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Do Young Philosophers Have a “Sense of Entitlement” or Are They Just Internalizing the Expectations of Their Teachers?

Brian Leiter

A tenured philosopher writes:

I read with interest the piece by Gregory Pence you excerpted on your blog. I think that he may be misinterpreting the data. That is, he takes the dissatisfaction of young scholars as evidence of their sense of entitlement.  But it may just be that their expectations were mis- set by their graduate faculty. When I was a grad student at [an Ivy League university] it was obvious that everything short of a job at a research one was, if not an embarrassment, something to be viewed as a temporary step on the way up the ladder. One unnamed but famous philosopher, when I told her of my offer from my current employer, asked me about the teaching load. I told her it was 4-4. She looked at me with pity and said– I kid you not– "I’m sorry." This was my only tenure-track offer, which I was ecstatic to get. When, as a grad student I and some others were grousing about the poor adjunct pay at a local state college, another household name who overheard the conversation asked us why we even took a job with such poor wages. Why not simply refuse? He couldn’t grasp that we needed to pay the rent and eat, and didn’t have a 6 figure salary like he did. I remember staring at him in stunned silence. If you spend several years around folks with quarter million dollar salaries, minimal teaching duties, palatial offices, and brilliant undergrads, you start to think that your first job, if not that grand, ought to be better than teaching 8 courses a year to unprepared slackers at some underfunded State U. in fly-over country.

Thoughts from others?  Anonymous comments are O.K. here, as long as accompanied by a real e-mail address (which won’t appear).  Post only once; comments are moderated and may take awhile to appear.

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50 responses to “Do Young Philosophers Have a “Sense of Entitlement” or Are They Just Internalizing the Expectations of Their Teachers?”

  1. Third time on the market

    The "I'm sorry you didn't get an R1 job" comment also sends a clear message about the value of teaching in our profession. So, if students in their first year on the market seem to display some sense of entitlement, that sense likely originates in the way in which students are socialized in their graduate departments. Many of us are quickly disabused of such a sense after failing to acquire a tenure track job in our first year or two out.

    I should also like to comment that this discussion of entitlement and the difficulty of the market seems to consider only graduates of the top 10 or 15 programs. I assure you that most graduates from schools farther down the list feel no such sense of entitlement. Given that most people on the market originate from schools other than the top 10 or 15, I would guess that most job seekers display nothing like a sense of entitlement at all. At this most recent APA, I saw no entitlement at my alma mater's table of job seekers (a school in the 20-30th ranking range). I saw only desperation.

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  2. Anonymous

    I believe I am the "young male professor" of which Prof. Pence speaks. He represents my reasons for leaving thusly: "If he couldn't get a great job at a research university, he told me, or at least a job in a great city, he would change fields."

    I think a communication error must have occurred somewhere for these aren't *my" reasons. I never told Prof. Pence any such thing.

    But, nevertheless, let me say a word in defense of the above given reasons. The factors that make a person's life worth living are many and are, no doubt, idiosyncratic to some degree. If a person believes that working at a research institution or living in a city rich with diversity and cultural opportunities will make his life better, then why should we find that laughable? A person has desiderata which he weighs and if he is not irrational he will weigh what he has to give up in a situation before he makes a choice. If being a philosophy professor is the only thing that can make sense to a person and if everything else pales in comparison to this, then the above given reasons might seem a little silly. But, for a person of diverse, equally competing desiderata, giving up philosophy because it involves sacrificing too much else can be a perfectly rational decision; nothing to laugh at.

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  3. Jon Cogburn

    I apologize in advance for this rant, but I've seen so many academics sabotage themselves both in their jobs and in their lives by this unjustifiable and arrogant feeling sorry for themselves (and feeling superior to their colleagues who have lived for decades in the place they deem unlivable).

    While Anonymous is certainly correct that it can be a rational decision to leave academia, people with this value system should stop slighting the rest of us that feel that the study of philosophy is worthy of a great deal of reverence, and that the chance to spend one's life doing so is one of life's greatest gifts. From this perspective, the whining of people because of where they live is both bizarre and insulting to those of us that thought our job was primarily the pursuit of wisdom which we are supposed to love (Diogenes did this from a barrel; I think those who truly love wisdom can do it with tenure in Alabama).

    Also, the Roman Stoics were on to something. My experience with people is that if you are constitutionally incapable of being happy in Alabama, then you are constitutionally incapable of being happy anywhere else either, you are just using Alabama as an excuse. And when you move on it will be something else to explain your incapacity to order your life so as to produce happiness.

    As an Airforce brat whose father was stationed all over the place, I got the chance to again and again meet people who blame their unhappiness on where they live. With the exception of one dear friend (who is happy where he is, in any case) every single academic I've known who bewails the limited cultural offerings in flyover land never took advantage of those same cultural offerings in more cultured cities. Yes, the live theatre here sucks compared to the place you came from. But you didn't go to the theatre there either. And you would probably find life a lot more meaningful getting involved in local theater (I was dramaturg for a local production of Proof) and generally trying to be a part of the solution rather than making your colleauges dislike you for coming across as feeling superior to them.

    Obviously, there are limits to stoicism- it's expecting too much to hold that people in prison, very ill, or unsafe be unmoved by their situation. And in academia, people whose spouses can't get jobs where they are do have a very difficult time.

    But most of the people with Ivy League syndrome are living in massive Sartrean bad faith and should get over it (and most of them do), even if that means seeing a therapist or going on happy pills or something.

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  4. Anon

    Of course there is a sense of entitlement and one I think perfectly justified. The vast majority of graduate students pursue philosophy for research reasons, spend the vast majority of their graduate career pursuing research, receive little to no formal pedagogical training, aren't expected to have any formal training, and have teaching experience largely limited to TA-ing a few classes. Sure, we all know that we'll have to teach as professors, but other than that everything else about our academic lives screams "Research!" Given this, of course a 4-4 load would be a disappointment because a 4-4 load says "Hey, remember that stuff you did for all of 10% of your graduate career? Now devote 80% of your work time to that." For most of us, this is a big disappointment, and to reduce this disappointment to a bratty sense of entitlement smacks of hypocrisy. How are we supposed to get that our profession "values" teaching when to teach high school seniors I typically need all sorts of teaching credentials backed up by all sorts of hours and schooling devoted to formal teaching methods with formal assessments conducted by reviewers with formal training but to teach college freshman I just need to have my grad program admin assign me to a class. So sure, I am happy to claim that "our profession values teaching" just as long as I'm allowed some room to prevaricate.

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  5. P.D.

    I know a number of academics (not just philosophers) who finished graduate school without any thought that there could be good jobs anywhere besides research universities. I think this may just indicate lack of imagination, rather than a sense of entitlement. Grads typically have experience of two institutions: their undergrad alma mater and their graduate university. Those who attended a liberal arts college as undergrads (for example) are typically able to imagine teaching at one as a career path, those who did not may not have such possibilities occur to them. (Similarly for state schools without grad programs.)

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  6. Mark S

    I just wanted to register agreement with the above anonymous poster. Prof. Spence's argument seems to take for granted that one's "career" (defined as labor-activity for the purpose of earning income to eat, have a place to sleep, and so on) is or should be the major determining factor regarding happiness in one's life decisions (it is true that in the last several decades sociological research shows that an ever-increasing majority of "professional" workers consider their job a "major life interest"–ironically, I chose to study philosophy on the wildly mistaken premise that it was not a "professionalized" field). Kind of reminds me of the more ominous observations regarding work in Plato's Republic. Or F.W. Taylor.

    I, for one, consider the place I live, with its cultural and social offerings, climate, etc. to be of greater importance to determining my overall satisfaction with life.

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  7. GLBT grad student

    "My experience with people is that if you are constitutionally incapable of being happy in Alabama, then you are constitutionally incapable of being happy anywhere else either, you are just using Alabama as an excuse."

    One thought I immediately had when reading the article, which I've had again when reading this comment, is that as a gay philosophy graduate student, I have some significant reasons for not wanting to live in Alabama and favoring urban locations over others. My experience isn't that of all philosophy students, but I do have to ask what kind of assumptions are being made about the profile of the hypothetical entitled job-seeking philosophy student. Men, women, singles, families, gay/trans people, etc., have different "limitations" to their capacity for happiness, even when given the chance at an excellent job.

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  8. Zena

    This discussion reeks of certain class and culture battles in a way that I find truth-distorting.

    It is certainly true, as some above have noted, that an individual's focus on research vs. teaching will have a major impact on how they feel about a 4/4 workload.

    It is also true that holding wide swathes of the United States as uninhabitable, as many academic philosophers do, is often ignorant, childish, or bigoted.

    Lastly, no matter what sort of job one has, it is not obvious that there is close bond between academic philosophy as a profession and the love of wisdom pursued with integrity (cf. Socrates, Diogenes). In my academic travels I have not noticed any place where that bond was notably concentrated or notably lacking. A heavy teaching load and a low salary may bring integrity to light in some cases, but it does not guarantee it. For some jobs, overwhelming gratitude may not be justified. A healthy respect on all sides for different interests, different tastes, and different ways to pursue wisdom with integrity seems appropriate.

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  9. Anonymous

    The preference for low teaching loads is, of course, perfectly compatible with valuing teaching a great deal and judging teaching deeply rewarding. To me, at least, the trouble with heavy teaching loads isn't that they get in the way of research, but rather that they make teaching well more challenging than it ought to be.

    That is, having no TAs, 100 students, four classes/three preps per semester, teaching assignments that veer very far from one's areas of specialization and competence, and teaching assignments at multiple campuses does mean, for many, not enough time for research. But it also means, for many, not enough time for providing students with all the feedback they'd like to give, not enough time for expanding their acquaintance with the relevant secondary literature, and not enough time for rewriting lectures and reflecting on ways they could improve their teaching.

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  10. Rural Grad Student

    What exactly is being discussed here? As near as I can tell, some young professors complain about having to choose between working in academia or living in an area where they would be happier. Understandably, they'd rather have both.

    And why would anyone insult young professors by saying that they think they're "entitled"? Maybe some select few are truly arrogant, as some select few philosophers are diabetics or ex-cons, but this is no reason to publish an article about 'entitled young professors.'

    By the way, I wonder if it occured to Professor Pence that his colleagues and grad students were not complaining or trying to sound arrogant and entitled, but were looking to have a discussion, to seek his understanding and advice, about important life choices. Sometimes complaints are not "whining" but an expression of the need to be understood.

    Finally, as someone who grew up in an extremely rural area -I've roped cattle, mind you- where you live is a consideration you must keep in mind when you're thinking of accepting a job, academic or otherwise. Some people can live rural, some can't; I've seen what happens to unhappy transplants from the city, and it's not pretty.

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  11. John Turri

    Dear Jon Cogburn,

    "people with this value system should stop slighting the rest of us that feel that the study of philosophy is worthy of a great deal of reverence, and that the chance to spend one's life doing so is one of life's greatest gifts"

    I don't share that value system. But I note that the value system in question doesn't deny that studying philosophy is intrinsically rewarding, or that having the luxury of studying it is good. Leaving academia, or simply refusing to live in some types of places, is perfectly consistent with continuing to gratefully philosophize all one's lifelong years.

    And it's hard for me to feel insulted if someone happens to value it less than you or I do, or even fails to appreciate its value at all. I might think the person is missing out on something valuable, but that's doesn't rise to the level of an insult, I don't think.

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  12. Jon Cogburn

    Zena is absolutely right that love of wisdom might not actually be characteristic of philosophy professors. But the question is a normative one- shouldn't it be? And if it should, then we should feel vastly more sympathy for the unemployed and underemployed people who value the chance to spend their lives teaching and studying philosophy more than the chance to be surrounded by like minded people in educated conclaves.

    Many of us taught 4-4 on yearly contracts for multiple years prior to getting a tenure track job. And it's very, very tough for those of us who have gone through that crucible to have sympathy with tenure track faculty who whinge about not being at better schools or living in different parts of the country.

    And I don't think *anyone* should be oversympathetic, mainly because being a whinger is so bad for the vast majority of whingers. (1) The whinger's colleagues pick up on the fact that they find the place so lacking, and as a result find people who have spent the greater part of their life at the place to be lacking. Alienating your colleagues in this way is uncollegial; it just is. (2) If the whingers would stop whinging and really invest themselves in making the institution and locale better, then they might find a measure of happiness that has always eluded them. (3) All else being equal, the person who loves studying and teaching philosophy more is more deserving of a job. This should be unproblematic. But unless you are very, very good, there is almost certainly somebody just as good as you (in terms of publications) who is either unemployed or more underemployed than you are, but who loves philosophy so much that they would feel lucky to have your job (and I include tenure track jobs that have a 4-4 load here). (4) I assume there's some good practical ethics on the importance of cultivating one's gratitude and the crappiness of the opposite? All that's coming to mind is Paul Woodruff's very nice stuff on "habits of reverence." That probably works.

    To the LBGT graduate student. I noted in my original post that the kind of stoic "find happiness within" advice that most academics (most of whom have enviable lives by any rational standard) need to take does have its limits. The examples I gave just involved suffering- the ill, those in prison, those separated from loved ones, and the unsafe. I should have included those subject to injustice.

    Telling people who experience systematic bigotry and discrimination (such as it being illegal to marry a loved one, or legal for someone to fire you because of who you are) that they just need to be more stoic when they whinge about things is to end up making excuses for that bigotry and injustice. I'm sorry if anything I said above is implicated in that.

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  13. Al

    I enjoyed reading Jon Cogburn's musing on entitled graduate students. It has been a long time since I've seen such adventurous reasoning from a philosopher!

    But seriously, what is the argument here? I'll try to translate:

    (1) Philosophy is really great, requires some kind of quasi-religious worship. Heretics should not be tolerated.

    (2) I've lived a bunch of places

    (3) Where one lives has absolutely no consequences for one's sense of well-being. (follows from (2))

    (4) People who believe they are unhappy because of their living situation are incorrect. I, Jon Cogburn, know that all who have this belief are suffering from Sartrean bad faith (follows from (2), (3))

    (5) People who complain about Alabama's lack of cultural offerings have never visited a museum (follows from (2))

    (6) Contra (3), prison can sometimes make people unhappy.

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  14. Jon Cogburn

    I'm abusing the norms of this forum by posting to much, so here's the last one.

    Al is right that I don't understand someone who would get a Ph.D in philosophy who didn't have quasi-religious reverence for the subject and one's favorite philosophers. That such a view seems to be open to refutation by generic internet snark (which I am generally a fan of) is depressing.

    I also think that philosophy should (should! not that it always does) help one learn to order one's life more rationally. In this regard, I name dropped the Stoics for a reason. I didn't intend to my claim about happiness to deductively follow from my experience of living in different places or my infallibility. Please read Epictetus, Seneca, or Marcus Aurelius, or perhaps Lawrence Becker's fine work. Is it crazy to think that those of us who teach and study philosophy of all people should be more Stoic?

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  15. GLBT grad student

    Jon, just a quick response that I didn't necessarily infer that you personally were saying LGBT people should be more stoic (arguments from silence and all). However, I do think that it's worth reflecting on the specifics of different situations, since it's possible that in the discussion we make some assumptions about philosophers (like heterosexuality) which can be misleading.

    Thanks for taking the time to clarify. As for the rest of the conversation, I'm content to watch and keep my musings to myself for the time being.

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  16. wj

    Is it crazy to think that those of us who teach and study philosophy of all people should be more Stoic?

    I suppose that depends on whether or not the Stoics were/are right.

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  17. Anony

    Here's a few thoughts:

    (1) I attended a PhD program outside the Leiter top 50. When I got a 4/4 job with a good salary and in a decent location, I was thrilled (only 2 out of 12 or more candidates on the market that year got any offers at all, whether t-t or 1-year or post-doc or anything else). But then one of the senior professors in the department stopped by my office to "congratulate" me, and the best he could do was mutter something about "slave labor." I was stunned at first (I thought highly of him, and still do in spite of this), and then enraged. Here was a person who had taught at my PhD program for 40 years and thus was just as responsible for our mediocre placement record as anyone there, yet he was so out of touch with things that he couldn't see anything beyond a research job like his own as an acceptable alternative.

    (2) I went to a pretty good liberal arts school as an undergrad, one where teaching mattered. As a philosophy major, I thought the philosophy professors were the next closest thing to gods. Not once in four years did I think that compared to those at the big research programs, these were people that didn't count for much. Several professors in grad school thankfully did their best to set me straight on this, both by showing me how little they cared about their undergraduate students and by being disparaging of anyone that did care. Guess which set of profs I invited to my wedding though!

    (3) If what Jon Cogburn says above were more respected, I think our profession would be a much better one. Maybe we'd even go up from #12 on the list!

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  18. Alex Leibowitz

    It seems as if it would be very helpful if anyone had any thoughts on how to pursue philosophy *without* going into academia. Philosophy, I agree with Jon Coqburn, is the end — academia is just a means. I at least have always thought of the two — doing philosophy and being a professor — as anonymous, but I have from time to time heard voices to the contrary. When I was first applying to grad schools, one of my professors refused to write a recommendation for me until I could give him a good reason for going — until I could convince him that I wasn't just going because I couldn't think of what else to do. I think it would be nice (and very helpful to the profession!) if somehow we could honor and aid people in their commitment to philosophizing without tacitly requiring of them, for all practical purposes, that, in order to pursue their interests, they find some sort of academic post.

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  19. Al

    Re: Jon Cogburn

    Well, I am someone who is getting a PhD in philosophy and who does not have a quasi-religious reverence for the subject. I suppose I should explain myself, since it seems to be unclear how I could exist at all.

    For me, philosophy is valuable and rewarding for a variety reasons, but I'll just list a few: it allows one to achieve clarity regarding important but poorly understood concepts, it establishes connections between disciplines, it can change one's attitude about to live one's life (hopefully for the better), it is fun, it encourages critical thinking.

    However, I don't think philosophy is well-served by turning practioners of the discipline into members of a self-satisfied priesthood of "wisdom." First, this would discourage taking a critical attitude towards past and present philosophers. Second, it would discourage people to look outside the (fairly arbitary in my view) boundaries of the discipline for important insights. [I take it the quasi-religious devotion to philosophy does not have the same devotion to history, literature, the arts, economics, law, etc. and thus that one is less likely to look for insights in such places then in philosophy texts]. Third, as an atheist, I find worship distastful, be to Allah, Jesus, Plato, or Quine.

    As for Stoicism, there is an empirical question about whether it is possible to adjust one's attitudes such that one is completely indifferent to one's surroundings. I suspect that this is impossible, but I could be wrong. That said, I suspect it is possible through habitual self-deception to convince oneself that one is indifferent to one's surroundings. I further conjecture that such people will harbor resentment against those who do not feel this way, since such attitudes put their hard-won self-deception at risk.

    This is of course mere speculation. However, I do find it curious that I have never heard someone in New York express the slightly worry that someone in Alabama would rather live in Birmingham than Manhattan. Yet those in Birminham seem extremely sensitive to the opinions of New Yorkers.

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  20. Justin

    As a student who attends a program outside the top 10-15, I myself have no sense of entitlement. My own feelings are that of healthy fear and trembling, which motivates me to do the best I can. However, many of my peers do not seem to share my feelings and expect to get jobs, even really good jobs. The reason, however, seems to me to have less to do with a sense of entitlement and more to do with their own naivety about the state of the discipline in general and the current status of the job market in particular. Perhaps my experience is not the norm, but what anecdotal evidence I do have suggests that many grad students simply do not realize how hard it is to get a tenure-track job nowadays. They seem to think that because they have a Ph.D. and can teach an applied ethics course that they're good to go.

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  21. Jon Cogburn

    Sorry, there were so many strawmen in Al's post that I had to respond. Al, I promise you can get the last word if Leiter wants to continue to post our missives.

    (1) The supposed inferiority complex of Birminghamers versus the more self-actualized New Yorkers hasn't been the issue in any of the above posts. There are quite a few colleges in New York where thinking you are too good for the place will rightfully be taken as an insult by the very colleagues who may end up voting on your promotion. There are quite a few colleges in New York where the unfortunate tendency of whingers not to fully engage themselves in service work will rightfully be viewed as suboptimal. There are quite a few colleges in in New York where whingers' habit of going on the market every year instead of working their butts off to do what is necessary to get tenure ends up being incredibly self-destructive.

    The point is, the real issue is people who think they are too good for a place for whatever reason, and who end up acting in obnoxious and incredibly self-defeating ways as a result. In this job market, tenure standards have gone through the roof at schools not even ranked in the Leiter Reports. And it's just stupid to be a weenie about these things. Those of us in the field who have taught long enough at schools not in the the top twenty have over and over again seen people sabotage themselves by projecting superiority and being perpetually on the market even after they land tenure track jobs. And given the fact that so many good philosophers don't have tenure track jobs, it *is* morally problematic to be insufferable in that way.

    (2) I agree with Al's points about the benefits of philosophy. It can help people get clearer about their ideas, be better critical thinkers, and make connections between disparate concepts. But it must be said that this is how we (rightfully) sell philosophy to undergraduates; it is not the primary purpose of graduate education.

    Al's point that reverence for great philosophers is in any way in tension with multi-disciplinarity is also risible. Many of us have the most reverence for philosophers whose work has empirical friction with either the history of science or the science (broadly conceived to include the social sciences) of their day (in my case- Kant, Schopenhauer, Frege, Carnap, Putnam, Foucault, Hacking, Friedman, Mark Wilson). There's nothing remotely self-defeating about this attitude. When you read somebody much better than yourself (and it is much harder to do first rate philosophy with empirical friction than without), who can change the whole way you think about the world, of course a certain amount of reverence is warranted (again, on the general issue of the importance of reverence, see Paul Woodruff, though of course reasonable people can disagree).

    And for a final strawman (I guess that critical thinking component of philosophy helped after all), nobody in this string has defended the claim that one should be "completely indifferent to one's surroundings." The denial of this was actually the point of premise 6 of Al's presentation of my "argument."

    (3) Wj's point is fallacious. Stocism can be false while it is still the case that it is not crazy to think that philosophy professors should be more stoic than they are. Many people who think that deontology is strictly speaking false still think we'd be better off if our moral actions and psychological states trended more Kantian. Likewise with utilitarianism and social contract theory. Great moral traditions are canonical just because they get at least some important moral and psychological facets right.

    But maybe thinking as much is just a result of having too much reverence for Mill, Kant, Hobbes, and Epictetus. What did they know? Those of us who benefit from all that critical thinking and multidisciplinarity Al takes to be constitutive of philosophy can certainly put these guys in their place (at least during the amount of time when we're not pining for nicer cities and better universities while pouring over the most recent JFP).

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  22. Alex Leibowitz

    Oops, I meant "synonymous"…

    Reply
  23. GS

    I am a graduate student with, frankly, little if any interest at this time in securing an academic post. I do not want a career; I want a very specific kind of life – and I feel no need to apologize for this. I am in graduate school because I want to learn how properly to *do* philosophy. I want eventually to make my own contributions to the discipline, and I have a fair degree of confidence that if I work hard enough I can do such a thing. I would love to teach throughout my life (and no doubt I will, somewhere, since we all have bills to pay), and fancy myself someone who would be a dedicated and passionate educator; but my primary interest is in *being* a philosopher and working on the questions and issues which are so important to me (I'll note that my specialization will be social and political philosophy, one of the most potentially-practical areas of our discipline).

    It is disheartening but obviously quite correct to say that this is not the point of graduate education in most departments, and that fact is a reflection of the nature of our discipline in our time (not the fault of philosophy so much as of our economic institutions). The school at which I received my undergraduate education (a top-5 program) is much, much different in how it approaches the teaching and training of its students than that of the program in which I am presently enrolled. Now, there are simple reasons for these differences, but I won't mention them here. But the differences are extremely significant for the life- and career-prospects for students who might not all share the same ambitions (and might not all have the same set of capabilities).

    Those in philosophy for reasons such as mine are likely some of the ones headed toward frustration (of a very specific kind), particularly if they were unable to secure a spot in the 'elite' departments that first and foremost aim to train exceptional *philosophers* who will be able to dedicate themselves to research at least as much as teaching. I am aware of this problem I face and shall endeavor to make myself stand out as a researcher/writer of philosophical discourse before all else – what else can be done, really? I need to support myself, but I don't intend to be buried by a heavy teaching load that leaves little time for serious philosophizing.

    If I become an academic, then so be it – so long as I'm able also to be a dedicated philosopher, which is far more important to me. Does any of this make me arrogant or possessive of a sense of 'entitlement?' I think not, as my interests and ambitions are my own, and are – I think – respectable if I've got an accurate conception of what I'm capable of (as well as an understanding that I exist in a capitalist economy and must earn money). But I'm be curious to hear others' thoughts. Please be sure you understand what I'm trying to communicate here before responding, as it's late and I'm tired.

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  24. Anon

    I had every intention of being happy in any department, in any place, with any teaching load. I applied for every job in my field and was thrilled to get interviews anywhere, without regard to teaching load or location.

    And then I ended up in the midwest and it turned out I was desperately unhappy. So I now doubt my capacity to be happy in any department, in any place.

    I currently teach in a diverse, exciting and culturally rich city. My teaching load is a bit heavier than in the midwestern place. I am exceedingly happy.

    I'm not sure whether I would be as happy with any teaching load. My teaching load isn't that bad but I think if it were heavier I would probably be more unhappy. I am more unhappy when I have so many students I can barely learn all their names or provide the kind of personal feedback and interaction I think they need. I am happier when I can interact with students one-on-one, etc. What does this have to do with being entitled? One situation is professionally better than the other. Who can deny this?

    Almost no one was happy in the MW school. Some of them were more unhappy than I can ever imagine being and I was pretty miserable then. They ran the gamut from disgruntled to bitter to frighteningly, desperately drink-yourself-to-death unhappy. I would have tried to make a better go of it than that. Maybe I would have succeeded. But I'm relieved that I found another job. It has nothing to do with professional entitlement or an ivy league degree. I was alone and–after being very happy in grad school–found that I could not relate to either the local people or my colleagues. In fact, being around them was often very disconcerting. I threw myself into my work and my work was the most pleasant part of my life but this was not enough for happiness. There are limits on my capacity to be happy in any situation. This is what I discovered during my two years in the midwest.

    I had some campus visits to a couple other isolated midwestern colleges where people did seem a bit more content. I'm not saying this is a trend or anything–that every academic in those circumstances is miserable. Obviously, I don't have the data. But if someone thinks that they will be happier in a certain region or with certain cultural options I find it very strange to condemn them for that. There are many reasons my colleagues with similar experiences are relieved to be in the city we are in. It's not easy to be virtually the only Southeast Asian or the only Latino in a 200 square mile area. Like someone mentioned, gays and lesbians feel unsafe in many parts of the country. Single people really struggle in small towns if most people they know are married with kids. I guess you could say–marry a local farmer or learn to love spending the rest of your life alone. Learn to love hot dishes and forget about curries. Get used to being treated as scary or foreign by the locals. Overlook all the racist police brutality against the black citizens. Don't freak out when your kids are stigmatized in school for not being Christian. Or convert.

    I suspect that most people make the best out of their situation when they find themselves in regions of the country whose culture is alien to them or when tremendously burdened with large teaching and service loads. It would be a little absurd to spend one's entire life in those circumstances steeping in self-pity. If a person can't hack it in Alabama, for whatever reason, and there are not other options, it is possible there is both some wisdom and some courage involved in leaving the profession. There are quite a few people who spend miserable lives in academia once they get tenure or close to tenure because they are too afraid to try anything else. The wiser stoic, I assume, only resigns herself to what she is powerless to control, not to absolutely everything.

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  25. RMF

    I want to register some support for what I take to be the main thrust of Cogburn's "musings", namely, that we might expect philosophers (and philosophers in training) to be willing to make some sacrifices in their pursuit of wisdom.

    Along the same lines, I've always thought that part of the reason one pursues philosophy professionally is that one firmly believes that one has something to say. One has, as it were, a burning desire to contribute to the conversation. Perhaps that feeling wears off or perhaps it's often illusory. Either way, I take it that even a teaching heavy job in the middle of nowhere will afford one more time to focus on philosophical research than nearly any other job.

    Even when one is teaching the dreaded hundred student introductory course at NorthSouthWestern Mississippi State (without TAs!!!!) it seems to me that one is still more apt to have some interesting or relevant contact with philosophy than one might have otherwise. I have doubts that much philosophical insight is to be found in a corner office at the consulting firm (perhaps Mill is a counter example but he was certainly exceptional).

    I have the suspicion that if one's "burning desire" to contribute to philosophy is contingent on one's being able to make that contribution from a particular geographic location, one does not, in fact, have much to say.

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  26. Anonymous

    Like the first poster above and Justin, I would like to comment on the notion of "entitlement," as it seems to be a bit of a blanket argument used against many of my generation and for those of us that decided to pursue graduate study in the humanities. I have also heard stories like Pence's numerous times — the heavy teaching load, working odd jobs to make due, etc. — and would like to say that they miss the point with the current generation of desperate academics.

    Like the two above posters, I am not from an "R1" institution, though I did attend a school which has an excellent reputation in my niche field. I do not expect or feel entitled to a great job; I don't even feel as if I "deserve" anything. But, in a scenario that's all too typical, I have accumulated $45,000+ in loans (a small number compared to many of my friends, and a situation many in the previous generation never dealt with), worked 50-80 hr. weeks doing manual labor in the summers to pay for my living expenses (no stipend at the lower schools), sacrificed location for opportunity, and worked for pennies on the dollar to be a TA, adjunct, and research assistant. I've also done all that I'm supposed to have done: published articles, edited (two) books, gotten strong teaching and professional recommendations. I feel like I've done what I could, and yet, this year, I have failed to get any interviews (for the second year in a row). And my story is all too typical. For those of us that this describes, I would offer that we do not feel entitled at all; we feel alienated and desperate, and realize that we've done precisely as we've been asked, but to no end.

    Many will say that we were naive, didn't understand the shifting dynamics of higher educational employment, or operated under some myth of self-exceptionalism. Those are probably true to some degree. But many of us operated under the trope that, if you do just as Professor Pence did, then, through perseverance and guile alone, you would cut it. But that's simply no longer the case. The type of work Professor Pence describes no longer insures vertical mobility. Nor does it allow for us to pay off our loans or justify to our significant others another move for low wages.

    I did not get into graduate study in order to make a lot of money or have unending job security. But I did hope that hard work and excellence would matter to some degree, and, like the students the above poster saw at the APA, I'm a bit disoriented in trying to figure out my next step.

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  27. Anonymous

    Jon Cogburn, RMF and Pence seem to think that us young philosophers don't sacrifice for our profession. This, of course, raises the question: what counts as a sacrifice?

    Let's say we zip through undergrad and get done with that by the age of 22. Then off to grad school for 5+ years. After those five years are up we'd be counted lucky to emerge with no debt. We'd be the stuff of folklore if we emerged with assets. Then for a great many of us it is off on the 1-year circuit. This involves 7 months on the job market followed by a move to a place we might not like and probably don't have any roots in. We are paid between $30K and $45K (if we are lucky) and we spend any disposable amount on traveling to conferences, trying to get noticed, and going to APAs (in expensive cities). Then, just as we make good friends we have to go to another town and repeat the process. And then maybe a few years down the road we get a TT-position. Often it is not in a town or even a geographical region of the country that is near good friends or family. And notice that I have not yet mentioned the devoted and loving partners who follow us so that we can achieve. What do they do? They don't develop their careers. In fact, it looks bad on their resumes to be floating from job to another. So we have to keep in mind those attached to us when we think about these things.

    Say one takes the job in a rural town, not near one's family, or without the consolations that a big city offers (i.e., like not having to drive two hours to an airport, or having a coffee shop, …). If, as with most people who get TT-positions, we end up staying there for the rest of our careers, have we then sacrificed enough? (Given that this small town is nothing like what we had wanted.)

    Furthermore, let's consider this fact: all of our non-academia friends from high school had settled down, had kids, and good paying jobs before we even finished getting our Ph.D.s. And so there we are at the age of, say, 31 (Undergrad at 22, Ph.D by 28, 3 1-years, and then TT at 31) and we have no assets, no friends in the place we live, no family other than our forever sacrificing partners, and a town without a coffee shop and two hours from an airport which we still frequent hoping that our academic research will get us a job at a place we'd prefer.

    I'd say that this is more of a sacrifice than anyone should ever be *expected* to make and, minimally, if someone decided that they were done after this we wouldn't ridicule him. Instead, we'd say, he gave it a good go, but in the end it wasn't for him. But to suggest that those young philosophers who decide to take control of their lives and do something else are whingers or whatever, well, that's just a load of crap.

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  28. Paul

    I haven't read every comment carefully, so forgive me if this point has been made. But one of the reasons that a person might find a 4-4 load unappealing is that it *might* decrease the overall quality of one's teaching experience. More students means less time to meet with each of student, to help with drafts of papers, or to give helpful feedback. I think of myself as someone who cares a lot about teaching, but I would worry that the teaching itself might suffer at some point.

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  29. anon in the midwest

    No one seems to have mentioned student quality as a factor in a satisfying career. As a nation we're expecting more and more students to go to college and doing a terrible job of preparing them for it, nor are we tracking young people without the appropriate aptitudes toward non-college-based careers. (The real problem with the WSJ-reported job ranking, incidentally, wasn't that it dissed the intellectual life, but that it so clearly scorned manual labor, which can be deeply satisfying as well as economically rewarding.) Teaching students who are unprepared and disinterested can be incredibly frustrating. Such students tend to dominate the ranks at those places that also have heavier teaching loads. This makes for a double disconnect: it's not just that teaching takes the place of research, but the teaching one does has very little resemblance to anything close to "doing" philosophy. It's a waste of everyone's time to pretend we're getting students to engage with Plato or Descartes if they lack basic reading, writing and even grammar skills. One can be forgiven if she decides a life spent in that sort of activity isn't rewarding and seeks opportunity elsewhere. There are of course unprepared and disinterested students at all sorts of institutions, but one also gets many more bright and intellectually curious students at the better colleges and universities. My desire to teach such students doesn't come from my sense of being entitled to do so, but rather because I think that's where my skills as a philosopher and teacher are appropriately deployed. When I have to teach unprepared students at geographical state u., I'm being asked to do something different and at the same time to pretend that I'm not. That false consciousness doesn't make for high job satisfaction, even if I am one of the lucky tenure-track few who is employed in a way that lets me engage in the world of professional philosophy.

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  30. Christopher Hitchcock

    Here's an attempt to point this discussion in a more constructive direction, and hopefully one that will be helpful for prospective graduate students. It's a question that is little discussed and to which I don't know the answer: Are there philosophy graduate programs that do an especially good job of training and preparing students for positions at the sorts of institutions where the majority of the profession wind up? (Heavy teaching loads, large classes, earnest but less-than-inspired students, no graduate students, little time for research, etc.) And what are some of the practices that are effective in preparing students for these kinds of jobs? Does effective preparation for this kind of job enhance job satisfaction? What more could be done at programs that are not effectively preparing students for these kinds of jobs?

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  31. Anon in the West

    I appreciated the spirit of Professor Pence's article. Coming from a top 25 PhD program, most of the graduate students definitely felt entitled to "research" jobs. Many eschewed their teaching responsibilities as T.A.'s and believed they would be teaching at a place where teaching really doesn't matter as much as research. Not surprisingly, those of us with tenure-track jobs focused on teaching and less on research at the graduate level. Maybe it is the luck of the draw, but many of my fellow graduate students cannot find work, even the short-term positions because they have no teaching skills nor do they really want to teach.

    I find the comment about the lack of student preparation and the like somewhat comical. If you are a good teacher you reach students where you can and realize that others will never be reached because they don't belong in college or a university. Many students have no business in higher education at this point. Adopting the right Stoic mindset about controlling only the things you can makes teaching in these environments worthwhile.

    For the vast majority of teaching jobs realize that you cannot control who your students are, what their level of preparation is, and the teaching load. More so, you cannot control the location of the school, the nature of your cohorts, and the monetary incentives or lack there of. Until you realize that having a job, where you get to teach and study something that you love, is a gift, you will never really be a philosopher. I appreciate my imperfect job and underprepared students every single day.

    Finally, no one enters into philosophy ignorant of the job market. I was told by an undergraduate advisor: don't take loans (get an assistantship or don't go), don't plan on getting a job, and only go to graduate school to learn, nothing else. It was wise counsel. Those of you who take on loans, move to places you don't want to live or cannot afford, and various other "sacrifices", remember, you chose to do this. You may never get a job and all of your sacrifices may be for nothing, at least in terms of employment. Academe will move forward without you and many others. It is brutal in that way, as Professor Pence said there will be many adjuncts waiting to apply and still pursue the dream. It is a heartbreaking profession for many and a wonderful one for a few. We all take the gamble.

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  32. WJ

    Hi Jon,

    My comment was made tongue-in-cheek, so I wish you hadn't taken it so seriously. In any case, in the post I respond to, you list a bunch of Stoics before suggesting that we, philosophers, should be more Stoic. (This seems to be the conclusion implied by what is surely a rhetorical question, i.e., that Stoicism isn't crazy.) So it's natural to read your claim the way I did. From this perspective, your claim that stoic attitudes might be defended from other non-Stoic perspectives is, strictly speaking, beside the point. Your argument, as it appeared to be formed, is open to my objection. But your latter claim about stoic attitudes is undoubtedly true, and not one I would take issue with. It surely might be the case that stoic attitudes can be defended from non-Stoic points of view, and seem to show up in non-Stoic works, and it might even be the case that stoic attitudes are good for us. This just didn't seem to me to be what you actually argued. Sorry if I fostered some confusion here.

    That said, I think it's a bit much to suggest that a person who rejected stoic attitudes, however they might be defended, reveals some defect of philosophical character, or otherwise fails to show proper reverence for the canon. All of this (the rejection of stoic attitudes and the implications of this for philosophical character) seems like a lot to read into such scanty evidence (a couple of blog posts). And we've all got to be careful not to let reverence turn into deference.

    If your point is just that no one's life is perfect, and we all have to accept that, well, I don't think anyone has disputed that point, even Prof. Pence's "young professor."

    WJ

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  33. Midwest Phi-er

    After my two years of 4/4 adjunct work I got a "good" job, so I thought. I have a 3/3 load, colleagues I like, a union job that pays very well, and a nice big house. Why am I applying out and thinking of leaving the profession since I KNOW I am a lucky one from a lower 40 Leiter school? (Really I feel lucky, but my wife asks for what?)

    Let's start a list:

    (i) We are geographically isolated in a town of 10,000 people with 10,000 students. The *regional* airports are 90 minutes away. International is three hours away.

    (ii) My wife cannot get a raise at her job. She hates her job b/c it is not fulfilling. There are no other jobs for her to get. In this town, she is considered a lucky one.

    (iii) My stepdaughter hates it here and hates me for moving her here. There isn't a child therapist in the region for her to talk to about her problems.

    (iv) There is a shortage of MDs. I have the best health insurance in the region, but it took THREE years to get a doctor AND I sit on the hospital's ethics board. I had to beg them to help me get a doctor. No one is accepting patients. It is amazing.

    Would I like a book store? Would I like an acceptable restaurant (I am not talking Thai here either)? Would I like a place other than WalMart to shop? Yes, but we don't even have basic amenities here, and as much as I agree with Pence, some of us have it bad, and I haven't even talked about the shitty students that make me want to never grade another written assignment.

    So, for me, I can deal with most of this b/c I am getting to do philosophy (really), but the burden it has placed on my family is quite high, and I might have to give it up for them b/c this place is not getting better and if history is our guide, it won't either.

    Quality of life is a function of a lot of things. Since I didn't have health insurance as a graduate student, not going to the doctor didn't really bother me, but now that I am 39, I need to go to the Dr. I need basic services especially if I cannot be near friends and family or live in nice weather.

    Watching my wife look at her friends and mine on Facebook makes it all the more difficult to point to all the great things philosophy has given US (not just me, but us since that is who I am selling this to — us).

    The American dream that everyone should go to college is false and it is making a lot of people unhappy b/c they don't want to be in school.

    I should also tell a story about two interviews I had at places that said they wanted to start PdD programs. I asked each of them why. One group said EXACTLY. I got an on campus and nearly got that job. The other group before this question were a bit rude and negligent in how they handled the interview. When I asked them why, they got mad and defended their greatness.

    So, to conclude, I agree with a lot of what Pence says, but my place will never be Birmingham, and I would kill to live there, but some of us do have it bad and some things really are defeaters for jobs, but you don't know until you are three to five years into a place. Hope will make you stay sometimes.

    There are too many doctoral programs and too many people getting sucked into the temp job work. The profession and the people in it are generally good and have high expectations, but a bit more from my view would be great.

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  34. Dustin N.

    As far as psychic armor goes, at least a sense of entitlement has this practical benefit: those lucky few who did get that dream job also had a sense of entitlement and without it, who knows? perhaps they wouldn't have *entitled* themselves to it. (A sense of entitlement as impetus to hard-work, self-confidence, etc.) But philosophers are curious folk; the decision to get into the rationality business is decidedly irrational. The litany of possible horrors and privations which philosophers visit upon themselves voluntarily should be more than enough to persuade anyone with half a wit's claim to rationality to run in the opposite direction. As a grad student at an unranked MA program applying to top-20 PhD programs, I need a sense of entitlement because it is preferable to the sense of desperation I feel when I start being realistic.

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  35. Jeff

    One prominent theme in this thread is that there are not enough philosophy jobs to go around and, further, that even some of the philosophy jobs can be pretty bad. Here's a question that, admittedly, might merit a different thread: what can we do to make it easier for younger Ph.Ds in philosophy to find reasonably fulfilling non-academic jobs if the academic job search doesn't pan out?

    Given the number of people who frequent this blog, there have got to be folks who know folks who've earned their Ph.D. in philosophy but have for some reason left academia. Why not tap into their experience? For example, how did they land their respective jobs? What sorts of industries tend to hire philosophers? What is the best thing a philosophy grad can do, career-wise, to prepare for the possibility of no teaching job come August?

    I realize that some schools do something similar for their undergraduates, but under the circumstances it may be time to do the same for graduates and new Ph.Ds. What if, for example, the APA regularly had a session or two on this topic at regional meetings? Similarly, what if the APA invited various companies, NGOs, etc., to set up tables or booths at the Eastern to recruit philosophers out of the academic world and into the 'real' one?

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  36. Greener Pastures

    After finishing my doctorate, I left philosophy for a completely unrelated discipline, and don't (at least at this point) do any philosophy independently.

    I decided not to go into philosophy for a lot of reasons. Three reasons are high on the list (in descending order):

    1. Living in a cosmopolitan urban area DOES make your life better. Working in philosophy means you probably can't live in such a place.

    2. Teaching unprepared students philosophy, which in my opinion requires a high level of background knowledge in history, math and science to appreciate, is very frustrating.

    3. Teaching doesn't pay very much.

    These are all features of the academic job that everyone recognizes, and are included in Prof. Pence's post.

    Prof. Pence, and others I take it, argue that 1-3 shouldn't bother those truly interested in philosophy because an academic job means you can be part of a grand tradition with Plato et al.

    The problem is, the number 1 reason I left philosophy is:

    Real number 1. The professional aspect of academic philosophy (what makes all the lifestyle sacrifices worth it, supposedly) is terrible.

    First, many academics just aren't serious. They are more interested in thinking they are Socrates or constantly name dropping their Alma Mater, than in actually working hard on hard topics. The peer group, in this regard, doesn't always seem better than the student population.

    But, second and most importantly, being in the philosophy career (again from my experience) means constant abuse from your superiors. Tenured professors calling people "spoiled", "entitled", "without a clue", "whingers", etc. Perfunctory readings of work followed by grand statement such as "this is all garbage". The fact that the dissertation process is 1 part philosophy and 9 parts appeasing ego.

    Perhaps this is just hazing, and I would have learned something else if I'd stayed in the career. But I have to ask, can anyone say they haven't been to a colloquim where a faculty member strolls in 30 minutes into the presentation, waits for the question and answer and opens up with "Maybe I missed this, but don't you think your approach can't possibly work?"

    My current career doesn't excite me like philosophy did. And I do feel like I have many important and interesting things to say. But, after 6 years in grad school, I didn't really feel that the community of philosophy profs was the kind of audience I wanted to be in dialog with.

    I'm not sure whether I confirm or invalidate Prof. Pence's point. I did in fact leave academia to "bartend in San Francisco" (although you'd hope a PhD can do better than that…) But part of the reason I left academia is because of this type of sanctimony that treats people as morally inferior because they want to live in a place with more than just white people, go to a good restaurant here and there and yes, check out a museum every once in a while.

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  37. anon in the midwest

    Anon in the West wrote: "Until you realize that having a job, where you get to teach and study something that you love, is a gift, you will never really be a philosopher. I appreciate my imperfect job and underprepared students every single day."

    Seriously? We're only philosophers if we accept the imperfect rather than try to change it or seek alternatives to it? I'm glad that wasn't one of the degree requirements at my own program. (It certainly wasn't the attitude my advisors took towards my thesis drafts.)

    No life we end up with will be perfect, of course, and for some it may indeed be worthwhile to teach lousy students in a bad location, but it's surely perfectly reasonable for others to decide that such a life is not for them. The only bearing that need have on their status as philosophers is that making that decision may cut them off from the world of professional academic philosophy.

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  38. Steven Hales

    It seems to me that there are good points all around. Prof. Pence is on to something when he notes the virtues of being open minded about where one lives and the sort of department in which one works. And he is right that many academics are amazingly close-minded about what might constitute the good life. Witness "Greener Pastures" above, who blithely declares that "Living in a cosmopolitan urban area DOES make your life better." He or she clearly can't imagine that a academic (or possibly anyone) might prefer rural living. Yes, cities have good restaurants and museums. On the other hand, out here in the country I live in a house that I couldn't afford at 10 times my salary if it were near a major metro area. I pick wild raspberries in my yard, see bear, deer, and wild turkeys, and can walk to a Norman Rockwell swimming hole. That counts for something too.

    I'm quite sympathetic with Midwest Phi-er, though. There are unquestionably jobs in philosophy that are not worth the candle. But the real issue, for everyone, is opportunity costs. What kind of life are you sacrificing to keep what you regard as a shitty job in philosophy? The weighting of those costs is largely a matter of personal preference. Some may think anything less than a research load in a top-20 urban school is the 3rd circle of Hell. Others might be satisfied with a teaching career in a sleepy little podunk town. But it is quite unreasonable to assume that all academics have the same lifestyle values.

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  39. Alastair Norcross

    I am very sorry to hear about Greener Pastures' experiences. My own experiences in grad school and as a junior professor were the polar opposite. I had incredibly supportive and helpful teachers, and a superb dissertation director, whose criticisms were always constructive. Likewise, in my first tenure-track job, my senior colleagues were terrific. The goal of everyone in the department was for everyone else to do good work and succeed. Everyone read everyone else's work and did their best to make it better. No-one cared about your alma mater. My current department is, I think, similar (though much bigger).
    Perhaps I have just been incredibly lucky, or perhaps Greener Pastures was incredibly unlucky. I hope it's the latter. I have many friends in the profession, and I just can't see them behaving the way Greener Pastures saw senior philosophers behave.

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  40. tired of blogs

    If far too many young adults are attending college to keep standards adequately high nowadays, which 80-90% of us will admit that we're not needed as professors?

    (I admit in asking this question that I count myself fortunate to have some very strong students.)

    I've worked at two R1 schools and I'm now at a small liberal arts college. Interestingly, I find I have more personal time to pursue my research. I'm arguably less well connected to bright colleagues in my own discipline, but I find that there is compensation in terms of much stronger connections with bright colleagues in other disciplines. We talked about the value of interdisciplinarity at big institutions, but rarely if ever practised it. And even at the R1 institutions, my closest research connections were with people doing work similar to mine at other institutions in other parts of the country and world. Those are easy to maintain.

    Also, the quality of the students at R1 schools shouldn't be taken for granted. Some R1 schools do indeed have great students, others don't. In many cases you won't meet many of them anyway, because your classes will have 50-500 students in them and your TAs will handle all the one-on-one interaction. I suspect what we're really talking about is the quality of graduate students, and that makes for a much smaller pool of "acceptable" institutions. Small liberal arts colleges *regularly* permit the kind of student interaction that we *imagine* we might have elsewhere, and some such institutions have students just as good as those at R1 schools. I remember seeing a report years ago that suggested that liberal arts colleges' graduates contribute vastly disproportionately to professional academia, too, so the personal attention may matter.

    I would also contest some of the assumptions above about differences between big city and small town/city life, though. When I lived in a big city, it took me 45 minutes to an hour to get to the airport, and I lived only 6 miles from it. Few residents of that city were so fortunate. I also routinely spent an hour or more getting to those wonderful restaurants and museums. In many small towns, you can still do that! You'll just be driving an hour through scenic countryside to a big city rather than driving through 10 miles of maddening and dangerous city traffic.

    Further, I find that I engage with cultural opportunities more often now that I live here. Firt, local opportunities aren't entirely absent. Second, a few big cities are only a couple hours' drive away. Visiting the museums in my former big city took half that long anyway. Remember that if you're a professional academic, you'll be fortunate to actually live right in the cultural district of any big city on your salary (and, having chosen to do so, you probably won't be able to afford the cultural opportunities that cost money). Third, I have far more disposable income than my colleagues who have taken jobs in big cities, even though my salary is a bit lower (and I also have a sizable house compared to their 800-square-foot walk-up flats, etc.).

    A lot of the decision was driven for me by family considerations, admittedly. After my wife and I had children, we looked around our 1000-square-foot two-bedroom apartment in a great neighborhood that was costing us 40% of my post-tax salary, plus high car insurance, etc., *and* the horrible public schools (and great private schools we'd never be able to afford). We realized we'd be able to afford a very nice house sited near great public schools and actually have a great deal of disposable income to make up for any loss in cultural opportunities by taking the job at the smaller place. Living in the big city was a very attractive proposition when we didn't have kids. So I can understand singles and others with no kids wanting to stay there.

    Differences that are real and that I do miss: diversity of food and the diversity of the surrounding community. I do happen to live near a big R1 school, so we have a fair amount of culinary and personnel diversity about 20-30 minutes away, but I do miss being in the middle of it. On the other hand, I remind myself that I rarely drove *less* than 20 minutes to get to a restaurant, friend's house, or anything else in the big city.

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  41. Lisa Shapiro

    To follow on with what Cricky Hitchcock suggests: some constructive suggestions, but on a different track. I often wonder why there isn't more effort in North America to make Philosophy a teachable subject — that is, to make philosophy a major one can have to qualify for a teaching certificate (to teach high school). That is, what if philosophy were taught in high schools? Public high schools, that is? As they do in many european countries. Not only would this have a benefit of providing a set of jobs in the profession in some sense, but I suspect it would also improve the quality of HS education, and so of college students. I know that there is a program in Ontario to offer philosophy in the schools, but I am not sure how extensive it is. And I know that there is a very small philosophy in the schools program here in Vancouver. Is there anywhere else? Is there anything the discipline can do to lobby — perhaps to school boards near graduate programs where PhDs are having problems finding employment — for such things?

    [I note that a teacher in Vancouver regularly brings his students to my University to sit in on our intro classes. Those students (who are not from the best part of town) are great. They ask questions in a 300 person lecture, pay attention, and get pissed off when the actual university students around them talk. I imagine he is a great teacher, but also that it is very rewarding to teach philosophy to high schoolers.]

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  42. anon prof at unranked program

    Brian,

    I would like the following posted anonymously or not at all.

    There are many rational PhD students who not only would be happy with 4/4 jobs but who have realistic expectations. But I have had several PhD students who are happy to apply for t-t jobs at places like Princeton, NYU, Yale, etc even though nothing on their CVs that makes them stand out in the slightest. They have perhaps one or two publications in some obscure places, no letters of recommendation from anyone who has ever mentored anyone who has gone on for anything like a research job, and they are coming from a department outside Leiter territory. They have zero chance at getting interviews at those places and yet they apply to them anyway.

    I would like to see some data regarding the number of applications top-10 departments get each year for assistant professor jobs. If PhD students had anything like a remotely realistic sense of their prospects, the number would be pretty small I would think. And yet I suspect the number is quite large.

    Does this mean that they think they are entitled to a 2/2 or 3/2 research job? I don't know if 'entitled' is the right word. But perhaps it means that regardless of what we tell our PhD students about their career prospects they will continue to harbor some utterly irrational feeling that they have a realistic chance at a job at Princeton or NYU–or, failing that, they think they certainly should be able to land a job at some place like Minnesota or Illinois or Santa Barbara. And yet, even the latter places are usually way, way beyond their CVs. Maybe that's one small factor in job dissatisfaction: a secret feeling that they deserve better, even though they would deny it.

    This is crude armchair psychology, but part of it is based on my own case. I graduated from a so-so place but with a half dozen publications in journals like PPR, Phil of Sci, and PhilQuarterly, and yet upon reflection I know that there was no chance I was going to get any interviews (let alone offers) at the top places.

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  43. Jon Cogburn

    Anon in the West and others might be surprised to find out that states in the American South have the highest proportion of African American and Latino citizens in the country. Higher than Anon's own San Fransisco (incidentally one of the wealthiest cities in the world in terms of per capita median income), which he ridiculously claims to be "less white." There are also thriving Vietnamese and Lebanese populations throughout the American South.

    I love San Fransisco (albeit that South Park episode with people relishing the smell of their own farts was to the point), but would rather live in the more culturally and economically diverse American South. I can afford a house here. I can get silence to meditate and study here. Finally, I get to be part of fighting the good fight with lots of other progressive southerners trying to make things better.

    For example, the institution where I teach graduates more African American Chemistry Ph.Ds than any university in the world (including those in San Fransisco). And all students, many of them from pretty grinding poverty, get their tuition payed for by the great state of Louisiana (Georgia actually does the same thing). Yes some of them are much less prepared than at better schools and wealthier states, and it's taken work to craft classes that simultaneously reach them and the best five to ten students in each class. This has been immensely rewarding though and has helped my research.

    More generally, I'm sorry if anything I wrote above seems insulting. I wrote it the attempt to help people be less self-sabotaging in their professional and personal behavior. I didn't intend to appeal to the Aristotelian hierarchy of goods to put down people who walk away from an academic job. I applaud them; you should walk away and do something else if your love of philosophy (teaching and studying it) don't override your love of place (a vanishingly small percentage of academics have control over that).

    Again, my target audience has been people seeking or holding tenure track jobs, not in an attempt to gratuitously insult, but in an attempt to let them know what the consequences of their behavior will be at the vast majority of institutions willing to pay people to love wisdom. If you think that it's a horrible thing that the world works this way, then O.K. But you are better off if you don't entertain fantasies that it is different.

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  44. Bingo

    Could we have some idea of what non-philosophy careers those with philosophy PhDs have pursued? Where does one get if getting out is what one wants?

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  45. G.

    Twenty dollars says that there's a strong correlation between a commenter's position on the acceptability of preferring urban to rural and his/her age, as well as whether s/he has kids. People with children tend to prefer urban areas less, and people who are young, and, in particular, who are single, tend to prefer them much more.

    I spent two years (in a non-academic career) living in a town of ten thousand people, where the closest city was a town of about two hundred thousand, and that was fifty miles away. I did not have a date for two years; I did not meet anyone of the opposite sex who was single and who shared any of my interests for two years.

    There's openmindedness, and then there's the fact that people at different stages in their lives have different needs that can be met in different places.

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  46. Jon Cogburn

    Midwest Phi-er,

    I'm sorry things aren't working for you. However, be very careful. I have two close friends who were in your exact situation and left tenure track jobs as a result. Both moved to locales in which their spouses wanted to live. Both ended up getting divorced in any case. I also have a number of friends in your situation who stuck it out and whose spouses and kids are thriving in places they initially loathed.

    I realize that the set of people I'm friends with is too small to be a useful sample, and I'm *not* saying that you and your family are self-deceived or irrational to be bothered by the situation in which you find yourself. I'm just reiterating that a large portion of happiness does derive from the way we respond to the situations in which we find ourselves, rather than those situations themselves (i.e. if someone spits on you, they don't make you mad, they just make you wet, etc. etc.). For everybody it will sometimes take years of trying different things to get the best response down. And clearly sometimes the correct response is to remove yourself from the situation.

    In any case, I'm sure everyone reading this blog hopes the best for you and yours.

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  47. Greener Pastures

    Re Steven Hale:

    I didn't mean to say that living in urban areas was categorically better than rural areas. I really meant to say that there is such a thing as an urban temperament, and if you have one it really does improve your life to live in a big city. I have friends from all over the world, of every ethnicity (I don't actually live in San Francisco, but NY) and working in every field, from finance to government to art and beyond. I think that if I liked nature, bigger house, etc. it might have been that I'd stayed in philosophy (who knows?)

    Re Jon Cogburn: I think you frame the issue correctly "if your love of philosophy (teaching and studying it) don't override your love of place" My real point was that the philosophy career is really not the same as the world of ideas that some rhetoric makes it out to be. I of course wouldn't universalize my experience to others, but a lot of why I didn't go into philosophy is because my love of philosophy was deeply stained by my time in grad school.

    Re Bingo:

    For those considering leaving academia, I can offer some advice.

    1. Remember that noone out there knows what to make of you. They respect advanced education, and some of them remember that philosophy was really hard in college. They may, thereby, think you are smart. But the thing is, a PhD in philosophy probably won't get you a job, and may impede your chances at entry level work.

    2. Keep your options open. If you think that you are becoming too attached to Chicago, New York, San Francisco, etc. (the location of your grad school). Think about doing some temp work over the summer, or during the year instead of adjuncting. Get some lines on your resume in another field you might consider going into.

    3. Diversify your network. It's easy to just hang out with philosophy grads as discussion seemlessly moves from Nintendo to theories of reference, but try to have friends in the working world. When you are looking for a job in the area you've decided to transition to (e.g. non-profit, consulting, publishing, NGOs etc.)they can really help. Your connections at the temp agency from point 2 also can help.

    4. Learn how to use Microsoft Office. I know this sounds stupid, but if you can do fancy powerpoints or model any scenario in excel (your logic experience in philosophy helps more than you think on this one) you will rule the office. Seriously, all anybody does now is spreadsheets and powerpoints.

    5. Consider getting a professional certification or joining a professional society in another area. Some of these entail a few exams that professionals in the work force find very difficult, but a professional student can easily pass them with their good study habits. Sometimes it means just spending a couple hundred bucks a year.

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  48. Mark Silcox

    One of the things that gives me a profound impression of unreality about this whole discussion is the fact that, having actually studied and worked at a couple of schools in major North American cities, it was always my impression that academic philosophers actually make extraordinarily scanty use of the resources available there. Only a tiny percentage of my colleagues and fellow students at either place ever went to the theatre, or museums, or art galleries at all, let alone regularly. And as for nightclubs, symphony concerts or poetry readings – well, forget it. You might see the odd one of them wandering the halls of an esoteric bookstore, if there was a full moon. So what IS so attractive about living in non-flyover country for professional philosophers? Just the vague feeling that it somehow makes you one of the hipsters?

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  49. Michael Kremer

    This is for Bingo and others who want to know where to go after getting your Philosophy PhD, if it's not academia.

    I know of two places where people like this have ended up. I think they are not uncommon destinations for Philosophy undergraduate majors as well.

    (1) Law School. Philosophy undergrads are very successful at getting into law school, and (anecdotally) my impression is that Philosophy PhDs do even better, securing admission to the best programs, succeeding in them, and perhaps even ending up teaching in a Law School.

    (2) University administration — often in the institution where they earned their PhD.

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  50. MattiJ

    Midest Philosopher "Watching my wife look at her friends and mine on Facebook makes it all the more difficult to point to all the great things philosophy has given US (not just me, but us since that is who I am selling this to — us)."

    Yes. Suppose me and my partner graduated in about the same time: suppose further her/his field was medicine and I wrote my thesis on compositionality in Hegel from a relevance logical perspective with some chili and garlic. Now we both are looking for jobs. Whose career should give? Can I ever make a contribution to philosophy, if I follow her/him, which might mean turning down some otherwise tempting offers? Stoics also disparaged family life, but for those of us who are unstoical in this regard, also the life-projects of our significant others do count.

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