Bret Devereaux

What's the ethical pitch to prospective grad students these days? Something like "We'll pay you a menial wage for 6 years so you can earn a vanity degree while providing important university labor. 1-in-5 may get a TT job (that won't fund the lifestyle it once did)"? https://twitter.com/dbessner/status/1353014419693817859 …

I think the main pitch has to simply be about the opportunity to basically pause your (professional) life and opportunities to increase your advancement in a career/gain increased wages in order to intellectually explore some things. It's fine to do that but that's the reality.

Is it fine? It seems that treating a PhD like a vanity good rather than a path to a profession is going to cause academic inquiry to go back to being what it was in 1800s, the province of the wealthy leisured class. With negative implications for both society and scholarship.

I don’t think it’s a dichotomy between a path to a profession and a vanity good. And I don’t think five, or however many, years of good, sincere intellectual work during a PhD is a vanity good. It’s not a path to a profession anymore. If that’s the problem—and it is—we need jobs!

But in terms of where we are right now? (And, I fear, where we’ll be in the future?) It’s both inaccurate and unethical to pitch a PhD as a path to a profession. So let’s right now embrace it for the intellectual opportunity that it is without any claims of academe beyond.

I'm ok with that, but we need to be honest to ourselves and our institutions about what we are doing an append "for rich kids" to the end of the statement because that's what it means.