Caveat emptor

Tue Sep 17 11:07:12 UTC 2013

I agree with Dan. Additionally, a graduate with a technical hand generally gets a job at the age of 22-23 but a Ph D candidate makes his/her mark around 30 in the rat-race of getting a job. There is a chasm between someone 'gets' a job and on the other hand someone 'enters' into the job market. But at the same time I think this thing may remain in the mind of a person who is entering into a research programme. And to my best knowledge any such programme only offers a good research, and it doesn't offer a job security.

Yours,

Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi, Dr.
Assistant Professor
Department of Languages & Literature
Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra
Jammu & Kashmir 182 320

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi
amitabhvikram at yahoo.co.in 
amitabh.vikram at smvdu.ac.in amitabh[dot]vikram[@]smvdu[dot]ac[dot]in
http://www.smvdu.net.in/

________________________________
 From: Sebastian Nordhoff <sebastian_nordhoff at EVA.MPG.DE>
To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG 
Sent: Tuesday, 17 September 2013 4:23 PM
Subject: Re: Caveat emptor

On Tue, 17 Sep 2013 12:35:42 +0200, Everett, Daniel <DEVERETT at bentley.edu> wrote:

> Absolutely correct, Sebastian. But we all know that most people do not do PhDs in typology in order to do accounting, etc.

in my (Dutch) PhD program, we were told from the beginning that only about 1/3 of us would find a job in research, and that we should get used to the idea of working elsewhere.

> A PhD is normally seen as the way into an academic career.

This is the basic misconception I think. It is true that this belief exists, but it does actually not correspond to what people with a PhD do do in the end. I therefore very much appreciated the University of Amsterdam's approach of dispelling this myth from the outset.

> And I see far too many unemployed and underemployed  PhDs in the humanities.

Do you have some numbers for your PhD students? There might be a bias in that you are unlikely to meet PhDs who have left academia. The people who remain are the few lucky ones with a good position, and the unlucky ones still trying.

> To give an example, adjunct faculty in the business disciplines usually have full careers, well-compensated, and do teaching as a satisfying way to interact with future professionals. Adjuncts in the humanities are either retired or, most commonly, underemployed folks trying to piece together a career from the leavings of full-time faculty. They wanted the tenure-track/permanent position. And they still do. And it is wrong to overproduce in this way.

I agree that the ratio of applicants per tenure position is too high. One should try to either get more tenure positions (unlikely) or discourage people from pursuing this career option. But this is logically independent from people getting a PhD in linguistics.

> Saying that there are other things they can do would be fine for BAs or MAs in linguistics. But a PhD is overkill for positions not in or even only tangentially related to  the field of study.

I know a couple of PhDs who now work outside of the research circus. Maybe they have acquired too much specific domain knowledge and scientific skills for their new job, but it certainly does not hurt. And, after all, it is a great pleasure and privilege to investigate uncharted scientific terrain during your PhD.

tl;dr
No need to cut PhD positions, but curtail expectations to follow a research career afterwards

Best
Sebastian

> 
> Dan
> 
> 
> 
> On Sep 17, 2013, at 5:59 AM, Sebastian Nordhoff wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 18:59:24 +0200, Everett, Daniel <DEVERETT at bentley.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> I am posting this because linguistics is one of the disciplines I think needs to consider this seriously. There are too many academics in the liberal arts with no chance of full-time, secure employment in the area in which they have done their PhD.
>> 
>> I might note that there are job possibilities outside of "the area where they have done their PhD". Getting a PhD in Typology does not necessarily mean that the only career opportunities are within the, indeed restricted, field of academic linguistics.
>> Best wishes
>> Sebastian
> 
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20130917/0c6b7101/attachment.htm>