<p>Pursuing your dream is commendable, but you have to do it without having it adversely affect the rest of your life. Taking out lots of loans for iffy job prospects can really be a bummer. I know people who have over 100K in student loans and 2 part time jobs teaching English comp at the local JCs. Not good…</p>
<p>But if you can get your education without going into massive debt and have a back up plan in case the professor thing doesn’t work out, I’d pursue my dream.</p>
<p>As far as changing career paths a while back there was a thread on this. Parents posted the sequence of their careers. Here is mine: English BA, postgrad work in Publishing, Marketing Intern then Marketing Manager at Yale University Press, moved cross country, temporary work, timeshare secretary, stay home mom, hotel sales assistant, hotel sales manager, assistant to general manager of hotel, cfo of a construction company, now working as a wine salesperson. That’s just the list after my undergrad degree and at 48 I expect there is still more to come and a few I forgot. Technically I haven’t “used” my education directly since the job at Yale.</p>
<p>So what happens if you take out loans and cannot pay them back?</p>
<p>Most people do not do what they got their degree in. You aren’t even talking about changing careers since you haven’t done one career yet (and you are only switchign subfields within academia). That is hardly changing careers (and I say that to reassure!). To the rest of the world moving from one subspecialty to another in an academic field (both of which really need a PhD anyway for a decent job)… so you aren’t backtracking or losign time and nothing is wasted. Everything you’ve learned so far will be really really valuable. No reason to feel foolish.</p>
<p>Then why do some adults think that students who don’t know what they want to do for the rest of their lives are immature and unfocused? Nothing makes sense to me anymore and I don’t understand why older people have high expectations for someone who isn’t even 30 years old yet and is very scared of life.</p>
<p>Bumping up</p>
<p>Interesting thread. My daughter came out of the womb an English major. She’ll graduate with that BA, and probably go on to grad school shortly after. It’s not like there’s some other path out there for her, right now, as young as she is. It wouldn’t make sense for her to study something “practical” for which she has no interest and no particular aptitude. What would happen if she did that? She’d end up in a job she hates at the age of 25? If that happened she’d probably quit within a year and go back to school to get that English degree that she was always meant to pursue. ;)</p>
<p>I think she’d make a great professor someday, but she’s not really thinking a lot about that. She does work as a research assistant to a professor, and in the course of that job she has been privy to the hiring process for two new professors. She said it’s been quite revealing – especially how sought-after the jobs are.</p>
<p>I don’t know though… she is the spawn of humanities majors, so it just is what it is.</p>
<p>I, on the other hand, am wondering if a post-bac accounting program makes any sense for me to do. Are there CPA jobs out there for 50-somethings with a humanities background?</p>
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<p>Who is that who feels that way? Is it your parents? Not knowing your passion or dream career or purpose in life isn’t immature as it can take people a long time and some never find it! However, adult children can’t and shouldn’t expect parents to pay for more degrees or financially support their adult children while they find it.</p>
<p>Starbright,</p>
<p>No. Faculty.</p>
<p>As for financial support, I don’t really have much of a choice right now: either I sleep on the street, or my parents support me, since I am having trouble finding a job anywhere.</p>
<p>Is there any way you can go to your career center on campus and run a search of all the alumni with Ph.D.'s in Cultural Anthropology, to see what they do today? I imagine they do a lot of things, including but not limited to college teaching. My cousin has a Ph.D. in Social Anthopology, and consults to business in the area of marketing. They need to know how people behave in various situations, especially internationally, to guide some of their marketing strategies. Knowing my cousin, he’s very unusual in his work, but the point is the faculty may not know all the ways your degree might apply in a research/business consulting/private sector way. (Nor do I). That’s why I’m suggesting the search of department alumni. There might be positions in federal government, nonprofit organizations overseas, and things the faculty is not willing to do but you’d find interesting (if impure) applications of your area of interest.</p>
<p>You should not pay to enroll in an Anthropology Ph.D. program. You should receive a financial aid package that would cover tuition and a stipend that would cover your living expenses in exchange for some teaching. You would have to apply for research grants.</p>
<p>That said, things to consider: do you have student debts from your undergraduate/MA days? Job prospects in academia: as others have said, they are not very good. My S had a high school Social Studies teacher who had a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology (she was great).
What do you like about cultural anthropology? about being an academic? These are two separate things. You could read up on cultural anthropology on your own while pursuing a different career.</p>
<p>No, I do not have any debt. I want to teach and do research. I also want to go live in a jungle with native people in SE Asia for a year or two. That is something you cannot do by reading a book. I have no interest in teaching high schoolers. I do like tutoring elementary school age children. And, yes, I know that no one should take out loans for a doctoral program. Whoever suggested that must not know a lot about PhD’s.</p>
<p>For paying3tuition, my university does not have a PhD program, so there are no alumni for PhD’s in anthro.</p>
<p>You probably will have to start from square one in a Ph.D. program. You will also need to learn the appropriate languages, which may take more time. You have to be willing to risk not finding a job in academia at the end of 5-6 years.
My H had a colleague who was a cultural anthropologist. He did his Ph.D. fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Wrote his dissertation and decided he did not want to do any more fieldwork. He switched to computers (that was many years ago, when practically anyone could move into that field).</p>