
Deprogramming From the Academic Cult - 13ren
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/1999/04/1999040901c.htm
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smanek
I find it funny that a PhD (modern European History) considers a 3 month
consulting gig earning 12K "lucrative." That's only ~48K/year ... after taking
inflation into account, I was making more without a bachelors.

Oddly, most of my friends pursuing graduate degrees in the hard sciences
aren't too worried about job prospects. From what I understand, it's almost
impossible for them to get a tenure track position at a decent university. But
most do have the option of working in their field in industry or just becoming
quants/traders in finance world.

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brentr
I have a bachelor's degree in finance. I am currently working on a bachelor's
degree in mathematics in preparation for a PhD in applied mathematics at,
hopefully, either Princeton or MIT. My ultimate goal is to get a quant job.
For certain types of PhD's, the job prospects continue to look very lucrative;
financial mathematics is one of those areas.

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fgimenez
The only examples given here are those of liberal arts degrees. Does this
happen as much in engineering or the sciences?

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hugh
To some extent. The big difference is this: if you leave the academic career
path with a PhD in ancient history or medieval basket weaving, you're pretty
darn-near unemployable and will probably wind up making $35K editing crummy
manuscripts for a fourth-rate publishing house (or doing three months work in
Moscow for $12,000 and calling it "lucrative"). But most of the folks I know
who've left the academic career path with a PhD in physics have jumped
straight into obscenely highly-paid jobs in finance, management consulting,
etc.

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msluyter
This article is from 1999, but everything I've read recently suggests that the
situation has only gotten worse. For a while I seriously considered getting a
Ph.D. in philosophy or psychology, but various articles like this one
convinced my of the insanity of that idea.

