SL 611

~ Laura

Life as a “human prop.” 

Detroit is cutting off the water on people who don’t pay the bills.

The cupcake bubble has burst.

I’m not sure I understand why grad students are still surprised that there are no jobs in academia.

J.K. Rowling writes more about Harry as an aging hipster in Brooklyn. Not really. But she still writing about him.

Published by Laura

44 thoughts on “SL 611”

  1. There’s kind of a theme here, and not a very happy one. Whether the theme is a crappy economy, or people (including municipal officials) who have made bad choices, I guess is up to individual reader.

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  2. An unintended theme. Just what blew my way through other social media outlets this morning. I also looked at a video of Tom Hanks dancing at a wedding.

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    1. The most intriguing kind of theme, since they suggest something emerging out of the social interactions of a lot of people. Like the Facebook negativity study, makes me think that the Brave New World of the Foundation books could be plausible in the not too distant future.

      I think the Facebook folks did their study without worry about ethical implications because they were marketing folks, used to the idea that what they’re doing isn’t going to be particularly effective. But, I think we’re better at manipulating public opinion and group thinking. The Facebook study is proof in principle, a solid study that shows the ability of a corporation to manipulate people pretty directly.

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  3. The cupcake thing has come and past here. Out of five or six cupcake places, I think one is left. The new dessert things are frozen yogurt, I guess because the 90s are back, and East Asian bakeries that aren’t particularly Asian judging by what the put in the windows. The newest just opened yesterday and is called Pink Box.

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    2. We had a cupcake store front suddenly disappear this past year, and we don’t have nearly as many as you guys.

      With regard to frozen yogurt, we regularly go to three different places and I hope they all make it–just about every big shopping plaza seems to have one. I have more hope for the frozen yogurt places than the cupcake places. The problem with cupcakes is that they aren’t a great investment in the calories I have available to spend. On the other hand, with the frozen yogurt, you can take a little frozen yogurt (they have no sugar added ones, too) and then load up on blueberries, pineapple, raspberries, strawberries, etc. The cupcakes, in comparison, have close to no redeeming value. They’re pretty and sweet–that’s it.

      90s frozen yogurt was TOTALLY different. As I recall, they didn’t do the you serve thing with so much fruit available–it was mostly various sprinkles.

      We get the frozen yogurt cards as a reading incentive from school and as birthday gifts, which is how we got into it.

      I also love frozen custard and wish there were more outlets in town (the only one in town is right on a six lane main road and has no indoor seating–terrible ambience).

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  5. We have crepe places as well. Haven’t seen East Asian bakeries, though did encounter one in SF, but it had real Japanese sweets (which I think are a seriously acquired taste).

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    1. Our main source of crepes is my husband (he’s an Eastern European guy). One of his standard dinners is crepes plus a sweet ricotta filling with cinnamon and nutmeg and maybe walnuts plus whatever anybody wants to put on crepes. (The less gooey kind of pie filling is also nice–around the holidays they sell an apple cranberry canned filling that is fantastic.) We grownups would love fried mushrooms with crepes, but the kids wouldn’t appreciate it.

      I’m hoping my husband will manage to teach our 11-year-old how to make crepes sometime this summer. This is a very, very important skill that needs to be passed on to the next generation.

      I’ve been noting $6 packs of crepes in the store and boggling at it.

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  6. I’m not sure I understand why grad students are still surprised that there are no jobs in academia.

    They are surprised because, 1) the categorical statement is obviously not true, and that makes it easier to believe that the true statement, “jobs in academia are hard to find and the odds are bad, and the conditions often less than desirable, and you’ll have a much harder time if you don’t go to a top department” is also not true. 2) If you (rightly) believe the categorical claim is false, but use that to infer that the true claim is also false, it’s easy to convince yourself that you’ll be one of the special or lucky ones, even if you’re not going to a top department or program.

    It would be a good public service to focus on the true claim- some version of it, adapted for different disciplines- and not push the false categorical claim. Making overly strong, and so obviously false, statements doesn’t really dissuade people from the behavior in question, but often backfires. This is an instance of that, I’d claim.

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    1. I agree that the “no jobs” statements are damaging to the goal of accurately informing people on how unlikely finding the jobs will be.

      It’s important to talk about the structural changes to academia that change the environment. The Atlantic article that I read this morning is a good example, because it brings up the challenges of information work in every industry, as well as the issues associated with unbundling services that were sold as a package in the past.

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    2. But your true statement isn’t even true enough. Here’s the real true statement — jobs in academia are hard to find and the odds are bad, and the conditions often less than desirable, and you’ll have a much harder time if you don’t go to a top department. And you might get denied tenure at age 45 and have to start all over again. And you probably will have no choice about where you might live in this country. And if you have kids before you have tenure, things wil very difficult. And you might get paid less than the gym teacher at the local high school.

      But, really, I think the true statement is too long, and people still believe that they will be the lucky few. Since there are so few people actually getting tenure track jobs, I really don’t have a problem just shortening the statement to “there are no jobs.” I think it cuts down on the delusions.

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      1. I really don’t have a problem just shortening the statement to “there are no jobs.” I think it cuts down on the delusions.

        That’s what I’m denying, though. Since people can see that “there are no jobs” is false, they are (rightly!) not guided by it. I considered “conditions are often less than desirable” to include the part about picking where to live. I’m less sure about the kids before tenure part. _Many_ people I know had kids before tenure (or even in grad school) and got tenure w/o trouble (or, finished their degree and got jobs). It might not help, or might be a small disadvantage in some cases and a large one in others, but I don’t think it stands up as a general claim. The situation is a hard one (especially for people going to lower-ranked departments, though not only them.) People should know that. But giving them a real evaluation, rather than a false one, will be more useful for “cutting down on delusions”.

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      2. I know too many people, both of my generation and the next, who are truly enjoying their academic careers to make the statement that there are “no jobs”. Some of them even increased their risk factors significantly (by having children as graduate students, taking time off, limiting their mobility, . . .).

        I wouldn’t advise my own children against going to grad school, if they could get into a top program (or a top lab) and if they truly enjoyed the work they would do in grad school. I wouldn’t advise them to give up anything really important to them (delay having children, getting married, moving) in the hopes of the career. I’d also advise them to have a backup plan, at every step.

        (but, this is the same advise I’d give for any career plan).

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      3. Matt said:

        “I considered “conditions are often less than desirable” to include the part about picking where to live.”

        Yeah. I haven’t looked for a while, but I remember seeing City Data posts with lots of whining about how TERRIBLE it is living in a small college town in flyover country.

        If you wouldn’t be thrilled to live in a town of 20,000 in the Midwest, an hour from the nearest “big city” (i.e. Pittsburgh), definitely don’t go to graduate school. I get the feeling that there are a lot of jobs in locations like that.

        “I’m less sure about the kids before tenure part. _Many_ people I know had kids before tenure (or even in grad school) and got tenure w/o trouble (or, finished their degree and got jobs). It might not help, or might be a small disadvantage in some cases and a large one in others, but I don’t think it stands up as a general claim. The situation is a hard one (especially for people going to lower-ranked departments, though not only them.) People should know that. But giving them a real evaluation, rather than a false one, will be more useful for “cutting down on delusions”.”

        We didn’t have kids in grad school but started our family when my husband was getting tenure the first time. It was very stressful for him (for both of us, actually). We had lots of conversations that sounded like this after we had our second:

        Me: I can’t handle this! I need help!

        Him: I’ve got to put in 40 hours a week!

        (Fortunately, we were in residence at the time, and able to lay out a small fortune on babysitters.)

        My husband finished up grad school and got his first job at 28, so there wasn’t a huge wait for starting a family. Since then, we’ve met a lot of people who’ve had kids in grad school. I get worried by the ones with both parents in grad school and/or twins and/or 3+ children, but I’ve been surprised by how well people manage. I suspect it helps a lot that everybody else is doing the same thing.

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      4. bj said:

        “I know too many people, both of my generation and the next, who are truly enjoying their academic careers to make the statement that there are “no jobs”. Some of them even increased their risk factors significantly (by having children as graduate students, taking time off, limiting their mobility, . . .).”

        Our oldest would make a fantastic classicist (she has a phenomenal memory and she picks up scads of extra credit on her Latin tests), but it seems like a route as full of peril as Odysseus’s voyage home. If she chooses to go in that direction, we’ll have to tell her she must be prepared to teach high school Latin unless things go very well.

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    3. We just had an amazing placement year, and it’s not even a rated department. I’m going to be boohooing, though, because a close mom friend’s husband has gotten a good job in the Midwest. They’re leaving in a few weeks. Waaaaah! Time to get on the find-new-friends treadmill again.

      I also know of a family that just had a fourth (!!!!!!) child and the husband also just got a very decent job. Yay! That one was very suspenseful.

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  8. An Atlantic article on the demise of education as we know it: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/07/how-universities-are-like-record-labels/374012/

    With, I think, a bit of an explanation for why people are still going to answer those letters of admission affirmatively, even if they did get as satirical as the one described in the link. People are still going to go for the lottery, because it’s a pretty great gig if you can get it, being a public intellectual.

    There’s an interesting analysis at a grants funding analysis site (for NIH): http://grantome.com/blog/in-it-win-it, that makes a bottom line prediction of who might end up the surviving 1% or 10% or whatever it will actually be. NIH’s expansion of a research award, the K99, might end up identifying those individuals who will make it to the funded/tenure-track position (in the short run — some of those jobs will require continuing external grant funding, which might mean that people will be weaned later). So, in that case, as a post-doc, it might be reasonable to presume that unless you are able to get K99 funding, you should give up.

    I’m thinking that in non-NIH funded fields, a reasonable marker might be the reputation of the program you are entering. It won’t be a marker of continued success (even the K99 looks like it might be 60% or so rate), but, a pre-requisite.

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  9. That was a good article, mostly because I’m intriged with the music industry. I’ll re-read it later tonight. I’m on the errand part of the afternoon, so things are rushed… (Jonah pick up, gym, supermarket, shower, mom’s for dinner and pick up Ian).

    I think he’s right about the university system, btw. Lots of good stuff in there.

    I liked the bit about Taylor Swift and Macklemore self financing themselves until they built up their brands and could leverage better salaries from the record companies. I think schools are going to recruit all-stars in the classroom, who can pump out online lectures and mega classroom lectures. I think research creds are on the way out. I would urge grad students to think about themselves as entrepreneurs who have to cultivate their brand.

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    1. In science, research is a money maker, too. So, I see the star teacher with online presence as a possibility, but, only if the universities can leverage that into money. Right now, they’re leveraging it into reputation (i.e. EdX, Coursera, etc.) — the online course is supposed to increase the profile of their faculty so students will pay tuition to come (including foreign students). A star professors in the online courses are a draw.

      But, how do you become a star professor? I think you’re right that you have to develop your brand, by publishing, appearing in public, doing research that gets reported.

      And, as I said, in science, researchers are entrepreneurs who compete for government grant funding, so that model exists and will remain.

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    2. Liar! You’re watching the World Cup. I read Twitter. 😉

      GRRM wins for his tweet, btw.

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  10. entrepreneurs who have to cultivate their brand…

    *shudder*

    It is the way things are, I get it, but, oh my. My organization just rolled out the new yearly review criteria they’ll be using and one of the factors we’ll be judged on is our reputation as “Thought Leaders.”

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  11. What I always tell young people who are thinking about law school is: “Are you going to a top law school? If not, then apparently you don’t have top college credentials. So why do you think you are going to be significantly above average at the second-tier law school you are thinking about? Because there is no prospect of getting a job that justifies the expense of law school unless you do very well at the second-tier law school.”

    Note that there can be good answers to the second question. Possible examples include:
    1. “I got into a top tier school, but I got a full scholarship at the second tier school.”–In that case, there is good reason to expect you will do well.
    2. “I had a serious drinking problem in college, but now I am sober.”–Maybe.
    3. “I had a serious attitude problem in college, but three years in the Marines/an office job/my dad’s company has straightened me out.”–Again, maybe.
    4. “I had a debilitating physical illness in college.”–Good answer, assuming you are confident that the illness will not recur.
    However, “I am hoping that it will work out” is not a good answer.

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    1. I still don’t fully understand the legal market now. Who’s doing the divorces for the working and lower middle class? Who’s defending the guy on his second DUIs and kid who is punched the wrong guy. Those people used to be getting their lawyers from bottom half of the second tier schools and the third tier schools. I know that the bottom half of the second tier law school classes aren’t getting so many jobs anymore. Does that mean if you get sued for child support, the lawyers handling the case or either middle-aged or went to Harvard?

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      1. Interesting question. I think some of it is that people are relying on boilerplate contracts/divorces/wills (i.e. the Nolo press style). But who is defending the DUI guy? I’m guessing that it’s the middle-aged lawyers.

        Also, in their day, you didn’t go 200K+ into debt in order to earn the degree.

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      2. No, it means that the guys doing the work are getting paid $20 per hour as contract attorneys for someone who had an established practice. The “adjunctification” of legal practice, you might say. These contract attorneys were probably middle of the class at mediocre law schools; the bottom of the class is unemployed.

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      4. They are largely middleaged — I litigate against a bunch of these. And they do hire some kids, but everything flows downhill in terms of quality. The kids from excellent schools are scrambling for real jobs, and pushing out the kids from pretty good schools, and so on, meaning that the kids who manage to find a job representing drunk drivers are probably the ones who did quite well at pretty good schools.

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    2. I think I’d agree with pretty much all of this, but would add that, at least in the near past there were “regional” law schools that would dominate certain legal markets, and it would make sense to go to them (especially if it cost less) if you wanted to work in that market. So, if you wanted to be a lawyer in Boise, Idaho, it made sense to go to the University of Idaho, even though it’s not as good as lots of other schools, and it could be a positive detriment to go to, say, Penn or NYU if you wanted to work in Boise. But, with the changes in the law market, I’m much less sure of that than I would have been 5-7 years ago.

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      1. I think the state flagships still work, outside of Greater New York, Chicago, and southern New England, IF you want to practice in that state. I would include them in the top-tier category, if I ever met a young person from outside of Greater New York and southern New England, which hasn’t happened recently. (Michigan, Berkeley and Virginia are obviously in a separate category.)

        I didn’t mean to start a separate law school thread. My point was that I think the same considerations apply to graduate school: if you aren’t going to a top program, what makes you think you will be a success in this field? Another question for grad school is: if you aren’t getting a full ride, why would you think you can later get a job?

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  13. A relation went to a 3rd tier school and has ground his way into the state attorney general’s office. He did gritty ‘adjunct law’ for assholes who paid him poorly, hung out his own shingle. He finally got hired (over some folks who had gone to pretty swell schools) because he had done everything, been in court, could file his own motions, etc.

    I don’t recommend it. I will advise my kids pretty much as y81 has. It relied too much on a wife with benefits, making $15-20k for too many years, was pretty uncertain. But it did work, he has a career job doing work he likes as a litigator.

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    1. The legal market isn’t nearly as bad as the academic so things like this do happen. Regularly even. The are maybe 2 grads per job opening every year (and several unemployed people looking). Beating the odds isn’t nearly so hard. The bigger problem is that a lot of legal jobs don’t pay well enough to justify $75,000+ in tuition plus living costs for 3 years. Looking at the recruiting statistics I find it hard to say a school outside the top 5 is justified at that price.

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  14. Regarding Amy P’s youngest, studying classics in college, if you go to a good college, is perfectly sensible. One of our niece’s friends (I might have mentioned this) was a classics major at Brown, then got a job at BCG and makes big bucks. And my friend from Exeter, John McGinnis (you can google him), was a classics major at Harvard. Mind you, if don’t go to Brown or Harvard, it might be different.

    Plus there are the lifelong rewards of knowing Greek. My summer reading project is reading the Gospel of Mark in the original. I have done four chapters so far. You see a lot of things that are lost in translation.

    That said, graduate school in classics would be a very risky venture.

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    1. I think one can risk it, if one loves the field, and is not paying one’s way. Paying for grad school is foolish, unless it is earning you a credential, and then, you have to think seriously about the credential.

      It’s these rules I think are important to convey, to get out early rather than late, and not to hang on forever in the hopes that things will “work out”, and to have a back up plan and not give up anything really important to you “until you, graduate, get a job, get tenure, . . . .”

      Also, mobility restrictions make academics very very risky, though not necessarily impossible. And, there are not “lots of jobs” in flyover country. There are not lots of jobs anywhere. I do also really believe the hype that those jobs at small colleges are going to disappear. I don’t think that the little private liberal artsy schools that offer the “college experience” to weaker students are going to be able to sustain their economics in, say, the next 20 years.

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      1. “And, there are not “lots of jobs” in flyover country. There are not lots of jobs anywhere. I do also really believe the hype that those jobs at small colleges are going to disappear. I don’t think that the little private liberal artsy schools that offer the “college experience” to weaker students are going to be able to sustain their economics in, say, the next 20 years.”

        There are lots of jobs in flyover country–or let’s just say that for every job at Yale, there are a 100 jobs in far less glamorous locations. It is a good question, though, whether certain Rust Belt locations can sustain all of their colleges (Pittsburgh alone has several you’ve never even heard of and the not-outstanding women’s college was just forced to go co-ed).

        http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2014/05/01/chatham-university-to-go-fully-coed-beginning-in.html?page=all

        I see a lot of people get jobs at small Catholic colleges or Bible colleges or small historically Dutch Reformed colleges, etc. Many of those are jobs that a lot of people who post here would run screaming away from, either because of location or religious or ideological issues or what have you (there isn’t a Thai or an Indian restaurant for 80 miles!!!!), but the jobs certainly do exist.

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  15. As a woman who has succeeded as an academic and an administrator in a pretty nice place, including figuring out the two career bit, I get worried when my female students in particular come over to my house and sit in my kitchen and say something like “I really want what you have — this interesting career, the flexibility to leave work and pick up my kids, a way to make marriage and family and career work, etc.”

    I think that’s the problem right there — as long as you can identify one person for whom it ‘all worked out’, it’s fairly easy to convince yourself that that person will be you. I always make sure to tell my students about: the year I didn’t have any academic job and filled in by substitute teaching in a public school and working at a Christian school where I was forty and my boss was twenty-six (his parents owned the school) and I had to call him “Mr. So and So.” I tell them about the years of adjuncting and teaching online when my kids were little. I tell them about the nonprofit job I cobbled together when the kids were little and my husband’s job was too demanding for me to take one that involved commutes and deadlines and late nights. I tell them about teaching the late night seminars when the kids were little and being exhausted the next day, the Visiting Assistant Professor job at the prestigious university that involved a ninety mile commute each way when my kids were little and the succession of au pairs who totalled our cars and the teenagers I hired to pick up the kids and drive them around when I was working, the three books I had to write for tenure when I was exhausted, the point at which I actually thought I was developing Alzheimer’s because I was so worn out I couldn’t remember my kid’s names or any of the vocabulary I needed to be able to access to give a lecture on post-materialism, and constructivism, etc. etc. etc. I tell them about how the other Girl Scout moms all thought I was a rotten mother, and about how close we came to getting divorced from the stress of it all. I tell them “Remember how you used to always see my cute little kids on campus on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons? That wasn’t a choice. That was because my childcare had fallen through.”

    From the outside, I look like one of the people who succeeded in academia, and it all looks pretty sweet, but most people have no idea what that journey actually looks like or how long it takes — even for those who do succeed. I always make sure to fill my grad students in on that part.,

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    1. If you wrote three books for tenure, you don’t just “look like” someone who’s succeeded in academia, you definitely are someone who has succeeded in academia! Wow.

      It’s great that you share those stories with your students, but I do think that many two-career couples find that there’s a 5 or 10-year period when their kids are little (depending on how many kids you have and how spaced out they are ) where they are just barely keeping it all together. It may be worse overall for academics, but I feel like I know a lot of people who are awfully stressed out and depressed during that period.

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  17. Part of psychology are apparently trying to bleed over into parapsychology, but keep their grants.

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    1. I thought his research was on mentalizing, but maybe it is mentalism. Either way, that essay sure makes him seem arrogant and stupid.

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  18. I feel sorry for the current crop of graduate students, but I am so over the graduate-school-sucks-and-there-are-no-jobs meme, not because it’s not (largely) true, but because it’s been true for 30+ years, at least in the humanities. Did none of them do any research before entering their PhD programs? I wish Invisible Adjunct had left her website up…

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