Tuesday, October 02, 2007

a libran decision making paradigm

Here is the question. Do I finish my PhD or do I leave by Spring 08 with a master's?

Here is a brief and highly simplified overview of my decision factors.
Pros:
Finishing what I've started.
Get to have people call me "Doctor".
Get a chance to hold a professorship.

Cons:
Coordinating good faith and timely reading and review of various drafts of both my proposal and dissertation by a group of faculty who have demonstrated serious failings in time management and coordination abilities.
With loans + a half time GAship, I will run out of money to live on by March 2008.
I am borrowing money that I will be paying off at a rate of:
- nearly $600 a month if I can pay off the debt within ten years
- nearly $400 a month if I can pay off the debt within twenty years
- just under $330 a month if I can pay off the debt within thirty years
(And that's assuming a maximum fixed interest rate of 6.8%, which not all of these loans have)
Permanent, stable faculty positions are far less easily come by now than they had been for the past generation of scholars.
Permanent, stable faculty positions entail average teaching loads of 4/3.
Many of the lower teaching load tenure track positions give preference to candidates with post-doctoral training and who come with their own active grant (or strong "extramural funding" history).
Trying for such a position would require at the least a willingness and ability to uproot every one or two years for anywhere from 3 to 10 years post PhD.

Realities:
I cannot get a more than half time GAship because I have been taking too long in this program since my second year in it.
I have good reason to doubt I will be healthy enough to hold a job after I leave my program (with or without PhD) which will pay enough for me to afford both my education debt payments and my other monthly costs of living.
I am certain I am not healthy enough to go through what is becoming the standard post PhD employment scramble and make ends meet, do a yearly tenure track job search, and bounce around following the promise of a tenure track job as if it were the damned holy grail.
I do not like the academic work culture/climate. The hypocrisies wear on my nerves, stress me out, and make me loathe nearly all aspects of the interpersonal interactions and even sometimes the impersonal experiences I have as a researcher and instructor.
I quite strongly feel the trends in higher education employment are socially irresponsible.
I quite strongly feel the trends in undergraduate education are socially irresponsible and socio-economically unjust.
I find it hard to reconcile both my principles and my physical abilities with how I would need to behave and act in order to be a functional part of this socially irresponsible, socio-economically unjust, hypocrisy laden, pretense riddled system.
Having some license to insist that people call you "Doctor" is, as I see it, not a sufficient reason to do anything.

2 comments:

WinterWheat said...

Since you're a woman, they won't call you "doctor" anyway. They'll call you by your first name.

I have to respectfully disagree with your complaints about the academic work environment. By "disagree," I don't mean that I think all of those things are untrue, just that they're by no means unique to academia. You will find them in just about any work environment you end up in... and the corporate world sucks in its own unique way.

HOWEVER, money-wise, you have a point. If you can get out and get a job that pays big bucks, then perhaps you'll have come out ahead. How close ARE you anyway? If it's a matter of finishing a dissertation, I'd practically firebomb your house to persuade you not to jump ship before getting that degree.

PFG said...

Oh I don't think any of this is unique to academia. I just think it's more common and more glorified. Sanctified. Something along those lines.

I'm just looking for a job that pays enough, not big bucks. What awaits in academia post PhD doesn't meet the minimal requirement (i.e. enough to simply live on).

How close am I? Dissertation proposal drafts stage.