Don’t Let Anybody In

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Clarissa

January 2, 2014

When I was an undergrad, I was friends with a woman who had spent 18 years working for Canada’s Customs and Immigration before going back to school for a BA in Political Science. She told me that what never failed to surprise her was how passionately recent immigrants always insisted that the borders should be closed and no more immigrants should be allowed into the country after them.

I’m always reminded of these conversations with my friend whenever I see recent PhDs clamoring that grad schools should stop admitting any more students.

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3 responses to “Don’t Let Anybody In”

Ol.

January 2, 2014

Great post.

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J. Otto Pohl

January 2, 2014

Actually my department is desperate for people to apply for our new PhD program. We don’t have any funding for it. But, the administration would like people to come and pay for it. Our new program has gone from a UK style system of just the dissertation to a US style one of two years of course work. Although currently we don’t have any PhD courses separate from our MPhil courses. Here is the reading list for the graduate course I teach. It is only 14 books and 10 journal articles, however.

http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2013/01/i-have-finally-finished-by-syllabus-for.html

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Z

January 2, 2014

Yes. I mean, I do tell people they are not guaranteed an academic job, and if they get one it may not be one that makes them happy, and they are risking student loan debt, and they will not be earning as much money in their 20s as they theoretically could if they took certain kinds of jobs instead of graduate school. I don’t hide these things from them. But most of those who wanted to go originally, still want to go, and they say they do not regret it, even if they then quit after the M.A. or go into some other line of work post Ph.D. (Of course, part of why they do not regret it is that I am an excellent advisor and get them to go places where they will be happy and not sunk financially. But still, the main thing is, they went because they were interested in going.)

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