NWR: Searching for a College

And the one about Chemistry?

Why is biology out of favor? You'd think with the advances there, and interest in genetic engineering, etc., it would be a cool doctorate to work from, as well as interesting.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
And the one about Chemistry?

Why is biology out of favor? You'd think with the advances there, and interest in genetic engineering, etc., it would be a cool doctorate to work from, as well as interesting.
Click to expand...

Biology isn't out of favor, just the opposite. There is probably 1 academic job per 15 PhDs in Biology.

Learning is cool. Getting a PhD is difficult and rewarding. I've never been more intellectually engaged than I was in graduate school. I had never really pushed to the outer limits of my intellect before then. It was amazing.

However, I think that students should have to answer a questionnaire or something going in to insure that they understand what they are getting themselves into.
 
originally posted by VLM:
However, I think that students should have to answer a questionnaire or something going in to insure that they understand what they are getting themselves into.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. I recall talking to some very weary 8th and 9th year students....
 
originally posted by VLM:

However, I think that students should have to answer a questionnaire or something going in to insure that they understand what they are getting themselves into.
Click to expand...

I agree, and this is a big point that I stress to our grad students, or any undergrads debating PhD programs.

But, at the same time, one can never know the outcome before starting and to some degree there is always a leap of faith involved. Which is why I also stress the fact that there is no dishonor in dropping out. When they start to feel honor/pride/sunk cost issues and stay in something that is not working, the dysfunction and unhelpful life patterns begin to multiply. So I remind them that people change careers all the time in their 20s and 30s, whether from companies or grad programs.

But yes, information up front is key. To the extent that a 21 year old can process information about his/her future life.
 
Someone at the Times must be a lurker here: Friday's Business section Your Money. The article doesn't address how to choose a school but focuses on how important majors have allegedly become.
Some of you will be distressed to learn that Florida's Governor would like to shift state funding away from the Humanities and towards business, engineering, etc. Might not effect any one here directly but a dictated shift in funding wouldn't favor the Humanities if it spread.
 
originally posted by Tom Glasgow:

Some of you will be distressed to learn that Florida's Governor would like to shift state funding away from the Humanities and towards business, engineering, etc. Might not effect any one here directly but a dictated shift in funding wouldn't favor the Humanities if it spread.
Click to expand...

While Rick Scott just signed a bill establishing Florida Polytechnic, it's not just the humanities that are getting cut in Florida. The dean at University of Florida recently proposed shutting down research and graduate studies in computer science and moving all faculty to teaching. At the same time UF athletics got a budget increase. The state contribution to the university budget was cut by something like 30%.
 
Anti-intellectual talk, coming from people who have degrees themselves, is bullshit. All you have to do is look at the leaders of industries and nations and you will see that 99% of them have degrees.

(For example, Wikipedia says that Rick Scott holds two degrees and initially attended school on the GI Bill.)
 
One of the programs at Georgetown published a long-term survey of salaries by majors for people with terminal bachelors degrees. It actually had a little bit of statistical rigor

Loading…

cew.georgetown.edu

I think you'll see that if you corrected for the likelihood of the majors as terminal or a step on the path to grad school from a selection bias perspective that really things are pretty firmly clustered.
 
Interesting chart from the UC system (from this source):

faculty_management_fte.png
All from an interesting conversation.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Interesting chart from the UC system
Click to expand...

Yes, that is interesting to me, but for different reasons. My humble employer crossed over the 1/1 ratio of administrator to faculty back in 1992. It's good to know, I suppose, that we're out in front of the UC system in at least one regard *sigh*.

Mark Lipton
 
On the original page of SFJoe's chart there was a link to this magnificent article from a 1955 issue of The Economist. Perfectly apt and engaging discussion of Parkinson's Law.
 
Any explanation for what has happened since the early 1990s, or are these, presumably, trends that go back much earlier?
 
The issue of administrative growth at AU goes back at least to the late 80s. I remember a history professor who kept doing reports of comparative job creation, arguing that the turnover of classes to adjuncts and the starvation of academic programs could be laid at that door. I should say that since the middle of the aughts, we have reduced adjuncts and increased faculty size (though more non-tenure than tenure, I think) so this may be an issue that, as usual, people have discovered when the damage is almost done.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top