In today’s world too many people get degrees they can do nothing with because we want that perfect world. And we want everyone to be equal.

There should be more testing and more discrimination based on ability.

Of the folks with whom I graduated law school, only one went into academia. I’ve in my time done small firm work, solo work, lobbying, and government work. Made a little money off books and a documentary. A JD lets you go in many directions.

That must have been interesting during the three university Jewish holidays of the year.

If you go to law school, it is not academia or bust. You can actually try to sell yourself in the (gasp)for-profit sector. Actually, most of us do that.

Only a law professor would compare a J.D. to a Ph.D. in terms of how long it takes to get the degree.

Xanthippas: I went to law school precisely because I knew I’d never get a job with a PhD in history. Little did I know I’d never get a job with a JD either.

Ditto, except for me it was poli sci. At least I landed a decent bureaucrat job.

Perseus: If such programs are in fact doing that, they should be sued for misleading their students. And are many students in philosophy really so credulous as to believe that they will end up in similar institutions?

To a surprising extent, they seem to. I frequent a mostly grad-recent grad blog, and the anger evident at their situation (to which they seem now to be awkening) is intense. But, keep in mind that their profs have been encouraging them all along.

Most importantly, no, history doctoral candidate. You do not get to go to a third-rate doctoral program, pick your topic and analytical approach without regard to what the market dictates, and do all of the other supposedly intellectual pure things you want to do and get a guaranteed tenure track job. You are, in fact, entitled to absolutely nothing.

If such programs are in fact doing that, they should be sued for misleading their students. And are many students in philosophy really so credulous as to believe that they will end up in similar institutions?

Menand appears trapped in a collectivistic worldview. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that the expansion of state universities in the 60s and continued hot-house subsidization of artificial intellectual communities since, is THE problem.

What the Hell is an “artificial intellectual community?”

I’m referring to the fact that much of it is maintained at coerced taxpayer expense, one way or the other. Is it productive enough to survive on its own in a free market, or even via non-coerced philanthropy? Or would most of it be weeded out because individuals allocating their own resources would not support it? How much of academia as we know it is being, in that sense, artificially maintained? Might not the resources, including intellectual talent, find better use? Perhaps there was a better way to phrase the point, but this was a quick stop on the way back to the 2A threads.

Mark: Yes, you can go to law school, where you won’t be required become an expert in anything.

What? Generalists don’t exist anymore.

tired of blogs: I don’t know about that. Academia tends to place a very, probably excessively, high value on getting one of the treasured spots at an R1 institution with a highly ranked PhD program. There are more than 3000 other institutions of higher education in this country where the professors lead perfectly happy and even respected lives, if not as glorious as those of the research stars. At least the top half of those institutions — the second tier state schools, the better (but not elite) small liberal arts colleges, etc. — often even provide support for research if that’s what you want to do, and save you the rat-race pace of the R1 life.

You are right. I should have said, “Where you want to teach,” assuming that most grad programs today are preparing students to teach.

Ours is not a Leiterific-oriented program by any means. I am at a SLAC, and proud of it. However, most of our grads do not want to live in certain places and do not want to be at CCs. In fact, they do not want to be/teach at second level RUs.

On the other hand, the big graduate programs seem to be leading students to believe that each and every one will end up at a (in my field, Leiter) ranked university.

If grad programs told applicants that they could find rewarding careers in other than PhD. granting programs, that would be fine. But, I think the problem is that these grad programs are more or less assuring their students that they will all find positions in depts. like those in which they did their grad work – and, so, have lives like their grad program profs.

tired of blogs: There are more than 3000 other institutions of higher education in this country where the professors lead perfectly happy and even respected lives, if not as glorious as those of the research stars.

I think the point is that these institutions are located in places that few people in their late 20s or early 30s would want to permanently relocate to. Many liberal arts colleges are fine places. Are they in places that have much to offer a single 20- or 30-something with no family or friends there? And if you are married, your spouse’s job opportunities will be much more limited unless your spouse is also a Ph.D. and the two of you received a joint job offer (very tough to pull off).

By contrast, with a law degree, you can either stay in your home town or choose between Manhattan, the Bay Area, D.C., Boston or several other metro areas.

Not sure if we are talking about using the coercive force of government to limit PhDs. Though one could argue a libertarian case for less government subsidizing of what seems irrational.

There’s nothing wrong with giving folks rational advice, however.

Yet what seems like a majority of Liberal Arts Div. (sans the math professors) has PhDs, and many from great schools. We aren’t expected to publish and 15 credit hours is standard teaching load. Still we probably make more $$ than most small liberal arts 4 year college profs and get great benefits. Most are probably happier that they didn’t end up at a 4 year college.

With the quality of education at K-12, any PhD in her subject matter should automatically have the right to teach there. It beats not working in education. And some K-12 jobs pay quite well (and likewise offer great benefits).

For instance, I remember checking out publicly available salaries for our local school district here in Bucks County PA. And a first grade teacher was making $92,000 (and remember K-12 teachers get excellent benefits as well). I wonder how many of those PhDs who got shut out of higher ed. would take that offer if available.

I wonder how many actually do go back and get certified to teach in K-12 after failing to get a higher ed job.

For starters:

The academic credential is non-transferable (as every Ph.D. looking for work outside the academy quickly learns)

Tell that to any number of people with Ph.D.s in the sciences. Menand’s comment is likely true in the humanities, which seems to be the only field with which he has experience, but it is certainly untrue in many if not most other fields.

you cannot take a course in the law (apart from legal history) outside a law school. In fact, law schools urge applicants to major in areas outside the law.

I taught a course in environmental law in an undergrad poli-sci department this past spring. My undergraduate college had several ‘law lite’ classes – they may not have followed the case method, but that is hardly what make a law class. My high school even had a class called “Practical Law” that taught things like when police can and cannot search you and when you’ve committed assault (hint to high school students: sooner than you think). It’s absurd to say there are no legal classes outside law schools.

And I had been under the impression that law schools discouraged ‘pre-law’ majors because they were seen as a code for ‘I have no idea what I want to do but I hear lawyers make good money.’

Weirdly, the less social authority a profession enjoys, the more restrictive the barriers to entry and the more rigid the process of producing new producers tend to become. You can become a lawyer in three years, an M.D. in four years, and an M.D.-Ph.D. in six years, but the median time to a doctoral degree in the humanities disciplines is nine years. And the more self-limiting the profession, the harder it is to acquire the credential and enter into practice, and the tighter the identification between the individual practitioner and the discipline.”

A lesser mind might call this the product of economics rather than ‘political correctness’. Lawyers, doctors, and M.D.-Ph.D.s can all get high-powered, well-paying jobs outside of the academy. In fact, law and medicine, academic jobs often pay less than those outside the ivory tower. Jobs for a truly non-transferable Ph.D. are scarce, hence competition for them is greater and barriers to entry higher.

The fact that the article cites only one part of a single study also undermines its conclusions. The study looked at six fields; Menand looks only at the data on English Ph.D.s. Chief among his conclusions is that it takes far too long to get a Ph.D. With a few friends currently in Ph.D. programs, I’ll share a fact that Menand likely didn’t consider: it’s S.O.P. in many fields to prepare your dissertation, then do a job search. If you get a job, you complete your dissertation, get your degree, and go to work. If you don’t, you take another year of teaching undergrads for a pittance and try to publish another paper or two to make yourself a stronger job candidate.

Again, this doesn’t necessarily hold outside the humanities, doesn’t suggest anything about political correctness, and suggests that Menand’s analysis is of limited scope and usefulness.

What the Hell is an “artificial intellectual community?”

The problem is that even second tier universities and teaching oriented colleges now expect far more publication output than in the past because of R1 envy, the oversupply of PhDs (which means more can be demanded of the lucky few who land positions), and administrators who are obsessed with quantitative measures of “productivity.”

ChrisTS: …but it is highly unlikely that you will find a tenure track position anywhere you would want to be, unless you are a genuine superstar.

I don’t know about that. Academia tends to place a very, probably excessively, high value on getting one of the treasured spots at an R1 institution with a highly ranked PhD program. There are more than 3000 other institutions of higher education in this country where the professors lead perfectly happy and even respected lives, if not as glorious as those of the research stars. At least the top half of those institutions — the second tier state schools, the better (but not elite) small liberal arts colleges, etc. — often even provide support for research if that’s what you want to do, and save you the rat-race pace of the R1 life.

Other than that, this is true and unconscionable. We tell our undergrads the raw and ugly truth: if you can get support to pursue graduate study in philosophy – because you love it – go ahead, But it is highly unlikely that you will find a tenure track position anywhere you would want to be, unless you are a genuine superstar.