{"id":47226,"date":"2024-05-28T04:13:40","date_gmt":"2024-05-28T10:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=47226"},"modified":"2024-05-28T04:22:04","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T10:22:04","slug":"religious-studies-graduate-programs-are-pyramid-schemes-just-say-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/05\/religious-studies-graduate-programs-are-pyramid-schemes-just-say-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Studies Graduate Programs are Pyramid Schemes. Just Say No."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Blind leading the blind<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that religious studies folks are blind to things that matter, I just thought it was a good depiction of the religious studies treadmill in general, and I kind of just like the picture.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

I have one of those Facebook friends who I\u2019ve only met briefly once in real life (at Sunstone), but with whom I\u2019ve had enough Facebook interactions with that it\u2019s like we know each other in person.\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been privy to a tragic trajectory of his career that I\u2019m seeing as becoming all too typical. He enjoys researching and talking about religion, so he bought the \u201cpursue your passion\u201d line that was ubiquitous in our generation, got a PhD in Mormon Studies (more or less, I don\u2019t know the exact degree title) at Claremont (not afraid to say it out loud, they\u2019re one of the worst offenders), and then gradually realized after the umpteenth rejection that, when people make it sound like the Mormon Studies academic job market is \u201ctough,\u201d as if with a little positive thinking and grit you can still get that job, what they should have said is that it is \u201cnon-existent.\u201d He has since had to restart his professional life and seek retraining in middle age.\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Outside of BYU or the Church Office Building, I can only think of a handful of people who are full-time \u201cMormon Studies\u201d scholars: Deidre Green at Berkeley, Patrick Mason at Utah State, <\/span>Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp at the University of <\/span>Virginia, and Benjamin Park at Sam Houston State University. There may be more that I can\u2019t think of off-hand, but probably not many more, and if you want a job you basically have to either carve out a Mormon space in a (still rare) generic position like Park, or wait for one of the other three to retire and hope you get their spot.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Within, say, the Maxwell Institute there are probably about another half dozen full-timers including the director, but those positions are already taken, and I suspect they\u2019re not going to be expanding their payroll any time soon (although I might be wrong). BYU Rel-Ed is the other major source, but even there the positions are shared with CES professionals and, increasingly, social scientists. I\u2019m not in the \u201cin\u201d in any of these worlds, but I suspect pure Religious Studies PhDs are also having a hard time there as well. The Church Office Building is another source for historian types, but from what little information I\u2019ve gleaned, the competition for positions with living wages there is also quite intense.\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Anyway, the point I am making is that, given how vanishingly rare professional Mormon Studies-type positions outside the CES track are, it is clear that those very few who get the elusive TT religious studies job are training far more people for their own TT jobs than there are positions for. There is a term for such a business\u2013a pyramid scheme.\u00a0 (There is something to be said, a lot to be said actually, about this dynamic in a lot of PhD programs that produce way more PhDs than the market can absorb, but this is a Mormon blog so I\u2019m limiting my observations to this particular niche).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So just say no. Maybe if you\u2019re okay being a single, childless hermit who lives off of sweet potatoes and rice in a camper you can live off of adjunct wages until you are anointed as a chosen one, or if you have family money (I\u2019ve also seen that), a sugar mamma\/daddy, or if you\u2019ve already established yourself as a skilled underwater welder and have a skillset with demonstrable earning potential, but as a job that can support a family it has gotten to the point to where it is simply irresponsible to pursue a career in Mormon history and\/or Mormon studies. Full stop. I\u2019ve seen way too many people run out of rope halfway through their life, and it isn\u2019t pretty.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blind leading the blind I\u2019m not saying that religious studies folks are blind to things that matter, I just thought it was a good depiction of the religious studies treadmill in general, and I kind of just like the picture.\u00a0 I have one of those Facebook friends who I\u2019ve only met briefly once in real life (at Sunstone), but with whom I\u2019ve had enough Facebook interactions with that it\u2019s like we know each other in person.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been privy to a tragic trajectory of his career that I\u2019m seeing as becoming all too typical. He enjoys researching and talking about religion, so he bought the \u201cpursue your passion\u201d line that was ubiquitous in our generation, got a PhD in Mormon Studies (more or less, I don\u2019t know the exact degree title) at Claremont (not afraid to say it out loud, they\u2019re one of the worst offenders), and then gradually realized after the umpteenth rejection that, when people make it sound like the Mormon Studies academic job market is \u201ctough,\u201d as if with a little positive thinking and grit you can still get that job, what they should have said is that it is \u201cnon-existent.\u201d He has since had to restart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":47232,"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-47226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/HEIC.heic","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47226","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=47226"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47235,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47226\/revisions\/47235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}