So, ... you really want to go on to graduate school?

When I was relatively new to the neighborhood where I live, a neighbor remarked that becoming a college professor did not come with the economic returns that one might normally expect, particularly when you factor in the subsistence lifestyle in the long years between the undergraduate degree and the full-time academic position.

"One needs to be independently wealthy or should have a spouse who earns, and earns a lot" he added.  We both agreed on this--I from my own experience, and he was basing it on his son's.

Over the years, I am all the more convinced that I don't belong anywhere else but in academe but, at the same time, make sure that I warn any interested student about the realities of graduate school and academia itself. 

William Pannapacker, who writes about many of these aspects of higher education at the Chronicle, has a piece at Slate, where he writes about the need to "remind undergraduates that most of them are out of their freaking minds if they are considering graduate school"

I can only recommend graduate school in the humanities—and, increasingly, the social sciences and sciences—if you are independently wealthy, well-connected in the field you plan to enter (e.g., your mom is the president of an Ivy League university), or earning a credential to advance in a position you already hold, such as a high-school teacher, and even then, a master's degree is enough. 

 Of course, truth-telling of any sort doesn't earn friends.

But, that never stops me, right?

What might "The Simpsons" have to say about graduate school?




Not convinced yet about graduate school?  Ok, how about this one: