Many social science Ph.D.s are encouraged to enter academia, but the limited spots for academic jobs leave these and humanities Ph.D.s in the difficult position of being overqualified and without academic jobs. For instance, the Modern Language Association reported a nearly 50 percent decline in listings of tenure-track jobs between the 2007-08 and 2009-10 academic years. Sites like SellOutYourSoul.com, a site about dropping out of graduate school, also reinforce the realities of competition for limited jobs.
Understanding the realities of graduate placement is important to help applicants clarify their goals and appreciate the challenges they will face after completing a Ph.D. The problem is that many universities and departments do not collect or release data about graduate placement. Recent doctoral program rankings by the National Research Council did not include this data, which it had hoped to incorporate, because of the difficulty in obtaining it from institutions. This data would be useful to undergraduates contemplating further education and to graduate students seeking to assess their options and futures.
The Ohio State University and the University of Maryland, College Park, have both begun to push academic departments to track Ph.D. placement and publish the data. The editorial board urges Princeton’s departments to do the same. Some departments will hesitate to unilaterally publish their data, necessitating a University-wide approach to this proposal. Placement data would also be a good indicator of program quality, which should reinforce the reputation of Princeton’s departments. This change would provide much-needed information on doctoral students’ career trajectories after graduation and thus help prospective graduate students in their decision-making process.
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It is not Marschall who bothers me most, although he certainly bothers me quite a bit. It’s the conditions that allow for Marschall to cause great harm and strain to the University — including the Trump administration and the right-wing media machine — even though he is not affiliated with it.
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