[URBANTH-L]Re: The Temp-Scholar Market and the Future of Anthropology

[susan mazur]

Hi all,
 
Loved both the original article and Dimitri's response to it. 
 
I would say the first step is to warn people away from entering graduate school. Problem is, no one believes that 'it will happen to them.' The Chronicle forums had a wonderful example of this a few years ago when practically the entire set of contributors rose up to warn off a bright young thing from entering graduate school in English.
 
I had good advice, from an independent scholar, which was, not to stay in grad school unless I got money. 
I would amend that to telling students: "Do not enter graduate school unless you have a full ride from a top ten department in your discipline."  Susan Mazur-Stommen, Ph.D. www.susanmazur.com 951.687.8661 "As a realtor said to me, "a house is a wooden box that sits out in the rain and slowly rots. No one would buy in this market if they really thought about how much pain it's going to cause them in the long run. That's why we have to sell them a home, not a house."



> From: jancius at ohio.edu> To: urbanth-l at lists.ysu.edu> Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 21:32:29 -0400> Subject: [URBANTH-L]Re: The Temp-Scholar Market and the Future of Anthropology> > From: Dimitra Doukas <dimitra.doukas at gmail.com>> > I just read your post to URBANTH-L. Corporatization and the dominant market > ideology loom large in our predicament, but I wanted to mention another > aspect of the situation.> > Four or so years ago I put together some figures on the anthro job market > for a seminar. My source was figures then published on the AAA website. I > just counted up PhDs granted and academic hires in the couple of years for > which data was posted and found, to my surprise, EIGHT times as many new > PhDs as new hires. These calculations were incomplete as the hire figures > did not include our casual labor market but they point up something > interesting.> > Bureaucratic status in the academic world as in the business world is based > on the size of your budget and the number of people you 'supervise.' As the > number of hires began to shrink (when was the turnaround?), department > chairs did not accordingly shrink the size of their PhD programs because > their own and their department's incentives all lined up against that > sensible move. 10-15 years of chairs' holding onto large programs produced > the glut of PhDs that made the academic sweatshop possible.> > not cheery news but there's no good remedy without good analysis> > don't let the bastards get you down!> > Dimitra > > _______________________________________________> URBANTH-L mailing list> URBANTH-L at lists.ysu.edu> http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l