[rickmichaels]

...her scholarship on black women’s hair.

Just keep reading that over and over.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Sometimes this happens...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_University_of_Alabama_in_Huntsville_shooting

[jtal]

She was thinking less about whether she would become a professor and more about how exciting it would be to continue her scholarship on black women’s hair.

Is this a joke?

[ClearCase_guy]

Got a PhD? Check your privilege!

[4Liberty]

Engineering majors DO NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM; Feminist Poetry majors - yes.

[Maine Mariner]

I think the job market for university positions for Ph.D.s is pretty good if your degree is in accounting, finance, computer science, transportation and/or logistics and/or global supply chain management. Ph.D.s in engineering I doubt have trouble finding university appointments.
One or two offering for each freshly minted Ph.D. I bet.

History Ph.D.’s not quite so good, usually 50-100 applications for each position. But even 20-30 years ago there was a glut of history, English, etc Ph.D.s competing for academic positions.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

It's about time the liberal punks had to find real jobs.

[martin_fierro]

[Huskrrrr]

I was a Post-doc for 4 years, then industry for eight, now an adjunct at two colleges with benfits after 3 years (and some seniority). My PhD is in Organic Chemistry. I’m better off than most, but still you need a plan A, a plan B and a plan C. Be flexible!

[blueplum]

Straight thru school, on history and literature, not even enjoying teaching, then expecting to find a career, which is viewed as being a failure, mind you, even a highpaying one - and one discontent finds a blogging career in, it gets better, career counseling.

The target goal of these grads being not taking a lesser salary to teach young children the delights of prose or the significance of America in the world, but grant-writing. That is, soliciting free government money on top of the free government money to go to school to begin with.

Perhaps they are grants to study the mating habits of pelicans in historic perspective. Or the literary skills of unemployed grads responding to blogs, or the mathmatical abilities of the four-tongued frog, written while sitting in a private ‘biosphere enclave’ in a national park restricted from the public, buffalo roaming by their airconditioned gert on an open prairie, where once ranchers worked their beef herds to feed the world. WTSHTF these are the people who become immediately useless.

And the punch line? we support them with tax dollars.

wait...how do you write a grant proposal again?

[DesScorp]

Go to any university’s library, especially the ones with easier admittance policies. Peruse the dissertations section. You’ll realize what a scam academia has become. We could lose 90 percent of our humanities and “social science” faculty without any ill effects, and indeed, many positive ones.

[samtheman]

Humanities Professorship = Suckling on the Govtit

[righttackle44]

The lack of on-campus assistance for those who pursue graduate studies is amazing.

Years ago, I was the executive director of an organization that employed persons with academic achievements ranging from high school graduates to Ph.Ds, with the occasional MD thrown in.

Many of our positions were part-time, research-oriented, and time-sensitive, for these doctoral-level staff and consultant positions.

The graduates were wonderful to work with, most of them striving to achieve, for professional reasons. There was the occasional grumpy-joe and -jill who believed that their talents and academic achievements were being wasted--clearly, they believed, they should be in teaching positions, charging straight toward tenure.

Many of them were amazingly well-prepared in their, fields, bringing cutting edge, state-of-the-art knowledge and skills to our poor little $18-an-hour, 20-hours-per-week positions. And it was because no one had told them, during about 32 or more periods of course enrollment and financial aid struggles and lines, of filling out new questionnaires, information updates, and constant vita revisions, that there were no jobs waiting on the other side of their diplomas.

I remember one young woman, extremely efficient and bright, begging me to retain her in the secretarial support position she then occupied, because it was the only full- time work she had been able to find. Alas, the funding for her position was scheduled to run out at the end of the fiscal year because the project was essentially over with when I hired her, a fact I had explained to her.

At the time, there were few professional positions for doctor of audiology degree holders.

I remember that, on her very last day of employment with us, she faced a bleak future. She would be living on unemployment assistance for 13 weeks, then nothing. She was clearly distressed, and she was crying as she walked out the door.

I hope things have improved in audiology. It's tough to watch someone who has worked hard in, and brought a high level of commitment and achievement to, a particular academic field, being destroyed by the lack of employment in that field.

And all because no one has said them, "Your chances for employment in your area of expertise are not very good."

[RetiredTexasVet]

Probably should have gotten a PHD in Modern Expressive Dancing and moved to North Dakota and got a job as a pole dancer/stripper at $2,500 a night .... providing you’re not excessively obese or two coyote ugly ... tattoos OK.

[boycott]

The colleges and universities had no problems taking the taxpayer’s loan and grant money over the years.

Sooner or later, there has to be an education bubble to burst. This is truly the fleecing of America.

[Sapwolf]

Where can you get a PHD in...Militia Studies? LOL!

[publius911]

She was thinking less about whether she would become a professor and more about how exciting it would be to continue her scholarship on black women’s hair.

Say what?

How many real losers delude themselves by getting a "PHD" on a trash subject and expecting eventually to "win" a professorship on the subject?
Other that a well disguised welfare life tenure, what use is it?
How many millions more are there with totally useless college educations and degrees?

[Political Junkie Too]

But what about the woman who was giving John McCain middle east war advice? She didn't even finish her doctorate and she landed a fine job.

-PJ

[katana]

So I guess when I told my academic advisor / one of my professors when he suggested I go for a PhD in History “Thanks, but I have no intention of joining the academic priesthood” (thus pi**ing him off royally) I was ahead of my time.

[MIchaelTArchangel]

The average Ph.D. in history needs to study Ray Kroc and the history of McDonalds.