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Monday, July 22, 2002 |
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News: Too many PhDs and not enough real jobs -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15182-2002Jul16.html Comment: This article from the Washington Post tells the sad story of a woman who got a PhD in medieval literature and is mad because she's not making the money she thinks she should. She has $46,000 in student loans to pay off. Well, gee...did she ever think maybe it was not a wise economic decision to borrow so much money for college when there is a glut of liberal arts PhDs on the market? How did she think she was going to make enough money to pay all that back? The article blames the adjunct teacher system...basically, part-time college teachers who are a lot cheaper to hire than full-time tenured faculty. But remember my blog of last week about Michigan colleges raising tuition rates again? If the teaching quality is just as good, I'm all in favor of colleges holding down cost by hiring cheaper faculty. The best career advice I ever got was at a job fair when I was a freshman at Michigan State. An employer told me that it's nice to daydream about your ideal career, but in the end you have to convince someone to pay you to do something. If you're lucky (like I have been), you get paid for doing something you enjoy and are good at. I have little sympathy for students who enter fields where there are obviously no job prospects. News: I stopped by the MSU Observatory Open House on Saturday night. Comment: Dave Batch told me they had hundreds of visitors over the weekend. We have to find a way to get some of those folks out to astronomy club meetings. I'm convinced that the inexpensive, easy-to-use computerized "go-to" scopes are going to lead to an upsurge in people getting interested in astronomy. Click here to see current comments and add your own. 11:30:17 AM 
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