So, I went to law school instead, at a school with an excellent health law program, and concentrated in health law, bioethics, health policy, etc. I practiced law for a few years with a big firm, earned some dollars, and then kissed it goodbye to return to grad school and prepare for the career I’ve always wanted (clinical medical ethicist).

I work part-time as a lawyer, which pays the bills nicely. I have law school debt, but it isn’t overwhelming by any means, and I make more than enough to live comfortably whilst I am in school.

Admittedly, my intended career is not entirely academic in the traditional sense, though I do plan to seek academic appointment. I did what I did partly to make the decision to attend grad school more practical for me.

And of course, having a law degree and several years of practice, as well as clerking for a judge, only serves to make me more employable, I tend to think.

You, on the other hand, had some sort of tragic career-ending alcoholic event in grad school, and it’s been a gift that’s kept on giving.

If this is your definition of an unhappy outcome, then don’t go to grad school.

The advice above about considering moving up (getting an MA from one institution and then transferring) makes sense. Another option is to go to a university with a good terminal MA program, where lots of people will be in your situation: coming from a less well-known place, or whetever, and wanting to spiffy up their applications for good Ph.D. programs. (I’m biased, as I teah in such a program, but I still think it should be kept in mind.)

I would also advise, if your GPA was significantly lowered because of a couple of semesters of Fs due to personal problems, that you be upfront in your cover letter about why you have the transcript that you do, or ask one of your letter writers to address the issue. Otherwise many places (with large numbers of good-looking applicants) will simply see that your GPA is e.g., 3.2, and chuck your application out.

Speaking strictly for myself, Nathan, there’s a crucial distinction between academic jobs and the other kinds you refer to: the relative ease of changing jobs when you find yourself in a situation not to your liking. I was considering an academic career in the smallest of anthropology’s four subfields—even in the best years, no more than a dozen or so tenure-track jobs are likely to open up, and many of these will be restricted in terms of geographical area of study or other specialization. And as I pointed out above, having to relocate is pretty much guaranteed.

Simply put, an associate attorney or physician in a large city, upon finding herself in an intolerable work environment, will have an infinitely easier time finding a position in the same city than will an assistant prof in linguistic anthropology—and this is one of the factors that ultimately scared me off.

Nathan, one of the big issues is debt, and Brian and I agreed on that one, though I think that he overestimated the proportion of fully funded grad school positions.

I agree with you that lower-middle-class income would be OK if everything else was. Adjuncts, though, have (besides low pay) no security, and they aften have hectic workloads (often part time at several schools) making the fun part of teaching/studying hard to spend much time on,

Careerwise, with the exception of library science, no one has mentioned any of the various certificate / MA type programs which lead to pretty good jobs, some of them even without the BA. ESL is another, and there are many jobs in medical and high tech fields. They often do require tech rather than verbal skills, but often not at a terribly demanding level.

If the number of PhD programs dropped from 150 to 50, then some large number of departments would downsize, but they wouldn’t disappear entirely. More relevantly, they wouldn’t pump out so many PhDs to compete for the jobs that remain. So Brian’s advice would result in a sustainable equilibrium at some level. Of course, the jobs that are lost would be many of the best (though not the very very best) jobs, but there would still be plenty of tenure track jobs for the graduates of the smaller number of institutions.

If that crosses a line, so be it.

John, childraising has a function, and so does self awareness.
I grow tired of people defending human values using vague terminology. I always end up wondering what the fuck meaningful means.

The question is this (and I almost posted this on a legal philosophy blog today): What is the difference between an academic discussion of legal principles and the act of defending someone you know to be guilty of a particularly grisly murder?

What is the difference between the langue and parole of any system? How describe a system of which you are a part? Objectivity, if it were possible: would still not be capable of describing the details of subjective experience.

Scientists ignore this question. Novelists do not. Philosophers do so at the risk of being thought of as idiots by anyone outside their field, as green haired suburban teenagers risk mockery every time they call themselves radical. No they’re PRIDICTABLE!
As predictable as run-of-the-mill academics become when they attempt to be original thinkers.

academia is one of the best industries to be in

I think this is industry, in sense 5 from the OED: A particular form or branch of productive labor; a trade or manufacture, since all the other non-obsolete senses are mass nouns rather than number nouns. From outside academia, it does not appear to me to be a trade or manufacture. In fact, it’s often spoken of as the opposite, as in the comments above:

the academic job market has plenty of outlets into industry

1. Why is it such a financial risk to go to graduate school again? Sure you aren’t going to be making contributions to your retirement fund while in grad school, but neither are law school or medical school students. Most jobs that you can get fresh out of college, B. A. in hand, aren’t going to pay enough to allow you to make substantial contributions to a retirement fund anyway. Unless you’re Bill Gates or something, earning a high income requires advanced training.

2. Several people have mentioned unpleasant things about being an academic, and their comments are well taken. But can you name for me a job that isn’t accompanied by some unpleasantness? I’m sure that having to accumulate 2,400 billable hours a year as an associate at a big law firm is all fun and games right? Or being a resident at a hospital is nothing but playtime correct? Any job is going to have it’s good and bad aspects. If the point being made is that you should only go to graduate school if you find the good aspects of being an academic significantly more enticing than the good aspects of being a lawyer or doctor then of course that’s correct. But isn’t that obvious?

3. I find the implicit supposition lurking behind many of the comments that philosophers live in poverty to be insulting. Neither one of my parents has ever made over $35,000 dollars in a year and I certainly wasn’t deprived growing up. It’s called being middle class. I understand that philosophers often have friends who entered more lucrative professions, and that this can inspire jealousy or even regret. But the idea that people making the salary of your average academic are poor is insulting to those who are actually poor.

In sum, I think that Brian’s original post is right on the mark. Even if the idea of being a teacher/researcher is very appealing to you, the job prospects that people have coming of out some low-ranked programs should give one pause before going to them. But for those accepted to good programs, I don’t see how the risks are greater than in any other profession, and even for those accepted to lower-ranked programs sometimes it can make sense to attend. Being a happy academic requires that you care about the rewards of teaching/research more than the money you might be able to make in another profession, and people should carefully evaluate what is most important to them in life before deciding to attend grad school. It doesn’t necessarily make you a shallow person to decide that the life being a lawyer could afford you is worth more to you than being a scholar or teacher. But the suggestion that there are some special risks inherent to going to grad school, or that too many people have been duped into going under false pretenses, is ludicrous. People should enter grad school eyes wide open, but that doesn’t imply that anyone with eyes wide open would see that going to grad school is a bad decision.