CHE article: Your Doctorate Does Not Prepare You

[Kron3007]

But also: people entering these programs are adults and can make their own decisions. I doubt they're actively being deceived about the chances of obtaining a tenure track position. Whatever reason they have for pursuing a PhD is on them. I suspect a sizable share of people in these programs have parental wealth to fall back on and are doing this as a leisure pursuit -- and why not? Probably a more productive use of privilege than traveling from one beach to another as an Instagram influencer.

That's my point. It's not just parental wealth (my son has an Ivy League PhD!), it's spousal wealth (there are a lot of rich people in NY, some of whom are married), or people that don't really care about what comes later (they're being funded to teach college classes at an Ivy for a few years, while living in NYC, and that's an experience unlike any they'll ever have again). There's no chance I'd ever go for it, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea for someone interested in that field.

There are also many that are not really wealthy but are going with the advice that many of us received; do what you love and success will follow.  A PhD in many fields in the humanities takes this to the extreme, but as I mentioned this was  the type of advice I had always had growing up and I can see how people would just go with it.

Forunately for me, what I love is relatively marketable in and out of academia so it was good advice.   

[polly_mer]

AAU has announced pilot programs for PhD programs that will include non-academic strands of some sort.  It's not clear from the IHE article what that means. 

Reading the website didn't help all that much, either, other than the assertion that data transparency is important.

The announcement of the 8 institutions participating in the pilot programs is somewhat entertaining based on what departments were chosen and what isn't being said about any sort of details of the pilot program.  For example, only a few of the programs being chosen are in fields where the primary PhD market is academia.  "Ensuring that students know all their options" is much easier in something like physics and chemistry where the professional societies are very strong and have materials/programs that one can easily adopt, if for some reason the graduate programs weren't already engaged with the relevant professional societies that have been embracing non-academic options for decades.

[Hibush]

AAU has announced pilot programs for PhD programs that will include non-academic strands of some sort.  It's not clear from the IHE article what that means. 

Reading the website didn't help all that much, either, other than the assertion that data transparency is important.

The announcement of the 8 institutions participating in the pilot programs is somewhat entertaining based on what departments were chosen and what isn't being said about any sort of details of the pilot program.  For example, only a few of the programs being chosen are in fields where the primary PhD market is academia.  "Ensuring that students know all their options" is much easier in something like physics and chemistry where the professional societies are very strong and have materials/programs that one can easily adopt, if for some reason the graduate programs weren't already engaged with the relevant professional societies that have been embracing non-academic options for decades.

At UVa, to pick one arbitrarily, they are working with four graduate programs: Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, English, and Religious Studies.  I am curious how students in the four fields will interact! The first two fields are training grounds for industry, probably the most industry-oriented. The latter two are probably at the opposite extreme, with no equivalent to Exxon or Medtronic in their sphere.


One to their trainings this week, organized through the library, is to help these scholars have basic competence in coding Python. Python is a skill that helps research and employability in many fields. How widely will grad students in the targeted fields realize this, and sign up?

[polly_mer]

One to their trainings this week, organized through the library, is to help these scholars have basic competence in coding Python. Python is a skill that helps research and employability in many fields. How widely will grad students in the targeted fields realize this, and sign up?

While I agree that Python is a useful skill, it's not a high-level skill that only graduate-trained researchers use.  There are online, self-paced Python classes that are good enough my sixth grader is doing one for his own entertainment.

People who had adequate, recent undergraduate mathematical training should already know at least one language like Python because that's what a modern undergraduate curriculum teaches.  I suppose someone in English or religious studies may not have that tool in their intellectual toolbox, but that's a weird thing to be advertising as a new initiative for a chemical engineering graduate program.  20 years ago, we all knew Fortran and/or C; now, we all know Python as well as Fortran and/or C.  Many of us are also pretty good at R (or some other statistical package) and probably Excel as a quick first pass.

[spork]

[. . . ]


At UVa, to pick one arbitrarily, they are working with four graduate programs: Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, English, and Religious Studies.  I am curious how students in the four fields will interact! The first two fields are training grounds for industry, probably the most industry-oriented. The latter two are probably at the opposite extreme, with no equivalent to Exxon or Medtronic in their sphere.


One to their trainings this week, organized through the library, is to help these scholars have basic competence in coding Python. Python is a skill that helps research and employability in many fields. How widely will grad students in the targeted fields realize this, and sign up?

I'd say that by the time people reach the doctoral program stage in English or religious studies, it's too late. The programs self-select for those who generally don't want to become proficient in something like programming with Python.

[pigou]

Why would anyone spend 6-10 years on an English or History PhD to then become a mediocre programmer? Just... become a programmer and read books for fun.

[Hibush]

Why would anyone spend 6-10 years on an English or History PhD to then become a mediocre programmer? Just... become a programmer and read books for fun.

Digital humanities? Quantitative histriography? AI-assisted literary analysis?

Employment as a programmer would be unlikely. Polly's sixth-grader might underbid them on the job.