readeatsleep

I'm really not trying to debate anything. Several posters ask questions about whether one's chances are increased without fellowship or not and several posters are not doing empirical social sciences. Also, I think it is rather naive to discuss fellowship, admissions, etc. without not recognizing that our profession excludes many participants from entrance.

Now onto your claims.

1. "Political science is not part of the humanities. " Go read Plato and Aristotle.
2. Now read my post and re-read it. I spoke of political science in terms of its non-empirical elements; I would be the first to concede that my comments do not apply to empirical methods in political science, which is itself heavily dependent on mathematics and economics.
3. I also don't think political science is largely empirical. I kind of wish it was, but most PhDs in politics are focusing on American Government, Comparative, IR, Theory or Public Law, not methods or formal theory.
4. You also missed the point of my argument which did not focus on graduate admissions as much as the nature of the profession (e.g. professors). A lot of non-wealthy people are in graduate school, but how many of them place and stay as professors? Guess what -- not many.
5. " But even that doesn't matter, because most top political science schools give stipends, so finances aren't an issue." This is a non-argument (i) even 25k stipends does not cover one's finances, especially if one has a family (thanks for conceding that you've never held a real job and that you don't even think about graduate students who have to support families); (ii) I was making a comparison to the sciences where stipends for graduate students are much higher, and (iii) are you really so naive? Who do you think funds political science fellowships at top schools that allow students to go finance-free? . . . wealthy ivy-league alums and they want to see proxies for value-creation, i.e. Yale graduates teaching at elite schools not community colleges and a lot of that, in the long-run, will depend upon the wealth-creation or retention of graduates.
6. "Your historic examples are silly and irrelevant. First, the sample is ridiculously small. Second, they are only from a sub-discipline of political science. Third, they are all from an era where few people went to college at all. There is no reason to believe political science programs have the same socioeconomic makeup as they did 50 years ago."

1. Provide counter-examples
2. Eh, I think we've established that empirical methods is the sub-discipline and the rest is humanities-like.
3. Your college argument is silly because those that did teach pre-1900s did not have PhDs or got PhDs from Germany; notwithstanding most of the great "American" college professors back then were imported from Europe.
4. Actually, I think there's reason to think PSCI programs are worse off -- as economics, methods, and empirical social science has dominated, traditional "government" programs have less value, cf. Coburn's NSF resolution.

You are incredibly obtuse. Read something.

See: http://chronicle.com...l-in-the/44846/ --
"As things stand, I can only identify a few circumstances under which one might reasonably consider going to graduate school in the humanities:


You are independently wealthy, and you have no need to earn a living for yourself or provide for anyone else. You come from that small class of well-connected people in academe who will be able to find a place for you somewhere. You can rely on a partner to provide all of the income and benefits needed by your household. You are earning a credential for a position that you already hold — such as a high-school teacher — and your employer is paying for it. Those are the only people who can safely undertake doctoral education in the humanities. Everyone else who does so is taking an enormous personal risk the full consequences of which they cannot assess because they do not understand how the academic-labor system works and will not listen to people who try to tell them."

Think about the most famous political theorists or philosophers -- I can't think of any that didn't come from money. I think the facts are different in natural sciences and empirical social sciences, but otherwise I think the overwhelming majority of successful academics come from $$$. I actually think William James wrote an essay on this called "The PhD Octopus." Also cf. Dinesh D'Souza "Professor Moneybags" National Review (http://www.accessmyl...demics-get.html)

Plus, if anyone here argues that where you went to UGRAD matters for PhD admissions, then cf. http://www.insidehig...06/12/kimbrough (elite college kids are overwhelmingly from $$$).

I think Benton/Pannepaker is making an economic argument: the economic signals for non-empirical social sciences/humanities are pretty transparent: you're not doing economically profitable work, it's not very translatable, and there aren't institutions that readily fund your research (e.g. no NIH grants).

We all seem to understand this reality because we apply to top-1o schools. Typically, if you don't go to a top-10 school and you want to do non-empirical social science, you're placement chances are slims. The reason rank matters so much in disciplines like law, political science and the humanities is because it's hard to price one's scholarship, so you price proxy mechanisms and create an artificial market that way.

In the natural sciences, salaries are at least partially determined by grants money and people apply to schools based on research agendas solely, knowing that a PhD from Harvard in neuroscience and a PhD from Texas Tech in neuroscience aren't going to lead to large salary differentials. Plus -- just look at science PhDs admissions -- they INTERVIEW and pay for flights because they have money. To succeed in a profession where there's limited external funds often means a) one is a natural super star or one is very good and has independent wealth. Plus, the natural science/economics heavily weigh the post-doc system and in these sciences the post-doc institution often means more than the PhD institution. Also look at faculty: a typical biology faculty will have a range of schools where professors got their phd but you can best a top 50 political science professor went to a top 10 school. There's also the same parallel in professional school: for MDs, the intership/residency institution matters more than the MD institution and most MD faculty at top 10 medical schools come from a range of MD institutions whereas in legal education top 50 professors went to top 5-10 schools. THe key is that the sciences sell patents, they get grants from corporations and pharmaceutical companies and they do translational research that is relevant to health or drugs. There's less of an internal incentive for the professors to have independent wealth. The incentives are clearly different in non-empirical political science. Obviously, for our methods cousins, they can get big grants, placements at banks and firms, etc.


Wittgenstein, Russell, W.Wilson, W.James, etc. came from money; M.Nussbaum, R.Dworkin married into it.

http://chronicle.com/article/If-You-Must-Go-to-Grad-School/45269/

And, as a historical matter, only the super-rich attended PhD programs (the first American University to offer the PhD was Johns Hopkins -- e.g. Woodrow Wilson, John Dewey).

There's an unmistakable reality that those at Harvard and its class of PhD programs are independently wealthy.

Well it totally reveals the psychology of the email-writer. The author spelled "Frequently" with a derivation of "Request" and if you look at the sentence prior to the grammatical error you see the word "request". Grammar is a logical capacity of the human mind to categorize words using heuristics that code for data and depends deeply on one's capacity for memory. In short, one would have expected the email-author to have had a greater capacity for neural data storage in order to avoid the tendency of lower-IQ's to parse words due to limited memory capacity. Or, for the less intellectually-inclined, EDIT!

i agree. lev, youre simplifying things at an alarming and offensive rate. 'only the super rich attend PhD programs' is a silly thing to say. additionally, proposing that wealth should allay concerns about admission to a top ranked program is illogical and insulting.

i agree. lev, youre simplifying things at an alarming and offensive rate. 'only the super rich attend PhD programs' is a silly thing to say. additionally, proposing that wealth should allay concerns about admission to a top ranked program is illogical and insulting.