anyone have some knowledge of them/can speak in general about what is typical?
is 28 too old to begin looking into a graduate program?
are any students admitted without previous academic philosophy training?
are there people who do it with no interest in teaching the subject?
does anyone get a fellowship/scholarship to do a phd?
What's your background?
The age thing wouldn't be a huge deal, if you had a BA and/or MA already. This is more the problem:
>are any students admitted without previous academic philosophy training?
Anyone can apply to most programs, even (I think) people with very unorthodox backgrounds, or no academic background at all. But the vast majority of people who get into any good program (more on program quality in a second) are going to be people with predictable backgrounds. It's not unusual for a philosophically inclined person to have a Bachelor's in some field like Anthropology or History, but most are going to be Philosophy BAs who then do a Philosophy PhD.
The reason for this is simple: Graduate programs are looking for applicants who are likely to succeed. If they see someone with a BA in Philosophy, and a high GPA in it, they know instantly that he's not a total fuckup. They know that he knows at least something about what academic Philosophy is, and what is expected of him if they accept him. If they see someone applying who did their BA in Literature, they'll still be open to it, but they'll double-check to make sure the person meets those same qualifications. If he has zero philosophical background evident in the courses he took in undergrad, his statement of why he's applying had better clear that up and make damn clear that he knows what he's doing.
Theoretically, the same could be said for a total unknown. I'm sure if you published some magnum opus at 20, as a total nobody who worked at a laundromat, became world famous, and then applied to Harvard, they'd be interested. But:
a) Almost all of the time, they're just going to assume that applicants without relevant backgrounds are naive and don't know what they're doing, and that it's just some random guy who thinks he likes philosophy.
b) Almost all of the time, sadly, they'd probably be right.
A lot of doing academic work is just being familiar with what the academy is doing, and having been trained to look like you could do it. If a modern day Nietzsche, working at a laundromat, applied to a top tier Philosophy program, they'd probably reject him and admit some boring, middle-of-the-road, derivative dipshit who has a nice safe 4.0, because it's not really their job to take risks. And most of them are derivative specialist hacks as well.
>does anyone get a fellowship/scholarship to do a phd?
Usually, you don't go unless you get funded. Getting a PhD is years of taking classes, reading, writing, and jumping through hoops, so you need financial support, and obviously to have the ridiculous tuition waived.
>program quality
One of the other problems is that academia kind of sucks right now. It's bloated. If you want to have a career, you will probably want to get into a relatively exclusive program.. But the more exclusive, the more they will be looking for those picture-perfect Princeton graduates.
Testnachricht
Also, it matters why you want to get a PhD in the first place. Definitely don't look at a PhD as some vaguely prestigious thing, or as the necessary gateway to being "a philosopher."
Academia is seriously brimming over with complete fucking whocares nobodies whose whole career amounts to writing a footnote to the footnote to the footnote to something that has been done to death, then getting tenure, and writing one shitty derivative article every few years. And to get there, it took that person 4-6 years of pre-PhD study, 5-10 years of PhD study, 1-3 years as slave labour with no job security, no benefits, and no fixed residence, a few years working at some bumfuck university they hate and didn't get to choose, and then MAYBE, if they're lucky, finally working some place prestigious (but still maybe in a shitty location, or boring), in their 40s. And a lot of those jobs will be teaching obligations.
That's academia. If you're made for the academy, that can be fine. But if you aren't into that, why the hell bother getting a PhD in the first place? If you want to be a public intellectual, it can MAYBE be worth it? Just to be able to put a "PhD" next to your name when you publish your independent philosophical works? But it's still years of your life, money, etc.
Again, it does train you to do academically acceptable work. It teaches you all the subtle rules of the game, teaches you what looks plausibly publishable, what sorts of things are hot right now and what things aren't. But that isn't even necessarily a useful or good thing, either. Again, there are a lot of fucking nobody whocares scholars, who put out a Routledge Critical Approaches to Film Studies book called "Critical Intersections: Derrida, Thomas Reid, and 1980s Anime" every 6 years, and when you go to the library and take it off the shelf you notice you're the first person who's ever opened it. And it's full of typos.
Academia is a weird thing. The one catch-all advice I'd give is: No matter what you do, know exactly what you want from doing it, and know exactly how the thing you're doing contributes to it. Again, don't assume that "PhD in Philosophy" is equal to "great philosopher." Or even "philosopher," a lot of the time these days.
>1-3 years as slave labour with no job security
>a few years working at some bumfuck university they hate and didn't get to choose
Being a bit optimistic there, people will literally kill for the academic slave labour job at bumfuck university.
thanks user - what is your academic experience?
what if you dont want to teach? you just want to learn and read more philosophy while getting your parents off your back?
You get a job at a research university instead, but tenure positions at research universities are non-existent and be required to publish or perish.
You say that like it's straightforward. I agree with the user that made the longer, more pessimistic post. My experience in academia has been almost identical, with the added problem of my country simply not having "research universities". If you want to be an academic here, you get to choose from a total of one options. That shoe has to fit you, or you're out
Honestly, it's not worth it
what if you didnt need to get a job at all afterwards?
Yeah that's true. Plus I didn't even mention that a lot of people get a whole fucking PhD, as a mid-thirties person with no life, have no interest in what they just spent ten years working on, and end up applying for regular jobs as consultants or something.
I'm getting a PhD at an OK university. I don't even know if not wanting to teach is a possibility, though the other guy seems to know more about it.
I turned down several offers at really good universities because they wanted me to start teaching in year #1 of my PhD, so I'd have been teaching (or at least assisting) for 7 years, as a STUDENT. I went for the program that doesn't make me teach until later. And programs that don't make you teach at all are rare and exclusive, I only know of Princeton.
Put it this way, the most valuable resource of a PhD holder, to a university, is usually that they can teach. That's why adjuncts are such a big thing now. There are 10x as many PhD holders as there are tenure-track jobs, so universities just hire PhDs to teach dinky courses on 6-month contracts for 5 years. It's basically slave labour. And that's people who did everything right - people who went to good schools etc. It's a really really bad job market, and it's probably going to get worse if the economy goes to shit (which it very well might).
I would not go into academia if you're looking for anything like comfort.
>you just want to learn and read more philosophy while getting your parents off your back?
Most people would very strongly say no, don't do it for this reason. BEST CASE SCENARIO is you're getting paid like $30,000 a year, for 5 years, to study, because you got into a top tier program. You probably have to teach for some of that, and you have to work HARD for all of it. It's not endless free time. And you'll probably write a dissertation you aren't super passionate about.
It's hard to just say "no." Some people might say this sounds like a great deal, and some people are just looking to burn a decade having fun being a student. But hopefully you have some idea of how wonky it would be.
I'm not sure about what it's like to go to a dinky university. My friend once told me that a friend of his got into some very obscure European university in Lithuania (or maybe it was Central European University, which is currently in trouble), and they basically threw money at him to go and live in a beautiful East Euro capital and he's having a wonderful time. He'll never work in academia, and he isn't exactly building a stable career.. but hey.
>with the added problem of my country simply not having "research universities"
That's basically every country that isn't the US or a few universities in Britain, Academia in continental Europe is literally non-existent.
Also I should say, I'm not the OP of the other thread.
You might find it useful though OP:
anyone have info on this topic for literature studies?
also - what's the deal with teaching high school/boarding school? do they just pay you like 20k?
>what's the deal with teaching high school/boarding school?
Kids don't give a shit about the Steinbeck novel you're desperately trying to convince them is good, their parents hate you because after indoctrinating them they won't shut up about seizing the means of production, you spent $100/k to teach kids which actually only requires half of a bachelor's degree (160 points) etc
Dude in the image looks like Tom Hardy.
yeah but you only work 7 hrs a day and have weekends and summers off, no?
If you think that high school teachers'jov is confined to 7-hours five days a week you are deluded.
Administrative proceedings, meetings, CLASS PREP (which you will spend your evenings doing), grading assignments etc.
sounds fucking gay
Bump for the importance of discussing graduate studies on Veeky Forums.
why would a graduate be on Veeky Forums?
man, a lot of us are in the same boat. no job's are inherently meaningful to us, save maybe writing. the things that would be 'fun' would take too much effort to ever actually be so. we all want to just enjoy the flow of life comfortably and with plenty of time to write. with technology, the options open to do this are changing regularly with some doors opening and others closing. we just want to know what's possible, otherwise wagecuckery starts to feel inevitable
this.
Go for it man! Don't let your dreams just be dreams!