Graduate education goals
Fortunately enough, I had a goal in mind before joining the INO: to pursue a career in philosophy. Specifically, the INO is supposed to be the first step toward the PhD and teaching in a community college.
The meaningful, "non-administrative" aspect of the studies is to deepen the philosophical sense and to gain specific skills. It also can be formulated as improving the ability to consider the Questions of Life, and acquiring a toolset of methods that can be used to address a variety of problems.
One of the great things about the INO is the ability to add courses beyond any specific program or even extramural studies. I hope the New Acropolis course that I just started can be counted as well, as it gives the aspect of Eastern (Indian, Tibetan, etc.) philosophy that is not part of the standard UIS offering. The syllabus is quite interesting, as was the first session.
As I have a lot of experience in teaching adults, I believe I will be able to handle this piece. Two other difficulties seem to be more formidable:
(1) Making it through the MA financially
My little company was doing much better last year... And now I'm hit with the out-of-state tuition for the online program. I'm an optimist, though.
(2) Life in the academia
Before making the decision to leave IT and go for the academic career, I had severe doubts regarding the professional climate in the field, mainly resulting from my first graduate attempt. The doubts mostly related to the competitiveness I witnessed among doctorants and lecturers; not always it had a nice face... I spoke with a couple of my friends who did stay in the college world about these concerns, and got entirely different perspectives. I hope, though, that the multitude of colleges in North America would allow some selection when I get to the point of teaching.
The meaningful, "non-administrative" aspect of the studies is to deepen the philosophical sense and to gain specific skills. It also can be formulated as improving the ability to consider the Questions of Life, and acquiring a toolset of methods that can be used to address a variety of problems.
One of the great things about the INO is the ability to add courses beyond any specific program or even extramural studies. I hope the New Acropolis course that I just started can be counted as well, as it gives the aspect of Eastern (Indian, Tibetan, etc.) philosophy that is not part of the standard UIS offering. The syllabus is quite interesting, as was the first session.
As I have a lot of experience in teaching adults, I believe I will be able to handle this piece. Two other difficulties seem to be more formidable:
(1) Making it through the MA financially
My little company was doing much better last year... And now I'm hit with the out-of-state tuition for the online program. I'm an optimist, though.
(2) Life in the academia
Before making the decision to leave IT and go for the academic career, I had severe doubts regarding the professional climate in the field, mainly resulting from my first graduate attempt. The doubts mostly related to the competitiveness I witnessed among doctorants and lecturers; not always it had a nice face... I spoke with a couple of my friends who did stay in the college world about these concerns, and got entirely different perspectives. I hope, though, that the multitude of colleges in North America would allow some selection when I get to the point of teaching.
The job market in straight philosophy teaching is crowded with a good supply, and light demand. I think the field of philosophy needs to do more to increase demand. I consider myself an ally of the field in this respect. Every citizen in a democracy needs some exposure to philosophy, critical thinking, and intellectual ideas that served as the foundation of our shared political heritage. I'd have standardized secondary school achievement tests cover some basic philosophy.
ReplyDeleteThe LNT Department has approval to give online students the online fees rather than out-of-state fees, so that financial issue will improve, starting either this summer or else in the fall.
The LNT program works with the Applied Studies Office to let students get credit for prior learning. Sometimes if courses don't transfer in here, you can do a credit-for-prior learning to get credit for your experiences as an independent study (which still costs money, unfortunately).
We have had students before who wanted to go on to earn a doctorate, and the advice given to them by philosophy professors is usually to take a certain number of core courses, and those courses often mean that a student ends up taking more than the required 42-hours of graduate-level work. For example, students may end up taking 46, 50, or even 54 hours of coursework, to prepare themselves for a good doctoral program. That's something our students negotiate with their faculty academic advisers.