{"id":43025,"date":"2022-06-01T18:15:25","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T23:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=43025"},"modified":"2025-05-26T10:06:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T16:06:34","slug":"religious-studies-and-the-church-part-iii-graduate-training-as-a-ponzi-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2022\/06\/religious-studies-and-the-church-part-iii-graduate-training-as-a-ponzi-scheme\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Studies and the Church, Part III: Graduate Training as a Ponzi Scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"

The subject of education that does not pay financially is a sensitive one for me. Thankfully, my graduate training equipped me with enough marketable skills that I\u2019m fine, but I\u2019m close enough to people in other fields (sometimes adjacent to mine) that I\u2019ve seen it not work out, and it can get very ugly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Somebody puts in years of their life, and sometimes takes out student loans, to only at the end find out that 1) the chance of you getting that R1 tenure track position for some fields is literally similar to your chance of making it in the NFL, and 2) hardly anybody outside of that field actually cares about all the skills picked up in graduate training (which aren\u2019t as vaguely transferable as is often supposed by both faculty and students), so you need to somehow find a way to support your family on entry-level wages, sometimes while trying to pay off student debt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Admittedly, my perception of graduate training payoffs is anecdotal, but for undergraduates there is enough data to show that some majors<\/a> really don\u2019t pay for themselves,<\/a><\/span>\u00a0or at the very most give you a slightly marginal \u201cgeneric college\u201d salary benefit that is far from enough to live off of. (Tragically, some\u00a0<\/span>of these same fields intentionally try to recruit BIPOC students, seemingly unaware or not caring that they are perpetuating intergenerational inequality by doing so, but I digress).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As can be seen in Census data<\/a>, religious studies is particularly low in terms of payoff; one year out with a religious studies degree and you\u2019re looking at Wal-Mart level wages. On one hand, bright young Latter-day Saint women or men might aspire to be religious scholars, on the other hand they run up against a strong religious imperative to have and be able to provide for a family (obviously things are socioculturally distinct for women in terms of \u201cprovide for the family\u201d expectations in Latter-day Saint culture, but I believe they experience a similar dynamic here).<\/span><\/p>\n

While in the past you could make provide-for-a-family wages with a non-marketable degree, we\u2019re just not there anymore, which is why I now have a \u201cjust say no\u201d attitude for members thinking about getting an advanced degree in religious studies at the beginning of their career (unless you\u2019re already a skilled welder or coder, then do whatever you want). Yes, your professors might sing your praises and you might win all those awards, but at the end of the day you\u2019re facing NFL draft level odds, and if you take your religious imperative to be able to provide for a family (or yourself, given the numbers involved) seriously it\u2019s hard to justify playing those kinds of odds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n



<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The subject of education that does not pay financially is a sensitive one for me. Thankfully, my graduate training equipped me with enough marketable skills that I\u2019m fine, but I\u2019m close enough to people in other fields (sometimes adjacent to mine) that I\u2019ve seen it not work out, and it can get very ugly.\u00a0 Somebody puts in years of their life, and sometimes takes out student loans, to only at the end find out that 1) the chance of you getting that R1 tenure track position for some fields is literally similar to your chance of making it in the NFL, and 2) hardly anybody outside of that field actually cares about all the skills picked up in graduate training (which aren\u2019t as vaguely transferable as is often supposed by both faculty and students), so you need to somehow find a way to support your family on entry-level wages, sometimes while trying to pay off student debt.\u00a0 Admittedly, my perception of graduate training payoffs is anecdotal, but for undergraduates there is enough data to show that some majors really don\u2019t pay for themselves,\u00a0or at the very most give you a slightly marginal \u201cgeneric college\u201d salary benefit that is far from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43025"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50119,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43025\/revisions\/50119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}