The Boston Globe reports that about 35% of American college students keep on obtaining degrees beyond a B.A. This percentage increased from 32.7% in 1999.While a raised interest in higher education is remarkable, one must ask: Is this upswing towards higher education positive? Are these M.A. and Ph.D. graduates obtaining jobs (and raises) which they otherwise wouldn’t receive? Are these higher degrees required? Is the additional degree worth with the money and time that goes into receiving it?
A current recession-related job survey implies that less than 4.5% of workers in America hold Ph.D.s, and that this number is dropping. If lots of people are becoming Ph.D., and research indicates that there are fewer Ph.D.s inside the workforce…well…you do the math.
Another staggering figure which may turn you to reconsider pursuing that Ph.D.: Employees with Ph.D.’s earned 10% below than those same Ph.D. holders could have made a decade ago.
This chart explains it all:
In a Chronicle article published one year ago Thomas H. Benton restated a position he’d held for several years, a “message that many potential graduate students were not getting from their professors, who were generally too eager to clone themselves”: that prospective Ph.D.s should scratch their Ph.D. goals and run the other way, towards a work.
Prospects are bleak for Ph.D. holders in the humanities, Benton explains:
Most undergraduates don’t realize that there is a shrinking percentage of opportunities inside humanities that provide job security, benefits, plus a livable salary. They do not know that you will possibly have to accept living almost anywhere, and that you must experience a six-year probationary time period in the end which you might be fired for numerous reasons and discover that you exiled from the profession.
To become a humanities professor is not the best prospect, though, Benton admits, it may be a more accountable option compared to freelance writing, acting, or to become a professional athlete.
Ph.D.s used to be reserved for few elite students inside aspecific area. Today, a doctorate program turns into a hiding shelter from searching for job.
A warning from Benton: The recession won’t simply vanish because you’ve locked yourself in the library.
A Ph.D. is for some individuals, relents Benton, for individually wealthy people who have the time and money to dedicate themselves to academe, you are remarkably well-connected individual who comprises a reliable job guarantee, or once you have a recent occupation and your current employer offers to fund your path towards Ph.D.-hood.
