what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff

Texas on the vanguard of something bad once again

this was really frustrating because no1's entirely wrong, but it seems like the worst way of improving anything

i feel like this kinda bolsters my theory that the right has become institutionally incapable of achieving anyhting except through bullying & force but enh

We do know that HYPSM...

i kept reading this wondering why he thought middlebury was an elite school

In this case the right just wants to end public education in the USA & since research is what keeps American unis a nice place for ambitious smart people to work, if they can end research then they can more readily justify shutting the public unis down, since way fewer smart ambitious people will want to work for them.

haa yeah its probably stupid to believe those dudes have any real interest in improving anything for students so why not just act like dicks

They care about minimizing public expenditures. They care about their own children's educations but don't want to pay for anyone else's.

Plus research is weird & who cares about complex functions of several variables or the gay Shakespeare or whatever.

I'd bet a lot of their kids go to UT tho!

actually I went to college in TX with one of the leaders of this push, at a fancy private liberal arts college; I was a scholarship kid funded by oil money, & it was a pretty conservative place on the whole. Could tell stories but this is too public.

still, rick perry went to a public tx college, kay bailey hutchison went to a public tx college...I'd bet if you looked at the top ranks of the texas republican party you'd have a majority of people w/ a public college somewhere on their resume.

I'm willing to believe that they're not necessarily trying to destroy public universities, they're just stupid.

I'd bet if you looked at the top ranks of the texas republican party you'd have a majority of people w/ a public college somewhere on their resume.

might be willing to take this bet i mean someone is sending their kids to baylor & rice

whats frustrating is that the think tank ppl in that article do seem to have some legitimate problems w/ the UT system (& those issues certainly exist outside texas too) but again theres no interest in trying to reach compromise or find best outcomes. idk. i do think a lot abt things like low graduation rates, student workloads, usefulness of undergraduate courses &c & i think that theres some value in looking outside the academy for solutions

yeah Lamp I pretty much agree; if we could talk this stuff out without having their anti-state agenda in the b/g, that'd be great. As it is we can't.

there really isn't a subject under the sun that we can do that w/ anymore

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/may/humanities-tech-conference-051211.html

I admire the sentiment but

More important are the skills graduates have acquired, such as stamina and listening.

you spent 9 years slumming it and working 60 hours a week on your doctorate to show future employers you're a good... listener

I like how their example of a humanities person took a few philosophy and linguistic undergrad courses and then got a comp sci grad degree

I know that major well & it involves more than a few philo classes & in a way that degree is what's great about Stanford.

I know, lol @ stamina but I think there's something to that: college can be a grind but a doctorate requires self-driven focus of a much different kind, & I can see why companies would want those kinds of workers.

still don't think she's a good example of a 'humanities' student. and if companies would want those workers why would you need this conference? feels more like the stanford humanities department is just trying to get a few $$ jobs thrown their way.

that said when the gf talked w/ stanford professors about their fr3nch lit program she came off with the impression that it was 'weirdly tech themed...' like their only option to study abroad was at some fr3nch engineering school.

that wasn't a selling point at the time but if it would lead to her being a vp at google maybe she should have gone.

I think that major's a good example of how the humanities can link up with science/tech in a way that doesn't distort the humanities; & that's why I like it.

I think you're right that this conference is a way to get students jobs & why is that a bad thing? if the humanities, broadly speaking, had that more in mind, maybe our salaries wouldn't be so low & there wouldn't be so many jokes about burger-flipping etc.

if anyone is doing grad school in the sciences, and _especially_ if they're just coming on to the job market or about to start a postdoc, i recommend this book v. highly: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ph-D-Not-Enough-Peter-Feibelman/dp/0465022227/

it's 140 pages (with big type and one half line spacing), v. readable prose (unlike tomorrow's professor, for example) and seems like v solid advice.

first time in my life i finished a book and just went back to page 1 and read it again. it's probably not completely useless for humanities students.

I think that major's a good example of how the humanities can link up with science/tech in a way that doesn't distort the humanities; & that's why I like it.

I think you're right that this conference is a way to get students jobs & why is that a bad thing? if the humanities, broadly speaking, had that more in mind, maybe our salaries wouldn't be so low & there wouldn't be so many jokes about burger-flipping etc.
--Euler

I agree with this but I feel like the burden should be on humanities academia to make the phd more marketable - which would involve some massive changes. rather than 'hey private sector why aren't you hiring all these super smart 32 year olds with zero work experience'.

yes I agree; symsys at Stanford is a good model for this; though it's not "humanities" as we typically think of it in the USA today

yeah symsys is a really great program ime - fwiw stanford does a decent job at least at the undergrad level of integrating humanites style courses into their science majors so its not just a oneway street. the also tend to be v thoughtful abt finding ways of linking programs w/ industry.

I agree with this but I feel like the burden should be on humanities academia to make the phd more marketable

lol isnt this exactly what the ppl organizing the conference are doing?

thanks for that book rec caek btw

I mean maybe they're trying to set the stage for it but from the article I got the impression it was more 'these people should be hired' than 'let's overhaul the humanities phd system'

let me know what you make of it! i start my first postdoc a week on monday, so it could not have come at a better time for me. dope chapters about: getting jobs, choosing jobs, choosing projects, timing, grants, etc.

http://www.slate.com/id/2300107/pagenum/all/#p2

fun times

I'm not sure why he wants to shit on his own profession like that (he says he's "a Ph.D. who teaches at a liberal arts college", so I assume that means he's a sessional instructor but I could be wrong) and put himself out of a job, but whatever. Strange article.

he's a tenured professor iirc

he has been writing those articles for years at the chronicle for higher education, under a pseudonym and later as himself.

the point about having detailed placement records is good. when my gf was trying to decide on a school, placement was a huge aspect. and while she did receive a list from each school (had to ask for some) they obv only included the success stories.

there isn't an incentive (other than 'honesty') for individual schools to do this tho, and I think the rule would need to be imposed from above.

i know i think literally almost nothing about placements, but: would there be an issue, potentially, with a list of placements that displayed institutional stature but not the nature of placements? so people who'd got shitty coffee-making internships or w/e at local big businesses versus people who'd had real jobs with smaller enterprises

i really know nothing about this though so maybe not

Schools should make public complete placement records, period. That's part of what they're selling, & potential students should know well what they might buy.

but again, it's easy to say 'should'

In my discipline there is growing pressure to do so as a competitive instrument.

yeah but that makes partial disclosure more tempting than full disclosure 'we sent one person to harvard, one to duke and one person can't find a job' vs 'we sent one person to harvard, one person to duke'

and the less competitive grad schools still have a huge incentive not to disclose. and those prob matter more.

I was thinking that if a department's complete placement record was excellent, then that would be an advantage: "even our bad students get jobs"! but I guess the doubt here is whether departments who claim they're presenting "complete" records are being honest.

I think it's something professional organizations ought to enforce, at the least.

yeah, I mean I don't know what it's like to aspire to go to a less competitive grad department, but unless people in your desired area overperform the department, I think it's not worth going to a less competitive department.

my understanding is that even the best departments have pretty shitty placement records vis-a-vis their reputation, and also when viewed against the 7-10 years the typical ph.d will have put into their degree

yeaaaaaaah career services are kind of a joke in schools that brag about their 'alumni network' and seem to operate on the 'who do you know?' basis

exactly why there is a strong incentive for those schools to not to not publish their placement xp

That's not true in my discipline. Though it's hard to say: a record might look shitty on paper but people drop out or chicken out on the job market for reasons besides departmental weakness. Placement records don't express the desires of their candidates. I know a lot of people who aren't super ambitious & those people are going to drag down placement records on paper, but they're also nothing to fear when considering that department---unless you're worried that department will kill your ambition too.

xp to dayo

i think that job placement depends on the level of specialization, too. for my MFA (highly specialized) the employment statistics were pretty grim, even though the school is renowned and respected in its field. my M.Ed. is from a much lesser university, but it's in a very general field and the 1-year out employment rate is +/- like 90%.

yeah but those peoples' stories can be put in context. they still matter. if anything they reflect the department's judgment. there's no such thing as too much information with a decision like this. xp

I agree, but it's not necessarily a flaw of the department if they have a shitty placement record. The stories matter, as you say. It would be good if there were a way to get those stories to potential students (& obviously there is).

i agree w/ you completely, but i just don't know how these statistics could be normalized –- and it would be really sad if some great specialty programs were marginalized or otherwise saw attendance drops b/c their employment statistics were low. as with the rest of current education reform, i'd be concerned about this turning into a metric for ranking and sorting 'quality' based upon a lot of potentially subjective factors.

I think the number of people we're talking about here is small enough that statistics aren't necessary. we could have this same discussion w/ law school - same general problem, student bodies big enough that 63% means something.

http://physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v64/i9/p8_s2

"Some simple actions can be taken to improve the situation. Scientists being interviewed by the media should require that they be introduced as “physicist John Jones,” and PhD scientists should require that they be addressed as “Dr.” Scientists who provide narratives for TV programs should require that their degree appear on screen in conjunction with their name."

i would pretty much dismiss as a fraud/crank anyone who did this. do people use "Dr" outside work? is this guy just an angry old man? my experience: in the UK basically never except the day you graduate, in germany always outside of work (people love you for it, you get it engraved on your door), and slightly more often at work.

I get Swiss Colony catalogs & other important mass mailings sent to me as Dr because it looks funny. Though if they have an option on the webpage for Sheik I usually pick that instead.