A Year Without New Grad Students: CHE article

[Parasaurolophus]

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

That a difference of 8% is the difference between normal and critical over/undersupply is surprising.

I'm in life science, and having sent off most of our students to some nice gigs, we are admitting a normal number of PhD students.

I imagine those numbers for CompSci and Life Sciences represent a lot of students. On the humanities side, however, it may well be a much smaller number of graduates, and so more susceptible to swings in either direction. English departments usually have a lot of grads, and history has a fair few, but classics, philosophy, religious studies, etc. tend to have pretty small graduating cohorts.

(Pure speculation; I haven't got access to the whole article, which might well clarify things!)

[PScientist]

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

Interesting.  When I was in grad school, everyone I knew stalled on finishing the dissertation until we had definite job plans lined up.  I would have guessed that these numbers would be closer to 100%.

[Kron3007]

The announcements regarding Fall 2021 entry for grad school have been rolling in and many humanities and social science programs are skipping a new cohort: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pandemic-leads-dozens-of-universities-to-pause-ph-d-admissions-11609261200

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

That a difference of 8% is the difference between normal and critical over/undersupply is surprising.

I'm in life science, and having sent off most of our students to some nice gigs, we are admitting a normal number of PhD students.

I guess it depends on what those definite job plans are, as well as what happens to the others without immediate plans.

[Vkw10]

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

Interesting.  When I was in grad school, everyone I knew stalled on finishing the dissertation until we had definite job plans lined up.  I would have guessed that these numbers would be closer to 100%.

My program actively discouraged stalling. Tactics included annual satisfactory progress reviews, six years funding maximum, unsatisfactory progress after three years meant you were ineligible for GTA/GRA leaving only office assistant work, credits expired after ten years requiring you to retake coursework at full tuition. There were some postdoctoral positions for graduates who didn't have a job lined up, but priority went to people who completed within six years and the positions were limited to eighteen months.

[spork]

The announcements regarding Fall 2021 entry for grad school have been rolling in and many humanities and social science programs are skipping a new cohort: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pandemic-leads-dozens-of-universities-to-pause-ph-d-admissions-11609261200

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

That a difference of 8% is the difference between normal and critical over/undersupply is surprising.

I'm in life science, and having sent off most of our students to some nice gigs, we are admitting a normal number of PhD students.

I guess it depends on what those definite job plans are, as well as what happens to the others without immediate plans.

What is the definition of "definite job plans"? Does this mean "I accepted an offer and signed a contract" or "I plan to have a job"?

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

Interesting.  When I was in grad school, everyone I knew stalled on finishing the dissertation until we had definite job plans lined up.  I would have guessed that these numbers would be closer to 100%.

My program actively discouraged stalling. Tactics included annual satisfactory progress reviews, six years funding maximum, unsatisfactory progress after three years meant you were ineligible for GTA/GRA leaving only office assistant work, credits expired after ten years requiring you to retake coursework at full tuition. There were some postdoctoral positions for graduates who didn't have a job lined up, but priority went to people who completed within six years and the positions were limited to eighteen months.

This kind of system ought to be mandatory for all PhD programs. One of my undergrad roommates was in a PhD program at Harvard. He saw guest speakers coming in who had started their PhD programs the same year he did, yet had finished before anyone in his cohort and were now in salaried positions. So he left for Stanford. At the other extreme, I see people in rip-off programs who will never get a full-time faculty position paying tuition for "dissertation credits" semester after semester.

[apl68]

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

Interesting.  When I was in grad school, everyone I knew stalled on finishing the dissertation until we had definite job plans lined up.  I would have guessed that these numbers would be closer to 100%.

My program actively discouraged stalling. Tactics included annual satisfactory progress reviews, six years funding maximum, unsatisfactory progress after three years meant you were ineligible for GTA/GRA leaving only office assistant work, credits expired after ten years requiring you to retake coursework at full tuition. There were some postdoctoral positions for graduates who didn't have a job lined up, but priority went to people who completed within six years and the positions were limited to eighteen months.

That sounds better than my program, where you got four years of funding, but taking six years to get the degree was considered normal.

[Caracal]

The announcements regarding Fall 2021 entry for grad school have been rolling in and many humanities and social science programs are skipping a new cohort: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pandemic-leads-dozens-of-universities-to-pause-ph-d-admissions-11609261200

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

That a difference of 8% is the difference between normal and critical over/undersupply is surprising.

I'm in life science, and having sent off most of our students to some nice gigs, we are admitting a normal number of PhD students.

The truth is that while bad, the numbers for most humanities grad programs aren't as bad as most people seem to think.
Here is a nifty little site from the AHA.
https://www.historians.org/wherehistorianswork

I think what has happened is that the rhetoric has gotten divorced from the reality. If you take all the preconceptions away, there's a lot in here that should make anyone considering grad school in the humanities think very carefully about the decision. Most people who go to grad school in the humanities hope to get a tenure track job, but only about half do. Of course, that's not the only avenue towards putting the training to work-some people in non profit or governmental sectors are doing things directly related to the field. However, lots of people spend a lot of time in grad school and end up doing something they didn't need the degree for.

However, the rhetoric around humanities grad school has gotten so out of control that these numbers look good by comparison. Getting a tenure track job is not like winning a lottery jackpot and most Phds don't spend their lives working as adjuncts.

[polly_mer]

The announcements regarding Fall 2021 entry for grad school have been rolling in and many humanities and social science programs are skipping a new cohort: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pandemic-leads-dozens-of-universities-to-pause-ph-d-admissions-11609261200

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

That a difference of 8% is the difference between normal and critical over/undersupply is surprising.

I'm in life science, and having sent off most of our students to some nice gigs, we are admitting a normal number of PhD students.

Having definite plans is not the same as having plans to use that newly acquired PhD.  Staying as assistant manager at McDonald's restaurant or taking the pity teaching postdoc at the same program is a definite plan, but that's not the same caliber of plan as that CS PhD holder who took a new position that requires the graduate degree.

These are also self reports from people who responded to the survey.  I don't know what the differences in response rates are, but were I in charge of doing survey analysis, I would be looking closely at differences in response rates between fields.  People who are neutral to happy tend to respond in higher rates than people who are negative about the current outcome, unless the survey skews towards supporting negative responses.  That was a "fun" part of running the outcomes survey at Super Dinky and talking with experts in survey design.

Spork also has a point that the exact wording of the question matters.  "I have a contract for the postdoc" is different from "I will keep applying for postdocs until I get one" or even "I plan to apply for postdocs".

[Caracal]

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 



I'm in life science, and having sent off most of our students to some nice gigs, we are admitting a normal number of PhD students.

This is a misunderstanding of what's going on. They aren't admitting new students because they are trying to give additional funding to current ones. In many humanities disciplines, students go off and do research away from campus for long periods of time after they finish their exams. Often, this research is funded through fellowships. Some of these are government funded, others are from institutions like libraries. Students can generally use this funding to extend their university funding into an extra year.

The problem is that all of this got messed up now. If you were a student doing research in another country, in March, you had to come back without finishing the research. If you were going to go in the fall, that didn't happen. For people doing work in the US, many probably couldn't do research, or didn't want to risk hanging out in archives. A lot would depend on where you were in the process and what sorts of research you were doing-but I'm sure there are plenty of people who basically have just lost a year.

[mamselle]

Most of the overseas research libraries and archives, as well as those in the US, that a humanities scholar might have used in the past year have also simply been closed or severely curtailed since March.

I'm on six email lists for sites that have been very enterprising about detailing what they have available as digital resources, and encouraging their usual visitors to use those whenever possible, while making it very clear that their doors are closed. 

So, just amplifying on the above to say, it's not just a matter of students not wanting to risk going, which is of course logical--but they couldn't have gotten in, nor found a place to stay in most of the towns those libraries and archives are in or near--even if they'd wanted to.

This time last year I was in the BnF, in fact...sigh.

M.

[Stockmann]

The announcements regarding Fall 2021 entry for grad school have been rolling in and many humanities and social science programs are skipping a new cohort: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pandemic-leads-dozens-of-universities-to-pause-ph-d-admissions-11609261200

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

That a difference of 8% is the difference between normal and critical over/undersupply is surprising.

I'm in life science, and having sent off most of our students to some nice gigs, we are admitting a normal number of PhD students.

Having definite plans is not the same as having plans to use that newly acquired PhD.  Staying as assistant manager at McDonald's restaurant or taking the pity teaching postdoc at the same program is a definite plan, but that's not the same caliber of plan as that CS PhD holder who took a new position that requires the graduate degree.

These are also self reports from people who responded to the survey.  I don't know what the differences in response rates are, but were I in charge of doing survey analysis, I would be looking closely at differences in response rates between fields.  People who are neutral to happy tend to respond in higher rates than people who are negative about the current outcome, unless the survey skews towards supporting negative responses.  That was a "fun" part of running the outcomes survey at Super Dinky and talking with experts in survey design.

Spork also has a point that the exact wording of the question matters.  "I have a contract for the postdoc" is different from "I will keep applying for postdocs until I get one" or even "I plan to apply for postdocs".

I was in a two-member committee for tracking alumni outcomes for my department's gradute programs. As we had no budget or admin support, we were in charge of everything, and therefore I was involved in everything, from sending out the survey to crunching numbers to looking for other data sources. Response rates were so low that the survey was of little use, but we found a lot more data googling names one by one. Regardless, very few of our former grad students were unemployed, but a lot of them were in precarious and/or part-time jobs, including adjuncting and postdocing, or had jobs which were not obviously related to their education, or which were related but for which they seemed overqualified. So "definite job plans" means sh*t - not having them could mean someone is undecided between multiple decent job offers, and having them could involve jobs not really worth doing a PhD for or for which it's not even much of an advantage.

[Hibush]

For the several who asked about the "definite job plan" in the survey, here is what they ask:

1 I accepted or began a postdoc, residency, or other training position
   (A "postdoc" is a temporary position primarily for gaining additional education
and training in research, awarded in academe, industry, government, or a nonproft organization.)
2 I am returning to, or continuing in, predoctoral employment
3 I accepted or am employed in a position other than a postdoc or training position
4 I am negotiating an offer of employment with one or more specifc organizations
5 I am seeking a position but currently have no offer of employment
6 I am enrolling in a full-time degree program (e.g., PhD, MD, DDS, JD, MBA, etc.)
7 I do not plan to work or study (e.g., family commitments, etc.)
8 Other - Specify
If 1 GO TO POSTDOC OR OTHER TRAINING on PAGE 8
If 3, GO TO EMPLOYED OTHER THAN POSTDOC OR TRAINING on PAGE 9
If 4 GO TO NEGOTIATING OR SEEKING on PAGE 11

They then ask a lot about the current status
1 I am employed in a position related to my field of study
2 I am employed in a position not related to my field of study
3 I am not employed


They=NSF
Survey = Survey of Earned Doctorates (which is completed by almost all PhD recipients)

The report itself seems to use the phrase "have a definite commitment" rather than "plan" as in the article. The latter does end up being problematically ambiguous.

[kaysixteen]

'Humanities ' covers a lot of territory.   Saying x percent of Humanities phds get a tt job is almost meaningless, and no undergraduate should make a decision wrt grad school attendance based on such claims.  Rather, one must look at the t t job acquisition rates within his field in order to make the decision,  and further delineate it based on the grad department s he is applying to attend.   Overall numbers vary enormously along these two axes.

[Caracal]

'Humanities ' covers a lot of territory.   Saying x percent of Humanities phds get a tt job is almost meaningless, and no undergraduate should make a decision wrt grad school attendance based on such claims.  Rather, one must look at the t t job acquisition rates within his field in order to make the decision,  and further delineate it based on the grad department s he is applying to attend.   Overall numbers vary enormously along these two axes.

Yeah, exactly. That's why people who tell students "not to go to grad school" in the humanities lack credibility. Advice that isn't tailored to the person seeking it is useless.

[Stockmann]

For the several who asked about the "definite job plan" in the survey, here is what they ask...

Flipping burgers would qualify in 2-4. I'm not saying there are many PhDs flipping burgers, but I am saying that a "definite commitment" doesn't mean much without further info.