Comment on Anon is 23
taiyang@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I graduated into Bush’s recession, so I went to get a PhD in education. They pay you a small wage to do research, guaranteed for 5 years in my program. Graduated that into a healthy economy that… old professors weren’t willing to retire from. Finally give up after several second place rejections and take a simple adjunct professor job just in time for the pandemic, cutting my classes to a third.
But hey, at least I didn’t get that job at NCES; Trump 2.0 royally fucked all those education PhD federal jobs.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 days ago
the problem with folks and their degrees is they fall into sunk cost fallacy. you have to get a job in your field or you have wasted your entire education.
no, you don’t. what you need to do is learn to market your skills to appeal to a broad range of employers, many of whom are looking for skills more than degrees.
taiyang@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s a fairly broad take that didn’t really apply to me. I wanted to impact education policy in the US because I noticed how decrepit it was. I was denied that opportunity but managed to get some top tier data analytic skills through the process that I could capitalize on if I was willing to work in the private sector (such as health insurance or financial industry predictive models). There is still massive demand for those skills.
But I don’t do that, not because of sunk cost but because I don’t want to contribute to systems I find immoral. I took a job in a Psychology department, which isn’t my field, since it lets me teach while taking care of my children.
You are right, though, the research field has some serious issues that need to be resolved. There has been some push for open source materials that people can contribute to, but given the current state of affairs globally, it’s not something people can really deal with right now.
That said, a PhD in any research profession is a passion project. You don’t do it for money, but for intellectual curiosity or some other reason. Towards that end, they should be stubborn – they’re already rejecting the idea that education is a means towards profit.
Unfortunately, that also means most PhDs are already wealthy going into it (especially those who can actually afford to finish) which means, at least in education and politics, those perspectives dominate the field. It’s a real problem when they don’t understand how 99% of the rest of us live.
Out of curiosity, which field did you need to leave? Each has their own problems.