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Yes. The market is very narrow for academia. I live in NYC. there are a handful of universes and colleges. If the large institutions are not hiring, you are lef

by yeukhon 10y ago

Yes. The market is very narrow for academia. I live in NYC. there are a handful of universes and colleges. If the large institutions are not hiring, you are left with the small fish normally just looking for teachers not professors. Also, to grow your career a healthy environment is collaboration. If you end up being a Professor at a small pond, your bet is external collaboration. If you don't like the small ponds, you have to find jobs somewhere else, that means moving to another state. Since there are thousands of post doc actively looking to join a good research institutions, the job market is so competitive. For engineers, say you got rejected by Google, there are still hundreds of engineering teams you can apply to. Should there be a policy to force retirement? Is it fair?

cpitman 10y ago
> Should there be a policy to force retirement? Is it fair? No, artificially creating jobs does not seem like the solution. We should be requiring all schools, for all degrees, publish relevant employment figures for that degree. And for doctorates, that should mean giving percentages that have tenure after X years and the percentage employed in jobs that required their doctorate. Informing students lets them make the choice. If they are getting a PhD for the love of it, and don't care, power to them. But they should be given real data for their job prospects.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  I agree we should publish the figure. But IMO this info is quite intuitive even without one. The market is small.
deleted 10y ago
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twblalock 10y ago
Many universities did have forced retirement policies for professors above a certain age. I don't think those policies are common anymore. I'm not sure how much they would help anyway. A few more jobs would open up, but not nearly enough. It would be a drop in the bucket. The bottom line is that there are way too many graduates for the size of the academic job market, and even if the number of newly minted PhDs dropped by half, there would still be too many. In some fields, the number of new PhDs could drop nearly to zero before it made sense to get one.

by yeukhon 10y ago

cpitman 10y ago

> Should there be a policy to force retirement? Is it fair? No, artificially creating jobs does not seem like the solution. We should be requiring all schools, for all degrees, publish relevant employment figures for that degree. And for doctorates, that should mean giving percentages that have tenure after X years and the percentage employed in jobs that required their doctorate. Informing students lets them make the choice. If they are getting a PhD for the love of it, and don't care, power to them. But they should be given real data for their job prospects.

yeukhon 10y ago
I agree we should publish the figure. But IMO this info is quite intuitive even without one. The market is small.

deleted 10y ago

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twblalock 10y ago

Many universities did have forced retirement policies for professors above a certain age. I don't think those policies are common anymore. I'm not sure how much they would help anyway. A few more jobs would open up, but not nearly enough. It would be a drop in the bucket. The bottom line is that there are way too many graduates for the size of the academic job market, and even if the number of newly minted PhDs dropped by half, there would still be too many. In some fields, the number of new PhDs could drop nearly to zero before it made sense to get one.