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historicallinguist

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  1. You do not need to worry too much about GRE in that linguistics PhD programs generally do not care too much about it. In fact, there is a trend in the recent years, probably starting from schools like mit and Ucla, to abolish the GRE requirement for admission.

    I think UCSB has a decent amount of corpus linguists, and I suggest you look into their website more carefully. Stanford and UPenn do as well.  

     

    Iowa state is fairly easy to get in. I guess the real question for this school is whether you can get funding from them. 

     

    For umichigan, robin queen is probably the one that fits your interests. But do not count too much on this one because admission to this school is very competitive. If you have luck, then you get it, but do put all your bet on this one. 

    You could also look into umass Boston. This one is in a very good location.

    By the way, usually only candidates interested in experimental tracks are admittted by the prospective PI. For theoretical track, admission is made by the adcom (basically you need to get the majority vote in the adcom so as to get in). So, you probably want to approach your schools differently, depending which track you are applying to.

  2. On 5/16/2018 at 7:11 PM, racataca said:

    Haha no, I would definitely not put all of this in a SoP - I'd tailor that to the dept I'm applying to and mentioning the professors in that department that interest me.  But that's super helpful with regards to what perspective I should write from! 

     

    I'll definitely check out UCLA's anthropology program!

    Also, SUNY albany's anthropology Ph.D. program may be a safe school to apply to. The downside is that the stipend level of this school is pretty low. But it won't hurt to get a safe school  first.

  3. 1 hour ago, smrithi9009 said:

    Hi All,

    I am yet to make my choice of University for Fall 2018 admissions. I have received offers from Iowa State Univ. with funding and Purdue without funding. I am talking to the professors @ Purdue to know my chances for funding. Could anyone please let me know how much time I have left to decide without being too late for the visa applications. I am an Indian resident.

    Thanks

    Smrithi

    Surely go to iowa state with funding. Neither school is top-ranked. Then, why bother to go to the one without funding?

  4. Hi, linguists.

    I am considering transferring to a better phd program, and wonder whether anyone has done this sort of thing before and succeeded. 

    I want to do this because the advising available in our department is quite awful. Though I am doing probably the best among the phd cohort(winning university-wide award, best gpa possible, very good reports from instructors, etc), I am pretty much learning everything my own, and advising is  like a 9minutes conversation per semester. Emails rarely got responded, or got responded after two weeks (which is useless after all). Then, for external fellowship and grant application, folks who barely spent time with students told me that they did not know well about my research and cannot write LORs that focus on research(of course they did not know because they did not bother to spend time in knowing mine or those of other students well after all). What has happned is that this department has not had anyone getting external funding for many years in a row. Surely a bleak future!

    what’s worse is the situation that it has so few profs that it is literally impossible to have a dissertation committee. Current 4th year or 5th students get bare minimal advising from the one or two folks in the diss committee, and sending emails back and forth with the external members who are the majority of the committee and the couple email communication is what it means to be advising. This is not anything new, I guess. Then, what ended up for MANY recent phds who completes their diss here is 

    1. Cannot find a decent job anywhere else and be an adjunct in this department for more than 4 years in a row, teaching 3-5courses per semester 

    2.cannot find an adjunct prof job even here, and stay here for another couple years as a TA

    3. Ended up working in some wage-based job that has nothing to do with the phd whatsoever, and pay does not match the expected pay of the degree at all

    Finance and job matters aside, how about research? The output of the research is far below standard as well! Rarely, if ever, a phd dissertation completed here is of publishable quality. Not a single dissertation (correct me if I am wrong) completed here makes it to be published as a LI monograph. Citation of each of them barely gets more than 2 digits over many years(which is in a sad contrast with good departments such as umass where many outstanding diss. got cited hundreds of times or thousands of times). Of course, understandably, they could not, with such minimal advising and poor connection with the field and other well known folks in the field.

    Okay, research aside, how about course offering? Probably the biggest class size you could find in a phd program, with a single course crosslisted and taken by BA, MA, and Ph.D students. What this means is little to none personal attention from instructors. Plus, the quality of instructors is so low to the point that many courses are taught by nontenured people with little to none publication whatsoever, and they cannot address many questions about the materials they are teaching. Better to ask google than asking them! I am not saying adjuncts are necessarily bad, but adjuncts who are not interested in research and not doing research at all are bad fits to teach such research oriented courses.

    another problem is that course offering neither fits students research interests nor is marketable. Because the course intends for large enrollment from BA, MA, and PhD at the same time, it is impossible to make it specialized. Then, a so-called graduate level seminar here ends up being a general survey course that would otherwise be a lower division undergrad course in other better universities. These kind of course are majority of offering here and seem to me useless for research, and training in these courses are not the training marketable for academic job search in the future.

    These are some of the reasons that I want to get the hell out of here. Any Input welcomed !

     

     

     

     

     

     

  5. You definitely should not put all the interests you mentioned above in your PS. Stay focused on one or two sub fields (if two, between some sort of interface type of thing), and write about one or two particular thing(s) in the sun field(s) in your PS.

     

    UCLA’s anthropology phd program is probably a better fit for you than is its linguistics phd program.

    Also, for god’s Sake, please do not say you want to work with only a particular awesome prof X in department Y in awesome UNiveristy Z, as admission is made by a committee not a particular prof. You probably want to mention profs xyz and explain how THESE profs could support your interests to show your fit with the department as a whole.

     

  6. 5 hours ago, Charlotte V said:

    Hi!

    I'm an international student applying for PhD programs in linguistics. I'm expecting to be roundly rejected, and pretty much all of my schools are reach schools, but I'm prepared to try again next year and complete a one-year masters in my home country in the mean time.

    Here's my info:

    Schools: Boston University, Purdue, UPenn, UCSC, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Ohio State, University of Oregon, University of Michigan

    Degree: European MA in Literature & Linguistics

    GPA: no idea, but definitely on the mediocre side

    GRE: V 167, Q 156, AW 4.0

    No conference presentations or publications

    Other Stuff: Eight years of experience as a language teacher, including in college and at a US university.

    Good luck, fellow applicants!

     

    I'd made a spreadsheet containing important info on all of my schools, and somehow listed the wrong deadline for my Purdue application. Sooo I applied two weeks late and no, I didn't contact the department or graduate school about it. Haha! I'm too dumb for grad school.

    To be honest, it is really HARD TO BE REJECTED by UW Madison, because the program is really in bad shape right now there and they even have a rolling admission for their phd program. So, I think you will get at least into this school.

  7. 22 hours ago, Luis_981741 said:

    Hi,

    I'm a second year graduate student at a top university. I'm seeking advice because I am thinking of leaving my graduate program. I started graduate school last year through the chemistry PhD program at my university although I had a background in biology. I did research as an undergraduate and presented a poster at a major conference and did okay in my lab. The reason I wanted to do more chemistry in graduate school is because I liked learning about small molecule synthesis as an undergraduate and wanted to combine both chemistry and biology. I took a gap year between undergrad and grad school and worked at a small biotech start-up. I performed very well there and my boss thought I would perform quite well in graduate school. I even got advice from the CEO about his experience in graduate school and got great letters of recommendation. Coming from a underrepresented minority group background, getting into graduate school meant a huge deal to me and I left the company with great confidence and excitement. However, that quickly changed within my first few months at the university. Having no more organic chemistry background than what was necessary to complete my bachelor's, I was placed in remedial chemistry courses my first quarter while taking additional courses required for everyone in my cohort. I also started TAing my first quarter while trying to find a lab to rotate in. Between juggling classes, TAing, and rotating I quickly crumbled. I was overwhelmed by not performing well in my classes and having little time to do anything in my rotation lab. At the end of my first quarter I was put on probation due to the grades in my classes and on top of that I was unable to find a next rotation. I also got a notice from my department saying that they were not going to be able to fund me anymore since I was supported through a TAship and I could not TA with the GPA I had at the end of my first quarter. Finally after lots of hurdles, my department was able to allow me to TA again. I also got a warning from my department that I had to raise my grades and find a lab I could join by the beginning of the spring quarter or I would be dismissed. At that point, I had entered a deep depression. I had never performed that badly in my undergraduate university. I was paranoid, unconfident, and stressed out all the time which made concentrating in classes very difficult. I knew something was wrong and so I sought counseling. This helped me calm down and slowly regain my focus in class. I found a tutor to help me understand the subjects for my classes and while I was still struggling I did the best I could to show my department I was making progress. To make a long story short, sadly at the end of my second quarter I was told by my department I would be dismissed. At this point I entered an even deeper depression and felt incredibly ashamed. I only thought of how I could explain what happened to people back home.  Amazingly, when I told my undergraduate PI about my situation, she introduced me to the head of a different graduate program at the same university. I told him my story and he was willing to give me a shot in the biosciences program. He was incredibly supportive from the momment we met and said I just simply was not a good match for my previous program. The only condition was that I had to find a lab I could join by the summer. As you might expect, this was a difficult task because by the end of the year most PIs had made their decisions on the people they would take and I also had to explain my situation. Surprisingly, I found a lab I could join. It was not the most interesting research, but the pi had heard of my story in grad school and by the end of my short rotation, she wanted me to join. Now that I think back to it, I feel like the only reason but joined is so I could stay and I was really forcing myself to like the work. I was just amazed as to how supportive she was even though she knew how I had performed my previous quarters in grad school. Now here I am wondering if I should stay, and why you ask? Because I feel like I am not good enough to be in graduate school. Even though I try my best to hide it, I still feel very stressed all the time and highly unmotivated about my project. Although my pi says I am making good progress, I simply do not believe her and just think that she is simply saying that to be supportive. I don't think I'm nearly as smart as the other graduate students in my lab and I'm afraid she will start to notice my lack in motivation. I want to change this mindset but all I can think of is leaving. I'm sorry for the long post but any advice would be truly appreciated. 

     

    I think you should stay for a while and see how things go in this new lab. One thing you could do is to take some GPA booster easy courses as your elective courses to bring up your GPA. For this matter, my bet is that you check out ratemyprofessor.com and see what students said about the instructor's easiness.(don't get me wrong, there are lots of problems with the website, but my personal experience seems to suggest that the evaluation of the easiness of the instructor is generally quite accurate)

  8. 9 hours ago, Wugie said:

    If the linguistics program is rather weak, would it be helpful for my application to PhD programs?  Also, are there some "reach" schools/programs that I should consider?

    Being rather weak doesn't mean it won't be helpful for you to apply for Ph.D. programs. One thing you need to consider is private vs public schools. class size in private is usually much smaller than the public school, meaning that you will have more contact and personal attention from your professors. Also, in private school, masters level courses are almost exclusively taught by real professors, but in public school there is a good chance that masters level courses are taught by Ph.D. students. Because LORs written by Ph.D. students are rarely helpful, you probably don't want to be in a situation that you will have to ask Ph.D. students to write you letters because you have no one else to ask for. Also, some masters level courses in public schools are also online courses, which are something you probably want to avoid too.  So, everything else being equal, choose a private school over a public one, for the sake of your letter of recommendation. 

    Try some reach schools, but probably not too many. I guess 3-4 reach schools are enough.

    9 hours ago, Wugie said:

    Does this mean I can spend 1.5 - 2 years in the program? (I haven't taken any of the courses mentioned in the above list) And does this mean I will need some kind of approval to be able to do a thesis/project (as opposed to the thesis being an integral part of the graduation requirement)? 

    Also, if I can spend an extra year at Boston, can I do something similar in the one year program at Chicago (their MA program looks a bit more self-designed-ish than the one at Boston)?

    I guess that you could take advantage of the fact that you never took these courses and try to spend two years in Boston. That way, in the first semester of the second year when you apply, you have in your belt some course grades in linguistics in your transcript, some term papers already written that could be used for writing samples, and some professors who know you and can write you good letters. Thesis is not necessary if you already have some good term papers that could be used for writing sample and if your masters program doesn't require a thesis. These are just my personal thoughts about it. Like fuzzy said, check with the program, and see what they have to say. 

    But be sure that, when you ask, ask in a way that you do not project yourself as someone who does not know what your career goal/research goal is, because this will undermine your chance to get into the masters program.

  9. 6 hours ago, Wugie said:

    Hello Linguists,

    I am an international student trying to apply to MA programs in linguistics. 

    Background: BA in English (as a second language) from a no-name university in a third world country; not so impressive GPA; GRE V159Q160; TOEFL 115; one writing sample in phonetics

    I am mainly looking for schools in the US and the UK because almost all the European (and Canadian) schools I looked at require a BA in linguistics or at least a certain amount of credit points taken in linguistics and I have neither of those. I do intend to go for a PhD eventually, but given my background, I don't think I'm competitive enough just yet. I also don't have an exact research interest yet, so I'm hoping to get enough exposure to different subdisciplines during my MA to help me decide what I want to pursue. Right now I'm leaning towards phonetics/phonology and also wish to maybe get into some neuro stuff, although people have been telling me comp-ling is what will get me employed. 

    So, I'm still zeroing in on programs. I would probably prefer schools that

    1. are in the US (because universities in the States have a better reputation in my home country than universities in the UK and Australia/New Zealand and any Asian universities, and if I need to come back to my home country to look for a job if/when I failed to get into a PhD program, a US school will look better on my CV since HRs here don't care about things like publication or research or GPA other than the name of the school) 

    2. are located in a city that has a good public transportation system (because I prefer not having to buy a car as an international student on a budget)

    3. will give me a boost when I apply to PhD programs

    4. will give me exposure to different subdisciplines, especially neuro, hopefully

    Right now I'm thinking about Boston, Georgetown, the MAPH at UChicago, and Edinburgh. Among them, UChicago and Edinburgh both have good rankings but both are one-year programs and I'm worried about having to apply to PhD programs only 2-3 months in the MA program (no good recommendations, no grades, no good paper, etc), also the MAPH sounds a bit too intimidating tbh. Does anyone have experiences with any of the schools/programs above?

    *I did read Fuzzylogician's post on lists of MA programs, but I don't think they apply to my situation

    ** Some Canadian schools have things like a qualifying year but if I don't get admitted after the qualifying year will it look bad if I apply elsewhere?

    ***A friend of mine suggested applying to universities in France although my French is barely conversational. But according to them, linguistics in France is "Anglified" and I will get by before I can speak/read French at a functional level. Please verify?

    Thanks for reading!

    Any suggestions/advice welcome!

    I think your best bet is Boston University. The overall ranking of this university is high, but its linguistics program is somewhat weak, meaning it is not hard for you to get in. There are some other choices you can get if you absolutely need funding to go(you didn't know specify whether you can go without funding)Other programs in the States such as the one at university of Iowa may have partial funding (ie no funding for the 1st year but full funding for the second year) for international students, but you will have much fewer opportunities for both mentoring and jobs compared with BU.

    Don't go to a qualifying year program because that will get you to nowhere if you couldn't get a phd offer after that. Focus on MA program which could serve as a qualification for you to apply for a job if you couldn't get a phd offer after you graduate from the MA program.

    Also, I won't recommend the one year Master program at Chicago and any one year master program. This is because being in a one year master program means you will start apply for a phd weeks after you started your Master program in the Fall, and I don't think that is a good time for you to apply. So, applying for a two year MA program should be the better option, as then you will have at least a year to prepare a good writing sample, and get good letters from professors in the MA program after they knew you well.

  10. 2 hours ago, River said:

    Thanks. Do you think that most academics would write a bad letter based on a colleague's judgement of a student who always performed well in their own classes? In the past this tutor has always been very supportive.

    Hi. I went to the same institution, and was in the pretty similar situation as yours. Here is my 0.02$. Unfortunately, many tutors in Oxford care more about their faces than the welfare of their former students. So, what is happening is that, after they wrote your letters for the first time, and you did not do well when their colleague serves as your tutor (for no fault on your part, as I know some of the Oxford courses really suck, especially some the 12 months or 9 months master courses), they feel that they lose faces in front of their colleagues, and there is 0 chance to get letters from these people, even if you have legitimate reasons for dropping out or for not doing well. 

    One way you can get out of the dilemma is to apply to some place where references are not needed and try to get good references from this place and and then transfer to a better place that requires 3 references. One place that does not need reference is Australia universities, among which Monash University is notable. Hope this helps.

  11. On 11/30/2017 at 2:43 AM, Mateng said:

    I really hope they read your application too!! Not saying you should hold it over your recommenders heads or anything BUT maybe let them know the situation and maybe they'll have time to write an even better recommendation? Especially knowing that they might have hurt your chances despite you doing everything right on your end plus reminding them about theirs.

    What language are you applying?

  12. 1 hour ago, fuzzylogician said:

    NASSLLI, if you're into semantics: https://www.cmu.edu/nasslli2018/

    There are many more options outside of North America. The EGG, the summer school in Crete, the one in St. Petersburg, the one in the Himalayas, ESSLLI, to name a few off the top of my head. These all make an effort to keep costs down for students, but I don't know how federal aid would work. 

    Thanks for the informations.

     

    Wow. I just looked into the past NASSLLI. The cost is incredibly low, and I reckon that it might even be possible to ask my home department to pay for it!

    For the things outside of North America you mentioned, I honestly do not think I could use federal student aid to go to any of them. The federal aid only work for participating in a summer school hosted by a university participating in U.S. federal student aid programs, and these schools are usually schools in North America, U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, for some unknown reasons. 

     

     

  13. Hi. Everyone. Do you guys know any summer institutes in North America that I could attend in Summer 2018? I know that LSA has a summer institute, but it is a bi-annual one and it is not available until summer 2019.

     

    I am trying to attend North America summer institutes because I am interested in using federal student aid to pay for the cost of attendance, and I assume that most likely only summer programs offered by Canadian or American schools are eligible to receive federal aid. 

     

    Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

     

  14. 16 hours ago, stakekake said:

    UMass doesn't require them. At least, I didn't send one, and I'm now a UMass student, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Then, they must have changed the requirement in the past 1 or 2 years. Anyways, thanks because it is good to know the updated information.

  15. On 7/31/2017 at 8:03 AM, Jani127 said:

    Hi there, 

    I'm going to apply to MA and PhD programs in linguistics for fall 2018. Since May I've been constantly revising the list of schools I want to apply to and still haven't come to a final decision. At this point, I might have done too much research on too many different programs to keep track of all the options. I'm completely confused and need advice! As writing my SOPs is on my agenda for August, I'm desperate to settle on a reasonable number of schools ASAP! I'm particularly interested in First Language Acquisition, Cognitive Linguistics, and ASL.

    Which schools are specialized in one of these areas? I feel like a lot of programs offer Language Acquisition and Cognitive Linguistics as possible areas of specialization. Are there any schools that are particularly known for expertise in one of these fields?  Any suggestions or recommendations? 

    My GPA is 3.8, I have a little bit of relevant research experience, and spent a year studying abroad. Because of my lack of research experience, I don't think I should shoot for the most competitive programs. 

    Thanks folks! Your comments are highly appreciated!

    Check UCSD for cognitive linguistics. Also, I do not think too many schools offer cognitive linguistics as a field of specialization.

    For L1 acquisition, many schools have this specialization. In fact, you should also check the psychology departments, and schools of education of the school you want to apply, and should not limit your options to only linguistics departments in the schools you are interested in, when you are trying to find a place to do L1 acquisition research.

    For ASL, the first school that comes to mind is Gallaudet University. You should check its website for further details.

    Finally, I feel the three things you mentioned are very different stuffs, and should not be packed into a single personal statement. Be a bit more specific in a single subfield you mentioned when you are writing your personal statement. For example, if you are doing  L1 acquisition, tell the reader more specifically the L1 acquisition of what (e.g. syntax?phonology?) you are interested in, what experimental approaches you are interested in using and why, what theoretical frameworks you would like to work within and why, etc, etc.

     

    Hope this helps!

  16. Not sure whether the OP is admitted to the Mst or Mphil. One of my friends is admitted to the Mst in linguistics at Oxford for fall 2017, and she does not get any funding either. Past Mst or Mphil students I know are all funded by resources external to the faculty. You may have applied to Ertegun but not get awarded for Ertegun (which is a scholarship scheme external to the faculty of general ling). This is not your fault at all. Even though not said explicitly on the website of Ertegun, Ertegun has some preferences for philosophy and classics courses, which are in the two strong faculties of Oxford (i.e. faculty of philosophy, and faculty of classics). Indeed, funding allocated to the faculty from the central university to support master students in the faculty of ling at Oxford is rather limited, and students typically are either self-funded or funded by external funding scheme, whether such schemes are from their respective colleges, their respective governments, or other funding agencies. 

    So, I would say that you are not alone, and many of the admitted students or current students are on the same boat with you. If I were you, I would certainly go to the funded program elsewhere. After all, getting into a funded program will not only benefit you financially, but also make your CV look good.

  17. 1 hour ago, Molly Moran said:

    As far as the fields I mentioned being distinct, yes - it's hard to quickly and succinctly describe what it is what I want to do, but my hope is to do work that bridges disciplines. Essentially, in a few more words, I want to do work on theories of grammar and generative syntax, and ultimately use these models to better understand the psychological function of what we consider to be "effective", "persuasive" and even "aesthetic" language from a structural standpoint. Happy to explain this further, but hopefully that clarified a bit.

    Thank you for the comforting advice re: writing samples, as I was quite worried about that. I'm thinking that if I rework it well enough I will end up using one of my English papers.

    Possibly UC davis, UCSB, and UCSD are places that can support your interests. So, if possible, do take a look at their programs.

  18. On October 13, 2016 at 1:25 PM, songofgallifrey said:

    Hi grad cafe,

    I didn't see a thread for fall 2017 applications in the Linguistics forum yet, so I figured I'd take the initiative. 

    I'm looking to study linguistic identity and language policy as they relate to social, economic, and political inequality, so I'm applying to a couple different types of programs. Relevant for this thread are the programs in Sociolinguistics at Georgetown, as well as Educational Linguistics at UPenn and Second Language Education at Minnesota. One of my former linguistics professors, who is writing an LOR for me, highly recommended that I apply to the latter two programs based on my research interests, although I'm not 100% sold on the education bent. She spoke highly of Prof Nancy Hornberger at UPenn and Prof Kendall King at Minnesota, and they're researching exactly what I'm interested in, but I don't want to pigeonhole myself as strictly an educational language policy person. I'm also applying to the joint Ph.D. programs in Sociology & Social Policy at Harvard and Princeton. Does anyone else have thoughts on schools?

    I studied psychology and linguistics at a top 3 university and graduated in summer 2015 with honors. Since then, I've been working as an analyst on fair lending issues, particularly for folks with limited English proficiency, at a financial regulator in DC. My GRE (167 V, 161 Q, 5.0 W) and GPA (3.72/ 4.00) are both solid, but I'm still worried that I'm not going to be competitive. I have 2/3 professors confirmed to write me letters, and I think they'll write strong ones, but I'm still trying to nail down a third and I'm getting worried. Does anyone have thoughts on applying to PhD programs with 2 academic LORs and 1 non-academic? I'm sure my supervisor would write a strong letter about me and my work ethic, but I thought it would weaken my application.

    I also have no idea if my SOP is solid. I think it looks good at this point, but I don't have anyone in my field to ask for advice. What resources are you all using to polish your materials?

    Anyway, thanks for the support, even if indirect, from this thread. It's nice to have a community of people working toward a common goal!

    What are you planning to do after getting the PHD/Ed.D? Based on what I know about the educational linguistics program at upenn, it looks like this is particularly good for those who want to do research on/have a career in education. That is, this program is probably more about education than about linguistics. 

     

    Georgetown's linguistics program is a research program, so I think it would be better for you if all LORs submitted are written by your professors.

    In addition, based on your post, I also feel that you are more interested in applied sociolinguistics as relevant to L2 acquisition. Probably, some linguistics departments with strong emphases on linguistic theories cannot best serve your research interests in this regard. 

     University of Southern California has some sociolinguistic people doing research on identity issues (focus on Asian languages though). You can take a look at their website, and see whether their research foci fit with yours. 

    Can you ask your professors to read your SOPs and provide comments on your SOPs? Your profs writing LORs for you can  write you better focused LORs if they read your SOPs before they write them, in addition the benefit that you can know whether you are on the right track of writing a good SOP.

     

    Finally, given that your current undergrad school is a top 3, would you consider continue to do a grad degree in your current institution ?

  19. 37 minutes ago, ExponentialDecay said:

    You say that the humanities are useless, but lemme tell you, you could definitely benefit from Comp 101 /:

    First thing first, I was saying some humanities (e.g. philosophy) are useful, but some (e.g. comparative literature) are not. The prescriptive grammar I studied in comp 101 from what Steven Pinker called "language mavens" only turned out to be the target of criticism in my linguistics class. The problem here is that people in humanities (again, with the exception of philosophy) won't even entertain the possibility that the subject they study may not worth studying after all. I know it may be disturbing, or possibly making you feel sad to reason and then realize that XXX subject is not worth studying after all.  But the mere fact that you want some subject to be useful does not mean it is actually useful. If some subjects (e.g. say, Tibetan studies) were so useful, why are so many people in administrative posts (for example, the dean of my college who is working on downsizing some of the programs by not refilling the tenured posts after the incumbent are retired) reluctant to allocate funding to support these subjects and their programs? The deans are not freshmen who just got into college. They know what they are doing. If it were only the students who choose not to major in and therefore support humanities subjects, then maybe it is because of ignorance. But when both the administrators (i.e. dean, provost, etc) and the students frown upon the value of certain fields of studies, I guess it is the problem of the field and people working in the field should reflect on the problems of the field and try to find solutions to solve the problems, not blaming those outside the field who point out the problems. 

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