Comments on: Academic Hiring: Year of No Jobs

By: btenney

btenney — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:26:35 +0000

Any PHD worth his or her salt should be able to learn a trade in a year or so.
Tradespeople are in demand.
Change you can believe in.

By: odograph

odograph — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:50:25 +0000

We need a new boom, and I think shattering the intellectual property log-jam would help. 1) call any patent funded by 60% or greater public funds invalid (NASA patents, university patents), and make them revert to the public domain. 2) set copyright protection a fixed 50 years after date of publication We should definitely protect real innovation and creative works, strongly, for reasonable spans, but a mesh of long-term IP claims don't drive innovation, they block it. See also the tragedy of the anti-commons. Also, while we may not be able to net-cut spending in a downturn, we can certainly shift it. A little less arts funding and a little more robotics (for cost-effective on-shore manufacturing) IMO.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:35:31 +0000

Back when I was in university, the early 70s, grad students on the academic track were largely unemployable. Several PhD candidates in philosophy ended up teaching at private elementary schools, if they were lucky. Others ended up pumping gas, a job no longer available.

My school also closed its Astronomy program as it was producing more PhDs annually than there were jobs in the entire country. The program was sound; the profession was not.

By: Steven Taylor

Steven Taylor — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:46:57 +0000

Ah yes, the fabled Wave of Retirement. Much like the Holy Grail it is oft discussed, and yet never found...

I remember an article (I think it was in Newsweek) back in the late 1980s, right before I was going to apply for grad school, promising that right about the time I would be finishing that there would be jobs aplenty. And yet, not so much. Indeed, some version of that article comes out every few years.

By: Dave Schuler

Dave Schuler — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:39:36 +0000

Re: law school

From time to time I've posted about the large number of layoffs of professionals from large law firms recently, particularly in New York and IIRC there's something of a glut of lawyers in California, too.

By: Dave Schuler

Dave Schuler — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:49:58 +0000

In some fields this has been the case for a long time. For example, I remember that when I was an undergraduate well over a generation ago in order for a nuclear physicist to get a job a nuclear physicist needed to die or retire. Retirements were practically unheard of.

Another example is first-chair musicians in major symphony orchestras (where the real money is). I knew of cases young musicians waiting decades for their teachers to retire or die, meanwhile taking jobs as high school music teachers. If they could get them.

By: Zelsdorf Ragshaft III

Zelsdorf Ragshaft III — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:35:41 +0000

By redistribution, do you mean taking from those that worked for and earned the money through their own efforts and giving it to those who did not? Who will take the risks necessary to start new ventures if one cannot gain from that risk? Angel, let us come over to your house and redistribute some of your wealth. I want your computer. Not to change the subject, but James is right. There are many other ways to earn a living other than a professorship at University. [Editor's note: This comment is in response to another that was deleted for violation of site policies.]