Last week, EphBlog, a blog for Williams students and alumni, was discussing the Taylor op-ed that rolled through the blogosphere. One commenter wanted to know how many grad students really knew the odds that they would face finishing their program and then finding employment. They asked me if our grad school programs informed us about our odds. The answer? No.
I clearly remember our orientation in a large seminar room. There was about twenty five or thirty first year political science students sitting around a U-shaped table. I'm still in contact with many of them, mostly through Facebook and the occasional e-mail. Most of them dropped out of the program. A few after the first year. One died. (Robert, I still miss you.) Most just drifted off over the years. I think three of us finished the dissertation. We all took about eight years. We all had sizable loans. Only one has a tenure track job. That's a really lousy success rate. Any business that operated with that level of success would go bankrupt.
That orientation day, we learned about the requirements for the program, but nobody told us about the one in thirty odds. Nobody discussed student loans until graduation week. My husband, who was in the history program, didn't really discover how tough it was going to be until he sent out his first job package for a podunk college in Pennsylvania, and he was told that his application was one of 300. He promptly went out and got a temp job on Wall Street.
During my graduation, Senior Professor Stuffy Pants from the English Department gave the key note address. It was really long. I believe one of the honorees, an ancient song writer for Broadway, walked off stage because he couldn't take it. The topic of his speech was "what's the purpose of this grad program." His conclusion was that we could become administrators. We sat in the audience with our families around us and nearly starting booing. This is what all that hard work was about? This is when they chose to tell us that we had no chance of finding a teaching job?
It wasn't just our program. I have friends from the University of Chicago, Berkeley, and NYU who have PhDs and no jobs. There are few jobs out there and relocating across the country isn't possible for everyone.
In my most bitter moments after I graduated, I contemplated a class action suit against the university for not fully disclosing their poor placement numbers. But I got over it.
The good news is that there are opportunities for PhDs outside the university. I also think that grad students aren't as naive as we were in the 90s.
The other 29 students in that seminar room may not have found teaching jobs, but they have fine lives doing other things. They have spouses and kids and are paying their bills. Still, I bet they are just a little bit ticked off.
Related: The increasing rate of non-tenure track positions. See Duck of Minerva and Monkey Cage.
Apt. 11d 
“My husband, who was in the history program, didn’t really discover how tough it was going to be until he sent out his first job package for a podunk college in Pennsylvania, and he was told that his application was one of 300.”
But from what I hear, a lot of those 300 applications will be from people whose specialty isn’t within miles of the advertised position. From the other side of the table, I keep hearing that it’s very difficult to find good hires.
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I suspect it depends on your field. My husband’s specialty was German history. Tons of applicants, few jobs.
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25 years ago my department sent out a letter with grad application packets, saying that Philosophy was a bad bet as a discipline, and jobs were hard to find, so it wasn’t a wise move to go to grad school.
I know because I got one of those letters, and refrained from applying to this department, the one I most wanted to go to. I’ve been teaching here for 17 years now.
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IMHO we do a bad job with kids in the States and helping them transition from the schooling phase of life to the working phase. It’s amazing to me to realize how much effort we put into helping kids choose a college. Yet these same kids seem to not be hearing some very basic advice about choosing a profession: things like, what happened to last year’s grads? Do they have good jobs?
I don’t think you can rely upon the institutions themselves to give the warning. They’re too directly incented not to.
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I’ve been trying to think about the odds at my department (large midwestern university). They took in about 20 my year, but some were gone so quickly that I can barely remember their names. If you don’t count the military guys (who were in a very different situation job-wise), there were about a dozen of us that stayed past the first couple of years. Three finished. Of those, two currently have academic positions in the field. However, of those two, one is at a university in a state where people wear wedges of cheese on their heads and the other one is in someplace called Wales, which may be fictional.
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I should add that my count is probably not perfect as I’ve only kept in touch with about six or so of my former classmates. And, it turns out that Wikipedia says the University of Wales does exist.
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Laura: Thanks for taking the time to write such an interesting reply to my question.
harry: And someone I know just won the lottery too!
jen: When I implied as much to Sam Crane he suggested that it was inconceivable that faculty might engage in such unprofessional conduct. Perhaps you are imagining the whole thing . . .
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Hubby’s given up on the job market for a while — and is going to law school. Maybe a Ph.D. and JD combo will end in a job.
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Jasper Fforde confirms that Wales is a Socialist republic. See, for example, Fforde, J., The Eyre Affair, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2001.
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Sorry, David, I see that was a completely cackhanded way of saying that my department, when I though of applying to it, was entirely responsible about this (and very upfront about the lousy funding situation, which has, nevertheless, improved). Yes, I was dead lucky, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.
I don’t have hard data about why people leave our program without finishing. Most that I have talked to had better things to do, but certainly not all. Of those who complete most get tenure track jobs (or other jobs that they want like one who works for the department of defense), though not necessarily anywhere near where they’d ideally live. That is a risk you take when entering a highly specialized field (you don’t go into corrosion engineering if you want to live in London) and if you’re not aware of that you should be, simply by observing your professors and the graduate students in your department if you have them when you are an undergraduate.
As graduate admissions chair I would be very frank with the students I met, which included telling them that they should go elsewhere when I thought that’s what they should do (like where they’d get paid twice as much and get better job prospects). I also tell everyone who asks me for letters for grad school exactly what the situation is. I actually think that is what Laura should be demanding, partly because people listen to the profs they ask for letters, and partly because it is a more realistic demand.
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Wow, David. Just finished reading the whole comment thread at EphBlog. I didn’t catch all the heat that happened there. Disclaimer — I just wrote about my experience at my particular university and am in no way implying that all graduate students were as equally uninformed as my husband and I were. I don’t have that kind of information. N=2.
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Everybody in Europe keeps starting new countries and confusing me. First we had all the new Baltic things, then Czech and Slovokia separated, and now I’ve got to learn new places like Wales and Portugal.
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Kane is rather famous on the internets for his distortions, his embarrassing errors, and his ideology. Best just to not engage…
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Kane is rather famous on the internets for his distortions, his trollery, and his ideology. Best not to engage…
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Laura, I think you went to grad school where I went to college. At that particular place, you are nothing if you don’t go to grad school. Undergrads looked down on people in consulting jobs, who went to medical school, etc. Getting a PHD was pretty much a basic requirement to a civilized life. So its no wonder no one told you. Also, I think it was the early 90s when everyone was sure professors were all going to retire. HAH HAH HAH.
I eventually got over it and got a profession. I feel bad for grad students now.
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harry: No worries. Any department that provides accurate data on this topic is to be praised. My links are not getting through the filter, but I will just note that your department has an excellent listing of graduates and where they went. Well done. But also of interest would be the number of students who entered the program each year.
laura: Surely you have better things to do then read threads on EphBlog! The reason that I asked you is precisely because I was interested in your N of 1 (or 2) because I figured Sam might accept testimony from you on the extent of the problem. I had no idea what you would say before I asked you (other than my basic knowledge, which Sam seems to dispute) that there is widespread ignorance among graduate students about this and that many departments do a poor job of telling the truth.
Sam: Ad hominem may work for you on EphBlog but I suspect that readers at 11d will be less impressed. Laura (and perhaps Jen) have now tolled you that they were not informed about the odds. Do you think that Laura is lying? That hers is the only graduate school with such slipshod practices?
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“I don’t have hard data about why people leave our program without finishing. Most that I have talked to had better things to do, but certainly not all. Of those who complete most get tenure track jobs (or other jobs that they want like one who works for the department of defense), though not necessarily anywhere near where they’d ideally live.”
But, Harry is saying that he doesn’t have the accurate data. Grad programs absolutely must produce their graduation rates, and keep that data up-to-date in their web pages. Science programs are required to produce this data as part of any training grants they may have, so it’s usually available if one asks.
It’s harder, in science, to keep track of who makes it to a tenure track job (and, even more, who makes it to a tenured job), because the track takes so long. But, I still think they should be required to track this information.
Law schools publish this statistic (though there’s been talk of gaming by offering students some job, any job to keep the numbers high, in these dark days).
So, I think saying that “you don’t know how many graduate” and that “most people find a tenure track job” and the ones who find other jobs are “happy or have better things to do” should be documented with numbers and responses from the students. It’s wrong of schools not to.
That being said, I think I had a good feel for the odds, and was not mislead.
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The graduate program that I went to claimed a 100% placement rate in their promotional materials. I was a lot greener then (late 90s), and didn’t inquire further. What I didn’t know was 1) the program chewed through tremendous numbers of graduate students who never came out the other end 2) People didn’t procede with a defense if they didn’t have a job lined up already 3) I don’t believe anyone completed a PhD or got a job during the 2.5 years I was there or the year or so afterward when I was in touch with the department. 4) The Cold War years and the immediate post-Soviet aftermath were very good to Russian departments, but there was a collapse in demand immediately afterward.
The only thing I can say for the experience was that I didn’t borrow any money for the ride. Oh, and I know what Glagolytic is.
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OK, glagolitic.
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Glagolytic is a past, possibly legendary, king of Wales.
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“We all took about eight years.”
Speaking of this, I’ve always been afraid to ask, but I’m pretty certain that I’m at least partially responsible for my old department’s effort to tighten the time-line on its Ph.D. program.
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“Grad programs absolutely must produce their graduation rates, and keep that data up-to-date in their web pages.”
Totally agree.
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David, you ask me a good question and I was happy to answer it. I just didn’t realize that there was a rumble going on at your blog, and I would rather avoid rumbles on other people’s blog. My own rumbles keep me plenty busy.
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I wasn’t warned how hard it would be to get jobs (entering grad school in 1987). However, my class did pretty well. I’m brain-cramping and can remember only about 10 people (I think there were 15-20 of us), but our ranks include a current VP of Academic Affairs at a SLAC, a tenured faculty member at Notre Dame, two who are tenured at universities in Ohio, and one at a university in Illinois. One is in academic administration at a university in Europe, in her home country. Two of our class dropped out with a masters.
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Links not working. Here are some of Kane’s credentials:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/08/robert_chung_on_david_kane.php
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Laura: No worries. I will rumble elsewhere. Thanks again for answering my question.
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I wonder what kind of questions you (and your husband) actually asked about placement, dropouts, etc. From my personal experience, I can say that most of the questions I asked halfway through law school wouldn’t have occurred to me when I was applying. But the people I asked were more than willing to give me straight answers as soon as I did. Looking back, some people were also probably trying to warn me about the reality before I started but I wasn’t focused on it.
That may not be true for you – but I wonder how much we blame schools/administrators or whomever when we never asked the questions. This isn’t to say grad schools are off the hook – they need to be more transparent and forthcoming. But grad students are also adults who need to take responsibility for their own decisions. To me, this is a big distinction between college and grad school. In theory you’ve got to take more responsbility for your choices at 22 (or older) than you do at 17 or 18.
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What do people think about the intersection of fairly young people making decisions about undergrad or grad school, and their ability to borrow literally tens of thousands of dollars to do it? To me, I don’t really have a problem with a young person frittering away a couple of years because they don’t know enough to ask penetrating questions. But it’s another thing completely to saddle that kid with a lifetime’s worth of debt. Here’s where I start getting a little testier about grad schools and full disclosure.
Why are student loans approved for fields with such poor job prospects? Do students even have to make such a case? Wouldn’t that process alone lead to some more focused questions on the part of the students?
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“What do people think about the intersection of fairly young people making decisions about undergrad or grad school, and their ability to borrow literally tens of thousands of dollars to do it?”
There’s an article floating around right now about a guy deep in student loans who wishes he had gone to prison rather than college. He’s “only” $30,000 in debt.
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/05/college-debt-so-crushing-grad-says-i-wish-id-gone-to-prison-instead.html
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“Grad programs absolutely must produce their graduation rates, and keep that data up-to-date in their web pages.”
Totally agree.
Yes, it should be required as part of accreditation. Tracking employment should, too, though that is harder to do. And any statements like “the person didn’t want to continue working, wanted to become a waiter, musician, slacker” should have to be backed up with documentation. I’m fairly aggressive telling people about the non-professional degree that a Ph.D. is. I worry sometimes, too aggressive, because I think children should have dreams, and although a Ph.D. doesn’t provide any guarantee at all for, say a research-tenured position, not having one will mean that you can’t follow that dream.
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I too worry about quashing dreams. How to provide a balanced view? I always wonder if when I say, “Make sure you get an education that will improve your job prospects,” I’m actually saying, “I am currently stressed out about my own job prospects, which are not helped by my totally random undergraduate degree.”
I’d like to think it’s not always about me. Perhaps I’ll just stick with that delusion!
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I’ve enjoyed reading this discussion and find myself agreeing strongly with JD and less with bj (although I find bj’s remarks quite thoughtful).
I find linking certain behaviors to accreditation problematic, in part because it seems to me that linking behaviors that only tangentially relate to the actual format of education creates even more bureaucratic and administrative practices that actually diminish faculty-student interactions. (This comment is partially motivated by bj’s remarks but also the extraordinarily odd power that accreditation agencies like Middle States have on colleges and universities. Minor and incredibly vague requirements get translated by legalistic types as things for which much time, energy, and money must be invested to please the accreditors.) In many schools, administrators engage this, which leads to a rise in overall school costs. In poorer schools, it is faculty that must address this. In the case of Laura’s alma mater, which is affiliated with my own institution, such tasks would likely fall on faculty.
Why is this a problem? Well, I think it further undermines the transparency of the reality based world that many graduate students face as they undergo the difficult path of grad school, assuming that the TT job is what they want (and admittedly, this might not be the case).
I think one of the problems here is a dearth of mentorship — and Laura, your institution perhaps did not serve you well at all. Perhaps you had good mentorship, but I think this is not necessarily the norm there. Grad students need to know the likelihood of getting TT jobs in general and also need to know how their school fits in the hierarchy. There are many students from Ivies that don’t get jobs year after year; there are even more from schools not in the “elite” that do not because of academic snobbery. I know of many talented PhD students who did excellent dissertations, published good articles, and crafted and taught thoughtful classes who did not land jobs — I am assuming that this is in part because their institutions were not well-ranked.
I’m not sure that non top-10 departments need to post “snobbish folks might think you suck if you come here” on their websites, but there needs to be a culture of dedicated, empathetic and tough mentorship for grad students that provides a realistic snapshot of the difficulties and costs of graduate school (and opportunity costs) as well as job options both in academia and elsewhere, on and off the tenure track.
But I don’t think things like mandating graduation rates or noting placement on websites for accreditation are the right answer. I guess I’m too much of a qualitative scholar, but I think those statistics might not accurately convey the sorts of information that they would for other sorts of programs, say a nursing program or an undergrad program.
To expound/extend upon what JD said, many starting graduate students don’t even know what graduate school is when they start, so a full or even high finishing rate may not mean that the program is not serving graduate students — it might mean that leaving graduate students are becoming more astute about other career/life options that do not include the mental and personal masochism graduate school requires. And it might only occur to them to give up “the dream” (such as it is) once they understand its costs.
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Actually, the data our department has on the web, though ok, is probably below the mean quality of published data among top40 departments in Philosophy. It occurs to me Philosophy might be an outlier. Pretty much no-one goes to graduate school without reading Leiter’s Report, and he very prominently advises no-one to go into debt, and to be extremely demanding about finding out data about completion rates etc, as well as what “stars” in departments are really like in person. IN response the departments have publicised data about what happens to people who complete. They are less forthcoming in public about the size of an incoming class, and this varies enormously across departments, but they will usually tell prospective students.
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Harry: I looked at your data but could not find anything on incoming class sizes. Do you post those numbers, say over the last 10 years? If not, do you have any thoughts on the pros or cons?
Also, I have always thought that the ideal data would be a list of names in each incoming class. That would make it somewhat easy for an incoming student to say, here were the students who entered in 1999 (or whenever) and, via the magic of Google and Facebook, I can see where they are now.
Would your department consider publishing the names of all entering students for each year?
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“Pretty much no-one goes to graduate school without reading Leiter’s Report, and he very prominently advises no-one to go into debt, and to be extremely demanding about finding out data about completion rates etc, as well as what “stars” in departments are really like in person.”
Good for Leiter.
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I work in a small department at a small town University. During exit interviews this year, our graduates were encouraged to be persistent and to not just search for jobs that they were interested in… they should look for jobs that are building blocks to other jobs that would help lead them to their dream jobs (economic times have led to this). Helping students find employment after graduation is something that the department head and faculty members have been concerned about. This past week one of the faculty members in our department presented a great book to help students better prepare for employment… the book is titled, “The Job Coach for Young Professionals” by Susan Kennedy and Karen Baker. He claimed that the book offered phenomenal resume and interview tips, and that it even offers advice to people who currently have jobs, who want to better manage their skills. He strongly recommended it.
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Amy P — well, I wouldn’t be in favour of putting up names of incoming classes in perpetuity. At least without permission. I just looked at our page, and I can tell you that the average incoming class from 1995-2003 was somewhere between 8 and 10. From 1999 all students have been funded with a 4 year guarantee of support (at something around living wage).In a number of the years recorded on the site more people graduated than were admitted.
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harry b,
I think that was David Kane, not me.
By the way, if you click on Becky’s name, the link carries you to a web page for “The Job Coach for Young Professionals.” This looks like one of the better camouflaged pieces of advertising that I’ve seen on the internet.
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@bj. I completely agree with you.. “departments should produce their graduation rates, and keep that data up-to-date in their web pages.” This is something that our department/University has done. We have an accreditation link on our website that lists the number of students who are currently in our program and the number of students who have graduated from each discipline. We then keep track of all of our alumni. We always do a follow-up call and email to all of the students who have graduated from our department (up to 5 years after they graduate) to find out what they are up to (are they going on for more schooling, employment information, and what their salary is). We then anonymously put this information on our website so that people can determine what their options are and as to whether or not they would like to pursue a certain degree program. I didn’t realize that other Universities were not doing this.. Wow!
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