Number of PhDs on food stamps triples
TheSocietyPages.com reports on the plight of PhDs, as the number dependent on food stamps has risen from below 10,000 to over 33,000:
This spring the Chronicle of Higher Education offered an in-depth look at the number of highly educated people receiving federal aid. . . .
Notably, it reminds us just how risky pursuing graduate work can be; 70% of all faculty are now off the tenure-track. That often means that they teach part-time, have no benefits, and face semester-to-semester job insecurity.
These faculty could probably do something else, but many of them are trying to realize a dream that they’ve spent 10 to 15 years of their lives working towards. So, they continue to teach part-time for relatively low pay and participate in a job market that, for the most part, opens up only once a year.
One blogger in the field thus addresses the issue of “Whether an Evangelical Should Get a PhD in Biblical Studies.”
I’ve been fielding this question for 20 years, and my answer today is not what I was saying early on.
Let’s be practical, shall we? Here is my bottom line: Unless you can honestly say to yourself that you can’t imagine not getting a PhD in Biblical Studies, don’t do it.
The financial and personal challenges you go through in pursuing your degree–not to mention the job market once you enter it–will be unbearable unless you have a genuine, authentic, deep inner drive to spend the next 5-10 years in school.
The post is full of further warnings more specific.
