The state of education:

[Aquila]

SurlyPacer,

Congrats!

Before you head for grad school, make sure you get a really good sense of how long your degree will actually take (what's the time to degree for your actual program) and what the employment opportunities are like. For PhDs who want to go into academics in most fields, the employment opportunities are really lousy.

For example, the average time to degree for a PhD in English (after a BA) is 8.4 years.

1/3 of people who start PhDs in the humanities don't finish.

And of those who finish, in English, almost 1/3 will never get a tenure track job.

That means there's a huge opportunity cost for pursuing a PhD in English. It's not a bad thing to do, but you should go in with your eyes wide open.

[ginny]

Sorry, I have problems feeling sorry for most professors. They b*tch & moan if they have to teach over three classes/year and please, don't ask them to teach any class over 30 students without a teaching assistant to do the grunt work. And, they get tenure which means "job for life." I saw very few professors who really gave a damn about the students.

Oh Dogmama! Being a professor (in the sciences - I can't speak to other disciplines) is one of the only jobs that one has to "sing for one's supper". Research professors need to write proposals and get funding to pay for at least some of their salaries, pay for their graduate students, pay for their research. Professors are expected to: maintain a research laboratory performing world class science, mentor and graduate graduate students, teach undergraduate and graduate courses, bring in millions of dollars of funding, sit on many university committees - and if one is a minority, he/she finds herself on more committees than usual - the university likes to parade their minority professors for all to see, and mentor undergraduates.

Aside from the hope that they will, in fact, get to do world class research in a collaborative and supportive community, I do not understand why so many want to go into academia. I feel horribly sorry for my advisor from my MS program; she has traded any sort of personal life for tedious and difficult work with little thanks.

[Grog]

Quick hijack:

Interesting article about women in the professoriate:
http://www.leavingacademia.com/2009/...-jaw-dropping/

/hijack.

[OakLeaf]

Good link, Grog.

What I said about my sister and her stay-at-home husband...