Will Demographics Result in a Job Crunch in the Near Future?

A philosopher on the earlier thread about admissions posted a comment raising issues that deserve separate attention.  She writes:

I don't want to start a wave of paranoia, but I think it might be worth it for the profession to start some long term planning in grad admissions. It is my understanding that in about a decade (ie not long after the incoming grad class finishes their dissertations), the college age population is going to drop somewhat dramatically. The statistic I have heard floated is that this year's kindergarten class is the smallest since WWII. With about half as many students as are currently enrolled in college to teach, I suspect that universities will be cutting the number of faculty. What this likely means is no retirement replacements. Rather than create another situation like that of the late 80s and early 90s, the profession might well want to begin thinking now about how to handle these demographic changes. Grad admissions might be a clear area to strategize around. Another area might be the inclusion of philosophy into HS curricula (so there is a non-university arena for job-seekers). And while I never thought about these issues as a grad student (I didn't even know they existed), it might well be some handy information for grad students to have as they think about getting through their programs in a timely manner.

My impression of the demographics (at least for the US) is similar to this philosopher's.  References to data or trends, analyses of the implications of demographic shifts, and what the profession should be doing about all this are welcome in the comments.  Usual commenting rules apply:  post only once, non-anonymous preferred, etc.

Comments

[Stewart]

While I think it is incumbent upon the profession to make available all the pertinent information about job prospects for philosophy graduates of whatever degree level, attempting to regulate overall graduate admissions to lower job competition seems both futile and wrong. It seems unlikely to work because of the tragedy of the commons, and it seems wrong because it is preventing people who are presumably skilled reasoners from making rational decisions about their own futures.

If someone, after reviewing their chances of employment on graduation and assessing their relative ranking within their academic cohort, decides to pursue a doctorate (masters, bachelors) in philosophy, why should the profession as a whole paternalistically prevent this? Individual departments should control their graduate admissions to match their needs and resources, but I cannot see why getting a Ph.D. should ensure getting an academic job. It is a minimum criterion. Doing an M.F.A. in creative writing does not guarantee publication. There are lots of people with advanced degrees doing things unrelated to their doctoral work, some happily, some regretfully. Unnecessarily reducing people's choices to (perhaps) avoid their future regrets seems deplorable to me.

[Tucker]

Predicting the future is tricky business. Even if overall university enrollment goes down, not all departments may be effected equally. I would like to remind people of the article linked below that I found here on the Leiter report last month. Who knows how the numbers will work out in ten or fifteen years?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/education/06philosophy.html

[Dru]

As a recent philosophy graduate, looking at running directly into this problem, I agree with Stuart. Wouldn't limiting admissions to prevent inflated job competition simply inflate admission competition even more?

[David Goldman]

One of my favorite party games is to look up actual data in the Statistical Abstract of the US when this sort of argument gets going. Hardly anyone invites me to parties any more. (Warning--some _very_ amateur statistics lie ahead...all this should be taken with a large grain of salt; I only post this as an interesting exercise; for God's sake, nobody should make any policy decisions on these grounds, etc., etc.)

Looking at the data and projections offered in these two tables:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/08s0007.pdf
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/08s0010.pdf
--makes me a little skeptical that the upcoming demographic crash will be as bad as it sounds. The share of the population that is 18-24 is projected to drop slightly by 2020:
2006- 9.8 %
2010- 9.9 %
2015- 9.3 %
2020- 8.7 %

From 1980 to 1995, there was a much more drastic drop:
1980- 13.3 %
1990- 19.8 %
1995- 9.6 %

Of course, these numbers don't mean a whole lot on their own. The 18-24 year olds in 2020 may well include many fewer college enrollees than in the past, for instance. (E.g., there might be many more immigrants or children of immigrants then; and children of immigrants might--maybe! I'm pretty uncomfortable with this assumption--be less likely to attend college.) U.S. resident population numbers also leave out international students.

The statistical abstract doesn't include similar projections for higher education enrollment (although there are some interesting numbers in the "education" section--I recommend having a look, if like me you enjoy taking a break from a priori reasoning now and then). (And of course even that wouldn't say much about how many of those enrolled students will wind up in philosophy classrooms...)

[David Goldman]

Correction (I'm no mathematician or statistician, obviously): the 1990 number should be 10.8 %, not 19.8 %.

[Tom Hurka]

Shouldn't one also look at the number of philosophers who'll be retiring at the relevant time? The people who'll be reaching normal retirement age (65) in a decade will have been born around 1953 and have gone on the market in the early 1980s. (This is my generation, "talkin' about my generation.") And while this is pretty seat-of-the-pants, my memory is that the early 1980s was a time of not many jobs, because the big university expansion of the 1960s and early 1970s was over and there were few positions remaining to be filled. If so, that will make things doubly bad for those finishing grad school in a decade: not only fewer students needing teaching, but also fewer faculty retiring and needing replacement. Sorry to contribute to any paranoia ...

[Fritz Allhoff]

I like Stewart's position, which is one that I've typically had: why keep people who want to be philosophers from trying? I just thought of maybe an answer, though, and wonder what people think. Let's just stipulate that, if we don't cut down on the number of philosophers that we produce, the competition for the jobs will get harder (per the post that Brian considered). It seems that one consequence of this, though, is that fewer people will ultimately pursue philosophy, including talented people. So, while not cutting down now, we let in, ex hypothesi, lesser talented people that, stiplatively, will keep more talented people out of the profession later. Therefore, it's not pateralism but prudence that we cut back as we're otherwise bringing on board bad and unemployable philosophers (now) instead of good philosophers (later). Sounds like a bad trade, right?

[Charles]

I agree with Stewart (and several later posters) that there needn't be anything terrible about overproducing PhDs, but I disagree that resisting paternalism is the reason why. Like it or not, philosophy departments determine how many students can go to grad school in philosophy. Regardless of whether philosophy departments increase, decrease, or leave constant the number of PhDs granted, philosophy departments are necessarily going to have power over these potential students and how their lives shape up. If departments try to act for the benefit of those students, so much the better.

However, I still think it's perfectly alright for departments to overproduce PhDs. What, after all, is so terrible about being funded to study philosophy for 5 or 6 before moving off to do other things in the world? Are we really of the opinion that studying philosophy for 6 years is so unhealthy that it makes a person unfit for any line of work but academia? Mightn't this study actually benefit people throughout their lives?

To my mind, what philosophy departments ought to be doing isn't cutting down on grad students, but discouraging a mind-frame that suggests tenure alone is what lies at the center of a good and valuable life. It's absurd to think a non-academic job is failure, PHD or no.

[Avram]

Two points: 1. We need to balance the statistics of the decreasing college-age population by factoring in the (presumably increasing) proportion of the college-age population attending college. 2. The reason why we feel bad about creating a situation that leaves many qualified people under- or unemployed after getting their PhD's is that it is painful to think about all the stress of going through the many years of graduate school and then not being able to get a permanent job in the field afterward. One way to make this situation a bit less bad is to find a way to shorten the PhD process, either by adopting a system like that in the UK or (my own preference) by suggesting that PhD programs change the standard dissertation requirement to a 3-paper requirement like a couple programs now allow. This is an issue for another day, but it seems to me that even for those who do get jobs, the time graduate students spend writing an often useless tome would be better spent being trained to write highly polished papers, which is what most people do as young professionals anyway.

[Matt Shockey]

I would have thought we were already in a "job crunch." In a couple of recent years on the market, I learned that fairly narrowly described jobs I applied to had dozens of applicants, sometimes 100, and open positions at good programs or universities as many as 500+. Seems to me we're already overproducing. One obvious downside to this is it makes use of adjunct and temporary faculty much easier -- there's lots of qualified folks desperate to stay in the game in hopes of landing the coveted tenure-track position. I'd hate to see that situation worsen.

[Bryan]

I agree with Charles...There are other things philosophy Ph.D's can do with their lives other than the coveted TT position (teach high school, publishing, civil service, etc.)...instead of worrying about controlling the supply of philosophers, departments (and for that matter, the profession as a whole) should help their grad students realize there is more that they can do with their lives than just become a TT assistant professor at Northwest State Univ X.
It seems that, for a variety of reasons (the possible crash in the college age population being only one, the drain of funds away from the humanities and towards the sciences another) the future of philosophy as a profession within the academy is, at this time, in some doubt...if its true that, in the future, a number of philosophers (that is, people with Ph.D level training in the discipline) will work outside the academy, perhaps one thing that the profession should do is work on removing those barriers that make it nearly impossible for anybody without a university position to participate - through journal publication, conference presentation,etc. - in the discipline. The idea of teaching high school after grad school, I think, feels a lot less like a consolation prize if one could still be a philosopher (present at conferences, go to the APA and not be shunned because there's no college listed on one's name tag, and such) while teaching high school. After all, during some of the greatest periods in the history of philosophy (e.g. the 17th century) many of the most significant contributions were made by people without university positions (e.g. Descartes)...perhaps we, as a profession, should welcome amatuerism, given that it becomes more and more likely that philosophy Ph.D's may have to find ways of feeding themselves outside of the academy in the future.

[Matt Weiner]

There are two lines of argument that philosophers shouldn't try to restrict the number of PhDs even if we expect the number of jobs to decrease. (I'm completely agnostic as to whether this is going to happen; I'm just concerned about whether we have any obligations as a profession if we do expect there to be a job crunch.)

One (suggested by Stewart and Fritz Allhoff) is that this would be paternalistic; if someone wants the chance to attain a doctorate and try to find a job, we should allow them to, even if we think that their chances of getting a job are slim. They have the right to make their own decision that the chance of getting a tenure-track job is worth the risk that they won't get one.

The second (suggested by Charles and Bryan) is that there is little harm in getting a PhD and being unable to find a tenure-track job. Philosophy PhDs can get other jobs outside higher education, and it is OK to be funded for 5 or 6 years to study philosophy before doing something else with your life.

Both of these, at the very minimum, require that we inform incoming graduate students exactly what prospects they face. If they are not aware how unlikely it is that they will get a T-T job, then they won't be making an informed choice to pursue a doctorate. And if we're admitting people to PhD programs with the expectation that many or most will be pursuing employment outside of higher education, then we're certainly responsible for telling them of our expectations, and giving them a realistic look at their extra-academic job prospects. (For instance, how many philosophy PhDs can really move straight to teaching high school? There aren't that many high schools that have dedicated philosophy teachers, are there?)

If we admit more students than we expect to find employment without making an effort to tell them that that's what we're doing, then we're deceiving them. This is as paternalistic as not admitting them.

Even if we made an effort to warn students off, I think that it would still make sense to reduce admissions if we think there is going to be a job crunch. (Or, in light of what Matt Shockey said, a worsening job crunch.) For one thing, if you tell students that only half of them will get tenure-track jobs, they will almost all assume that they're part of that fortunate half. Beginning PhD students have been the smartest ones in the class until now, and it's natural for them to assume that it will continue -- but it can't, for all of them. Also, students considering graduate school probably don't have a clear conception of what the job market is like, what it is to have a visiting job, etc. (To my shame, even when I was in graduate school I thought visiting assistant professors were visiting from somewhere else.) So I don't think incoming graduate students will be making a fully informed choice even if we give them some kind of pro forma warning. Consider the original philosopher's statement that as a grad student she didn't even know that these issues existed. I don't think there's anything paternalistic about trying to reduce PhD admissions to increase the chance that people who are admitted will get jobs.

On the subject of how bad it is to complete your PhD and then do something else; most people who want academic jobs probably don't just do 5-6 years and then leave. They will probably do at least a year or two of visiting or adjunct jobs while trying to get a tenure-track position. After six years in graduate school and two years in temporary positions, even someone who went straight from undergrad to graduate school will be thirty; they will not have made much money, if they have a family their family life may have been disrupted after moving twice in two years, and they may have to start a new career at the entry level. This is a pretty daunting prospect. We should certainly try to make things easier for PhDs leaving academia, but we shouldn't be Pollyannaish about what it's like not to get a job in your field.

Another point is that overproducing PhDs can hurt us all; as Matt Shockey said, it makes it easier for universities to hire temporary and adjunct faculty (and it may make it easier for them to underpay the tenure-track faculty they do have).

Again, I'm completely agnostic about whether we are facing a worsening job crunch. But if we are, I think that the original comment is right; at the very least we should be giving graduate students this information, and we should at least consider the effects this should have on grad admission and on making it easier for philosophers to find good jobs outside the academy.

[Bryan]

I agree with Matt Weiner, in part. I think that information about the dismal job prospects for phil Ph.D's should definitely be given to all prospective grad students, either by their undergrad institutes or the departments that admit them. This, for the reasons Matt lists, is unlikely to deter them. However, after a year or two in the department, watching older students prepare for the market, and observing the travails of alumni from their department, the information will, for some at least, hit home. Given this, the better thing would be perhaps not to limit the number of applicants up front, but make it clear to students in their first year or two what they are facing in the future, and that if they want to take a terminal MA and go to law school, then that's okay.
This is anecdotal, but it seems that many who finish and look for jobs, or who won't give up on the job search after years on the market (and fall into that category of those who hurt themselves and their families), do so because they can't imagine doing anything else. If it was part of one's grad education that one learns that one can do something else, perhaps there will be less desperate job seekers on the market in the future. And the problem, after all, is not that there's too many graduate students, but that there's too many Ph.D's crowding the market. A more straightforward approach to the market by students, a willingness to consider other lines of work, and a more honest approach by depts, should help with this.
On the other hand, Matt is right that it is hard to go from the academy straight to other professions. Someone with no certificate and no degree in anything other than phil will probably have a difficult time finding a job in high school, for instance. But there are ways to fix these deficiencies in grad school (by taking courses in the ed school, for instance). The problem is that grad students don't do things to prepare to potentially do something other than teach college, and that they are not made aware of such things (and - again this is anecdotal - potentially discouraged from doing so) by their depts. Making preparation for a potential career both inside and outside the academy part of grad education could help with this.
But that having been said, I think Matt is right that doing something outside philosophy is a poor consolation prize for 5 or 6 (or 8 or 10) years in grad school. We shouldn't be cavalier about it at all.

[Cormac Smith]

I'd like to offer the perspective on one of the people the "paternalistic" posters are trying to protect. I am currently developing my application materials for the fall and plan to begin a program in Fall '09. I've read the PJMB. I know the job market is rough now. The fact that we, according to David Goldman's rough stats, may be losing 12% of our student base does not sway my convictions at all. The advice I've heard from multiple sources is, "Start a PhD in Philosophy, ONLY if you cannot imagine doing anything else." I am called to Philosophy. It is an irresistible call. I'd make the strongest application to grad school I could, even if my job prospects in academia were 1 in 1000 afterwards. I do think I'm especially good at academics. I do expect to apply with good chances to the top programs that suit my interests. I do expect to be among the brighter students in my program. I do expect to be well positioned for a position in academia when I complete my PhD. I am, in fact, an arrogant fool about many things. I'm guessing that most of the significant philosophers in history suffered from similar attitudes. Recognizing all that, I still think I should be afforded the opportunity to study philosophy at an advanced level. After hearing all the warnings based on today's job market, I'd be not just a fool but an idiot to think a PhD in philosophy was a good road to a cushy job with tenure. Now, I will argue that I SHOULD be able to participate in the philosophical community, even if I am not working in post-secondary education. I should not be discriminated against by journals and conferences based on who signs my paycheck. Even with all that, I am answering a call to philosophy much like both my parents answered calls to ordained ministry. Do you think they would stop admitting students to seminary just because they thought they had enough priests?

[Lisa]

As the original poster, let me clarify. One point I wanted to suggest was the one Matt makes above. But there is another issue the demographic predictions raise, one that affects us those of us who teach at institutions with grad programs. Most grad programs admit just the number of grad students they can offer funding to. In most cases -- as least at public institutions -- that funding is through TAships. The number of TAships there are is a function of how many undergraduates can be expected to enrol in entry level philosophy classes. If projections are correct and enrolments as a whole go down, we might well expect philosophy class enrolments to go down too. That translates to less TAships, and less funding for grad students. So, that means that many graduate programs are going to come under severe pressure -- unless, of course, prospective grad students want to support themselves through their graduate programs. My remarks are principally directed towards those in Philosophy that have some insight into the administrative workings of higher ed.