Came across an interesting article on my Google Reader feed about advanced degrees and the job market, or “Why You Aren’t Entitled To A Tenure-Track Job Because You Have A Ph. D”. I feel the whole bit about the people who immediately go from undergrad to grad school due to a “love affair with books and ideas” and/or those who are “bored by the ill-paid, entry-level jobs they are eligible for immediately following graduation” (which falls after the blockquote).
In fact, I don’t know a single form of professional education that guarantees its graduates a job, whether the market is good or bad, and why Ph.D. granting programs have a special moral responsibility to do this is unclear. But on the job wikis and the blogs there is an emerging consensus that the jobless should have received a waiver of liability with the letter of admission (which Brown University actually used to send its graduate students in English back in the sad old 1980s, and most of us who knew someone who received one were horrified by the practice.) Resentful job seekers , in other words, speak in the language of fraud rather than regret. This I find astonishing, given that an hour of research prior to applying, or accepting an offer of admission, could tell any prospective graduate student what their academic job prospects might look like six to seven years hence.
The only thing that makes this phenomenon less astonishing is that today’s prospective graduate students were yesterday’s undergraduates, and undergraduate education has been trending towards nanny-ism and false guarantees for several decades. But what is it that graduate programs and professional associations could do to intervene in this situation? I have three suggestions.
Oh Snap, Son! 