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Phil's avatar

I don’t know, are we being too harsh? It is kind of a clever take on the whole tenured professorship thing. Maybe he’s just poking fun at his profession.

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Irena's avatar

He's an academic philosopher, and so he phrases things a bit, ahem, creatively. However, he absolutely is doing young people a favor. Anyone even remotely considering getting a PhD and going into academia should know that a successful academic career involves moving repeatedly early on, and then moving to a place you didn't actively choose for the rest of your career. (And an unsuccessful academic career generally means moving repeatedly early on, and then having to leave academia because you didn't land a permanent job.) That's just how it is. The added layer with the humanities is that almost no-one lands a permanent job, and most of the rare exceptions come from a tiny number of elite schools. Yes, bright young students (especially those who did not grow up in the upper middle class) should be reminded of that early and often, though professors in search of PhD students, especially at non-elite universities, don't like having their prospective students scared off by such talk.

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