Give me some time to crawl out from this enormous pile of crap.
How long does it take to type "Don't blow the wrong people"?
The prof for my ethics seminar told us all about the shitty job market today, although, in granting that talent would in fact play a role, however small, in whether or not any given one of us got a job, he seemed optimistic compared to some sources in the online world.
Oh, and thanks for the well-wishing.
The job market is still good as long as you find a discipline in which...
...the guys who print the money (the Federal Reserve) want to hire huge numbers of your graduate students...
...the business schools (which continue to defy logic, sanity, and right reason by growing like... like... like...) want to hire huge numbers of your graduate students...
...you can keep people in nearby disciplines from competing for your jobs by an aggressive and pointlessly excessive use of mathematical overformalization...
Otherwise? In academia: up, creek, paddle.
In academia: up, creek, paddle.
Don't you mean "up, creek"?
THIS IS OUR OOL. NOTICE THERE IS NO "P" IN IT.
...the business schools (which continue to defy logic, sanity, and right reason by growing like... like... like...)
Which other educational institutions offer the prospect of huge wads of cash for the marginally qualified?
Other than the White House, that is.
I believe that the market for new PhDs in philosophy is much better than that for new PhDs in, say, English, at least for elite PhD-granting institutions like w-lfs-n's and mine. That isn't to say that it is satisfactory, but there's a distinction to be drawn as far as how far you go up the creek.
Also, I believe Prof. Delong meant "pointlessly excessive overuse of mathematical overformalization..."
Don't you mean "up, creek"?
He meant ∂paddle/∂creek < 0.
Which other educational institutions offer the prospect of huge wads of cash for the marginally qualified?
Certainly many institutions offer the prospect, even if they don't offer the reality. And with law schools proliferating, getting into one of them doesn't put up much of a barrier.
13, part 2. I disagree sir. Your proposal, that is, your recommendation or idea, leads to redundancy.
I believe that the market for new PhDs in philosophy is much better than that for new PhDs in, say, English, at least for elite PhD-granting institutions like w-lfs-n's and mine.
For what little it's worth, this is my impression as well. And Weiner is a professional. Also, thanks largely to the efforts of Brian Leiter (hate to say, but you gotta credit the guy), philosophy departments offer more transparency about placement than usual in the humanities. Brad is of course correct than entering the academic humanties job market is abotu as appealing as taking a dog to your senior prom. With philosophy, at least it's a sexy dog.
And there's always opportunities in the booming field of busines ethics! Seriously, what gives with the expansion of business schools? Most elite education is 50%+ signalling mechanism, sure; but crikey, business school is all signalling mechanism. There's got to be a lower cost way to network than taking two years off the job. I should start a nightclub where to get past the bouncer you need high GMATs and a recent psychological test indicating substantial ambition.
Give me some time to crawl out from this enormous pile of crap.
Hard to type with a cock in one's mouth, Ogged.
Have I got an act for yoy. It's called—"The Academics"!
There's got to be a lower cost way to network than taking two years off the job.
Go to school part time at night while your employer pays for it? Sure, it's working 60+ hour weeks for 4+ years, but what the hey, right?
/bitter
1. Was that really Brad?
2. Philosophy: a friend of mine at Texas was told something like 10-15 years ago that the phil market was saturated and that he should major in some other field. This was a humane way of keeping people in the bottom half of the class from slaving away to get useless, recommendationless PhD's, but it's also a little like protecting a monopoly by reducing production.
3. Also at Texas, the same friend was given a B (not good at all for a grad student) because he critiqued the teacher's central ideas, rather than working within them. The teacher, who had Nozickian sympathies, claimed somewhere along the way that there was an implied contract when you started the course that required that, for sake of argument, you accept his major premises. (He also made it clear that he really didn't want to teach at all, but only to write, and that his teaching was partly because of external pressure and partly a gracious gift on his part.)
4. #2 and #3 together suggest to me that the commendable efforts of philosophy departments to ensure jobs for their graduates were accompanied by a constriction of the scope of philosophy.
5. When I'm assured that philosophy is relevant to the real world, I'm usually told about the contributions of logic, language phil, and phil of mind to AI, computer science, and linguistics. This is all fine, but philosophy used to be a comprehensive or inclusive discourse, rather than one of the components of an area of engineering.
6. Thak you for your attention.
Brian Weatherson's data about placement, which is what I was relying on for my relatively optimistic assessment, suggest that Texas doesn't place quite as well as other top departments; Brian W suggests that this may be because it admits more people. (I know absolutely nothing about the department.)
Anyway, I'm violently in favor of protecting our monopoly by reducing production--if we didn't overproduce PhDs, then PhDs would have lots more leverage on the job market (for the same reason that oil prices would go up when OPEC cut production). In fact, I think that a coordinated reduction of production might alleviate the constriction of philosophy as John describes it; the harder it is to find a job, the more pressure there is for PhDs to work on a topic that people will instantly recognize.--That's not really to contradict John's point 4, but to say that 4 (if it is a real effect) only operates against the background of a tough job market.
So I'm going to go to school for four years and spend a ton of money getting a degree that everyone else in the nation has from an institution whose name doesn't open doors, fail miserably to find a job in a buyer's market, and never be able to afford a house, much less a house that I'd want to live in.
Jeez. Things were looking so promising when I was sixteen.
If you spend your summers apprenticing on an organic farm, you'll have skills ready for when civilization collapses?
You'll feel better about it all after you turn 21?
Did they not give you all your financial aid back, L.? That really sucks.
However, we're not talking about going to school for four years and failing miserably to find a job. Eight years, absolute minimum, or thirteen in my case.
I think ogged should get on the killer dolphin story.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1577753,00.html
They gave me most of my financial aid back, but I don't get the National Merit stuff anymore. And Tulane seems to be under the impression that I should be paying their tuition anyway.
So I'm going to go to school for four years and spend a ton of money getting a degree that everyone else in the nation has...
I thought you were looking at doing something practical, and on a free ride scholarship? Econ, Finance, pure math (well, that *could* be practical).
If it helps, I had a degree in Creative Writing and got a job, and then another one, and yet a third, bought a house, etc. You too can slave away at a job you only sorta like to try to buy things you don't really need, chugging away on a treadmill hoping to someday have enough money to not retire into povery.
30 written before reading 29. That sucks, L.
I think ogged should get on the killer dolphin.
I think the killer dolphin should get on Ogged.
Sorry to hear that about the aid, L. Can one of the local lawyers offer an opinion about whether Tulane is a position to do anything if L. sends them a letter saying, "Since there ain't no school, I ain't paying you no money"?
As for academia, we love to complain, but I'm pretty sure I'd do it over again. There can be a lot of rewards. If you want to have control over where you live academia isn't for you, but you do get to sleep late sometimes.
Anyway, you're a freshman, you shouldn't be worrying about this yet at all. Party! When you're a sophomore you can start getting to know your profs for grad school recommendations.
OK, 33 shows you've got the right idea. Now we'll work on the "Hanging around in cyberspace with a bunch of guys who might be dirty old men if they were more outgoing" problem.
I was thinking he could patrol the oceans avenging the downtrodden.
Don't need money / Don't need fame / Don't need no credit card to ride this killer dolphin
Well, I might be a dirty old man too, if I was dirty and old and a man.
L. Are you planning on returning to Tulane in the spring or next year? Because, if you are, you shouldn't have to pay tuition to the place that you're studying at now. If you've decided to make a clean break of it with Tulane, then you just withdraw.
It's strong and it's sudden and it's cruel sometimes / But it might just save your life
That's the power of the killer dolphin, Matt.
SLOWRIDE
nuh nih, nuh nuh-nuh
ON A DOLPHIN
nuh nuh, nuh nuh-nuh
I guess Huey Lewis isn't as hard to slot in as the Scorpions.
you may not drive
a great big Cadillac
Gangsta whitewalls
TV antennas in the back
you may not ride
a killer dolphin
but remember brothers and sisters
you can still go golfin'
You're making another like-mention error.
In 44.
Or else you're just teasing me.
Chops, 44 was in re this. The question of whether the Scorpions or Huey Lewis is better is one I'd really rather not have to think about.
I think Chopper was refering to their respective resistance to insertion.
You say that's your dolphin
You say I'm out of line
Funny… he said I could call him up anytime
You can say I'm wrong say I ain't right
But if that's you dolphin he wasn't last night
Hm. OK, I think I vote for Huey Lewis. (Come to think of it, isn't Short Cuts relevant here?)
re 49. Ah. I thought you were responding to 43, and mixing up Foghat and the Scorps.
One day we'll all have to get together to hash out exactly what we are talking about.
I won't dance
in a club like this
'cuz all the girls are sluts
and the dolphins taste like piss
Look at Killer Dolphin
Dancing with Maureen
Don't worry, L, it's America and everything works out for the best no matter how miserable your college years are. Just look at ogged!
I do think it's a great question why higher education costs so damn much. $40,000 for a year at Syracuse? That's obscene. 40 grand buys a lot human capital improvement. For 40 grand you could pay someone to give you a fascinating internship, and still have money left over to get personal kung fu lessons from Donnie Yen.
On John Emerson's #2, I agree with Matt that limiting supply of Ph. Ds, globally in the humanities would be a good deal for both grad students and undergrads. But as universities and tenured faculty subsist on their slave labor, it is unlikely to happen.
I'd been going to make a comment cheering your pick of "Fingertips" as your blog's theme song and wax effusive in a TMBG-partisan sort of way, but now I don't know. Maybe instead I should spread rumors that you wake each morning to Debbie Gibson tunez.
L., I feel you - the restrictions on who can get National Merit are total bullshit. I would say fight them if you can (maybe you already have). Because of a bunch of crappy bureaucratic restrictions and a late decision about where I would go to college, I ended up getting no money for having done all the work for the National Merit stuff. I'm still pissed about it, not that the money matters, it's the principle, damnit?
It's stupid to me that this thing (National Merit Scholarship) that is supposed to be on of the nation's premier honors and is not supposed to be college-specific ends up getting some people nothing.
I don't know jack about the restrictions on National Merit, but I'd guess that someone who lost their NMS because Katrina made her transfer out of Tulane would have the absolutely best case for fighting it. They might not like the headlines. (If that's not the deal, never mind.)
I also don't know jack about it, but was guessing that Minnesota had n NM scholarships to give away, and gave L.'s to someone else when she enrolled at Tulane.
Weiner, I am so tempted to talk Steelers trash right now it's not even funny. Also, when you wait 10 min before hitting post, the thread leaves you behind, man.
62- yeah, there are a fixed number of scholarships that they give out, you don't automatically get one based on scoring above a certain level. Which I found out senior year, much to my annoyance.
Sorry baa, my trash-talking on the blog this year is all directed at Chopper, who asked for it. See ya in the playoffs, I expect.
Mmhm. I remember being vastly disappointed by NMS (Although I can't quite remember what the process was. What I seem to remember is that you had to have scores at a certain level, but then all the scholarships were for something specific, like children of Norwegian fishermen, or students attending a particular school. Nothing that you could become entitled to simply by virtue of high scores alone. That seems as if it can't be right, in retrospect -- L., how does that work?)
62: If L. had one in Louisiana and she loses it because she had to leave the state, I still think that looks bad for the NMS people. Unless they want to try to say "We're saving the money to rebuild...."
I don't think she had one at Tulane. I think she had one at Minn., which she turned down to go to Tulane, and then when she came back to Minn. the NMS was gone.
66, some of the scholarships are limited to certain groups, or you need to have a parent who works for DuPont or something, but the rest are for people who just score high. Well, not only that, you have to send in your grades, write an essay, and get recommendations. Sort of like applying to college.
Well, I thought that might be it. Just working out the hypotheticals. OK, sucks to be you, L., except insofar as you're 18 and in college and... [goes to lie down]
I just read the first two chapters of this. Maybe we can quantify L.'s loss in well-being? Like, for what values of r and θ did her well-being decrease by r cis θ?
LB's got it about right. National Merit is mostly only good for institution- and corporate-sponsored scholarships that are linked with it. To be eligible for a corporate-sponsored scholarship, in most cases, you have to be the offspring of an employee; for the institutional scholarships you have to officially declare the institution your first choice. Otherwise you just get $2500 for your freshman year.
Hm. Well, L., it might be that you could generate some bad publicity for the system by saying "I declared Tulane my first choice and now Tulane is gone and it's not my first choice anymore so I lost my National Merit Scholarship," except that the lack of commas would make you sound like a 12-year-old. But it sounds like the problem is the National Merit people gots no money of their own, and it's all kind of a hoax. Good thing I had no merit!
Merit is overrated. Long Live Nepotism!
It sounds like Tulane is pissing off their students left and right. Sorry, L. I feel some kind of odd guilt about this.
my trash-talking on the blog this year is all directed at Chopper, who asked for it.
Yeah, how did the Steelers do this week?
The Steelers got the shit end of the stick this week. Should have been an overtime game.
Apo, John Cole, who certainly comes across as a massive Steelers fan, disagrees.
Feel real good about beating New Orleans, huh Chopper? (Yes, I fight dirty.)
Feel real good about beating New Orleans
Hey, our consciences are clean down here in Carolina.
[psst--hey apo--do you have something to say to baa here? tx.]
On a serious note, in re 57 my master plan (at least in philosophy) is to have lots and lots of terminal M.A. programs, with maybe 1/3 of the M.A. students getting accepted into PhDs and about nobody going straight into the PhD. That way there would be some basis for informed judgment when admitting people into PhD programs, people who wanted to do some serious philosophy without making it a lifetime vocation could, and people who got washed out would be 26 with an M.A. instead of, say 31 with a PhD and a couple of one-year jobs. And the MAs would still be slave labor! And a pony.
Say they took two years off before grad school, like me. Young, anyway.
If that was the standard path for students to proceed in philosophy, there's a reasonable chance I would have postponed law school and done it. I'm not quite sure if I can explain why that's the case, since of course M.A. programs already exist and I could have just done one of those and then gone to law school. But your proposal sounds more tempting, even if I would have gone into the M.A. program with my preferences leaning towards going to law school after the Masters.
Feel real good about beating New Orleans, huh Chopper?
After last Sunday, I would have felt good about beating the Special Olympics 12-and-under football team. After all, it's where we recruit our coaching staff.