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Though I had vowed not to visit Austin until my book was in the mail, my craving for Texas brisket overcame me. It’s always nice being back in Austin, though. I never really feel at home in Atlanta. And, there’s something nice about being able to walk into the Riverside Thundercloud to a reception not unlike Norm’s at Cheers. I can pretend to be a cool hipster rather than nerdy professor for a bit.

I’ve been getting some work done, but not enough. (I never seem to get enough work done… I could work 26 hours a day and it wouldn’t be enough.)

Anyway…some tidbits overheard at the coffee shop today:

Barista: You gonna do the crossword?

Random Austin guy: Naw…there’s a lot of government encoding and innuendo….

There was also this exchange, with same barista

Random Austin guy 2: Yeah, it’s like a sleeper film….

B: I’ll have to check it out.

RAG2: Yeah. Jennifer Tilly…She’s more like a campy actress.

B: Yeah.

I love Austin.

In today’s mass demonstration, Lopez Obrador has called for permanent installations of protestors until the election dispute is resolved.

Here’s the AP version.

Copies of my article are now online.

Read this article about ISSSTE reforms later.

10 pages of typed notes. And a bad headache because some of the library and second-hand books bought in the D.F. on unions and employer organizations in the 50-70s in Mexico are filled with DUST.

On the other hand, I’ve managed to gather much of the data that I needed to finish this chapter–enough anyway to write it up while I wait for remaining ILL items.

Oh…and I came across two other paper ideas…one entirely new and another one that occurred to me while writing my dissertation, but which I had forgotten about in the interim. How is it that some people run out of research ideas, when I seem to have more than I know what to do with? (Granted, not all of my ideas are APSR-like ideas, but at least they are ideas.)

No writing, but over the last two days I have waded through a foot high stack of photocopies and thin paperbacks gathering additional data/evidence regarding labor union/state relations at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s in Mexico.

Now, if only the library would send me e-copies of the articles that I requested over the weekend, I could put this Chapter to rest.

As it stands, I’ll do what I can with what I have now, and add additional data/evidence as it trickles in.

Earlier posts covered reasons for getting a Ph.D. and why it matters where you get your Ph.D.

How to figure out which program may be right for you.

Come up with a list of the types of research questions that interest you most. Is your interest in American government? European politics? International relations? List your favorite undergraduate classes and topics. What about them interested you? What would you like to learn more about?

Armed with this list of your interests, do some research on the top programs (use any of the ranking tools, though none are perfect and some are outdated). Look at the department websites. See if you recognize faculty names from things you’ve read in your upper-level classes. Poke around. Find the names of faculty working on the area(s) that you are interested in. Look at the description of the graduate program.

Put together a list of 10 programs that you think might be good for you. List the names of the people working in ‘your’ area of interest at each school. List what you like/don’t like about the Ph.D. program description (too many/few fields required, funding?, placement).

Then, talk to as many faculty members in your current institution as will give you time [during office hours] to get feedback on your first list. Show them your list of schools and list of names. Ask if they would add any schools to your list. Double check with more than one faculty member to make sure they are not biased. There should be good overlap between professors in the same area in the same department.

They know more than you do and may be willing to share. For instance, I was trying to decide between a particular top 10 program with no funding and a top 20 program with full funding. I talked to one of my undergrad advisors who told me that the primary Latin Americanist at the top 10 place had a reputation for being strange, arbitrary, and a bit uneven. They may also know about people who have recently moved or who are about to retire.

Your advisors may also be able to point out differences between two places that might not otherwise be apparent. For instance, both UC-Berkeley and UC-San Diego have excellent Ph.D. programs and a number of people studying Latin America. They are, however, worlds apart in certain respects. Depending on a student’s interests, quantitative inclinations, etc. one might be better than the other.

That’s why it’s important, once you’ve narrowed your selection to five/six schools that you do a little research on the types of research being done by the faculty in the area you wish to study. [If you can’t be bothered to do that much research, then how would you ever hope to finish a Ph.D.?]

Get the faculty names from the department webpage and use Google Scholar to look up their work. Usually, you can read the abstracts of the articles for free (if you’re not currently in school), and that will at least give you an idea of the types of things they study and how often they seem to publish.

After you’ve narrowed it down, go back to your undergraduate faculty advisor (during office hours) and show them your new list.

Questions I think all students should be able to answer about the programs to which they are submitting applications:
Are all students admitted funded, or do students have to scramble/compete for funding once they arrive?

How competitive is admission?

Where have recent Ph.D.s been placed, particularly in your field of interest?

What are the degree requirements? Do students seem to finish in a timely fashion?

Are there enough faculty in your field and other secondary fields of interest?

Do those faculty train graduate students? [You can look up Ph.D. dissertations online by advisor through Dissertation Abstracts.]

Naturally, I didn’t have the answers to all of these questions when I applied for a Ph.D. and most of them I didn’t even think to ask. But, they are things I wish I had known. I’m not sure I would have made any different choices, but I got lucky.

Maybe later in the fall I’ll post about application essays and funding.

Reviewed and reorganized Chapter 4. I realized that I have some research work to do on part of that chapter and that the other parts are better than I remember.

Today’s goal, writing some of the bridges for the revised parts and taking notes for the parts to be cleaned up.

Subtitle: (Advice for those thinking about Ph.D.s in Political Science)

I imagine the process is similar in other social sciences, but there may be important differences.

Since a Ph.D. is a means to an end, you should begin by identifying what ‘end’ you are seeking. I ask students what type of academic position they would like. Do they want to primarily teach? Do they want to primarily do research? Do they want to keep their options open?

Many students think they want to primarily teach, but then I explain the different types of teaching options. There is community college, small state university, liberal arts college or university, a range of research state universities, and then flagship state universities and/or private top-flight universities. All positions will include some teaching, but some more than others. And, as another undergrad advisor once pointed out to me, you can still be a good teacher at a research university–it just won’t be valued as much as your research. Pay will also vary, and often inversely with the emphasis on teaching.

If students don’t really know what type of professor they’d like to be or whether they’d really like to be in a research-driven position, I suggest that they work on the assumption that they might prefer more money and more research. If you come from a strong Ph.D. program and begin with a strong research record, you will have more options on the job market.

The job market, or how markets work with little information.

I explain that when most Ph.D. students go on the job market, their research record will be bare or minimal. Hiring departments must then weed through 100+ applications for their one position quickly. Since newbie Ph.D.s won’t have extensive publication records, hiring committees seek to narrow the field quickly using the paucity of information available: Ph.D. granting department, principal Ph.D. advisor, dissertation topic (for fit), and grants or publications (if any).

Unfortunately, to make that first cut is a lot easier if you are an average Harvard Ph.D. than the best student ever from North Texas (and that’s a growing/improving program….there are a lot less productive departments out there handing out Ph.D.s), for example. It pays to go to the best department possible to maximize your options on the job market.

You can think of it as an informal tier system among Ph.D. granting departments, where the top 5-10 are Tier I, through top 20-25 Tier II, and the rest in Tier III. [Also, the categorization into a particular Tier for each department or even subfield within a department may be debatable.] But Tier I schools usually only hire from other Tier I. Tier II would hire from Tier I and top students from Tier II programs. Tier III would hire from Tier II and top students from Tier III.

Non-Ph.D. departments are a little more tricky since there are a wide variety of these, e.g., state schools, liberal arts colleges, and even some flagship universities without Ph.D.s (like my Georgia Tech).

Of course, there are caveats or qualifications for “best” departments for a Ph.D. Remember that “best” refers to the department, not university. There are a handful of top universities with less than top departments of political science, and vice versa.

Also, if you’re interested in African politics, only sometimes (i.e., a top 5 department) would it make sense to go to a top department that had no Africanist.

Usually, I recommend that students seek departments that are highly ranked and that have well-known faculty in their specific area of interest. Also, students should seek “well-known” faculty who are still publishing and working with graduate students–often this means highly productive Associate Professors or recently promoted to full Professor, or at least not someone in semi-retirement.

Like with undergrad, it’s a good idea to apply to a couple of hard, medium, and easy programs each, with the understanding that if you only get into an “easy” program, you might consider moving after your M.A.

Next installment…. How to research Departments, what to look for in a Ph.D. program (or what questions to ask), and why I think you should never have to pay for your own Ph.D. training.

I managed to finish and submit the corrected proofs for this paper, which has been haunting me since APSA 2001, where it was first presented.

It spent over two years total at this journal. In the first round of reviews, the paper received a very positive review with minor revisions and a one sentence review that said the paper was “wonky and descriptive.” The former editor recommended revising on the basis of the first reviewer’s suggestions, which I did. I sent it back, and the paper sat for about 10 months before the editorial assistant emailed me to say that they could not find a suitable second reviewer. At that time the editor was changing, and the assistant asked if I would like to give the new editor a chance to find a second reviewer or have the manuscript back. I asked for it back.

I then sent it to this journal in May 2003. When I received the reviews that Fall, one of the reviewers faulted me for not citing an article in this journal that appeared in July of 2003. (Yes, I should have cited an article before it had appeared in a highly specialized journal!) Of course, the article I did not cite (because I had not seen it yet) is an exemplar of the type of work I critique in my article, so it’s no surprise the author of the July article reviewer did not like my theoretical approach.

Following that rejection, I sent the article to its proper home at Social Politics in October 2004. I received the conditional acceptance in September 2005. It will appear this fall, 2006.

Because it means I have something that will be published soon!

At least once a year, some undergraduate or M.S. student comes to me asking where they should apply to study for a Ph.D. And every time, I respond by asking: “Why do you want a Ph.D.?”

For those that tell me they want to become a university or college teacher/professor, I then ask, “What kind of college or university? What kind of professor?” After that, I explain how the academic job market works, and we discuss what types of programs they would want in order to maximize the likelihood that they will be able to get the type of job they want. Then, we discuss their particular research interests, and I recommend programs that they should investigate further. Roughly 20-25% of the students in my office fall into this category.

The rest usually give me one of the following responses to the first question (Why a PhD?):

“I like politics.”

“I like school and am good at it.”

“I am or want to be an intellectual.”

“I am smart and [therefore] should get a Ph.D.”

“I just want one.” Or,

“I like reading interesting books and contemplating important issues.”

[These reasons are not unlike those offered by future English Ph.D. students, though the job outlook for them is even more bleak. (Via.)]

For these students, I pass along something one of my undergraduate advisors told me when he learned I had been accepted to graduate school: a Ph.D. is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end, much like a union card necessary to get a particular job.

I point out that intellectual curiosity is not likely to sustain anyone through those dark nights sitting in front of a blank computer screen, and if at some point, you realize you can get the job you want without a Ph.D., you’re likely to give up the Ph.D. because it’s just so much work.

Then, I go on to explain how the job market works, how you have little to no choice over where you live for your first job(s), how important it is to go to a “top” program, and how hard you have to work to get tenure (no matter where you land in your first job–it’s hard to get tenure everywhere, the expectations are just distributed differently). In essence, I do everything possible to disabuse them of the notion that being a faculty member is glamorous.

So that’s the first half of the “So you [think you] want to get a Ph.D.?” talk.

At some point, I’ll post the second half of the talk (about the job market, assistantships and why if you aren’t offered one anywhere, you probably shouldn’t be trying to get a Ph.D., and other of my personal opinions). It’s a bit of tough love, but I hope it helps some of my students. If it scares them from getting a Ph.D., they probably didn’t really want one anyway, and if they go on to a Ph.D. program, at least they are doing so with their eyes wide open.

And then, when I get random queries about grad school, I can just point them to my posts first. It will save us both time.

Wrote 4-6 pages (?) and finished all but the conclusion of Chapter 3. I’m going to sleep on it, re-read the Chapter tomorrow, and write the conclusion when I’m fresh (or at least caffeinated).

I should really get my head out of the sand. How did I not know about this?

Back to the grindstone.

[Jeez, could I use more cliches?]

Progress is now harder to measure because it is more about revising than writing new pages. That said, I probably wrote about 4-5 pages total today (introductions, transitions) and completed revisions to bring Chapter 3 within 8-10% of completion.

Tomorrow: Write about 2-3 pages to wrap up two unfinished sections each, and another 4 pages of Chapter conclusions. Shouldn’t be too hard, once I go back and re-read the revised Chapter.

At the Colombia Statistical Modeling blog, Gelman has posted a short summary and link to a statistical analysis of the 2000 election votes in Mexico. The paper has some interesting empirical findings but is a little short on theoretical or contextual analysis. [You know, the “why” question….] There’s no clear theoretical or even Mexico-specific explanation for the observed pattern. This seems like a prime case of having the data and methods to run some cool models without doing the necessary research on Mexican politics to make good sense of the results. I’m sure journal reviewers (and Mexican specialists) who are impressed by the methods will help brainstorm explanations to explain the results…essentially doing the authors’ work for them.

Given the availability of Mexican poll data, there’s almost a cottage industry in testing hypotheses from American election studies on the Mexican data. Though there are exceptions, many studies are misspecified because in their rush to apply the their pet method to the new data, they forget to bother learning about Mexican politics. I’m not trying to make a case for Mexican exceptionalism; there probably are voting models that are nearly universal. But on the other hand, researchers need to understand that certain indicators that reliably measure something in the U.S. may not measure the same concept elsewhere. Just because decades of election studies have established the validity and reliability in the U.S. context doesn’t mean that those same measures are sure to be valid and reliable elsewhere. We need much more work testing basic measurement in the Mexican context, IMHO.

I don’t want to accuse Gelman of not doing his homework, but if he has, it’s not evident in the draft of that paper.

Today is the second of three planned assemblies in the Zocalo called by Lopez Obrador. Again, he is calling for a full recount to restore public confidence in the electoral results.

See more images.

Elsewhere, some are criticizing both sides for the negative campaigning and the consequent polarization.

Inside Higher Ed reports on a plans at Rice to start an online UP. The lead paragraph explains:

It’s hard to attend scholarly meetings these days without someone talking about the “crisis of scholarly publishing,” which goes something like this: Libraries can’t afford to buy new scholarly books; in turn, university presses can’t afford to publish books no one can buy and so cut back on their sales of monographs; in turn, junior professors can’t get their first books published and have a tough time getting tenure.

In a discipline as conservative (read: risk averse and incredibly status conscious) as political science, I can’t imagine tenure committees buying into online publications for junior faculty members’ tenure cases. And even Munger admits that books are harder to publish now.

Can put you in a bad mood. Sometimes it’s not good to know how little you’re paid.

Though already in first place, Wal-Mart is trying to gain even more market share in Mexico.

Have I mentioned that Wal-Mart is the single largest private employer in Mexico?