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About a decade ago, I left a humanities Ph.D. program at Stanford after finishing the coursework, but before starting the dissertation. In my experience, my cla
by earlyresort 14y ago
About a decade ago, I left a humanities Ph.D. program at Stanford after finishing the coursework, but before starting the dissertation. In my experience, my classmates thought very hard about what they wanted to do with their lives, and were very aware of the career risk involved - if not when they entered the Ph.D. program, certainly by a couple years in. (Hanging out in the graduate lounge with the eighth-year Ph.D. students will do that to you.)
However, most of my classmates were so intensely interested in researching their specialities that they decided the risk was worth taking. After all, it's not like they're particularly suffering during grad school. Grad school in the humanities gives you blissful amounts of time to really geek out in the speciality of your choice, and at top-flight universities, the first few years are free (except for the opportunity cost.) If you get in, your basic expenses and tuition are covered.
Note how we lionize entrepreneurs who intensely pursue a low-probability dream, whether they succeed or fail, while grad students pursuing their own low-probability dream get nothing but scorn. Odd, no? What needs to be changed isn't necessarily grad school, but academic culture - particularly its attitudes towards and adaption to failure. If their community was as understanding of their own failures as ours is of our own, perhaps there wouldn't be such drama about their low rate of success.
- crusso 14y agoNote how we lionize entrepreneurs who intensely pursue a low-probability dream, whether they succeed or fail, while grad students pursuing their own low-probability dream get nothing but scorn. I disagree with your characterization that grad students are getting scorn. At least in my post, I don't intend to scorn. Maybe a "marked lack of sympathy for a self-made mess" would be what I'm trying to convey. I also disagree that there is a significant commonality between entrepreneurs and grad students because of their probability of success. I'm just wondering why PhD students are surprised that higher degrees in the humanities aren't the easy gravy train they imagined. It seemed pretty obvious to me 20 years ago. Seems easily researchable 20 years ago. As time has gone by, it has just seemed more and more obvious. What needs to be changed isn't necessarily grad school, but academic culture - particularly its attitudes towards and adaption to failure I disagree again. Making it nicer to fail won't help those people. Opening their eyes to the real risk vs reward scenario earlier on would. Conflating the entrepreneurial and academic communities as far as the understanding of failure doesn't help. Entrepreneurs who fail learn important lessons about what doesn't work and are encouraged to dust themselves off and apply what they've learned. They're still entrepreneurs when they try again. Academics who fail while working on obscure/useless PhDs should most properly learn to stop being academics.