dual masters vs. PhD...

[Addario]

Hello All,

I've posted here once before in the fall. For those of you who don't remember I sought advice on how to approach graduate school despite a crippling undergrad GPA (). You guys were really helpful then, so I thought I could ask you another question now.

While I still have a steep, steep uphill struggle to look forward to in regards to getting admitted into a program, I have been stepping in the right direction by working as a research assistant for the Smithsonian's NMNH Anthro Dept. and I will be heading off to do anthropology fieldwork (conveniently involving the exact kind of anthropology I'm interested in) this summer. Down the road I plan to take loads of post-bac courses and network with professors in programs I want. Hopefully it will work out.

That being said, I recently met with an Anthropologist who offered me some helpful, yet somewhat unsettling, words of advice. My main interest is environmental anthropology, and his advice was that I should consider not pursuing a PhD. Or if I do, I shouldn't do it until later. His advice was that, unless I was dead-set on academia, a PhD in a theoretical practice such as anthropology (physical and archeology not included) would put me at an extreme disadvantage. His advice, after listening to what I was interested in, was to get a dual masters instead, coupling environmental anthropology with GIS. Conveniently enough, while I don't have a lot of experience in it, GIS is another realm I have always been interested in.

While it is a very real possibility that I may only get admitted into an MA program to begin with, should I place more emphasis on a dual masters rather than using the program as a stepping stone into a PhD? Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE for the opportunity to actually become successful in academia, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in a job with a practical application of anthropology as well, whether it's helping out with environmental policy or with conservation efforts. Which would be more useful?

Thanks!

[scrapster]

It really does depend on what you want to do after school. With an Anthro masters degree and some GIS skills, you can find jobs in various environmental fields. However, those jobs may be heavy on the GIS and have only an indirect connection to anthropology. An Anthro PhD is inherently a research degree. You can work outside of research, and outside of academia, but it's a LONG road to get there. I've also found that, unfortunately, many socio-cultural Anthro profs have no clue about how to apply the discipline outside of academia, or what anthropologists can even do in non-academic settings. So don't be surpised if you feel cut off from the "real world" of environmental issues (policy, advocacy, etc.) if you enter a PhD program.

I should probably note that I graduated from a masters program with a heavy focus on applied anthro. With the standard anthro skillset, most employers don't know how to use you. On the other hand, it's easy to oversell yourself, because we're trained to think that cultural knowledge is key to doing anything and everything. (Yes, you can learn to fix a copy machine using an anthropologial approach, but non-anthros can do it just as well!) In the end, I found myself tracked back into doing research, but prevented from advancing at my job because I didn't have a PhD.

In the end, if you want to work outside of academia with either a masters or a PhD in anthro--you have to be very creative in seeing opportunities and selling yourself. This is especially true if you want to live somewhere in the US other than New York City or Washington,DC. A PhD obviously is the right degree if you decide on a purely academic career. But either way, it really pays to bulk up on complementary skill sets (like GIS, stats, etc.). Folks withAnthro degrees are a dime a dozen. Prove that you can DO something with your knowledge and skills and you'll do fine--because the diploma itself won't open many doors for you.