They Don't Want Pity

I have several friends, and one in particular, who are pursuing careers in the humanities, so this article caught my attention. Apparently, academics of the humanitarian bent don't enjoy being told their job prospects are not good:

Apparently, though my program is excellent, I will be among the snookered, vagabond English adjunct scholars milling around the countryside, doomed to a life of the vicissitudes of enrollment and discretionary spending. Or, more likely, I will pursue my second career choice: swamp hermit. I will scream my Lacanian analyses at unsuspecting families hiking through my territory. There will be some dignity in my bog.

Did you notice the academic/humanities vocabulary? To thine own self be true, unemployed scholar.

The main thrust of the article is that graduate students need to broaden their horizons beyond professorships at research universities (and that departments and advisors should be more encouraging of those who pursue these paths). The author very much wants PhDs to be applying to jobs in public schools and nonprofit organizations. Even more than that, though, the author wants those offering guidance to warmly say:

Yeah, you're all screwed in terms of work for a research institution, but there are these other things out there that are great options. Your degree is not useless, and you are doing valuable work.

The problem with this, of course, is that there is little reason for getting a PhD in a humanities field to do a nonacademic job. Public schools and nonprofits would be equally well served by those with a masters degree (or less), so the extra investment in the dissertation is essentially wasted effort. Despite the desires of the author, for the positions she is describing her degree is precisely useless. Not that she wants pity:

We, the humanities graduate students of the United States of America, do not want your pity, or your smug, self-congratulatory admonishments of our choices. What we want is your help formulating a path that will lead us into careers where we can be useful, not exploited.

I think she fails to realize that most commentators aren't admonishing or offering pity. They are trying their hardest to do exactly as she asks. The path to a useful career for most in the humanities is to stop sinking more time into a dissertation that will not avail them; "avoid the sunk cost fallacy" might be the best advice they can get.

Now, I don't want to be too down on graduate work in the humanities. I think there will always be a demand for teachers in these areas for consumption and signaling reasons (as an aside, I find that I've only blogged about these functions of university in passing commentary before. Perhaps I should discuss them in more detail?). For foreign language studies, there may even be some productivity gains due to learning Spanish or Chinese or even Italian that result. As such, I think there is certainly a place for academic pursuit of these disciplines, especially at the best departments. But in general I find it's not a good idea to try for the terminal degree unless you are willing to make some major sacrifices for your love of the discipline. If you've spent a couple of years working on a degree and you don't absolutely love it, poverty and all, do yourself a favor and drop out. You can prove your worth  to society in some better way, and without spending years of your life hating it.