If you are a graduate student and you are not in a top 25 PhD program (and even if you are but not in the top tier of your program), you should immediately quit or go on strike. Sociology is increasingly a pyramid scheme and COVID 19 will accelerate this process. Moreover, the field is incredibly status sensitive, based on a very small network of scholars in elite programs whose reputations rely on exchanging their students in premier programs and the placement of their lesser students in lower ranked PhD granting programs. No matter your training or specialization, the pyramid scheme requires that you believe you can get a job in Academia or in a research centric institutions, but the reality is that you will rarely have access to jobs in other PhD granting institutions and increasingly, in smaller liberal arts colleges and universities. You are not allowed to talk about this reality, because the top programs need to sustain the size of their graduate programs, and lower tier Phd programs for them to place. It is unsustainable in the long-run, but borderline illegal and clearly exploitive in the short-run.
Not in a top 25 program, this is pyramid scheme
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OP is mostly right, but misses the crucial fact that grad students in Top 25 programs mostly can't get jobs either. Someone studying crim, health, or race at a Top 50 program probably has the same shot of getting a decent TT job as a Top 20 person studying something like gender or stratification. Not good, but just likely enough to be able to point to the successes.
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You are right, I did mention it, but I think this is the sign the pyramid is starting to crumble. So, probably should be emphasized more.
OP is mostly right, but misses the crucial fact that grad students in Top 25 programs mostly can't get jobs either. Someone studying crim, health, or race at a Top 50 program probably has the same shot of getting a decent TT job as a Top 20 person studying something like gender or stratification. Not good, but just likely enough to be able to point to the successes.
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The fact is that a lot of OP's advice applies to most professional fields (e.g. law, medicine, etc.)
Yet, I wouldn't follow this advice.
If you want to be a professor and are fortunate enough to get into a PhD program then stay and try to be a professor (as long as your program doesn't saddle a lot of its graduates with debt. I'm looking at you New School).
Just have a clear understanding that each job requires a certain number and certain types of journal articles.
You can go from a PhD from Podunk University to AP at Harvard. But, it'll probably take multiple ASRs/AJSs. And, getting those pubs and making that jump is unlikely.
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In my field, a professor outside top 50 writes better articles than my sub-area’s highest ranked program. Sometimes when I talk to another professor at that top 20 department, I am secretly surprised to see how his thinking still draws on theories of the 80s. Sure do it but there are many new ppl saying more interesting stuff. And that prof has postdoc money and shapes the conversations in the subfield by even designing panels. Doesn’t he know that the first name outside a top 50 program has great ideas? He does. But ranking allows him and ppl like him to tell their ideas as if noone could think of these
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If you are a graduate student and you are not in a top 25 PhD program (and even if you are but not in the top tier of your program), you should immediately quit or go on strike. Sociology is increasingly a pyramid scheme and COVID 19 will accelerate this process. Moreover, the field is incredibly status sensitive, based on a very small network of scholars in elite programs whose reputations rely on exchanging their students in premier programs and the placement of their lesser students in lower ranked PhD granting programs. No matter your training or specialization, the pyramid scheme requires that you believe you can get a job in Academia or in a research centric institutions, but the reality is that you will rarely have access to jobs in other PhD granting institutions and increasingly, in smaller liberal arts colleges and universities. You are not allowed to talk about this reality, because the top programs need to sustain the size of their graduate programs, and lower tier Phd programs for them to place. It is unsustainable in the long-run, but borderline illegal and clearly exploitive in the short-run.
Not allowed to talk about it? We talk about it all the time, and warn our students about it. And nearly all LRM students who finish their degrees get decent white collar jobs. They do fine. There is nothing remotely il/legal about giving them the option to do the degree they want. You're nut/z, OP.
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\I went to a program ranked like 90-100. Graduated in the last five years. I�m now a prof at an R-1 (no PHD program in soc) in a major US making an upper middle class income in an area where my wife had zero issue finding work. I couldn�t be happier.
Congratulations, sounds like you won the jackpot!