Professors at the top programs are often overwhelmed with grad student advising and don't keep up with the literature in their subfields, ending up relying disproportionately on what they read in grad school.
Many do not care about grad students and focus on their research.
Largely agree with OP. Except there's nothing illegal about it. Immoral for sure, but not illegal.
I stopped advising anyone to go into sociology years ago. I've even had some tension within my department because I will no longer even recommend undergrads major in sociology. It's a bad decision, but they want us to push it as a major for obvious reasons.
Largely agree with OP. Except there's nothing illegal about it. Immoral for sure, but not illegal.
I stopped advising anyone to go into sociology years ago. I've even had some tension within my department because I will no longer even recommend undergrads major in sociology. It's a bad decision, but they want us to push it as a major for obvious reasons.
our undergrads seem to do okay, at least the top quartile or so.
grad school may not quite be a pyramid scheme, but the reality is that it's a very dated model that only works if the number of TT jobs is roughly equivalent to the number of candidates so that the market will clear.
In some sense, the low status programs are indirectly subsidizing the high status programs with the way that they status chase when hiring. Central Michigan hires the Brown grad, etc.
academic sociology is something akin to a quasi-caste system, with little to no upward mobility.
I'm surprised to see people saying we have useless undergrad majors. Many of our undergrads do quite well. At my university, you apply to majors, and some of the other social sciences have a strategy of only letting in the best students. We let in almost anyone and train them. Our students have high variance. But a lot of them (including a lot of the ones rejected by other majors) are very smart, and we give them decent training in interpreting statistics, understanding organizations, and other useful stuff.
^sure, you give them decent training. our department does as well. fact is though, in terms of marketability and jobs, they would be better off to do something else with their time/tuition money. the exact same student with otherwise same credentials is going to have a much better go of job markets when their major is something directly and obviously related to the jobs for which they are applying and/or if it their transcripts say something like "statistics major with some soc and stuff on the side" instead of "soc major with some stats and stuff on the side".
i don't advise undergrads, and definitely not anyone looking to do grad school, to go into soc. i love it, but there are better choices for sure.
^sure, you give them decent training. our department does as well. fact is though, in terms of marketability and jobs, they would be better off to do something else with their time/tuition money. the exact same student with otherwise same credentials is going to have a much better go of job markets when their major is something directly and obviously related to the jobs for which they are applying and/or if it their transcripts say something like "statistics major with some soc and stuff on the side" instead of "soc major with some stats and stuff on the side".
i don't advise undergrads, and definitely not anyone looking to do grad school, to go into soc. i love it, but there are better choices for sure.
Sure, it's likely true that our undergrads could chose a "better" major. Engineering fields, finance and accounting, etc. But, with some exceptions, I doubt that many of them were considering those areas to begin with.
Look, ask yourself, if Graduate Students counted as actual employees and/or sociology was not protected within a credentialed degree system, would sociology be liable for offering a speciality with little to no skill attached to it. How far is our degree at the UG and GS level from Trump University? Beyond the context, I mean in practice and what the average student learns. I know we are encouraged toward a sort of nihilist view of the social world, sociology interprets everything as a contradiction outside sociology, but when you start to apply the logic of other professions, disciplinary specialties, workplaces, organizations to sociology (and some other academic programs) you see a crumbling system that relies on false promises, under skilled instructors (cheap labor), in sociology, highly dubious analytic skills (e.g, second sight, the idea that a critical perspective is equivalent to expertise). The question we should be asking is: does the broader society value the skills being offered, is our knowledge credible, does the morality/justice/critical model work in the context of rapid tuition inflation and bloated budgets in higher education? Sociology has, through a kind of critical nihilism, denied that these constraints are real, the problem is, socially constructed rules that govern the world does not deny their consequences or the constraints they create for social practices. For every other organization, we accept adaptation to the environment, in sociology adaptation is capitulation (ideologically). I think much of the professional ideology of sociology, is however, advantageous to a small number of elite professors in elite universities. If you treat the practice like an art form, and build up the dream of making, you can reify and even expand your status in an ever shrinking world. Unfortunately, there are practical constraints related to labor supply and demand, that make this strategy very high risk for everyone who is not in the small network of elites.
Look, ask yourself, if Graduate Students counted as actual employees and/or sociology was not protected within a credentialed degree system, would sociology be liable for offering a speciality with little to no skill attached to it. How far is our degree at the UG and GS level from Trump University? Beyond the context, I mean in practice and what the average student learns. I know we are encouraged toward a sort of nihilist view of the social world, sociology interprets everything as a contradiction outside sociology, but when you start to apply the logic of other professions, disciplinary specialties, workplaces, organizations to sociology (and some other academic programs) you see a crumbling system that relies on false promises, under skilled instructors (cheap labor), in sociology, highly dubious analytic skills (e.g, second sight, the idea that a critical perspective is equivalent to expertise). The question we should be asking is: does the broader society value the skills being offered, is our knowledge credible, does the morality/justice/critical model work in the context of rapid tuition inflation and bloated budgets in higher education? Sociology has, through a kind of critical nihilism, denied that these constraints are real, the problem is, socially constructed rules that govern the world does not deny their consequences or the constraints they create for social practices. For every other organization, we accept adaptation to the environment, in sociology adaptation is capitulation (ideologically). I think much of the professional ideology of sociology, is however, advantageous to a small number of elite professors in elite universities. If you treat the practice like an art form, and build up the dream of making, you can reify and even expand your status in an ever shrinking world. Unfortunately, there are practical constraints related to labor supply and demand, that make this strategy very high risk for everyone who is not in the small network of elites.
nrx
Look, ask yourself, if Graduate Students counted as actual employees and/or sociology was not protected within a credentialed degree system, would sociology be liable for offering a speciality with little to no skill attached to it. How far is our degree at the UG and GS level from Trump University? Beyond the context, I mean in practice and what the average student learns. I know we are encouraged toward a sort of nihilist view of the social world, sociology interprets everything as a contradiction outside sociology, but when you start to apply the logic of other professions, disciplinary specialties, workplaces, organizations to sociology (and some other academic programs) you see a crumbling system that relies on false promises, under skilled instructors (cheap labor), in sociology, highly dubious analytic skills (e.g, second sight, the idea that a critical perspective is equivalent to expertise). The question we should be asking is: does the broader society value the skills being offered, is our knowledge credible, does the morality/justice/critical model work in the context of rapid tuition inflation and bloated budgets in higher education? Sociology has, through a kind of critical nihilism, denied that these constraints are real, the problem is, socially constructed rules that govern the world does not deny their consequences or the constraints they create for social practices. For every other organization, we accept adaptation to the environment, in sociology adaptation is capitulation (ideologically). I think much of the professional ideology of sociology, is however, advantageous to a small number of elite professors in elite universities. If you treat the practice like an art form, and build up the dream of making, you can reify and even expand your status in an ever shrinking world. Unfortunately, there are practical constraints related to labor supply and demand, that make this strategy very high risk for everyone who is not in the small network of elites.
When you read footnotes and see people talking about "second sight" exoteric powers, Or Fabio's weird posts about the transmission rates of COVID on submarines as evidence for opening universities and elementary schools, I think you see that sociology is in worse shape that a speciality like photography, where you might learn to frame a photo etc. In sociology, we are teaching our students to be iconoclasts and misanthropes. I can see the value of knowing how to light a photo, not so sure about what we do. We know nothing but the negation of the world. We study how to take the most cynical and victimized vantage point on any issue.
All of these "pick a better major" points are s/t/u/p/i/d.
The thing that supposedly makes these majors "better" is that people in the majors have better job prospects.
What's going to happen if there's an increase in the major and NO increase in jobs?
The major won't be as profitable.
So, the great plan of these people complaining about the field of sociology is to turn these "better" fields into the field of sociology: lots of degrees, but no jobs.
JFC.
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.
You're in a soc department?
By saying "studying," do you mean majoring in it? I can assure you my non-top 25 graduate degree has offered me more opportunities than my undergrad major did as I wasn't even eligible to teach high school in my state with just the major
Studying sociology is fine. Going to a non top 25 program for a PhD is 99% not fine.