5 ms·

Help, My Degree Is Underwater

14 points by peter123 18y ago

jballanc 18y ago
As one of the (soon to graduate) 20-something Ph.D.'s referenced in the article, I feel no sympathy for any whining. The only problem people like me face is false expectations. We were all promised professorships, but it was mostly a lie. My attitude: No tenure track positions available? Crappy pay for indefinite post-doc appointments? Screw it! I'm going into the software industry... No, I don't worry about the advanced degree holders. What I worry about is the kid graduating high school and being fed false expectations. Too many people don't understand how correlation works. i.e. "Hey! People with college degrees make more money, so if we get every American high school student to go to college and get a degree, they'll all make more money!!!" ...uh, no.
- thwarted 18y ago
  And not understanding how economics work. If everyone has a degree, having a degree is less valuable and won't be a differentiating point for being paid more.
- timr 18y ago
  Bite your tongue. I'm no defender of graduate education, but I think it's a tad on the mean-spirited side to refer to what these people are doing as "whining". A lot of smart, hard-working people have just been screwed by circumstances that are beyond their control. Not everyone with a graduate degree knows how to code. Moreover, just because someone doesn't know how to code doesn't mean that they studied basket-weaving, and are therefore useless. If you worked your butt off getting a PhD in the sciences, only to graduate this year -- well, that's just plain bad luck. Finally, trust me: if this downturn goes on long enough, even the programmers will feel the pain. So if I were you, I'd start hunting for a big hunk of wood, and start knocking as hard as you can.
  - jballanc 18y ago
    First thing I would say is that you don't have to code to get a job. The reason I classify what these individuals are doing as "whining" is because there's not a lack of opportunities, just a lack of the opportunities they expected to have. Let's take, for example, the English Literature Ph.D. working at a Starbucks in NYC (I know a few...). Why are they there? Because they want to be in NYC. They want to be near the "action", by which I mean the publishing houses and big universities. Great! That's one choice. Another choice would be to travel out to the heartland of America which is in dire need of educated individuals. Get a teaching position and set-up writing workshops, for the locals to improve their resumes even. Take up an interest in back-woods folk lore. --or-- What about other countries? I hear that the Czech republic is in need of professors. Poland, too! You see, the problem is that college coddles people (or at least, it did me), and graduate school coddles people. It's not that these individuals can't go out, be creative, try something daring, and maybe fall flat on their faces a couple of times. No, instead, working an 8 hour shift to go home, change, hang out at the bars the "writers" hang out at, and desperately try to sell that novel to yet another publishing house is, let's face it, comfortable. Sure, there's a chance at success, and some people willingly make this choice. The bottom line is: if the years upon years of education you've received can't somehow be turned into good fortune in the absence of an obvious path forward, then what good were they in the first place?!?
    - timr 18y ago
      You can't be serious. You're talking to someone who left academic science to go into software, yet even I don't blithely assume that more than a handful of my colleagues could have done the same thing, even in a good market. Furthermore, you've totally ignored the fact that I wasn't talking about PhDs in English literature (I know quite a few un- or under-employed engineers and scientists, who are neither unskilled, nor lazy) so that you could draw a caricature of the slacker intellectual. I suppose that you could take the attitude that everyone who isn't picking up the proverbial shovel right now is just "whining", but I think you're missing the point: if we're in a position where our most educated and talented people are digging ditches and serving coffee, then everyone else is well and truly screwed. It isn't "whining" to observe that it's probably not in our best interest as a society to have lawyers and scientists stocking shelves and slinging espresso to make ends meet.
- puzzle-out 18y ago
  The lottery nature of the academic job market has been publicised for a while now; there is no longer any excuse for phds to grumble that they were lied to about a paradisial ivory tower. Although I think the US phd system too much of a commitment in terms of time, there is much to be said for a fully-funded 3-4 year phd in the uk, especially if started when your in your early twenties. The flexibility of humanities phd schedules gives you more opportunities to learn a new skill than many jobs would, e.g. programming, or maybe to start a small company. I knew about the 'doctoral pipeline leading to nowhere' before I started my phd, and this encouraged me to get involved in the enterprise culture during my postgrad studies. Whilst the limited job opportunities for humanities phds are increasingly publicised, it should also be pointed out how difficult, isolating, and depressing the process of doing the phd can be, for many students. I believe there is ample justification for whining on that issue.
BigZaphod 18y ago
This has already been here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556625 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556625
- jacobscott 18y ago
  also, from the same poster, to the actual source (slate). I flagged this one.
3pt14159 18y ago
To the liberal arts majors/masters/Ph.D.s don't say nobody told you it would be like this. My engineering/math/science friends would tell them the truth when asked and they wouldn't hear it. All they needed was +1 level (major to master, master to doctor) and THEN they would get that amazing job that would pay them for knowing the first year red dye paint was imported to Scandinavia. No. That isn't how the world works. You get paid for knowing useful things, like the coefficient of friction of various materials, the modulus of elasticity of building members, the viscosity of fluids, how circuits work, how to program. Useful things.
- lethain 18y ago
  The problem with an engineering student telling a liberal arts student that their degree isn't valuable, is that the engineering student's opinion is very rarely grounded in experience. Although one group happens to have the "right" opinion, that's all it is until reality vindicates it.
  - sketerpot 18y ago
    Does a fact need to be grounded in personal experience? I know that 10 gigabit ethernet exists, but I have never actually experienced it. Likewise, I know that a degree in history increases someone's expected earnings much less than a degree in nuclear engineering. Even though I have no personal experience in those areas.
- zcrar70 18y ago
  Our society needs diversity to thrive. If we have a society made up of only people that know 'useful' things (or what is considered useful today, as this changes through time), it becomes vulnerable, in the same way that a population with a narrow gene pool is vulnerable. So, it's important that we have people who understand the causes of the second world war (history) or the difference between signifier and signified (semiotics) in the same way that it's important we have people who understand about the viscosity of fluids; our society is all the poorer without them.
furburger 18y ago
this is a good. college tuition costs need to not just drop, but crash. they won't until people stop propagating the idea that they are required.

14 points by peter123 18y ago

As one of the (soon to graduate) 20-something Ph.D.'s referenced in the article, I feel no sympathy for any whining. The only problem people like me face is false expectations. We were all promised professorships, but it was mostly a lie. My attitude: No tenure track positions available? Crappy pay for indefinite post-doc appointments? Screw it! I'm going into the software industry... No, I don't worry about the advanced degree holders. What I worry about is the kid graduating high school and being fed false expectations. Too many people don't understand how correlation works. i.e. "Hey! People with college degrees make more money, so if we get every American high school student to go to college and get a degree, they'll all make more money!!!" ...uh, no.

thwarted 18y ago
And not understanding how economics work. If everyone has a degree, having a degree is less valuable and won't be a differentiating point for being paid more.
timr 18y ago
Bite your tongue. I'm no defender of graduate education, but I think it's a tad on the mean-spirited side to refer to what these people are doing as "whining". A lot of smart, hard-working people have just been screwed by circumstances that are beyond their control. Not everyone with a graduate degree knows how to code. Moreover, just because someone doesn't know how to code doesn't mean that they studied basket-weaving, and are therefore useless. If you worked your butt off getting a PhD in the sciences, only to graduate this year -- well, that's just plain bad luck. Finally, trust me: if this downturn goes on long enough, even the programmers will feel the pain. So if I were you, I'd start hunting for a big hunk of wood, and start knocking as hard as you can.
- jballanc 18y ago
  First thing I would say is that you don't have to code to get a job. The reason I classify what these individuals are doing as "whining" is because there's not a lack of opportunities, just a lack of the opportunities they expected to have. Let's take, for example, the English Literature Ph.D. working at a Starbucks in NYC (I know a few...). Why are they there? Because they want to be in NYC. They want to be near the "action", by which I mean the publishing houses and big universities. Great! That's one choice. Another choice would be to travel out to the heartland of America which is in dire need of educated individuals. Get a teaching position and set-up writing workshops, for the locals to improve their resumes even. Take up an interest in back-woods folk lore. --or-- What about other countries? I hear that the Czech republic is in need of professors. Poland, too! You see, the problem is that college coddles people (or at least, it did me), and graduate school coddles people. It's not that these individuals can't go out, be creative, try something daring, and maybe fall flat on their faces a couple of times. No, instead, working an 8 hour shift to go home, change, hang out at the bars the "writers" hang out at, and desperately try to sell that novel to yet another publishing house is, let's face it, comfortable. Sure, there's a chance at success, and some people willingly make this choice. The bottom line is: if the years upon years of education you've received can't somehow be turned into good fortune in the absence of an obvious path forward, then what good were they in the first place?!?
  - timr 18y ago
    You can't be serious. You're talking to someone who left academic science to go into software, yet even I don't blithely assume that more than a handful of my colleagues could have done the same thing, even in a good market. Furthermore, you've totally ignored the fact that I wasn't talking about PhDs in English literature (I know quite a few un- or under-employed engineers and scientists, who are neither unskilled, nor lazy) so that you could draw a caricature of the slacker intellectual. I suppose that you could take the attitude that everyone who isn't picking up the proverbial shovel right now is just "whining", but I think you're missing the point: if we're in a position where our most educated and talented people are digging ditches and serving coffee, then everyone else is well and truly screwed. It isn't "whining" to observe that it's probably not in our best interest as a society to have lawyers and scientists stocking shelves and slinging espresso to make ends meet.
puzzle-out 18y ago
The lottery nature of the academic job market has been publicised for a while now; there is no longer any excuse for phds to grumble that they were lied to about a paradisial ivory tower. Although I think the US phd system too much of a commitment in terms of time, there is much to be said for a fully-funded 3-4 year phd in the uk, especially if started when your in your early twenties. The flexibility of humanities phd schedules gives you more opportunities to learn a new skill than many jobs would, e.g. programming, or maybe to start a small company. I knew about the 'doctoral pipeline leading to nowhere' before I started my phd, and this encouraged me to get involved in the enterprise culture during my postgrad studies. Whilst the limited job opportunities for humanities phds are increasingly publicised, it should also be pointed out how difficult, isolating, and depressing the process of doing the phd can be, for many students. I believe there is ample justification for whining on that issue.

BigZaphod 18y ago

This has already been here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556625 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556625

jacobscott 18y ago
also, from the same poster, to the actual source (slate). I flagged this one.

3pt14159 18y ago

To the liberal arts majors/masters/Ph.D.s don't say nobody told you it would be like this. My engineering/math/science friends would tell them the truth when asked and they wouldn't hear it. All they needed was +1 level (major to master, master to doctor) and THEN they would get that amazing job that would pay them for knowing the first year red dye paint was imported to Scandinavia. No. That isn't how the world works. You get paid for knowing useful things, like the coefficient of friction of various materials, the modulus of elasticity of building members, the viscosity of fluids, how circuits work, how to program. Useful things.

lethain 18y ago
The problem with an engineering student telling a liberal arts student that their degree isn't valuable, is that the engineering student's opinion is very rarely grounded in experience. Although one group happens to have the "right" opinion, that's all it is until reality vindicates it.
- sketerpot 18y ago
  Does a fact need to be grounded in personal experience? I know that 10 gigabit ethernet exists, but I have never actually experienced it. Likewise, I know that a degree in history increases someone's expected earnings much less than a degree in nuclear engineering. Even though I have no personal experience in those areas.
zcrar70 18y ago
Our society needs diversity to thrive. If we have a society made up of only people that know 'useful' things (or what is considered useful today, as this changes through time), it becomes vulnerable, in the same way that a population with a narrow gene pool is vulnerable. So, it's important that we have people who understand the causes of the second world war (history) or the difference between signifier and signified (semiotics) in the same way that it's important we have people who understand about the viscosity of fluids; our society is all the poorer without them.

furburger 18y ago

this is a good. college tuition costs need to not just drop, but crash. they won't until people stop propagating the idea that they are required.