Clarissa's Blog

9 responses to “Stupid Lemmings”

1. 

   Bardiac

   January 3, 2015

   I think he also doesn’t understand that grad programs (especially at big state schools) often use grad students for cheap teaching; someone has to teach labs, lead discussion, teach intro languages, and so forth, and those someones are often grad students, doing it very cheaply (and grateful for the opportunity). Without grad students, the schools would have to pay someone to do those, and the offset with cancelled grad courses isn’t going to provide enough instructional time to do it.

   My grad program, at least, could have cut incoming classes and let grad students have another year or two of grad teaching. That fifth and sixth year for many students was deadly, as they were trying to support themselves elsewhere and finish a dissertation, go on the market, and so forth. It was especially hard for the students who didn’t come from the Ivies, since they got fewer fellowships and less mentoring all along, and so were more likely to be hungry.

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   1. 

      Clarissa

      January 3, 2015

      Well, there have been suggestions that undergrad students could do it for free.

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   2. 

      TomW

      January 3, 2015

      I teach at a big state school and it’s often cheaper to hire full-time lecturers (with benefits!) to teach lower level courses than it is to hire TAs. The TAs have low salaries, but the cost of graduate tuition waivers is enormous and drives up the total cost to the institution. I’ve been here over a decade and I’ve only ever heard TAs refer to TAs as cheap labor; the administrators clearly consider TAs to be expensive. From what I can gather as a non-administrator, TAs only make financial sense in the relatively large graduate programs where each faculty member winds up teaching lots of graduate students. So small graduate programs get axed and lecturers replace the TAs, medium-sized programs are pushed to grow or face the axe, and large programs are pushed to get even bigger.

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2. 

   xykademiqz

   January 3, 2015

   Apply gainful employment to graduate school? Presumably after graduate school?
   I don’t understand this — unemployment among PhDs is the lowest of all education levels. It’s probably even lower in many STEM fields.
   Many people don’t understand the difference between professional schools (medical, pharmacy, dentistry, law) and graduate schools. Going to get a PhD with teaching or research assistantships is a great mechanism for the US to bring the best and the brightest from all over the world here (I think that’s a good thing; those opposing immigration probably don’t); they are also a way for smart people from all backgrounds to be able to afford getting an advanced degree. Tuition in professional schools can be really outrageous and generally cannot be paid without going seriously into debt or having support from family.

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   1. 

      Clarissa

      January 3, 2015

      “Going to get a PhD with teaching or research assistantships is a great mechanism for the US to bring the best and the brightest from all over the world here (I think that’s a good thing; those opposing immigration probably don’t); they are also a way for smart people from all backgrounds to be able to afford getting an advanced degree. Tuition in professional schools can be really outrageous and generally cannot be paid without going seriously into debt or having support from family.”

      • Exactly. I’m very disturbed by these suggestion and the frequency with which they appear these days.

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3. 

   Thoreau

   January 3, 2015

   Unemployment for PhDs is indeed low. However, in many fields (though not all) under-employment is another matter. In some fields, many of them end up on postdoc or adjunct treadmills. If they undertake that risk as an informed decision, so be it. However, many of the people entering grad programs were strong undergraduates who could have pursued other paths with better prospects for their long-term economic security. Consequently, unemployment data (which only looks at whether they have a job, but not what kind of job it is) is not telling the full statistical story here. If they make an informed choice to forgo economic rewards for greater intellectual fulfillment, so be it, but the economic realities make me reluctant to cite economic statistics as a defense for offering the PhD, at least in some fields.

   Also, I know that Clarissa and Xykademiqz are both skilled immigrants, but many of the people who are most eager to argue for the “We need more PhDs!” line will also follow up with “The problem is that so many of our PhDs are foreigners rather than ‘mericans!” Then, stranger still, they will follow that xenophobic comment with some platitude about the importance of diversity.

   The politics of higher education is very, very weird.

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4. 

   musteryou

   January 3, 2015

   Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

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5. 

   Jones

   January 3, 2015

   No, this is even more cynical than you might otherwise expect …

   The “Community College Dean” may actually benefit from these closures as he sees it because it might force some of the lower end of acceptants into his programmes instead of into tracks toward graduate studies.

   After all, unlike a game of “musical chairs”, those people do wind up going somewhere, rather than simply disappearing.

   This isn’t about graduate studies in his case — it’s about lowering all boats together with an enforced low tide.

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   1. 

      Thoreau

      January 4, 2015

      His programs absolutely require an oversupply of cheap adjuncts. Reduce the rate of PhD production and his labor costs will assuredly go up.

      There might be problems with his analysis or recommendations, but I think he’s actually arguing against self-interest here.

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