Political theory and public law job market: 2009-10 Prospective Graduate Students Post #1

7/05/2009

2009-10 Prospective Graduate Students Post #1

For: Prospective grad students in political theory/philosophy to ask questions about different programs, different specializations, and anything else that might come to mind.

Please note: As has been observed in previous iterations of this topic, it is impossible for this conversation NOT to turn into a comparative discussion of different programs and, thus, the chance that there will be uncivil/unhelpful replies is high. In order to keep the discussion on point, I will moderate with a heavy hand. Personal attacks and unsubstantiated, throwaway criticism of a program or approach will be deleted.

383 Comments:

Anonymous said...: This post has been removed by a blog administrator.; 6:25 PM, July 08, 2009
Anonymous said...: 1) How would pay any attention to USNWR rankings? The grad rankings are even less based on data than the undergrad ones.

2) In theory, if you wanted to do critical theory or continental you'd certainly choose Chicago over Princeton. Harvard would be a wash.

3) I'd rather live in Chicago than Boston or Princeton; some people take location into consideration.

4) Some people might want a more intimate and supportive program, which Chicago seems to offer.; 7:43 PM, July 08, 2009
Anonymous said...: Seems plausible to choose Chicago over H&P to me, depending on your situation. Or any number of other schools. I know a number of people who turned down offers from H or P to attend, variously, Duke, Notre Dame, Chicago, and Hopkins. Maybe they were stupid to do so, but they had their reasons. Notice neither H nor P has 100% acceptance, and it isn't that all those who turn down H go to P!; 7:44 PM, July 08, 2009
Anonymous said...: This post has been removed by a blog administrator.; 8:35 PM, July 08, 2009
Anonymous said...: "4) Some people might want a more intimate and supportive program, which Chicago seems to offer."

Not to get involved in the sniping, but your mileage may vary on this one.; 8:58 PM, July 08, 2009
Anonymous said...: I know of 2 students who went to Chicago over Princeton, and of 1 who went there over Harvard.

Chicago very often doesn't accept its own undergrads into its program ("for their own good"), many of whom would go there over HU and PU.; 6:38 AM, July 09, 2009
Anonymous said...: Yes, I can confirm that Chicago wants its undergrads to get exposure to other kinds of intellectual milieus and so encourages them to go elsewhere.; 6:41 AM, July 09, 2009
Anonymous said...: This post has been removed by a blog administrator.; 6:53 AM, July 09, 2009
Anonymous said...: This post has been removed by a blog administrator.; 12:55 PM, July 09, 2009
Anonymous said...: This post has been removed by a blog administrator.; 11:42 PM, July 09, 2009
Anonymous said...: This post has been removed by a blog administrator.; 8:01 AM, July 10, 2009
administrator said...: Deleting inappropriate comments...; 9:50 AM, July 10, 2009
Anonymous said...: Harvard, Chicago and Princeton really need the administrator's protection.

I don't think anyone is really damaged in debates over which one is best.... The editing was clearly heavy handed.; 8:58 PM, July 10, 2009
Anonymous said...: Jesus. What is this thread running at a 45% deletion rate? What's the point of even reading this blog?; 11:43 AM, July 12, 2009
Anonymous said...: Was anything vital deleted? I don't think so. If you only come here to watch people insult each other, then yes, you should stop reading it. If you come here for useful insights or information, I haven't seen any of those being deleted, so you're fine.; 11:54 AM, July 12, 2009
Anonymous said...: a bit self-serving, 11:54? i think so.; 9:04 PM, July 12, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^^If you come here for useful insights, you're deranged.; 7:38 AM, July 13, 2009
Anonymous said...: I am sure this question has been asked a number of times, but here goes. Let's imagine a rising senior -- a poli sci/philosophy double major with interests pretty well split between Greek stuff and the post-Weber continental stuff. This student is unsure where to look for a program strong in both these areas. Any thoughts?; 10:02 AM, July 13, 2009
Anonymous said...: @10:02: Duke (Euben, Gillespie); 10:29 AM, July 13, 2009
Anonymous said...: 10:02, per the advice reiterated many times on this board, do not stray too far outside the top 5 or 10 programs just to do work in your niche. The person you may want to work with could move to another program, retire, or (more likely) turn out to be a lunatic.

That said, some good options are Northwestern (Dietz, Monoson, Honig), Chicago (Zerilli, Markell), and Duke.; 10:54 AM, July 13, 2009
Anonymous said...: Of course it depends on what kind of work you want to do on post-Weber continental, but both Harvard (Rosen, Tuck, and Nelson) and Princeton (Lane, Werner-Muller) are also worth thinking about, especially if you want a very stong all-round proram.; 1:11 PM, July 13, 2009
Anonymous said...: In all seriousness, how is the New School? It looks as though they have some interesting courses and people (Kalyvas, Arato). But how is their placement and is it true, as I hear, that there is little to no funding for grad students?; 1:17 PM, July 13, 2009
Anonymous said...: I agree they have interesting people, but they have little to no funding for students. Last I heard, even their "best" scholarships are only partial scholarships, nowhere near sufficient to pay fees and live on, and only a couple of students get them. A lot of students there seem to be self-funded, to work, and/or to be paid by funding from their home countries.

The New School's placement record into academic jobs is pretty good, actually. I saw some data on it a few years ago, and I think their website has more info on recent placements. I'm not sure what percentage of their students finish out the phd there or stay in academia after, though. I know of a few people who've started there for a masters but then went to PhD programs elsewhere.; 1:32 PM, July 13, 2009
Anonymous said...: Virginia is a reasonable possibility as are the other places mentioned. Apply widely, decide later.; 2:16 PM, July 13, 2009
Anonymous said...: Re 10:02 -- I second the recommendations of Chicago, Duke, Harvard, Northwestern, Princeton; UVA would also be good, though perhaps not quite so good a fit. Notre Dame might also be worth applying to (Villa, C. Zuckert, Abbey).; 1:17 AM, July 14, 2009
Anonymous said...: Notre Dame is also a good suggestion, but who does ancients at Chicago?; 10:02 AM, July 14, 2009
Anonymous said...: Question for those who have been on admissions committees: how important is it that an undergrad have a BA/BS in political science for admission? Would a philosophy BA count against someone?; 11:32 AM, July 14, 2009
Anonymous said...: 10:02 - Markell at Chicago has interests and work in ancients as well as continental.; 11:38 AM, July 14, 2009
Anonymous said...: Philosophy BA - I'm not on a commtittee, but I think this is fairly common. I'm a current grad student with a philosophy BA. I know others who did polisci, philosophy, English, or other things.; 11:40 AM, July 14, 2009
Anonymous said...: Nothing wrong with a Philosophy B.A., but it'd be good if there has been some exposure to political science and how theory is done in this discipline. An admissions committee will want some indication that you and your research interests belong in this discipline and that you are not just a philosophy wannabe or someone looking to make an end-run into a philosophy program. Some programs will see a serious philosophy background as a real plus. Others won't.; 1:35 PM, July 14, 2009
Anonymous said...: On the Ancient/Continental question, add UCLA (Sissa, McClure, Dienstag).

On admissions: someone who's not polisci needs to demonstrate that they understand what polisci/theory is - there are lots of ways to do that (courses, letters, etc). But it must be done.; 3:06 PM, July 14, 2009
Anonymous said...: >Notre Dame is also a good suggestion, but who does >ancients at Chicago?

Tarcov and Markell in Polisci. Lear and Pippin in Social Thought. Amis and Ando in Classics.; 5:00 PM, July 14, 2009
Anonymous said...: Tarcov and Markell might have some interest in the ancients, but they don't have a public record in the field that compares to Euben at Duke or C. Zuckert at Notre Dame, for instance. So, I would say, go to Chicago for continentals definitely, but Greeks, not so much.; 5:42 PM, July 15, 2009
Anonymous said...: All of the schools mentioned so far on ancients and continentals are potentially good options, and should be on your application list. Especially when your interests are still in flux (as well they should be when you haven't even started a PhD program yet), it is best to apply somewhat widely across top programs that 1) offer some support for the kinds of theory that interest you, and 2) offer broad and solid training. Once you get accepted to any of them (and admission is very competitive for all of these, so that's not a given!), then is the time to visit, suss out exactly where you feel most at home with the work you want to do and the people you want to work with. Certainly do some research in the meantime on the work being done by students and faculty at each of these schools, so you can better tailor your application and explain why you are interested in these schools, but don't close off any appropriate options too quickly.

(There are limits, of course: you wouldn't want to go somewhere that had NO ONE working on the ancients, if that's what you wanted to study, but none of the suggestions made here are wildly inappropriate in that sense, and they are all very excellent programs.); 5:56 PM, July 15, 2009
Anonymous said...: Advice on departments with strong links between political theory faculty and methodology faculty, and/or departments with quantitatively/empirically focused theory faculty.; 8:25 PM, July 15, 2009
Anonymous said...: Assuming that's a question:
Off the top of my head, maybe places like Stanford, NYU, WashU.; 9:17 PM, July 15, 2009
Anonymous said...: That's probably close to it and, with Knight gone, it's probably less true at WashU than it once was.

Columbia might be decent in that regard thanks to Elster.

I would try for WashU or NYU.; 8:24 PM, July 16, 2009
Anonymous said...: Prospective grad student here. I'm going to be sending out apps this Dec.-Jan. and I'm trying to read as much as I can in the mean time. I just finished my first reading of Rousseau's second treatise and now I'm thinking of starting on Kant's "Prolegomena to any future Metaphysics" (my first Kant). Really I'm just trying to fill in the gap in my education which basically extends from Locke to Frankfurt and Foucault (only one theory prof at my university = limited course offerings).

Any suggestions if this is a good place to start with Kant? After this I was going to do Hume, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche(who I've read some of)and Marx (ditto) in that order. Does this seem like a good plan of attack? Is this the right place to ask this question? If not where is?; 4:03 PM, July 18, 2009
Anonymous said...: You'll do a lot of this in grad school (in classes and in comps at most places), so don't worry too much about trying to fill all your gaps now. Lots of people have gaps; after all, academics specialize. What might actually be more useful for you in preparation for your applications is doing more focused reading around possible topics for research, so that you can start exploring and solidifying your research interests early (and master some of the scholarly literature around those topics) and get moving toward your dissertation that much quicker. So if you're going to do readings of historical texts, you might want select based on a theme or two, and also do some readings of recent journal articles and books on those themes that interest you.

As for these specific authors, for Kant's political thought the place to start might be the essays collected in Political Writings (Cambridge) - esp. Perpetual Peace, Theory & Practice, Idea for a Universal History - for the basics, then if you want to go further, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals and perhaps Critique of Judgment or maybe Critique of Practical Reason.

Kierkegaard actually doesn't figure prominently in many of the political theory graduate curricula I've seen, but if you're going to read him, I suggest Fear and Trembling. Others not on your list: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Arendt... There's a lot. But again, don't worry about not having read everything before you start.

You might find it useful to check out reading lists for comprehensive exams, which some programs post online (just google comprehensive exams or exams reading list and political theory). That will give you a sense of the authors and texts programs typically emphasize.; 4:56 PM, July 18, 2009
Anonymous said...: Faculty here: what programs are strong in the broad tradition of classical liberal thought, esp. Scottish Enlightenment?; 9:11 AM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: "Faculty here: what programs are strong in the broad tradition of classical liberal thought, esp. Scottish Enlightenment?"

I'd certainly consider going to Georgetown to work with Richard Boyd. Deneen and Mitchell are also there.; 9:46 AM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: Brown, with Tomasi on the classical liberalism side and Krause on the Scottish Enlightenment side.

Sabl (UCLA) and Frazer (Harvard) are both doing good Hume stuff these days. Fonna Forman-Barzili (sp?) at UCSD is supposed to have a big Smith book coming out soon.; 10:29 AM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: 9:11, see the advice given above - you are not asking the right question. You should be asking, "I have a specific interest in Scottish Enlightenment - which top 10 program should I go to?" Start with the criteria of a strong general education in political theory and a program with a good placement record. Unless you can afford to invest 7 years of your life for a degree that does not lead to a job, do not even think about a program that does not have a strong placement record. That doesn't mean one star student who happened to land a great job -- they need to have a consistent record of placing students, year in and year out. That narrows you down to the top 10 programs. Then you can select which of those programs might have someone who could supervise a dissertation on the Scottish Enlightenment. Maybe apply to one or two other borderline programs with strength in your area. Georgetown might make your list at the very bottom, but you should be thinking primarily about programs like Harvard, Princeton, and Chicago.; 11:00 AM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: "You should be asking, 'I have a specific interest in Scottish Enlightenment - which top 10 program should I go to?'"

So we're back to the "Harvard or nothing" doctrine.

Let's not make too many presumptions about the person asking questions. Of course, it goes without saying, the student should pursue study in the best possible program where someone is suited to direct a dissertation on the Scottish Enlightenment. But let's not automatically assume that life as a political theorist is not worth living outside of top-ten programs. There are plenty of political theorists trained outside of Harvard, etc. who are teaching material they love to receptive students, and are able to buy homes, raise children, and have fulfilling lives. Yes, that's right -- even without the prized "top-ten" program halo.

There are plenty of people who will not be getting into one of these programs -- because they had to attend a less prestigious undergrad institution for financial reasons, because they had a bad day when they took the GRE's (or even SAT's), etc. -- who would make fine professional political theorists. As long as they understand that some on this blog and elsewhere will discriminate against them on this basis, there is no reason they can't pursue the modest ambition of being a political theorist.

This being said, it is the responsibility of the student's undergraduate advisor to explain the benefits and risks of attending any particular graduate program.

But let's not impose an "Harvard-or-bust" philosophy on everyone. It may be your personal philosophy -- and it may have served you well. But there are plenty of people in this profession, many of whom have made substantial contributions (e.g., Cary Neederman, Jane Bennett, Antonio Vazquez-Arroyo, Kennan Ferguson, Jim Miller, Leonard Feldman, Stephen White), who have pursued other paths successfully.; 11:51 AM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: And, as we've discussed before, the job data from the last couple of years do *not* support the thesis that Harvard-Princeton-Chicago degrees have magical job-getting powers, or that candidates from those institutions are particularly more successful on the job market than others.; 11:57 AM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: I love how 10 suddenly becomes 3. I agree with others that this is too narrow. And I think it makes more sense to talk about a top 15 than a top 10 - a top 15 that provides excellent training and a good chance of placement; exactly who's in the top 10 depends on who's making the list and what kind of theory. The top 15 is more stable.

But underlying the exaggerated point 11:00 makes is the point, which can always be stressed, that the job market is VERY BAD in political theory, and so you do want to go with the best program you can get into that fits your interests, and be mindful of placement. No program - none - will guarantee you a job, but some will give you a better shot at it than others.

Incidentally, I went to a not so good undergrad for financial reason and I got into a so-called "top 10" school. Maybe that matters for some programs, I don't know, but it is not necessarily a barrier.; 12:09 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^ I don't think the data are clear on that. If you look at the whole universe of jobs, it's true that many people not from top 5 programs get jobs. If you look at good schools (research or slac), it seems to me that a great many go to people from the top schools. Obviously, there is no iron rule, but to deny an advantage seems wrong. So, it depends on the preferences of the student, but all else equal, going to a top program is obviously a good choice. It's also not just job placement, but resources (in terms of being able to fund you for me years if jobs don't come through, etc.).; 12:11 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: "9:11, see the advice given above - you are not asking the right question. You should be asking, "I have a specific interest in Scottish Enlightenment - which top 10 program should I go to?" "

Dude - read the post: faculty member; I was asking which programs are strong in classical liberal thought and Scottish Enlightenment. Not which top 10 programs; not which top 10 program should I go to. Just: "what programs are strong in the broad tradition of classical liberal thought, esp. Scottish Enlightenment?"; 12:42 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: So, you're saying that you are a faculty member and you are posting a query asking about department specialties on an anonymous list designed to provide advice to prospective graduate students, but you didn't expect to receive an answer conditioned on the overall quality of the program?; 1:21 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: 11:00 here.

"Dude": I'm not sure what you mean by "faculty here". I thought you were addressing your question to faculty here on this board for their advice on grad programs. Are you saying that you are faculty? Then why are you asking about strong grad programs on the thread for advice for grad students?

Regardless, on the general advice, yes there are exceptions. People can get jobs without top 10 degrees, and people with top 10 degrees often strike out. I also said you should add one or two programs that are strong in your niche. On "10 becoming 3," the three I listed were not meant to be exclusive, they just came to mind as good programs with some strength in the particular field the poster was asking about.

I wish this was not the case (my PhD is not from a top 10 department). It is deadly to the intellectual diversity of the subfield. I personally don't see anything that is intellectually superior about the top 10. Still, this is the situation we are in.

Regarding Miller, White, et al -- those guys are all senior people who have been around for a long time. They did not face the same market that we are facing now. The only exception is Vasquez Arroyo. There have also been several examples of PhDs from outside the top 10 landing great jobs in the last couple years. Good for them. But the exceptions prove the rule. It is very difficult to get a job in this market, even more so if you do not have pedigree on your side.

Just over a month before APSA, there are exactly TWO junior positions advertised in political theory, and one is at an evangelical college. There will be hundreds of applications for these jobs, not only from ABDs but also from advanced assistants and PhDs who have been on the market for several years. This is the market you will be facing. You ignore this advice at your own risk.; 1:24 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: A couple more: Berkeley (Stimson); maybe McGill (Levy); 1:24 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: "Just over a month before APSA, there are exactly TWO junior positions advertised in political theory, and one is at an evangelical college. There will be hundreds of applications for these jobs, not only from ABDs but also from advanced assistants and PhDs who have been on the market for several years. This is the market you will be facing. You ignore this advice at your own risk."

It seems the take-away fact from this is not to attend Harvard. It is to avoid political theory entirely -- or even academe as a whole.

Of course, we have no idea what the market will look like five-seven years from now either. It might be wonderful; it could be worse than we can imagine. Students should be keenly aware of the risks regardless of which program they attend.; 1:44 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: Faculty member - you could try Cambridge (Istvan Hont, Mark Goldie, Gareth Stedman Jones, Duncan Kelly, Chris Brooke, Sylvana Tomaselli, Ross Harrison, Clare Jackson, and Emma Rothschild (part-time)); 2:19 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: I wonder how many theorists are produced and are on the market from 10-20 ranked schools. What I wonder in particular is what percentage of candidates are placed by non-top 10 schools versus top 10 schools. I could imagine that in terms of percentages being placed of Ph.D's produced, it may not matter much if one goes to a top 10 or a top 20. While there may be a lot of placements from, say, Princeton, or in the past few years, Minnesota, programs placing only one or two people may only be producing one or two people.

Just a thought.; 2:20 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: > It seems the take-away fact from this is not to attend Harvard. It is to avoid political theory entirely -- or even academe as a whole.

11:00 here again: Unfortunately, I think this is probably the best and most honest advice. The way I see it, the natural inclination is for students to think they are special and can succeed. If you care about your students you should do whatever you can to dissuade them from such a foolish path. The ones who really want it will not listen to you and will go for it (but they will be a little more savvy in the process). Obviously I am somewhat exaggerating, but I definitely don't think we should uncritically encourage students to "follow their dreams".; 2:39 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: I think the denominator is a relevant consideration when thinking about placements, as is the type of job people want (there are opportunities in the public directional school market, to take an example, even if there are not opportunities in the high-end R1 market). But the relevant denominator should probably be those entering the program and not just those who hit the job market. I tend to think that one problem with lower-tier programs that prospective students should take seriously is that many of their colleagues will never finish or have academic careers (for all kinds of reasons), and that's not a favorable environment even for those who do make it through. There may well be a lot of theorists entering programs at the lower-ranked schools, but relatively few who finish their dissertations, fewer still who enter the general academic job market, and fewer still who land an academic job.; 4:58 PM, July 19, 2009
Anonymous said...: Even though its one of the dreaded top 2-3 programs, anyone interested in the 18th century should apply to Chicago to work with Jennifer Pitts and Sankar Muthu.; 6:57 AM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: "I definitely don't think we should uncritically encourage students to 'follow their dreams'"

This is always good advice, of course. In fact, I wouldn't do anything "uncritically".

But it raises questions for those of us in the position of advising our students: what do we suggest they do? Tell them to switch majors and become nurses? It seems like that's the only growth field out there these days.; 11:14 AM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: I have to say that I disagree somewhat with the tenor of this discussion. Yes, the odds that an entering student in *any* program will ultimately land a top job, or even any job at all, are pretty low. But it's also impossible to predict ex ante who will be the lucky winners. The signal that you're being sent by being admitted to a top program is that some pretty smart & experienced people think you have a shot.

(This, by the way, is another reason why attending a "top" program is important; since the opposite signal is being sent if you *don’t* get admitted to one of those programs. It's an imperfect signal, obviously, but a signal nonetheless).

So instead of actively discouraging talented undergrads who are considering an academic career, I think we should be doing a better job of actively discouraging the people who aren’t cutting it once admitted. Even Princeton is only going to be able to reliably place its top couple of students in a given year, and so students have to ask themselves after 2 or 3 years whether they plausibly fall into that category. And faculty should be sending clear signals along those lines.

Grad school isn't a bad life to live for a few years if you don't mind the foregone income, so the costs to a student of going off to grad school and then bailing out are relatively low. The people who end up screwing themselves are the ones who hang around for 6 or 8 years or more, abd, adjuncting, or whatever, presumably because they aren't being honest with themselves and/or aren't getting candid feedback from their advisors.; 12:48 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: >So instead of actively discouraging talented undergrads who are considering an academic career, I think we should be doing a better job of actively discouraging the people who aren’t cutting it once admitted.

I don't disagree with discouraging mediocre students in grad school from continuing, but this assumes that people who aren't getting jobs are somehow "not cutting it." The real problem to me is that people are doing great work, doing everything right, and still aren't getting jobs. I heard from a friend on a search committee for a visiting position that she was getting applications from people with published books. These aren't the kinds of people that you could say, "Hey, you failed your comps, you might think about quitting."

I also do not think it is fair to the students to encourage them to go to grad school if half of them are going to be weeded out after 3 years. 3 years is less than 7 or 10, but it is still a big chunk of time to ask someone to invest.; 1:48 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: 12:48 here. Students should go in with their eyes open, no question. But I still think there's a big difference between discouraging a promising student who, for all you know, might make it and advising them to give grad school their best shot and then step back and take a hard look at where they are in 2 or 3 years when the outlook is a lot clearer. Seems to me like you would get fewer false negatives that way, without necessarily increasing the false positives.

I definitely take the point about top-notch people not getting jobs; obviously there's a risk involved no matter what. But there are ways to reduce that risk.

I guess I'm a little more skeptical about the "wasting time" point. Yes, there are opportunity costs, especially with regard to income, and students should be reminded of that. But presumably the kind of person who's a serious candidate for admission to a top graduate program is also going to be the kind of person who's going to enjoy and profit, intellectually speaking, from grad school, at least relative to other things they might be doing. As someone once told me, grad school is a nice way to spend a few years of your life; after that you've got to decide if you can really make a career out of it.; 2:08 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: New poster here. 12:08, I see your point, but I also worry that "grad school is a nice way to spend a few years of your life" might not be the most responsible message. That might be fine for people who are well-off (middle to upper middle class) and pretty confident of their own career skills and/or networks and thus of landing on their feet in 6-8 years or so after a little holiday in academia. But graduate school is 1) very isolating in a way that tends to deemphasize (and even disparage) other career paths and the transferable skills needed for them, and 2) potentially be financially very damaging especially if one takes out loans (which one shouldn't) and even sometmes if one is fully funded given levels and insecurity of funding. I wouldn't want to completely dissuade talented applicants who are driven to make a career in academia and who know what that means, but I think they ought to be given a good scare and a realisticly pessimistic account of what's in store: people need to go in with their eyes fully open to the potential costs and tradeoffs.; 3:09 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: 12:48/2:08 here. Good points all.

(1) I'm talking about a reality check at around 2-3 years; i.e. around the time you're finishing coursework, comps, writing a proposal, etc. -- before the social isolation really kicks in. At that point I think the burden of proof should be on the student to show that they've got a realistic shot. And that means something more than that you've gotten good grades, passed your comps, etc. It means that you've emerged as one of the top students in your cohort, you have a promising idea for a dissertation project, a faculty member with the demonstrated ability to place students has shown real enthusiasm about working with you, etc.

(2) You should NEVER take out loans to go to graduate school (in the academic sense). It's been said here many times, but bears repeating.

True, some people can't afford to defer realizing their earning potential. Some people want to have kids before they're 30. But I suspect that those people already know who they are. Where we faculty can be helpful is in giving the students who are otherwise prepared for graduate school a realistic sense of what to expect and, crucially, of how they should evaluate themselves along the way. And on that count I don't feel comfortable sitting across my desk from a bright 21-year-old and telling her that she doesn't have a chance and should do something else. How the hell would I know?; 3:31 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: I wonder a bit about this strong-form "no loans for grad school" line. I tend to believe it also, but I wonder how thought out it really is. If students come into grad school with savings, should they likewise be unwilling to dip in to that savings and lose the associated income? If they have a family with resources, should they be unwilling to be subsidized by parents or spouses who give or loan them money -- and have to take that money out of somewhere in order to give it to the student?

I just wonder if the view really is that students should be able to be fully self-sufficient on current income in grad school to make that educational investment worthwhile, or if there isn't just some kind of assumption going on about personal/family wealth that makes second mortgages by parents ok but personal bank loans by grad students not.; 3:52 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: In the UK students apply directly to do the dissertation. As I understand it they apply either with a topic, or they apply to competitive "studentships" where the broad topic or theme is already set (if the specific research question and design isn't). I wouldn't suggest we adopt the UK model, which doesn't include much or any coursework or training, but I wonder if something like it, after coursework and comps, might not work. Defending the dissertation proposal sort of works like that, but what if instead of just that, after your comps you had to apply - with a formal application - to continue on as a phd student and not just a masters student. That application could involve a dissertation proposal or maybe pre-proposal (shorter outline of topic), but could be a little more formal (recommendations, performance, etc. reviewed by departments formally).; 3:56 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: Some more realistic assessment of prospects would probably be good, which would create some attrition across all programs across all years. But there are at least three cautions that come to mind about this. My sense is that a lot of problems arise in the dissertation phase, but aren't all that obvious before. You wouldn't necessarily have sat that student down after exams and said, time to go. But after struggling with the dissertation for 2-3 years, the student might well start correctly thinking this isn't going to work after all.

But lots of unsuccessful job seekers are accomplished in a traditional sense. They finish and accumulate lines on their c.v. Maybe an advisor could have looked at that early on and said, you can get this published but you won't be able to get anyone excited enough to give you a job given the competition. But that's a real tough call to make.

Students need to be realistic, and realistically advised. But their own goals can often be various. They may not want the R1 or the SLAC job, or at least be perfectly happy without it. They may not want an academic job at all. Trying to get rid of the ones "who can't cut it" will often mean in practice pushing out those who don't seem likely to get an R1 job, even if they'd have have a happy career (of whatever sort) on their own terms otherwise.; 4:12 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: "or if there isn't just some kind of assumption going on about personal/family wealth that makes second mortgages by parents ok but personal bank loans by grad students not"

3:09 here - not for me. I don't think people should spend their own money or their family's money on paying for grad school. It's been said many times, but no one should go to grad school especially in the humanities without funding. I'm somewhat ok with occasional very small loans in times of hardship as long as they're easy to repay: it's funding all or large chunks of graduate education through loans that is a very, very bad idea. But you also shouldn't have to come from a family of means that can support you financially in order to go to or finish grad school. When grad school places and jobs after are both scarce already, tacitly relying on people having parental help or savings means giving well-off students an unfair advantage in actually finishing graduate school and thus in getting into the professoriate.; 4:13 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: "My sense is that a lot of problems arise in the dissertation phase, but aren't all that obvious before. You wouldn't necessarily have sat that student down after exams and said, time to go."

That's right, but there's also a reasonable number with obvious problems before that stage who just don't get frank assessments.; 4:25 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: To be sure; 4:34 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: If students come from affluent families willing to subsidize the students' educations through their twenties, I have no paternalistic interest in stopping that. A higher education is a wonderful thing, and as compared with lots of other expensive consumption goods, a Ph.D. for your child seems to me like an eminently worthwhile thing to pay for. If the student tells me "my parents assume that I'll graduate and make a fortune and pay them back someday," then of course I'll correct them. But if the parents are forgoing some other expensive consumption good to give their kids the gift of years more of education-- great.

I do, however, have a paternalistic interest in preventing students from incurring educational debt for a Ph.D., thinking that it's an "investment" the way that borrowing for law school is. I flatly tell undergrads: don't ever borrow a dime for a doctoral program, and if either you don't get enough funding to prevent it, or your life doesn't allow avoiding it (e.g. because you're the sole income-earner for your family of four), don't go to grad school.

Yes, that means that I'm telling people who can't afford to spend their twenties sinking into the red that they can't afford it, whereas I'm not telling that to people who *can* afford it. But that's because there are some students whose financial futures might be ruined, and some for whom that's not true.

Actually, since I don't know my students' individual financial conditions, ordinarily I lay out both options for them: "if you can afford it, and understand that it's a consumption good, have fun; if you can't afford it, you can't afford it."; 4:50 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: Well, then the correct message to everyone should be that they should regard the Ph.D. as a consumption good rather than an investment good and act accordingly. Some people are more than willing to go into debt for consumption goods, and others are not. No more "ruins their life" if they have to spend the next x years paying off a debt on this consumption good, than if their parents did the same or if they were paying off ski vacations. Plenty of people are starting to realize that those pricey undergrad degrees are exactly those kinds of consumption goods as well -- and some people just like to eat them up.; 5:02 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: The discussion about grad school advising, etc., is interesting, and the proposal to emulate the UK system is interesting. But I'd also like to focus on what I think we *shouldn't* be doing, which is talking otherwise promising undergrads out of going to graduate school. Yes, they should be given a realistic sense of what they're in for, but it seems to me that it makes sense to wait until we have more information before we start steering people away. There will still be some tough calls to make, but less so than when you're trying to predict the future of someone who hasn't even started grad school yet.

As for the varied goals of students, I take the point but think it's a limited one.

First of all, it's a buyer's market out there, so even non-R1 or SLAC schools can afford to limit themselves to looking at people who have R1- or SLAC-like credentials. So if you want to get a job at ANY university, you pretty much have to conform to the norms that are set by the R1 schools. There isn't a Mr. Chips track any more.

Second of all, Ph.D. programs pay students with the expectation that they'll enter the profession themselves and eventually add to the prestige of the program. It is of course humane to steer students who seem unlikely to make it in academia into alternate career paths, but no top program should admit a student with the expectation that that will be the outcome.; 5:22 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: I'm a little confused by the discussion about funding. I take it that the reason you shouldn't take out loans is because there's a good chance you'll find yourself unemployed in a few years' time, and looking at bankruptcy and/or a second graduate degree (law, business) with still more debt.

If a spouse or family is subsidizing you, or if you're spending savings, then you might look at that as a waste of money, but the downside risk isn't the same. And I think in a lot of such cases the student technically *could* be living, if rather modestly, off their stipend, and the "subsidy" is more of a quality-of-life enhancement.

As for the ethical question of whether it's *wrong* to accept a subsidy or spend savings because it gives wealthy people a leg up, I guess I can see the point but (a) of all the ways in which wealth distorts educational and career outcomes in this country, I have to think that's a pretty minor one, and (b) I can't imagine anyone actually applying the principle to themselves ("I'd like to go to grad school but I won't because I'm rich and it wouldn't be fair"). Nor can I imagine such a principle being enforced.; 5:32 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: I spent some time teaching at a pretty low-tier R1, and a lot of our students were theory students. Some of those students did, in fact, get academic jobs. You can say that the R1s set the norms, but that doesn't mean the R1s set the quality bar. There are a lot of puffed up c.v.s out there that get people jobs and tenure at teaching institutions. Doesn't mean those people wanted to be researchers. We also produced quite a few students who went on to other kinds of careers, some in teaching outside of higher ed and some non-teaching-related jobs. Some just liked being in grad school, and didn't have much interest in thinking beyond it -- like a lot of undergrads I know.

No top program is admitting those students. But I've seen a few who turn out to be a bit closer to that than I would have expected, despite their apparently greater potential.; 5:55 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: The reason you shouldn't take out loans is that they're bloody hard to pay back if you take out too many of them, and grad school is expensive and long. The subsidized federal loans might be doable if you take only a very small amount once or twice (NOT the max you're allowed per year of subsidized and unsubsidized).

As for the principle/ethical question of who's funding your way, that's not so much where I was thinking the "principle" should be applied (to people deciding whether to go, etc.). It's more that if it's tacitly assumed that people will have family support, and when graduate funding decisions and advising are made on that assumption (e.g. when grad schools don't fund everyone or don't fund students at liveable levels), then it perpetuates the unequal chances of success.

But maybe, it seems, no one else cares that access to academic careers is hugely stacked in favor of those with above-average means and family wealth, and against those without them. Odd.; 6:04 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: "But maybe, it seems, no one else cares that access to academic careers is hugely stacked in favor of those with above-average means and family wealth, and against those without them. Odd."

Not to mention in favor of those from highly-educated and academic backgrounds, which does not typically mean great family wealth but does mean a degree of socialization that's hard to overstate. There's a traditional aristocracy, not just an aristocracy of wealth, that matters a great deal in the academy.

I'm one of the people you're responding to, and I do care about this-- a lot. But there are so many stages at which these advantages are perpetuated and multiplied that I don't really see the one we're discussing (the fact that family wealth can let some people afford grad school who otherwise responsibly couldn't) as being key, or suitable for any ethically-appropriate intervention.; 6:09 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: It's good to distinguish between how students or prospective students should treat the wealth advantage and how schools should. Having said that, the only prominent Ph.D. program in political theory I know of that admits a lot of students without funding is the New School -- which ironically is also one of the more vocally left-wing programs.

Other than that, my understanding is that most top programs pay stipends in the high-teens or low-twenties, which should pretty much remove the class barrier unless you have a family to support or are in a really high-cost city, no? It wouldn't seem that access is "hugely stacked in favor" of the wealthy, anyway.

Again, I think the previous posters are right to point out that the real class barriers kick in a lot earlier -- at the primary and secondary education levels, wrt socialization, etc.; 7:29 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: "the real class barriers kick in a lot earlier -- at the primary and secondary education levels, wrt socialization, etc."

And later, too. Can you afford to stay a grad student a year or two longer, or take a postdoc, instead of rushing off to take the first T-T job you're offered? That's an important one. So is: can you afford to wait out a year or two of un- or under-employment without fellowship support, or will you have to seek some kind of paid employment right away?

And that's to say nothing about class distinctions among faculty, which are quite real.

One other earlier-stage moment: can you afford to go get an MPhil at Oxford or Cambridge, or some other equivalent, before applying to doctoral programs at all?; 8:30 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: And pre-grad school: can you or your family only afford 1-5K per year for tuition, vs. paying (or being financially able to borrow) 25-40K per year? In most cases, this will impact your quality of education, and your likelihood of getting channeled towards, much less admitted to, to grad school at all.; 8:39 PM, July 20, 2009
Anonymous said...: I have a strong interest in classical political philosophy. The one-two punch at Toronto seems difficult to beat; Chicago and BC also have my attention. Other departments that might support careful study of, say, Plato's critique of the Achillean ideal? How about Harvard or Duke?; 1:09 PM, July 22, 2009
Anonymous said...: That's not my kind of work, so others may have more ideas, but the ones you name seem appropriate, and also look into Notre Dame, Texas. Sounds like you're interested in Straussian approaches: taking into account 1) (what I've seen of recent) placement history/success and 2) the need for broad training too, I'd put Notre Dame, Duke, Toronto and Harvard at the top of your list (in no particular order).; 1:50 PM, July 22, 2009
Anonymous said...: In light of the Louis Gates arrest, I'd like people's opinions here on the state of Black Studies scholarship. People claim professors like Gates, Cornell West, etc. are "geniuses" and "brilliant," but from my limited exposure to their work it seems to be just a racial and watered down version of some French post-structuralist philosophers (which itself is pretty watered down).

So here's the question, which might be offensive to some, but it's an anonymous blog so hopefully we can all be honest. Is the field of Black Studies/Race Studies an emperor's new clothes situation, or is this a respectable scholarly field?

Is it fair to say that the field is worth studying in theory, but in practice it is highly politicized to the point of only being friendly to certain viewpoints and not others (to see this, imagine Charles Murray being appointed to race studies faculty). Also, is it fair to say that the subject matter might justify one or two people studying it, but as it is the number of academics studying this field is vastly disproportionate to the actual merits and intellectual fecundity of the subject matter?

I'd be interested to hear your feedback.; 5:00 PM, July 23, 2009
Anonymous said...: What does that have to do with advice for or questions from prospective graduate students?; 5:45 PM, July 23, 2009
Anonymous said...: If the poster were interested in pursuing Black Studies, the question could be relevant. Or is this forum only for quibbling about rankings?; 5:55 PM, July 23, 2009
Anonymous said...: Doesn't really sound like they are, though, does it?; 6:19 PM, July 23, 2009
Anonymous said...: For the person interested in classical, think about Princeton too. They just brough Melissa Lane in from Cambridge.; 11:18 AM, July 24, 2009
Anonymous said...: To the poster who asked about Black Studies: Your intuitions seem more or less right. However, the fact that no one has chosen to respond to you should tell you something. This is a VERY sensitive issue and if you ever want to think about a career in academia, you better learn to keep those thoughts to yourself. Even in an anonymous blog there are dangers to speaking openly about this. So my advice, you are right, you know it, we know it, and just let it be. Your life will be much easier that way.; 1:04 PM, July 24, 2009
Anonymous said...: Speak for yourself. Don't mistake silence for agreement. I don't agree with the poster. But I don't really feel like engaging in a conversation about it here. The post looks like thinly disguised flame-bait. I'm not interested in wasting my time on it. I'd bet I'm not the only one. Not every off-topic or even on-topic post, particularly when clearly intended to be provocative, merits a response.; 3:10 PM, July 24, 2009
Anonymous said...: When the poster referenced the field's unwillingness to take Charles Murray seriously as a way of demonstrating that the field was too politicized/not rigorous enough, I tuned out. Talk about politicized pseudo-research...; 3:24 PM, July 24, 2009
Anonymous said...: OK, I'll go out on the thin ice a little here.

The OP makes two claims, (1) that race studies is an ideologically insular field, and (2) that the quality of the work isn't very high. Those are separate claims, though they could be linked in that insular scholarly communities tend, all things equal, to do worse work, especially in the long run.

Having said that, I think that claim (1) is probably correct, but that this is arguably a defensible situation given the historical legacy and current realities of race & racism in this country. I'm only referring here, I should add, to the study of black political thought, not to the empirical study of race & politics more generally, which strikes me (from a distance, admittedly) as a pretty diverse & fertile subfield, both racially and ideologically speaking.

I think that claim (2) is false, and that the OP's examples are badly chosen. Gates & West are public intellectuals, and suffer from the usual public intellectual's problem of the really smart person who spreads him- or herself pretty thin -- and whose work can often look pretty thin as a result. It isn't hard to think of really smart people outside the field of race studies whose work suffers from the same problem, though I won't name names here in fear of incurring the administrator's wrath. To the extent that the OP is holding the likes of Gates & West, let alone the field that they represent, to a different standard than those folks, then I think s/he can fairly be accused of posting in bad faith, or at least thoughtlessly.

As for whether "the number of academics studying this field is vastly disproportionate to the actual merits and intellectual fecundity of the subject matter": people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!; 3:49 PM, July 24, 2009
Anonymous said...: The poster clearly knows very little about work actually done in the field either. For example, there are impressive and prominent scholars working on race and political theory in the analytic tradition, as well as numerous marxists and critical theorists. And West's work isn't post-structuralist (he's best known for his work on pragmatism after all).

Given this ignorance - both about race studies and contemporary political theory more generally - some humility in posting about either would have been advisable.; 6:42 PM, July 24, 2009
Anonymous said...: I said ideologically insular, not methodologically insular. There's a difference.; 8:15 AM, July 25, 2009
Anonymous said...: ...looking back, though, I see that the OP says both, which is clearly wrong. 6:42 is right, West is no post-structuralist.; 8:24 AM, July 25, 2009
Anonymous said...: 3:49 writes:

"The OP makes two claims, (1) that race studies is an ideologically insular field... I think that claim (1) is probably correct, but that this is arguably a defensible situation given the historical legacy and current realities of race & racism in this country. I'm only referring here, I should add, to the study of black political thought..."

I don't think that this holds water: (a) given contemporary race studies is more ideologically insular than the actual history of black political thought, then I don't think that can be justified in terms of "the historical legacy and current realities of race & racism in this country"; the dissonance in this respect between the actual history of black political thought , on the one hand, and contemporary race studies, on the other hand, is therefore largely explained by the fact that (b) contemporary race studies is not influenced so much by the history of black political thought as it is by left-wing white, western intellectual trends (marxism, post-structuralism), which is in turn a reflection of the fact that (c) academia in general is ideologically insular to varying degrees, and so it follows that (d) the ideological insularity of contemporary race studies cannot be accounted for with reference to either the history of black political thought or "the historical legacy and current realities of race & racism", but is instead to be explained by the fact that race studies is just an appendage of a largely white agenda, i.e., it promotes a broader left-wing agenda to the exclusion of the actual tradition of black political thought.; 10:46 AM, July 25, 2009
Anonymous said...: 1:04: "Even in an anonymous blog there are dangers to speaking openly about this."

Like what?; 10:48 AM, July 25, 2009
Anonymous said...: @10:46:

well if the "insularity" of BPT reflects the "insularity" of the rest of PT then why single that field out for criticism?

and why exactly is the left-wing agenda (if there is such a thing) a "white" agenda?

this is a weird thread.; 1:05 PM, July 25, 2009
Anonymous said...: @1:05:

"well if the "insularity" of BPT reflects the "insularity" of the rest of PT then why single that field out for criticism?"

I wouldn't single it out. It was just the subject that was already under discussion.

"and why exactly is the left-wing agenda (if there is such a thing) a "white" agenda?"

Well if I wrote "THE left-wing agenda", then I was mistaken. There are various left-wing agendas with varying degrees of overlap. But I referred to it as white because the intellectual sources of it tend to be white authors, especially continental Europeans (and also because the agendas in question tend to be the sort of "stuff that white people like", so I was just trying to point out that the ideological insularity of race studies can't be attributed to a desire to withdraw from a racist society or focus on neglected black authors, etc., because the ideology which typifies race studies overlaps with what is embraced by many white people, even if they're not involved in race studies).; 1:37 PM, July 25, 2009
Anonymous said...: One more clarification @1:05:

"well if the "insularity" of BPT reflects the "insularity" of the rest of PT then why single that field out for criticism?"

I also tried to make clear that BPT (the history of black political thought) is actually much *less* insular than contemporary race studies (or much of political theory in general).; 1:39 PM, July 25, 2009
Anonymous said...: As someone mentioned, West is a pragmatist not a post-structuralist.

It is hardly surprising that most (maybe all) race schlars are somewhere on the left - even if the OP seemes to be unaware of the diversity (methodological and political) that this can still signal. After all, the right has often been, and in many cases remains, blind to the issues race scholars study. (The right is to race studies, what Harvey Mansfield is to gender studies.) It is hardly surprising that there are no Straussians in contemproary race studies; after all, many of them like many conservatives in general, have a rather ambigous attitude to slavery and its legacy. See, e.g, Richard King, "Rights and Slaver, Race and Racism, Leo Strauss, the Strausians, and the American Dilemma," Modern Intellectual History, 5 (2008); 2:26 PM, July 25, 2009
Anonymous said...: This post has been removed by a blog administrator.; 2:41 PM, July 25, 2009
Anonymous said...: This is why you don't ask, OP--because you get zero actual responses to the question and you get reminded what a chauvinist, racist twat you are for wanting to know in the first place.; 2:42 PM, July 25, 2009
Anonymous said...: 2:226 writes:

"It is hardly surprising that most (maybe all) race schlars are somewhere on the left - even if the OP seemes to be unaware of the diversity (methodological and political) that this can still signal. After all, the right has often been, and in many cases remains, blind to the issues race scholars study."

"On the left" is a misleading way to talk. The history of black political thought can be fairly associated with the "left" in various tactical ways, but the actual content of that thought is not conventionally "left-wing" at all, and in some respects could fairly be described as conservative. To describe it simply in terms of "left" and "right" is to make it more narrow than it actually is, which is a necessary consequence of trying to appropriate for the purposes of serving a broader (white) left-wing agenda.; 4:14 PM, July 26, 2009
Anonymous said...: I am a prospective graduate student and a first-time poster here - I want some advice, and please be brutally honest. I recently graduated from your typical University of [name of state here] (not a Berkely, Madison, UVA, or Texas type) in political science with a good GPA (though not quite summa or manga cum laude). Prior to my freshman year, I had very little contact with political theory, but I fell in love with it during college (I ended up taking 5 political theory courses) and I wanted to continue in political theory. I am taking a year or two off before applying in order to get more reading under my belt - and to understand the political science world more - and to save up money - and to find the area in which I am most interested (right now I'm interested in early modern revolutionary and counter-revolutionary thought, and modern interpretations of classical thought). Do I have a chance of getting accepted to a decent programme? If yes, do you have any suggestions? If no, thank you for your honesty.; 5:56 PM, July 26, 2009
Anonymous said...: Will you have strong letters of recommendation? If so, and if you get a very strong GRE, then you would have a good chance at some very good programs.; 7:31 PM, July 26, 2009
Anonymous said...: I'm not quite sure what the implication of this description of your college. Not a liberal arts college, which I suspect is a disproportionate feature of political theory grad students, but certainly not a necessary condition. What is important, coming from a state university (as I did) is that you have credible letters of recommendation and good writing samples. At a lot of Big State U.'s, you have to work to get those b/c you don't do that much extended writing and you don't get to know the profs. But for theory grad admission, it is really crucial. If you didn't really cultivate that while in school, it is not too late to cultivate those relationships and work on a really good paper before you apply to grad school.; 10:18 AM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: yes, that stuff is key. less so, i think, is a concrete idea of what "area" of theory you want to work in. sure, you need to be able to articulate a coherent purpose for entering a theory program (oh, and you don't need to pretend you're british to get in, either), but almost everyone changes their mind once in grad school ...

point being, don't spend years (like i did) trying to pick a specialization. you might spend a few years, however, exposing yourself to the world outside academia.; 12:03 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: This post has been removed by a blog administrator.; 12:36 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Matthew Moore has released the data from the big political theory survey he did last year. Of interest to potential grad students is the ranking of PhD programs by active theorists. The top 10 are below. The full list can be found at the link, p. 13:

Princeton University
Harvard University
University of Chicago
Berkeley
Yale University
Johns Hopkins University
Duke University
University of Notre Dame
Northwestern University
Boston College

http://www.calpoly.edu/~mmoore02/APSA%20Paper%20Conference%20Final%20%28D1%29.pdf; 1:27 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Oh, man, that paper is going to provide fuel for *endless* talk around here.

Table 8 asks for the names of people who are doing excellent work in political theory today. I come in behind someone who's dead.; 3:25 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Lucky you -- you're on the list! You had to get three mentions to make the cut, so I guess me and my best friend from grad school were the only ones to vote for yours truly...; 3:28 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: I count at least three dead people on the list!; 3:47 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Maybe they have a lot of unpublished work due to appear in the next 20 years?; 3:55 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: 4: Rawls, Okin, Said, Huntington; 3:57 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: dead people, but any untenured people?; 4:43 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Evidence for both sides, maybe, of our traditional Rawlsian Dominance argument.

On the one hand, Princeton is the #1 ranked school, and was essentially universally ranked-- almost every participant included it in their list of five schools.

On the other hand, the reputational survey of currently-practicing theorists goes: Markell, Brown, Connolly, Honig-- the only people named more than 20 times.

The only Rawlsians in the top 20 are Nussbaum (not poli sci), Kymlicka (in Canada), and Gutmann (admin). To find a Rawlsian liberal currently teaching in a US poli sci department, you have to go down to Macedo, around #50.; 4:45 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Eric Nelson and Peggy Kohn-- and Dan O'Neill was untenured when the survey was conducted.; 4:48 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Looking at the whole list of recommended programs in the paper itself, it's a weird list. The usual suspects in the top 10 or 15 are unsurprising, but the position of a few programs in the top 30 or so seems odd. I wonder if people were allowed to name their own institutions and alma maters, and if any particular approaches were disproportionately represented in the respondents.; 4:51 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: How many times do we have to go over this - Princeton is not only a liberal normative theory department! So having this ranked no. 1 is not proof of anything of any Rawlsian-dominance argument. Far more significant - from that perspective - is the ranking of theorists. Enough already.; 5:37 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: The Berkeley-Hopkins Po-Mo types seem to have been over-represented in the survey. Or, as others have charged before, they cheerlead for each other much more than Rawlsians or Straussians do.; 5:40 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Quite a lot of Straussian influence in there too - not dominant, but certainly prominent. (And if ever you want cheerleaders for each other, you could do much better). Harvey Manfield doing interesting work? Harry Jaffa? Give me a break.; 5:46 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^^ "couldn't" of course!; 5:47 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Given the outcome of the PT editorship controversy and the results of this survey, I'd say it is the Connolly types who dominate the subfield, NOT the Rawlsians. The PoMos just cover it by pretending to be dissed and persecuted.

In fact however they dominate more major programs than do Rawlsians: Berkeley, Chicago, Northwestern, and Hopkins.; 6:05 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^ That sounds about right.

The balance would shift quite a bit if you move outside the US (and Canada). A UK-based survey would look very different, for example. (Far more Rawlsians, considerably fewer Wolin-Connolly people, still quite a few historians, but barely a single Straussian).; 6:33 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Both Skinner and Wolin move up the first ranking, if you include the later entries for "Skinner" and "Wolin". Unless, that is, B. F. Skinner is gaining some votes!; 6:37 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: That's silly. "Pomo's" ceertainly don't dominate Chicago or Northwestern. They don't even have a plurality at either place. Berkeley is a toss up, at best. Only Hopkins could be said to be "dominated" by pomo's.

If your criteria for dominance where applied to other cliques, then Straussians dominate more top programs than anyone (Texas, Toronto, ND, BC, Claremont, Catholic, Dallas, MSU). But the criteria is wrong.; 6:37 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: I'm not sure the criteria for dominance is wrong, but I'm pretty skeptical of that criteria for "top" (Dallas? Catholic? MSU? And Catholic, btw, is notoriously not Straussian -- not all conservative theorists are Straussians).; 6:51 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: Questions about who does interesting work reveal the intellectual incoherence and anarchy of the field more readily than they offer any evidence of quality. My field of research is the history of political thought (as actually done by historians) and I don't think that anything that Straussians or pomos do has much to do with history, so I would never list any of them as doing 'interesting work'. Since I don't do much work in analytic political philosophy, I'm not competent to judge it, but it's current Rawlsian form seems to me to be an actual declension from the work done by English analytic philosophers like Weldon fifty years ago. In either case, the lack of any consensus as to what counts as political theory makes these conversations reek of special pleading (and I'm sure that I'm guilty as well).; 7:10 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: sorry about the misplaced apostrophe (it's?!!). drinking and blogging once again.; 8:25 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: I was using the listing from the Moore article for "top" programs -- all those highly ranked in the top 30 or so of the survey (except MSU).; 8:53 PM, July 27, 2009
Anonymous said...: I see. I wouldn't use the adjective "top" to describe departments hovering around 30, especially given the steep fall-off in political theory programs.

But now that I look at it, what I find far more remarkable is that schools like Baylor and Catholic received 50-odd weighted votes in this poll, which if nothing else just shows a surprising amount of support for those programs out there (and I say that as someone who know something about those programs). Likewise, I'm shocked by how much support JOP and AJPS drew among journals (given how much flack they take from theorists), and that APSR and ROP shows up here at the very top of the journal list.; 11:57 AM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: yes, welcome to the world outside your bubble.; 12:00 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: 4:51 here. Yeah, 11:57 & 5:46, that's more what I was getting at, not so much pomo or liberal. Seeing Boston College, Claremont, Baylor etc. so high on the list is odd, and seems disproportionate to their size, placement, and reputation in other rankings.; 12:04 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: It would have been interesting if they had asked with what approaches the respondents identified themselves, or at least if they correlated some of the responses about influential theorists, recommended programs, and journals, to see to what extent rankings differ according to approaches.; 12:07 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^ It would also be interesting to know whether that *changed* people's responses, i.e., whether people would be more inhibited about blatant strategic voting even on an anonymous survey.; 12:25 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: "It would also be interesting to know whether that *changed* people's responses, i.e., whether people would be more inhibited about blatant strategic voting even on an anonymous survey."

That's great point! I think the who is doing "interesting" work answer wouldn't have been so homogeneous at the top, if the question were formulated that way.; 12:35 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: Presumably it'd be possible to analyze across answers within a single survey to see what correlations there are. Do the APSR voters also tend to rank Claremont relatively high, etc.?; 12:45 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: wow. The APSR and ROP are ranked high because of a right-wing conspiracy of strategic voting?

If so, then why is Patchen Markell and the others at the top so far beyond Mansfield/Pangle?

Relax. HYP is still king, even if the data show that the masses have complex allegiances.; 2:08 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: Not to get all empirical, but it's worth keeping in mind that 27.3% if the respondents are what Moore calls "theorists by necessity"; that is, those who "teach political theory...out of departmental necessity and not due to an abiding interest in the subject matter"; those who "by necessity teach some political theory, but theory is not their primary teaching or research interest." (pp. 3-4)

I'm not sure HOW those responses would skew the overall results, but it stands to reason that they would. And some of the down-list results on the various rankings do look kind of squirrelly.; 2:21 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^^ Chill out.

It would also be interesting to know whether certain schools of PT tended to be more strategic than others, who tends to appreciate out-group research more, whether age has a moderating effect on attitudes towards out-group research, etc. etc.

I wonder if there is any existing data on the psychology of academics and their attitudes towards these kinds of things. Nozick of course famously speculated that academics tend to be left-wing out of ressentiment over not being as materially successful as the idiots they were smarter than in school but who went on to be lawyers and businessmen. [But we all know that that theory probably relies on an uncommonly high estimation of the IQ of academics in the humanities.]

But I wonder what kinds of variables you would want to control for: personal experiences of being attacked, diversity of colleagues, diversity of grad school cohort...?

Come to think of it, what kinds of non-rational factors do you think go into determining the kinds of sub-fields people are drawn to? I am thinking personality factors - those might have much more to do with whether one is drawn to Foucault/Deleuze/Zizek than analytic Marxism (to control for ideology bias here).

I think someone once speculated that great analytic philosophers tend to have a higher likelihood of Asperger's. What would great continental theorists trend towards? (Narcissistic personality disorder? Or does that only qualify you to be a GOP superstar?); 2:24 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: No one suggested a right-wing conspiracy -- calm down. Just given that APSR is roundly poo-pood in every conversation among theorists that I've ever been in (this board included), and ROP is rarely even mentioned as a leading venue (though a well respected one surely) and for a long time wasn't even particularly accessible, I found those results surprising. But there's a wide dispersion on the journal responses, and some clear tendencies about who publishes where, and so it would be interesting to learn whether a subset of respondents clumped in favor of some journals and others spread out, there was widespread appreciation for some journals or clear polarization even for those that came out as "top" in the survey, etc.

Which is to say, less normativity and wagon-circling and more sociology of knowledge.; 2:33 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: >It would also be interesting to know whether >certain schools of PT tended to be more >strategic than others, who tends to appreciate >out-group research more,

I think that the left-continentalists and the Straussians each performed so well as a bloc because they are more inclined to promote themselves as a group, and do tend to disparage practitioners of other methodological approaches in a cliquish way.

Not that there's anything wrong with this: other political theorists just shamelessly promote themselves individually and dismiss others along the same lines.; 2:43 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^ I know that we *think* that. The point was to see whether the survey (or another one) could be used to validate that stereotype-cum-hypothesis.; 2:55 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: 2:21 here. I'm still trying to get the empirics straight. I've already pointed out that more than a quarter of the respondents weren't "really" theorists, and that that probably skews the results somewhat.

It's also worth stepping back to look at the question of consensus more generally. It seems that there were about 1,000 respondents in all (though frustratingly the response rates for each question aren't reported). The top vote-getters among most influential theorists (Rawls) and presses (Cambridge) each got fewer than 300 votes -- and that's on a top-5 list, so that's out of a potential 5,000 votes. Habermas & Foucault each got fewer than 150 votes. The top journal (Political Theory) got just over 400 votes.

Now we can assume that the response rate for those questions was substantially lower than for the rest of the survey, since those questions required actual thought. But that still suggests that a substantial number of respondents didn't list Rawls, Habermas, Foucault, CUP, or PT among the top FIVE most influential in their respective categories.

Which strikes me, again, as squirrelly.

Compare that to the program rankings, where the level of consensus, especially at the top, seems to be much higher, and the rankings seem to make pretty good sense.

Can we ask Moore to provide the response rates for some of the individual questions here?; 3:13 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: ...sorry, that's ~5,000 CHANCES to get a vote, up to a maximum of ~1,000 votes each, since presumably you can't vote for the same person more than once.

You can tell I'm a theorist : ); 3:16 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: Or look at it this way: let's assume that the response rate for the rankings questions was as low as 400 (about the number of people who listed PT as a top-5 theory journal). That would mean that apart from Rawls NO-ONE was viewed by more than about a third of respondents as one of the top five most influential theorists of the last 20 years. That's an astonishingly fragmented field.; 3:30 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: ...or else of a lot of insincere, strategic and/or self-promoting voting in favor of down-list candidates...; 3:34 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: Everyone in every subfield poo-poos the APSR. It comes with the territory. Read the other blog.

But we still send our stuff there.

And HYP guy earlier claimed on other thread that the necessary condition at Yale has been 1. book at top press 2. book at big general journal (let's assume BIG 3, inlcuding APSR) and 3. top subfield journal (PT).

Maybe that's poop, but a strange version of it.; 3:35 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^ But do we send our stuff to APSR because we want to have influence on our colleagues in our corner of PT or because we want a better job, tenure, recognition by non-theorists or the stratospheric fame and glory (and babes/dudes) that comes with publishing there?; 3:44 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: Theorists generally claim they don't read, send to, or respect APSR. Other subfields generally just claim that APSR has fallen on hard times compared to the "good old days" and is now behind AJPS or IO or CP.

I have no question that the average Americanist puts APSR in their top 3 journals. I'm surprised if the average theorist does the same. Maybe I'm wrong about the average theorist. Maybe the survey respondent is not evaluating the journal quality per se but its perceived professional value. Maybe the survey just picks up a fragmented assessment in the community, and there is a substantial subgroup out there that thinks APSR is the bomb for political theory.; 3:46 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: Maybe the quarter of respondents who aren't political theorists tend to rank general-interest journals ahead of specialty journals.; 3:50 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: I am looking to do grad work in a more urban setting. There's a number of obvious ones (Harvard, U of C, Columbia, etc.). What are the best urban schools to do gradwork in theory?

Also: Does anybody have an opinion on UMaryland, specifically its Committee on Politics Philosophy and Public Policy? It seems right up my alley content-wise, but I don't know about their hiring record. Also, how do Toronto PhDs do in the American job market? McGill?; 4:47 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^ Here is the received answer to this stock question based on the board's collective wisdom:

Apply everywhere, go to the best place you get in, apply personal considerations to your decision only between the top 1-5.; 5:07 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: Speaking only for myself, I've submitted material to general-interest poli-sci journals ONLY because it pleases my non-theorist colleagues (especially Americanists), who put a lot of stock in publishing in these places. Post-tenure, I may never submit there again, as those who read my work (mostly analytics in philosophy departments) not only don't read these journals but often don't even know they exist! I either rarely read them (APSR) or never read them (AJPS, JoP). However, I recognize that for HPT types (especially Straussians) they are important outlets.; 5:10 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: There's enough variation in focus/specialities in the top 1-5 (1-7 or whatever), that I'd take that very seriously into account as well. It'd be nuts to go to a school b/c it was both highly ranked and urban, but it turned out to be a really bad match between your interests and those of the faculty/other students. Likewise, in my opinion, it'd be nuts to pass over a high-quality program that matches your research interests b/c of personal preferences for an urban setting (not like we're talking about Moo U. here), but I've come to recognize that some people have really intense preferences about this -- professional and intellectual consequences be damned.; 5:37 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: How does language proficiency figure into graduate school admission? Imagine the following prospective grad. student: very strong undergrad. record, writing sample, and recommendations; good if not off-the-charts GRE scores; proficient Spanish-speaker and -writer, and beginning student of Ancient Greek. Would a program look askance at such a student if he were to express interest in writing a dissertation on Plato? Is it reasonable to apply with a promise to study Ancient Greek in the interim, and to continue (more advanced) study at the University, if admitted to the program?; 6:22 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^ I don't think so. Even Classics programs assume that they have to train their students to bring them up to speed.; 6:39 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: To the die-hard urbanite: if you are so committed to urban living that you can't even consider a few years outside it for the sake of your career, you might want to consider a different profession (or subfield, at least). Given the tightness of the theory market, strong locational preferences will (in almost all cases) kill your chances of getting a job--or at least getting a job above the community college level. Unless, of course, you're the next Roxanne Euben, Patchen Markel, etc., but the chances of that are MIGHTY slim.....; 6:55 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: This post has been removed by a blog administrator.; 6:57 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: 6:55 PM is mostly right about locational and urban/non-urban preferences (and how you're unlikely to be able to have them in the long run in this line of work) but it actually shouldn't be that hard to end up in a city for grad school. More top programs are in cities than not.

Here's a very rough break-down of the urbanness of highly ranked programs, broadly, tier 1 and 2, top 20 or so:
in or next to very large urban areas - Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Texas, UCLA, Stanford (or medium?), UC San Diego (?).
in medium sized cities - Yale, Michigan, Minnesota, Duke, Brown.
in small cities or small towns - Princeton, Notre Dame, Virginia, Cornell.
Did I leave anything obvious out?

The Canadian schools you mention both have great people, but I'm not sure how easy it is to crack the US market with a Canadian PhD - Toronto may be better in that regard than McGill.; 8:02 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: On language training, it doesn't help you out that you are starting from scratch in the primary thing you want to learn. It is widely expected that you will train for language in grad school, but in the best case you are building on an established base or adding peripheral languages (Classical Greek, to go with the existing Latin). But these are common languages that people pick up, and starting from a low base won't preclude your admission. Working actively to remedy the deficiency is a definite plus from an admissions perspective.; 8:13 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: to 6:22

Your preparedness in a language will not matter one way or another. What will matter is your stated preference for studying ancient Greek thought. If the committee has someone who dislikes the prof who teaches the Greeks, that would hurt you. But in my experience, what really matters are the grades, gre's, letters, and personal statement, in that order.; 9:00 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: re 3:46
I think the APSR is still the bomb,, if you want to make a big splash or big stink about something. I think the AJPS is in the same league, albeit in second place.; 9:03 PM, July 28, 2009
Anonymous said...: APSR: Sure.

AJPS: Surprised that any theorist would say this, I check the #s. According to the latest editor's report, of 674 submissions in the last year all of 28 were classified as normative theory. 3 of those got R&Rs. Likewise, the year before 36 of 697 submissions were classified as normative theory and 3 were ultimately accepted.

I think that it's fair to say that the AJPS has no interest in theory and theorists have no interest in the AJPS. Frankly, I think it would be better for all of us if this weren't the case, but I am not going to be the one to start sending my work somewhere nobody will see it just to try to change a settled norm.

Data available at http://www.ajps.org/editor-reports.htm; 9:19 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: The 20 highest journals certainly made fascinating reading. Some new ones did much better than I would have expected. I wasn't particularly surprised by the top 5, though might have shuffled a couple around a bit.; 9:27 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: Actually, the one thing that surprised me was that Polity ranked higher than JPP and pushed it out of the top 5, but it only did so by one vote as 4 votes seem to have been misspelled.; 9:44 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: Polity above Philosophy & Public Affairs or Ethics is absurd.; 9:47 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^ True dat

And what the hell is "Interpretations"?; 10:12 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: What the hell is Constellations? Is it the jorunal that published the UFO article? Or was that another leading journal?; 10:29 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: Well, in fairness, the question didn't ask what journals people thought published the *best* work. Instead, it just asked what journals people pay attention to. People pay attention to journals that publish work in their area.

So, you might well agree that the work published in Ethics is of much higher quality than the work published in Polity, but still respond Polity rather than Ethics. This doesn't mean that Polity is better. It just means that Polity publishes the kind(s) of work that appeal to a broader segment of the subfield, which seems probably true. We shouldn't make the mistake of substituting breadth of coverage for a measure of quality (which the survey doesn't ask about), though.; 10:39 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^True. The philosophy journals didn't do as well as they probably should have in terms of their quality (apart from JPP), but all that shows is that political theory cannot be reduced to political/moral philosophy.; 10:46 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: I agree with the last comment. JPP etc might be more prestigious, but as someone who is not particularly interested in analytical work, I am more likely to come across articles in Polity. I can appreciate the work in JPP, but that doesn't mean that I read it.; 10:54 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: I'm the surly 10.29 poster.

These last three comments seem fair to me.; 11:02 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: "The 20 highest journals certainly made fascinating reading. "

Where is this reading?; 11:08 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: Scroll up to the link to the PDF of the Matthew Moore APSA paper; 11:53 AM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: Reposting a link to the Moore paper.; 12:04 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: 9:19. Those are amazing stats. But I don't think it's fair to say that no one reads the theory articles that make it into AJPS. Even my non-theory colleagues look at them.; 12:57 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: ^Is that "even" or "only" :); 1:16 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: I'd say only. I published a theory piece in AJPS within the last decade. It's never been cited. Everything else I've published, including a couple articles in pretty obscure journals, has been cited multiple times.

Maybe the AJPS piece just wasn't very good. But I think it just wasn't getting read by the proper audience. But it got me my job, so I'm not complaining!; 1:19 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: the "die-hard urbanite" here.

Point well taken regarding the lack of option in location once I enter the job market. I should have clarified that this comes not only from wanting to avoid living in the middle of nowhere, but also because I want to pursue comparative/urban politics in conjunction with theory. I am trying to transfer out of a small, non-noteworthy program (which is in a city) and so anything approaching a good program will be a step up for me. I don't know if that changes things.

For fear of it getting buried I'll repeat my Q about UMD: does anybody have any opinion about their program (aside from it not being "top-tier") or the CP4 specialization?

Also, perhaps discussion about journals is best placed on another thread?; 1:25 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: If you have a research interest in comparative/urban as well as theory, then that has nothing to do with where the university is located and everything to do with the faculty at the university (and for those interests, I'd think about cognate disciplines like sociology as well as who is available in political science).

My sense is the Maryland theory program is going through a bit of a transition and fairly marginal to the department at the moment, but I could be wrong.; 1:32 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: to 1:19, you might be correct but I am well aware of half a dozen of the articles that AJPS has published over the last 10 years. A few of them have turned up as chapters in books from major presses. But personally, I hardly ever search the individual journals anymore but search instead by topics, keywords, etc. I will have to make more of an effort to read more widely and to just browse through the journals again.; 2:40 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: I don't see how being in an urban area would help you develop a research agenda in comparative politics. To do that, you would have to live in two locations at the same time, and I am not aware of any programs that do that. :); 2:54 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: Maryland is not in great shape. Butterworth retired. Alford and Glass are not far behind. That said: it all depends on what the other possibilities are.

WashU is in Saint Louis and I think Hayward has done work related to urban politics.; 3:27 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: I would say Maryland might be an interesting choice if you're interests are a sort of theory/law hybrid that would fit with Graber. Otherwise, probably not a great choice.

Interpretations is a Straussian journal. (Fun fact: No non-Straussian has ever made it past five pages of any article published in this journal.); 4:15 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: Even that is pushing it since Graber has moved to the law school in Baltimore. Not clear how long he will retain ties to the Government department in College Park.; 4:20 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: I liked the UFO piece in Political Theory. Not that I agreed with it. Still, clever and fun, which is not something you can say about lots of pieces.

I don't think i've ever seen a copy of Interpretations. Maybe i'll check it out to test your fun fact. I imagine you are right, though.; 6:48 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: It's called "Interpretation," and it's their loss, mis amigos.; 7:01 PM, July 29, 2009
Anonymous said...: I'd like to add a different perspective to the discussion above about the perennial "top-tier-school-or-bust" approach to grad school applications.

The "top-tier-or-bust" approach ONLY makes sense IF you are dead-set on getting a job teaching political theory at a 4-yr college or university. I know a number of people with PhDs in political theory (or related fields) who do other things and are very happy. One set of these people teach at community colleges or private high schools. These are competitive jobs for which a PhD is often necessary, but if you aim for a job in these categories you don't need a top-5 or even top-10 degree. Another set of political theory PhD-holders I know have jobs for which a PhD may or may not be a help but certainly isn't a hindrance. They include policy researchers for nonprofits or gov't agencies, trade union staffers, and community organizers.

One of the biggest advantages any these people have over people on the conventional academic job track, by the way, is that they have MUCH greater ability to choose where they live.

The important thing is that if you're not heading for the high-end or even medium-end academic job market you might still want to get a PhD, and it will matter much less which PhD program you go to. Pick a program in a place you'd genuinely enjoy living for the next 6-8 years and where you can study things you like and not go too far into debt, don't assume you'll get a conventional academic job, and things can work out just fine for you.

Of course, if you do really really want that R1 or LAC job, then yes -- it is top-tier-or-bust.; 1:04 PM, July 30, 2009
Anonymous said...: 7:01pm, can we look for a straussian reading of "skippyjon jones" from you in the near future?; 2:04 PM, July 30, 2009
Anonymous said...: Hey, way to post a comment that only the parents of young kids will understand!; 2:13 PM, July 30, 2009
Anonymous said...: i ... fear ... not ... a ... single ... job-ito!; 3:41 PM, July 30, 2009
Anonymous said...: (clap-clap); 5:16 PM, July 30, 2009
Anonymous said...: and do my best reading with my third ear-ito; 10:26 AM, July 31, 2009
Anonymous said...: Why does the CUNY Grad Center not feature more in our periodic discussions on grad programs? They have a huge faculty, including 10 senior theorists of high reputation.; 11:55 AM, July 31, 2009
Anonymous said...: Good points, but they don't rhyme with Finceton, Marvard, or Flicago.; 12:23 PM, July 31, 2009
Anonymous said...: Or Bale. Or Bezerkely.

But is that really the only reason? I mean we still talk about Notre Dame, BC, Duke, Hopkins, Minnesota, New School, etc etc. On the Moore survey CUNY GC was way down with only 14 votes below Baylor, Dallas, Mich State and ... Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical Sciences.

This is a dept that has Tronto, Corey Robin, Richard Wolin, and many other well-published scholars.

Any thoughts out there?; 12:54 PM, July 31, 2009
Anonymous said...: Fractured campus, historically bad funding, historically little commitment to graduate training, no record of academic placement to speak of, several of those faculty are relatively new so perhaps things will change but I wouldn't hold my breath.; 1:07 PM, July 31, 2009
Anonymous said...: and Tronto is leaving...; 1:14 PM, July 31, 2009
Anonymous said...: Also, it has "City" in the name of the institution. Universities that have "State" in the title are second class, so a city university must be below that. I imagine going to classes in the dusty basement of some government building.; 1:34 PM, July 31, 2009
Anonymous said...: Thanks 1:07.

Interesting that they are doing a senior search (open to the possibility of Distinguished Prof) this year while dependent on a municipal budget.; 1:43 PM, July 31, 2009

Political theory and public law job market

7/05/2009

2009-10 Prospective Graduate Students Post #1

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