Going to graduate school

One of the chapters of the book describes the decision to go to grad school and particularly to a PhD program. My advice was short because I wasn't sure how many people would be interested, so I thought that I would link to a few more comprehensive guides.

Tim Burke's "Should You Go to Grad School"
Fontana Lab's "It's Six Years of Love and Music, Man"
Fabio Rojas's "Grad School Rulz"
Eszter Hargittai's "Ph.Do"

Kieran Healy sums it all up like this: "In academic environments, expectations are high and monitoring is low (but decisive when it happens). Many grad-student pathologies spring from a failure to deal with this problem."

Why so many liberal professors?

In the book, I mentioned how liberal the professoriate is and how that might affect your education. Some new research suggests just why the professoriate is so liberal. It claims that just as few men go into nursing because it is perceived as an occupation for women, so is academic life typecast as a place for liberals and hence unattractive to conservatives. You can find more details here, but the research leads to this interesting conclusion: “the more conservatives complain about academia’s liberalism, the more likely it’s going to remain a bastion of liberalism.”