I don’t believe that cohorts of students, year after year, are consistently fooled about job prospects. Information is not very costly.
There aren't enough jobs. When do we stop behaving as if there are?
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It is hard to discourage a bright young undergrad who has been a stellar student and is well suited to grad school. Nevertheless I have a straight up conversation about job prospects even as I agree t help them with their applications.
The rest is on you folks to winnow out the less promising ones and expand your social networks for job season.
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Good luck getting the lower ranked departments with PhD programs to reduce the size of their cohorts, aka cheap teaching labor pool.
A lot of us on the junior end are trying to do this. Senior faculty don’t want to. Plus half of our students are unfounded so they provide cash to the department. It’s hard to get those folks rejected.
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Political science continues to produce PhDs at a rate that is completely out of proportion to the number of tenure-track positions available. It's now normal to see applications from people who are on their second or third visiting position still clinging to the hope that they can remain in this discipline at great expense to themselves and the people close to them.
There has been little serious discussion that I have seen about the abuse we as a discipline are heaping upon unsuspecting graduate students. In many programs, they are made promises we know we cannot fulfill and, in return, they prop up the work of people who are already safely situated. Talk about a power imbalance. When a student is misled about the prospect of employment, spends 5-8 years of their life in pursuit of something they most likely will not achieve, how are we any better than a for-profit institution that extracts money from someone on a dubious promise of career advancement? The education a political science PhD is NOT great training for anything other than a very narrow sliver of jobs, despite what some may tell you.
I find it fascinating that (in a field that frequently relies on probabilities for analysis) so many of us are able to sleep soundly at night knowing we have provided "the chance" of tenure-track employment even if that chance approaches zero.
It would be perfectly legitimate grounds to stop training PhDs if the net contribution to the student's life was to waste their time and effort. But, we won't do it. Every program wants to be a top program, we want to keep our 2-2 load, and we could never forgo that sweet (nearly-free) labor on our projects. Nothing will change because it would require courage and humility to stop it. In a discipline that rewards self-promotion at any price, I strongly suspect we'll continue it indefinitely.Every tenured political science professor deserves a bullet to the head.
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Good luck getting the lower ranked departments with PhD programs to reduce the size of their cohorts, aka cheap teaching labor pool.
This canard has been addressed countless times here and elsewhere. The problem is unique to the lower ranked places. A department ranked ~75 that brings in 5-8 people each year is producing a smaller number of non-academically employed PhDs than Harvard.
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Good luck getting the lower ranked departments with PhD programs to reduce the size of their cohorts, aka cheap teaching labor pool.
This canard has been addressed countless times here and elsewhere. The problem is unique to the lower ranked places. A department ranked ~75 that brings in 5-8 people each year is producing a smaller number of non-academically employed PhDs than Harvard.
Also poorly trained. But, yes, fewer.
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I don’t believe that cohorts of students, year after year, are consistently fooled about job prospects. Information is not very costly.
Even when the information is available, the data don't speak for themselves. They require some interpretation regarding the underlying mechanism, especially if you're at a place that has a decent reputation but mediocre placements. Who do you assume has better information than you? Faculty, who will give you explanations like:
- Last couple of years were just two bad draws. They'll improve soon, especially with new Profs X and Y we just hired.
- The students in our last two cohorts just had weird preferences which led them to apply too narrowly. If you're really dead set on an academic position, and apply everywhere, something should turn up.
- I think you have more potential than those students who didn't get academic jobs. Just keep your head down and work hard.
This is all amplified if faculty at your department are a little slow to realize the realities of the market - by which time it is too late. Note that all of the above explanations are observationally equivalent to the case where your odds are truly not good.
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"Good luck getting the lower ranked departments with PhD programs to reduce the
size of their cohorts, aka cheap teaching labor pool.This canard has been addressed countless times here and elsewhere. The problem
is unique to the lower ranked places. A department ranked ~75 that brings in 5-8
people each year is producing a smaller number of non-academically employed PhDs
than Harvard.Also poorly trained. But, yes, fewer."
I disagree on the poorly trained. We bring in 8 or so, provide lots of one-on-one / one-on-many attention, expect them to publish, provide good professionalization, and they get jobs. Unlike the well-known departments with 30 grad students / year, faculty seldom seen, & just tell us when you've been here 6 years and we'll give you a PhD even though you've never published and never will, program.
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"Good luck getting the lower ranked departments with PhD programs to reduce the
size of their cohorts, aka cheap teaching labor pool.
This canard has been addressed countless times here and elsewhere. The problem
is unique to the lower ranked places. A department ranked ~75 that brings in 5-8
people each year is producing a smaller number of non-academically employed PhDs
than Harvard.
Also poorly trained. But, yes, fewer."
I disagree on the poorly trained. We bring in 8 or so, provide lots of one-on-one / one-on-many attention, expect them to publish, provide good professionalization, and they get jobs. Unlike the well-known departments with 30 grad students / year, faculty seldom seen, & just tell us when you've been here 6 years and we'll give you a PhD even though you've never published and never will, program.Right....
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^ How much of a free market do you think there is for competitive crew, or lacrosse, or volleyball? These individuals greatly benefit from the current system, and if colleges had to start paying student athletes, their opportunities to compete would evaporate. How would you decide who gets paid, and how much, and who doesn't?
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And it would be different if jobs were awarded by merit. But increasingly it's not - it's often based on "diversity" and on who one knows . Or even one if your spouse is also on the faculty which is completely ridiculous. A spouse who doesn't earn on merit takes up the spot of one who does. No other industry gives jobs out to spouses, especially in locations near big cities where there are other options.
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Except Harvard PhD students have the genuine ability to select to not enter academia and use their PhD to pursue other routes.
In my CHYMPS PhD program, my cohort had at least 4-6 students who voluntarily chose not to pursue academia (going instead to companies, government, and non-profits). Almost all who treated graduate school like a job and worked hard to produce scholarship eventually found a TT job (might have taken a postdoc first). Only a few students who used the PhD for more school, to avoid the real life, and didn't really work hard didn't find TT jobs in the end.
The problem isn't the top 10 schools.
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My impression is that most grad students know the odds and think they'll beat them.
I think this is very true. And let's also state that the odds of landing a TT are not longshot, 100-to-1 odds.
I got my PhD from a mid tier State U. R1 -- not fancy/elite, not bottom of the barrel. I ended up a tenured prof. at a well located R2. When I was on the market no big name R1 school gave me an interview, nor did I expect one. It was understood that my PhD from Big State U. was not going to get me into CHYMPS or even well-known R1 departments. My job applications went mostly to directionals and R2s and LACs. Of my cohort, about half of us ended up in a TT job. So, 50/50 odds of landing a TT job. Not a sure thing of getting a TT job, but neither was it "lighting strikes here" odds.
These days, my PhD department is placing a lower percentage of its people in TT jobs. I'd say around a third end up in a TT job. Are the odds against you? Yes. But a not-insignificant number make it.