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cacatacarta

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  1. Long time listener, first time caller here to say that this is not a universal experience. Sure, the job market isn't amazing, and neither is the pay, but I don't think that the situation is quite as dire as the OP would suggest, and a Classics PhD is certainly something that can still be both enjoyable and both personally as well as professionally beneficial (with one major caveat). Many of the "T5/T10" departments, especially the older ones, are still rather well off and can offer fairly generous financial support to admitted students. I know plenty of people who have been able to start paying off loans or putting decent amounts of money away during a PhD. Most also offer RAships that cover room and board, in which case your total compensation will probably wind up being fairly close to what the majority of your peers in the humanities are making out of undergrad. Though this is obviously going to be somewhat department-specific, I, personally, also haven't noticed the sort cultural issues that expositorveritatis mentions either (at least not to the same extent). Every workplace in the world has drama in spades as well its fair share of miserable people, and, having spent some time in the "real world" before heading into a PhD program, I never felt that academia in particular had more of either to offer. The state of the job market is going to depend to some degree on your particular field of study but, in general, I've noticed that these "top" programs tend to place roughly half of their graduates into tenure-track positions within 5-6 years. Obviously those aren't stellar numbers, but it is still possible to find TT jobs (contrary to what you'll read all over this board). Even if you don't, with a brand-name PhD in hand, you almost certainly aren't going to wind up as a barista. Generally speaking, I think that university career centers are finally beginning to wisen up to the state of the academic job market, and I know that I've definitely started seeing much more support for alt-ac careers in recent years. Consulting agencies in particular recruit quite heavily from Ivy League PhD programs and, of course, it's also possible to find comfortable positions in government and higher ed administration. If you're curious, the AHA has collected some very useful data on History PhDs that seem to broadly parallel outcomes for Classicists. However, at risk of sounding a tad elitist, I would be very cautious of any programs outside of the top 5-10. None of them, to my knowledge, even come close to matching the financial support that HYPS can muster, and placement for 90-95% of graduates is going to be regional at best. Even in very strong public programs like Berkeley and Michigan, money can still be incredibly tight. There won't be much support for conference travel or research, and there probably won't be any sort of placement service either, both of which can make it very difficult to network and connect with hiring committees. And, as I'm sure you've heard before—tempting though it may be, you should always be extremely wary of paying for an MA, and especially of going into debt for one. IMO, most American Classics MAs are little better than scams, and there are good reasons why places like Harvard and Yale do not award a terminal master's in the field. That said, even at programs that are less well-known, a graduate degree in Classics can still be a very rewarding experience. You get to meet a lot of wonderful and incredibly intelligent people, you get paid to hang out and read/write, and you have the freedom to work on your own schedule. A lot of folks on this forum seem to think that getting a TT job at an Ivy League university is the end-all be-all of the academic world and (though they're not entirely wrong), it is *gasp* still possible to lead a successful and fulfilling life without doing so. Always do your due diligence on any programs to which you're accepted, never go into debt for a graduate degree in Classics, and take very seriously any negative gut feelings you may have about a program (both in terms of its culture and support), and you should come out alright.
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