Exploitation ofa academics (was reparations)

[Jlcranford at aol.com]

I work for the EPA, a serious science-based organization, but in the two office in which I've worked about half of my colleages--myself included--are humanities grads.  Of the ones I know, some are happy with their careers, but many are still trying to find something closer to their original interests.  Most also have had to get some sort of business-ish degree to "prove their seriousness."  (For myself, I was in the happy camp for a while--I got the goofy MBA--but now after 7 years I'm trying to decide whether to return to the academic world to begin a PhD program.  Anyone happen to have an opinion on the New School's PhD program in philosophy?) 

--Jennifer

In a message dated Tue, 20 Mar 2001 12:14:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> writes:

<< Hey, Kelly, I had to go to law school to get a job in my 30s after I was 
canned. Other frienbds of mine in similar situation report that for 
humanities stypes w/o technical skills, business people are very reluctant 
to hire them, they are viewed as having goofed off, not having had real 
jobs, not being serious, and also as being snooty and unlikely to fit in. 
--jks


>
>At 03:17 PM 3/20/01 +0000, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>>people who have made these sacrifices and put themselves in a position
>>where, as Yoshie remarks, many of them are essentially unemployable in
>>anything else, a sort of seniority system.
>
>tenure, as far as i'm concerned has an ethical-political
>justification:  the free speech, knowledge issue.  QED! :)
>
>i think the claim that we are only able to do certain kinds of work is a
>myth -- surely not objectively true.  annalee newitz wrote a piece about
>how the structure of the PhD career is such that it tends to make you think
>that academia is ALL that you'll ever do. Out of Academia Why do we think
>that PhD's are only good for making someone into a professor? By Annalee
>Newitz, from Salon.com
>http://www.salon.com/it/career/1998/11/06career.html
>
>
>
>

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