This morning I caught a tweet that struck me as just as curious as the responses from some on Twitter.
First off, the tweet:
A professor who received his PhD from Harvard was asked to give some advice to potential grad school applicants today: [paraphrased] “Um, the job market was good back then and it was super easy. I have no real insight into the current process. I’m sorry.”
— Shane Wagoner (@shanewag1) February 2, 2019
It’s curious to me because, unless the person in question earned their Ph.D. in the early 1960s, the job market in the Humanities has not been good for decades, though sure, due to even more declines in public support it continues to degrade in ways that make the market 30 years ago look “good” when compared to today. But, speaking from my own experience, it was not “super easy” to get a job when I first stepped onto the market (early 1990s) — either for myself or most of my peers at the time.
So, lesson #1 is easy to draw: beware how you generalize from your own experience. Continue reading