to be one that can pay off
loans.

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tatsuke95
I can only assume the prospects get worse with the movement towards online
classes and learning. How many 101 classes can't be taught nearly exclusively
online? That will reduce the demand for PhDs and supply of positions further.

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CurtMonash
One point not covered -- suppose you do get an academic job. Where will it be
located? Now suppose you have a spouse with a career of his/her own. Where
does s/he want to live and work?

Oops.

------
ommunist
She should start writing horror PC and Xbox game design pitches. And I like
the illustration. EA should make her the offer.

