Re: PhD Gluts
Title: Re: PhD Gluts I don't have the answer to this puzzle, but I want to bring up the fact that there is price discrimination in academia. Not all faculty pay scales are the same. At some universitites (probably most) there is a different pay scale for academic salaries for Business and Engineering (B/E) faculty. I believe most physical scientists are included in this pay scale. The difference is significant. At UC Irvine, the difference is about 25-30% at some levels. Additionally, I think engineering and computer science professors are more likely than the aforementioned humanities professors to get external funding, allowing them to pay themselves the summer salary. This can boost their pay an additonal 33% or more. I may be wrong about the ability of humanitites professors to get grants, though. One more thing. There is a lot of tolerance in engineering departments for consulting. I think up to one day a week is not unusual. This is an additional source of income. However, there are probably ways that humanities professors can acquire income that is not really available to engineering professors. I'd guess that books written by humanities faculty make more money than most engineering texts (not really money makers at all.). I hope this helps. John An article in today's Chronicle by Robert Wright http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i31/31b02001.htm poses the obvious economic solution to the glut in the History PhD market: cut wages. He argues that cutting salaries eliminates non-price rationing and makes the market more efficient. However, I have a problem with this. Why don't colleges cut wages in glut disciplines such as history, philosophy, etc.? Certainly, economists and computer scientists command higher salaries to account for greater scarcity, indicating that schools do respond to labor market conditions. Why then are wages in glut disciplines so high? Also, why do people continue to enter the discipline when the expected wage is so low? Some suggested answers: 1) Asymmetric info between administrators and departments. The administration keeps wages high to attract a large number of applicants to any job so that department hiring committees will have a harder time hiding candidates who make the current department look bad. (But then why don't administrators do this for all disciplines?) 2) To attract good thinkers to become historians, schools must keep the wage high enough to compete with other disciplines and occupations that require intelligence. Therefore, it is beneficial to keep the wage high and sort applicants for non-wage purposes after the fact. That is PhDs who will work for 30K are not worth 30K. That is 40K historians are at the minimum level of competence. This explanation would also entail the poor screening of PhD worthiness by graduate schools. A school could easily gain a reputation for having only 40K PhDs, thereby cutting search costs, and outcompete other programs. 3) Interest group reasons. Faculty lobby for higher wages. (This answer is boring and I think incorrect, because current faculty bear the cost of the non-price rationing.) In other words, I don't have a good answer. Anyone else want to give it a try? JC _ John-Charles Bradbury, Ph.D. Department of Economics The University of the South 735 University Ave. Sewanee, TN 37383 -1000 Phone: (931) 598-1721 Fax: (931) 598-1145 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- John A. Viator, Ph.D. Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic 1002 Health Sciences Road East University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92612 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: 949-824-3754 Fax: 949-824-6969
Re: PhD Gluts
> Speaking from a student's perspective, I am not basing what I plan to study in college on the salaries that profession makes. Those of us who want to be in academia are usually not the same people who pay a lot of attention to money. I do not want to study economics to make money, but to study economics. Please excuse me, but I am going to have to call BS on this comment. What kind of car do you drive? How expensive are your clothes? What do you eat for dinner? What is your debt situation? All of these choices provide some indication of your expected life-time income. Would you really contiunue your college education if you knew you would earn the same income as the lowest skilled workers? You might for consumption reasons, but most people would not. > Also, people who have studied a subject for four years and realize it pays peanuts are probably unwilling to change majors, because a low-paying degree is better than no degree at all. I disagree. The forgone income from writing a history disertation is likely to be quite high: 2-3 years (at least) of forgone income plus additional debt. Because the small liklihood of getting a job after getting your degree, on average, abandoning the degree is worth more than getting the degree. In fact, a friend of mine recently left grad school in history after heading up his school's search for a part-time adjuct slot. He said the CVs were glowing.
Re: PhD Gluts
Speaking from a student's perspective, I am not basing what I plan to study in college on the salaries that profession makes. Those of us who want to be in academia are usually not the same people who pay a lot of attention to money. I do not want to study economics to make money, but to study economics. Also, people who have studied a subject for four years and realize it pays peanuts are probably unwilling to change majors, because a low-paying degree is better than no degree at all. Institutions might pay higher than market wages for some professions to convince people that it is a viable career, and so attract people into their programs. Once they are into them, they will be unwilling to change, etc. Brian Keith
Re: PhD Gluts
> 2) To attract good thinkers to become historians, > schools must keep the wage high enough to compete with other > disciplines and occupations that require intelligence. Therefore, I think this is a big part of it. Compeitition to get into the best humanities programs is as fierce as law school. It's common for humanities Ph.D.'s from good places to jump to law school if academia doesn't work out. Consider the following fact. There are some nations where many faculty are paid badly, where they could be paid better. In Latin America, there are entire departments and universities that are treated the way we treat adjuncts in American. Consequently, they don't attract the best, and are considered frequently to be not very good institutions. Fabio > John-Charles Bradbury, Ph.D.
PhD Gluts
An article in today's Chronicle by Robert Wright http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i31/31b02001.htm poses the obvious economic solution to the glut in the History PhD market: cut wages. He argues that cutting salaries eliminates non-price rationing and makes the market more efficient. However, I have a problem with this. Why don't colleges cut wages in glut disciplines such as history, philosophy, etc.? Certainly, economists and computer scientists command higher salaries to account for greater scarcity, indicating that schools do respond to labor market conditions. Why then are wages in glut disciplines so high? Also, why do people continue to enter the discipline when the expected wage is so low? Some suggested answers: 1) Asymmetric info between administrators and departments. The administration keeps wages high to attract a large number of applicants to any job so that department hiring committees will have a harder time hiding candidates who make the current department look bad. (But then why don't administrators do this for all disciplines?) 2) To attract good thinkers to become historians, schools must keep the wage high enough to compete with other disciplines and occupations that require intelligence. Therefore, it is beneficial to keep the wage high and sort applicants for non-wage purposes after the fact. That is PhDs who will work for 30K are not worth 30K. That is 40K historians are at the minimum level of competence. This explanation would also entail the poor screening of PhD worthiness by graduate schools. A school could easily gain a reputation for having only 40K PhDs, thereby cutting search costs, and outcompete other programs. 3) Interest group reasons. Faculty lobby for higher wages. (This answer is boring and I think incorrect, because current faculty bear the cost of the non-price rationing.) In other words, I don't have a good answer. Anyone else want to give it a try? JC _John-Charles Bradbury, Ph.D.Department of EconomicsThe University of the South735 University Ave.Sewanee, TN 37383 -1000Phone: (931) 598-1721Fax: (931) 598-1145E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
