bobo_the_muse

hi lizart et al, your comments are well taken. taking a cue from your post, cynicism and pragmatism are two very different things. and i would place my comments squarely in the pragmatic category. i did not say that none of you will find jobs and i certainly did not mean to imply that you should forgo your dreams (that would be rather hypocritical of me!). i am just trying to strike a tone of reality. whether or not you think i'm cynical or pragmatic, the fact remains that even if one has an incredible cv and great dissertation, a job may not materialize when you are out of grad school. this is something that one needs to know before one starts. it's great that you have already accepted this reality, but there may be other people out there who need to hear this information who don't have undergrad advisors who have prepared them for it. and i think that it's important to make this a topic of discussion from the beginning of your academic careers so it does not come to bite you down the road. the negative tone of my posts is not a reflection of my unique and cynical outlook, but is more a factor of what is going on right now in the academic job market. that is what i wanted to relay because i thought that some of you might find it useful. i completely empathize with the process you are all going through. i know it sucks. if the information i relay is difficult to take, i'm sorry, but i hope you can believe me when i say that i'm not being an alarmist about this. i can see that my comments are not well timed (and i'm sorry for that), with committee decisions coming down right now. believe me, i understand what rejection feels like. but i also thought that the insights of someone further along might give comfort to some of who who don't get the offers you have dreamed of. again, best of luck. i hope you all get what you want.

Veroordeeld, I am shocked and appalled that these professors are telling you that hard work and a good diss will get you a job. It's great that you are skeptical; you absolutely should be. My advice to all of you who do start PhD programs is to work VERY hard to cultivate a set of skills that will be marketable both within and outside of the academy. IMHO, tenured professors who have been teaching for a while are simply out of touch with the conditions "on the ground." Or they expect that all their students can move around like nomads for 1-10 years, make the same wages they pay at Starbucks (but often without the same benefits accorded to a barista!) and put their personal lives on hold. This is a routine lifestyle for freshly-minted PhDs in the humanities these days. Basically, I think you should go into a humanities PhD program thinking that there is a very real possibility of coming out with no prospect of a job...in other words, one should not undertake this degree and think that it will earn you a job. Be pragmatic, think about the kind of life you want to lead (do you want to have job security? do you want children? etc). ALSO: I implore you all not to accept any offer to unless you are fully funded. Paying for the privilege of being unemployed and in serious debt on the other end makes no sense. Good luck.

FYI: I am finishing my PhD in art history this year at a top-ranked R1, having won multiple prestigious fellowships and awards, and basically done everything I could have possibly done to cultivate a long CV. I have applied for over 20 jobs and postdocs. Out of this, I have received ONE interview and no offers. CAA this year was filled with nervous ABDs and recent PhDs freaking OUT that there are no jobs. With the rise in contingent faculty (adjuncts, Visiting asst. profs, etc), the availability of tenure-track jobs is plummeting; nobody thinks this trend will reverse itself, even when the economy improves. By one account, tenure track job listings were down 40% this year (CAA's own statistic). So basically, I'm not trying to tell you that you are all crazy for wanting PhDs in art history (because I wanted one too), but I am telling you that it will not be the worst thing for you if you do not get in. To back up this assertion, here is a link to the "venting page" of the academic jobs wiki, a resource for academic job seekers to post information related to the academic job search: http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/The_venting_page explore the art history heading on the main jobs wiki page and you can see what kinds of jobs were available this year... best of luck to you all!

Actually, I can say that it is a very good idea to visit the schools you are applying to. This is certainly true for the school I am getting my PhD at (highly ranked public university in the midwest). You have nothing to loose. Be humble and you should have no problem.

As a related note: This advice is for all of you, and especially those of you who are considering paying to get an advanced degree in art history, whether an MA or a PhD. Under no circumstances (unless you are a trust fund baby and have tons of money to throw around) should you ever consider going into debt to pay for your schooling. I am in my last year of an art history PhD program in a highly regarded public university program. I received four years of funding from my department and won several external fellowships for my dissertation. I have been very very lucky in this regard and have not gotten myself into any debt. Now that I'm on the academic and curatorial job market this year (it's not uncommon to go for both if you have some curatorial experience during grad school), I am looking at the very real possibility that there will be no art history employment in this dismal economy. This is something that I accept as a reality; I knew that this possibility existed when I decided to get my PhD in art history and I'm trying to stay focused and get my dissertation done while frantically applying for jobs. Now, let us pause to consider what would happen if I had loan payments to make after I'm out of school. There are very few jobs in the field, even if you are at the top of your game. It just makes no sense to go tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands....) of dollars in debt for a field that has very few jobs, none of which are particularly high paying. This is a reality. My advice: do NOT pay to go to grad school. If you do not receive funding, it simply is not worth it. If a department is not willing to put itself on the line for you financially, then this could very well be a sign that they won't be willing to support you in other ways. You want a department to be dedicated to you and financial support is a major sign of this. If a department can't fund you, then you should think about other options. Good luck to all of you. I hope my advice stays somewhere in the back of your head during the application season....