just_me

I don't think that is hypocritical at all. I think most faculty members understand that graduate students have to work. That is why graduate programs provide assistantships in some (hopefully many) cases. However the workload of graduate studies -- especially at the doctoral level--- is the reason why most school limit the assignment to 20 hours per week. The problem gets to be when the work hours are approaching 30-50 hours on a consistent basis.

Having been a professor supervising graduate students for the last eight years, my reactions fall along these lines: (1) The last poster made a good point about a collective work/school/professional development limit of around 50-60 hours. Anything more for any extended time and you are going to burn out.; (2) In the pre-thesis stage of most graduate programs, 20-35 hours of that time (depending on your ability, the rigor of the program and the quality of work you want to produce) is spent on classes. That leaves 20-40 hours for work and professional development.; (3) It is very easy to get a graduate degree in many programs while doing a half-a** job. However faculty do notice when you cut corners on things like assistantships and classes. I spent ten minutes yesterday complaining to my wife that about half of my MA students (all of who were working full-time) were just going through the motions with their coursework in this semester. They might as well get the degree since it looks nice on the wall and the resume but it has been an intellectual dead-end for them since none of them are doing meaningful professional development or putting enough effort into their classes.; (4) The best piece of advice that I ever got was that the most important priority in graduate school is working on your own research, which is part of a broader concept I would term "professional development." If you are spending your 55 hours a week on work and classes, you don't have enough time to make yourself competitive. Classes and work are things that get in the way of your research unless you are lucky enough to get a research assistantship or class that allows you to work in that area. You don't neglect them but your professional priority in graduate school should be research. God help you if you are the person who goes out on the job market with only two or three mediocre conference papers.; (5) Going to graduate school is a huge investment of time and money. The good news is that we aren't English --- in most fields people with some teaching experience and a little bit of research do get jobs. However we also aren't some of the fields within business where even a MBA degree and not much else can get you a spot at a (smaller) four year college. (6) Graduate school involves a willingness to make substantial sacrifices financially. Unless you have a working spouse or a trust fund, forget a middle-class lifestyle while you are doing it. It also may mean mean sacrifice afterwards. Despite having a lot of luck and family support, I will be making $400 a month student loan payments until I am 55. Between my wife's debts and mine, we had to settle on a 1600 square foot house instead a 2200 one. Neither of us have any regrets.

When US News polled department chairs last (in 2005), they actually ranked Harvard #1 and Stanford #2 in that field. Methods people are certainly free to differ though. It is kind of a pointless mental exercise (liking trying to decide the best college football player ever). For practical purposes (such as which graduate program to attend), they are so close in quality we are arguing about spurious differences when we argue between the two of them for overall ranking in that field. Your feel for individual faculty that you might have to/want to work with, award package, geographic preferences, etc... probably trump any paper-thin difference. It isn't like we are talking about the difference between Stanford and Ohio State (which still has a very, very good program in methods).

I am going to start out with three assumptions: (1) At the end of graduate school, you want a tenure-track job, (2) While there are certain ones you would prefer, most jobs out there would be good ones, and (3) You want to do this without running up huge amounts of debt if possible. If you were in any other field, I would suggest the MSU option. You would find a job with a degree from a good second-tier school (MSU is a top 20-40 school in most fields and subfields with some obvious areas where you can argue for a higher ranking), the cost of living is inexpensive compared to large urban centers and coming in with funding is a huge plus (it is much easier to keep funding than to get it after you start in most programs). However the political theory market is brutal. If you aren't in one of about 10-15 programs, you have little chance of getting a tenure-track job. It isn't fair but that is a fact of life. Stranger things do happen, but you will have a very difficult task finding a job with an MSU degree with a focus in political theory. If you could see yourself teaching in any other subfield, my advice is the MSU option is the safer course. The Chicago option is a gamble that will cost you ten of thousands of dollars for something that may or may never lead to a placement in one of those top 10-15 doctoral programs. I think you need to ask yourself "Would I be miserable the rest of my life if I never took that gamble? Is political theory that important to me?" If it is though, Chicago may be the better choice.

I think that is good advice. If you don't truly love what you are doing, getting a Ph.D. just isn't worth it. The opportunity costs are just too great. I wouldn't suggest doing Public Administration if Foucault is what you love. On the other hand, sometimes it isn't bad to be strategic if you are somewhat indifferent between fields. When I started grad school, I wanted to do European and American but the American job market seemed better so that became my focus. Ironically my first job out of grad school as an Americanist was also at a place where they needed someone to teach one section of Western European Politics a year.

I was also looking a few days ago at the job wiki as a very rough guide for this year's job market: 66 accepted positions (not counting post-docs) in American, 50 in IR, 34 in comparative, and 28 in theory at that time. It doesn't mean that one field is "better" than the others. However it is something to notice. The vast majority of the theory job-finders btw came from a few institutions: three or four Ivy League schools, Minnesota, Michigan, Hopkins, UNC and WashU. http://bluwiki.com/go/Polisci0708

One of the things also to remember is the privileged spot American National Government is given in the core curriculum of most colleges (especially public ones). For example, Georgia and Texas require students in every major at state institutions to take ANG. And even at most non-elite schools without a legislative mandate, it is more likely to be the primary (or only) pol sci option in the core. There is always going to be a need out there for faculty out there who can teach two sections of ANG a semester. I think that is why the job market differential between American and theory is so noticeable at the non-doctoral level especially. At schools with graduate programs, it is easy enough to pawn those classes off on grad students. However at schools without grad programs, faculty teaching ANG provide a good chunk of a typical department