Seems like a pretty crappy existence. Is is really this nasty per this article from the Village Voice?
Wanted: Really Smart Suckers- Grad school provides exciting new road to poverty
I went to graduate school, got a masters degree in 2 years, and got a decent job upon graduation. Note: This was business school!
The above is not an idle comment, because one can contrast the inputs-outputs of b-school and graduate studies in the humanities and realize that they are two very different beasts.
B-school
*Only takes 2 years; a masters is the goal, a masters is good enough.
*You usually do an internship at a real company; can greatly help defray costs.
*In theory, excellent job prospects upon graduating (but the last few years have been rocky, to say the least)
*The studies themselves are of practical value; very little pie in the sky; really helps you fulfill your goals
Humanities
*Takes over 4 years, since a masters degree is worthless without the PhD
*As the articles suggest, you do a lot of work, but you are working for the school; this too can help cover costs.
*Job prospects upon graduating range, depending on the discipline, from OK to non-existent
*The studies themselves are often of little value to society.
More on this last point. I was born with decent smarts, and after I got my BA everyone always encouraged me to do the PhD thing. I never had any interest. I never wanted to write a thesis just because that’s what you have to do to succeed in that game. Uh-uh.
Higher education in the US and around the world is now a joke. As per the second quote in the OP, …It is one trap among many for people who are uninitiated into the way power and influence operate in this culture. “College,” as it is called, now serves mostly as a resistor on the career circuit of young people. It serves a negative but “useful” function to society: namely, it separates out a pool of “losers” (those who do not attend or who can’t make it) who are then deemed unworthy of white collar work. The fact that what one learns in college is pretty much useless for the world of work is besides the point. (Note: I am talking about humanities degrees here, but nowadays a science or BA business degree is also pretty much worthless out there. Still, you need to have something to avoid being cast into the outer darkness.)
Since everyone must now go to college, college is big business. And anytime you have a big business, you have an opportunity to skim a little from each paying customer. Instead of execs you have tenured profs. And, of course, these positions must be earned with additional leaps through additional hoops: grad school, the thesis, publications, etc. etc.
Yeah, it’s a big, phony, useless rackett that drains resources from society and costs young people years from their lives. But it serves that essential function of our primate society: dividing people into castes, the haves and have-nots. I doubt we’ll ever be rid of it.
Well, the article focuses on humanities grad students, but physical sciences students (in my experience) don’t have it too much better.
My experience re the items mentioned in the OP:
**For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. **
True (for 6.5 years).
**Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read. **
True, although in my case it was 272 pages. 
I lost a number of friends who got tired of my regretfully turning down invites, and my love life certainly went down the tubes. I remember at one point, having passed my qualifying exams (and thus being deemed ready to spend all my time on research), one of the older grad students warned me that I was about to embark on the loneliest period of my life. He was right.
**Then it’s time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable locations, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at all. You may end up living 100 miles from your spouse and commuting to three different work locations a week. **
I didn’t go this route (more below), but I know a number of people who did. In fact, I can easily think of 5 couples off the top of my head who see (or saw) each other on the weekends only because of where each partner ended up employed. One couple didn’t even live on the same continent.
You may end up $50,000 in debt, with no health insurance, feeding your kids with food stamps. If you are the luckiest out of every five entrants, you may win the profession’s ultimate prize: A comfortable middle-class job, for the rest of your life, with summers off.
The debt and lack of health insurance I’m all too familiar with; thank God I don’t have anyone to worry about but myself.
Much to my advisor’s dismay, I made the decision to pursue a consulting career that would allow me to keep doing research on the side. There were a number of reasons for doing this, but one of them was definitely the desire to avoid a possible situation where I might break my back for 6 years trying to get tenure, only to be told the university couldn’t afford to grant it and therefore I would have to leave and start all over again at another institution. I do also know people that have been treated this way, so it’s not just a hypothetical situation. My current job is by no means perfect, and I have my share of frustrations there as well, but at least my life is much more under control and less anxiety-rich.
Having said all that - I have had some amazing experiences, and I do enjoy the field that I’m in. I don’t think the endeavor is useless, especially in the sciences, because our advances in knowledge come through the blood, sweat and tears of people who have made it through the grad school system. But I can’t kid myself and say that the good things didn’t come at a significant cost.
I’m a graduate student in the sciences, which may be different. Here is my experience:
–The low pay claim is true. Less than $15K per year is typical here.
–“Superhuman levels of commitment”–it does feel that way sometimes. However, I think that’s a fair price to pay for learning. The more time you commit, the more you learn. Even the time spent TAing can be a learning experience. I learn something (sometimes a lot of things!) every class I teach.
–I do have health insurance, since I’m a teaching assistant. My medical needs are covered (except for some copay on prescriptions) and basic dentistry is covered. Of course, the coverage ends once I graduate, and I don’t know whether people who have post-doc positions get health insurance.
–I can not disagree more with the claim that what you learn in college is useless for the real world. Again, I’m only talking about a science degree, but there is absolutely no way I could be a successful physicist without first learning physics and math. The six years of higher education I’ve had haven’t taught me everything I need to know, but at least they’ve given me the background knowledge and skills I require to learn what I do need to know.
–The debt problem varies. Graduate students in the physical sciences usually get support from their departments, either in the form of TAships or research assistantships. As far as I know, none of my fellow physics grad students are in debt. We’re poor (by middle class US standards), but not in debt.
Clarification: I should have worded this better. By “we” I mean me and the people I happen to know about (who are also physicists); I do not claim to speak for grad students as a whole, or even all the people employed in my department.
Also, I’m sure the amount of financial support given to grad students varies by university and field of study.
I did not mean to imply that no one goes into debt in grad school; only to say that not everyone does.
Sorry.
I’m starting grad school this July. I did not need to hear this.
Anyway, I was looking at PhD programs in biomedical sciences, and they all offered around $25,000 with medical and in one case, sunsidized housing. It ain’t much, but for a singly guy it ain’t poverty either.
I got a Master’s in English Lit in 1997. I’d always planned to go on for a Ph.D. and professorhood, &c., but after the M.A. I took a break for my then-GF to get her Master’s. The distance and perspective I gained from this time off clarified for me much of what’s mentioned in the OP, and I got the hell out and got a job.
This fall I start law school.
After nearly 14 years in this racket (I can no longer call it a profession), I am thinking of doing the same thing.
I cannot tell you how much I wish that one of my college professors had sat me down and said, “It’s great that you’re majoring in history. Really, it is. But take a few accounting/computer science/Spanish classes while you’re at it.” As a bright, motivated undergrad, all of my professors steered me toward graduate school. It worked for them, why shouldn’t it work for me?
I got a fellowship to grad school, tuition plus a $9,000 stipend. I busted my ass and got an M.A. while working two part-time jobs. I now have a museum job that pays $18,000 a year with no benefits. I’m seriously considering going to community college to take courses in bookkeeping or paralegal work. I love history, teaching, and research, but I’m at the point where I’d love a decent paying job with health benefits even more.
From what I hear, law school seems to have its own problems. Many people go to law school just because they dont know what else to do rather than because they really want to be a lawyer, then end up feeling trapped in a career they don’t find satisfying with lots of debt.
So, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
I was pretty shocked by that article - none of my profs ever let on that academia was that bad!
The more I read these kinds of things, the more that I think trade-school is perhaps an under-utilized option!
One thing I perhaps should have added is that I love graduate school. I don’t care if I never make more than $20K as long as I have enough to eat and won’t starve when I retire. I love physics, I love being a student teacher, and I would be perfectly happy staying in graduate school forever if I could. Hopefully I will be just as happy doing physics at the professional level (assuming I get that far). It saddens me that the practical realities might steer people away from doing what they love. Please don’t give up on graduate school if you need it to attain the profession that your heart is set on. I could have given up years ago and gotten a degree in something that would have better job prospects than physics, but I think if I had done that I would spend the rest of my life wondering if I could have made it, and regretting the lost opportunity. Even if I fail to become a professor, or lose the publish-or-perish race, at least I know that I tried my best, and the analytical skills I’ve gained will be preserved even if I can’t use the actual knowledge.
I don’t think higher education (in the sciences, anyway) is a “big, phony, useless rackett,” as long as it brings the joy of knowledge and discovery to those who pursue it. I think it would be very sad to live in a socity where no one bothered to gain the skills necessary to answer fundamental questions about how the world works.
I think the point that a lot of these articles [The Chronicle runs them on a regular basis] is trying to get across is that this had really better be something you love doing. There tends to be a “well, I guess I’ll go to grad school, then” contingent out there - and that’s something that a little more information to the right people could help to diffuse. Being in grad school would not be a good idea if I weren’t passionate about math [insert your subject area here].
I love what I’m doing. I don’t know of another way to be paid to learn and teach mathematics. It’s true that I don’t make a whole lot of money, and there are times it feels like grad school’s eaten my life, but the net sum of plusses and minuses still leans to the positive side for me. If that stops being the case, then I’ll work on finding something else to do.
Well, it was 25 years ago, but I loved grad school. I was in Computer Science. I got paid about $5K a year back then, but it was enough for an apartment and food, and I even saved some money. I did get married while I was in grad school. Both my advisers were great, I learned how to do research and to think better, I learned how to write papers and give talks. I did my dissertation on a subject I wanted to work on. Before that, we finished off an open question, and published some papers that even got republished in collections. Right after I got my PhD I got a really good job at Bell Labs, back in the days of the Bell System.
But I suppose if someone goes to grad school only to get a degree, not to do something new, it could be a bummer. I got offered a “real” job right out of college, and I’m damned glad I didn’t take it.
Former liberal arts grad student here. The original plan was to go on for a Ph.D. in political science and teach, but after experiencing most of that mentioned above (except with no funding at all; I’m still paying off the student loans) for 2 years, I decided to cut my losses at the M.A. level and get a job.
More than half of my incoming class had no university funding at all; ours was an interdisciplinary area studies program, and most of the assistantships went to Ph.D.-track students in the relevant disciplines. I lived on less than $10K per academic year. For that, I probably put in at least 12 hours/day, 6 days a week, if not more; some people put in even more. It was so pitiful how little of a life we all had; I used to try to get a break by checking Russian films out of the department library in an attempt to invite fellow students over for dinner and language practice, but they would generally beg off, saying they had too much reading to do. How sad is that, if you can’t take 2 hours on a Saturday night to watch a movie applicable to your field? you, Russian & East European Studies isn’t a field one enters for the big bucks, and none of us had any delusions about that. But we at least thought we had a shot at a job that would pay the rent and grocery bills.
I ended up with an extremely tangentially related job for which all that specialized knowledge practically never comes in handy (although it is related to my pre-grad school work experience), and I probably make more than most of my professors did. But that’s not saying much.
The interesting thing about graduate student drudgery is that it’s mostly self-imposed – there’s a culture of commitment to the research. And your future job prospects are related to how much you can publish during your grad years. So the hours * are * long and the pay is crappy. Much of the quality of your life depends on your advisor. With a good advisor who supports your research, you’re practically self-employed. You can make your own hours and decide what you want to be doing. In the computer science department where I got my degree, there were few actual slave drivers – most of the students were driven by the above-mentioned culture. And most people enjoyed grad school for much of their time there and had to be coaxed to actually finish up; it’s actually quite a nice lifestyle if you don’t mind the lack of income.
I did have the misfortune of working for a while on a grant in which the PI was a control freak in the microbiology department. He treated his students (and anyone on the grant) like slaves and demanded levels of participation far beyond that of the grant’s funding. So there are some real asses out there who can make your life a living hell.
But the fundamental assumption that grad school is a * racket * might be somewhat overstated. It’s more that there are only a finite number of vacancies at academic institutions per year, and barring a mass-extinction event among university professors, there are eventually going to be more PhDs produced than there are places to put them. Even computer science reached this point in the late 80’s or early 90’s (which is why I’m working at a small startup rather than working on a tenure case). As the articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education point out, it may not make a lot of sense to train for many years for a highly competitive position for which there is no demand outside of the confines of academia.
I don’t know if it was as bad for me for me as it was portrayed in the article, but it was certainly the longest hours I have worked. I have a Ph.D. in social psychology, which is an academice field, by and large. All social psychologists do is research and produce other social psychologists. There is a glut, and you do have to be willing to move to get a job–usually several times as you bounce from college to college trying to get tenure.
I went back to grad school for post-doc training in clinical. which is a much better field in terms of employment.
Both times, grad school was hard and I wanted to quit many, many times. Still and all, though, I am glad I did it.
Eventually? I’d say that we passed that point a long time ago. (The reduction of military funding in the 80’s surely didn’t help either.)
i guess it varies by college and major. My older brother got his MA in marketing from ohio university. It only took him one year and he lived with his wife while he did it. He was also an AI while he was doing it, when i ask him about it he says it wasn’t that bad.
I know a guy working on a Masters in rocket propulsion (rocket science engineering) he says he spends 15 hours a week studying, 15 hours a week working on his thesis, for a total of 30 hours a week (plus a few hours of class). He still has an outside job and although he is having serious family problems he still has his family.
Here at IU the school paper says over 50% of people who start out on Ph.D.s quit. Most just give up on the doctorate work on a masters instead, since its only a 1-2.5 year commitment for most people vs the 6+ year doctorate commitment.
BINGO
At 19 I was making $38K US per year working as an inside machinist. All I did was graduate high school=) Of course I started sweeping floors for minimum wage in that shop at 16, but learned and qualified every piece of equipment in the shop, took machine repair training from the factory reps for the equipment…but despite the work [and i had a second job on weekends through highschool in a resteraunt kitchen, and later weekends and evenings in teh place because I loved cooking and sort of fell int the machine shop job, but that is a soap opera of a different color=)]
My brother went through the BOCES program which is a trade school sort of set of classes where you do acedemics in the morning and tradeskills in the afternoon. He ended up with a nice job himself making good money on graduating.
I like the european habit of career tracking kids in school, not wanting to sound disparaging to anybody BUT many kids just are not zippy enough for the current higher education track and frankly are more technically oriented. It is wrong pushing Johnny into college when he is better employed repairing vehicles, as a plumber or as a telephone lineman. Susy may be better as a computer programmer than a housewife, and Mazy may have qualified for mensa at 10 years old but cant afford to go to college and drops out to get pregnant and married at 16 because she knows that Mcdonalds is not for her and without college, that is all she can get=\
If we could presort kids into the right tracks, AND provide career training, or college tuition to those going either direction the country would be better off. But then again, I also think universal service to get your citizenshp franchise is a good idea also…[like in the BOOK Starship Troopers, NOT the movie]
Some of these old chestnuts are so true, it’s painful:
You know you’re a grad student when…
* you can identify universities by their internet domains.
* you are constantly looking for a thesis in novels.
* you have difficulty reading anything that doesn't have footnotes.
* you understand jokes about Foucault.
* the concept of free time scares you.
* you consider caffeine to be a major food group.
* **you've ever brought books with you on vacation and actually studied.**
* Saturday nights spent studying no longer seem weird.
* the professor doesn't show up to class and you discuss the readings anyway.
* you've ever travelled across two state lines specifically to go to a library.
* **you appreciate the fact that you get to choose which twenty hours out of the day you have to work.**
* you still feel guilty about giving students low grades (you'll get over it).
* you can read course books and cook at the same time.
* you schedule events for academic vacations so your friends can come.
* you hope it snows during spring break so you can get more studying in.
* you've ever worn out a library card.
* you find taking notes in a park relaxing.
* you find yourself citing sources in conversation.
* you've ever sent a personal letter with footnotes.
* you can analyze the significance of appliances you cannot operate.
* your office is better decorated than your apartment.
* you have ever, as a folklore project, attempted to track the progress of your own joke across the Internet.
* **you are startled to meet people who neither need nor want to read.**
* you have ever brought a scholarly article to a bar.
* you rate coffee shops by the availability of outlets for your laptop.
* everything reminds you of something in your discipline.
* you have ever discussed academic matters at a sporting event.
* you have ever spent more than $50 on photocopying while researching a single paper.
* there is a microfilm reader in the library that you consider "yours."
* you actually have a preference between microfilm and microfiche.
* you can tell the time of day by looking at the traffic flow at the library.
* **you look forward to summers because you're more productive without the distraction of classes.**
* you regard ibuprofen as a vitamin.
* you consider all papers to be works in progress.
* professors don't really care when you turn in work anymore.
* you find the bibliographies of books more interesting than the actual text.
* you have given up trying to keep your books organized and are now just trying to keep them all in the same general area.
* you have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation.
* you find yourself explaining to children that you are in "20th grade".
* you start refering to stories like "Snow White et al."
* you often wonder how long you can live on pasta without getting scurvy.
* you look forward to taking some time off to do laundry.
* you have more photocopy cards than credit cards.
* you wonder if APA style allows you to cite talking to yourself as "personal communication".
* **you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle.**
Cultural anthropologist, here. At one point before I got a TAship, I was working three part-time jobs and was so far below the poverty level that I got to take Earned Income Credit.
mr.quilter, on the other hand, is a physicst and had tuition remission and a stipend all the way through to his PhD. Similarly, my dissertation is 400 pages; his thesis is 90 pages. (We have a lot of “In my field…” conversations about the differences between social and non-social sciences.)
It’s NOT fun. But if you love your field, go for it!