Portents and Prospects: Graduate Study and the Profession

1977 ◽  
Vol 10 (01) ◽  
pp. 10-12
Author(s):  
William J. Siffin
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Graduate Study ◽  
Academic Employment ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
New Political Science

The supply of Ph.D. level political scientists is astonishingly and ominously out of phase with prospective demand. Drastic changes in our graduate enterprises are inevitable. Some will be deliberate. Others will be forced upon us by uncontrollable events.What Do the Numbers Show?Concerning Supply. About 5000 new political science doctorates were granted between 1969–70 and 1975–76. In the same period 11,927 students embarked upon Ph.D. programs; 1443 were admitted in 1974–75, and another 1174 in 1975–76. 6150 graduate students were active in American Ph.D. programs in 1975–76.Back in the 1950s and 60s, 46% of those who entered our Ph.D. programs completed their work within five to eight years. Between 75% and 85% of them sought or desired academic employment.If the same ratios applied to the Ph.D. starters for 1969–70 through 1975–76, then as many as 5500 more Ph.D.s could appear on the scene between 1974 and 1984, more than 4000 of them seeking academic employment. A relatively high percentage would be women.

Leo Strauss on Modern Political Science:Two Previously Unpublished Manuscripts

2017 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-425
Author(s):  
Svetozar Minkov ◽  
Rasoul Namazi
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Political Views ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Unpublished Manuscripts ◽  
First Time ◽  
New Political Science

The two manuscripts published here for the first time were written by Leo Strauss: the first in 1956 and the second between 1957 and 1962. The first, entitled “Lecture in Milwaukee: Michigan Midwest Political Science,” was written for the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Midwest Conference of Political Scientists on May 4, 1956, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The second is an unpublished passage of “An Epilogue” Strauss wrote for Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, published in 1962. Together these pieces improve our understanding of both the context in which Strauss developed his critique of the new political science and the audience to whom that critique was addressed. These two texts are of “biographical” interest. They are biographical in the sense that they clarify Strauss's thought and its evolution. The “Lecture in Milwaukee” clarifies the context in which Strauss's critique of modern political science was born: confrontation with the political scientists of the 1950s, here represented by Glendon Schubert who is not mentioned in Strauss's published writings. Without this lecture one might overlook the reference to “extrasensory perception” in the ironical discussion of “our man in Missouri” in “Epilogue.” The critique of Arthur Bentley, Bernard Berelson, Harold Laswell, and Herbert Simon by Strauss's students also takes on new meaning if read in the light of this lecture's references and Schubert's published article. Aside from Strauss's view of academia in the 1950s, his references in the lecture to the British Labour Party's policy toward Nazi Germany, to postwar American disarmament, and to prison reform and immigration policy in the United States provide rare and thus important information about Strauss's political views and judgment.

Government Job-Hunting in Washington

1978 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 492-498
Author(s):  
James P. McGregor
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Main Topic ◽  
Job Market ◽  
The Face ◽  
Almost All ◽  
New Political Science ◽  
Percent Decline

Probably the main topic of conversation at most recent professional meetings of political scientists is the job market. For graduate students and professors alike, getting a job, keeping a job, or improving one's position take precedence over traditional scholarly concerns. Statistics gathered by APSA and presented inPSby the Association's official Cassandra, Tom Mann, point to a worsening job situation despite some success in the profession's holding its ground until recently. According to Mann, “the outlook for the next decade and a half is grim” in the face of such facts as a projected 25 percent decline in the college-bound population between 1980 and 1994, the prospect that almost all demand for academic political scientists will be replacement for those who retire, die, or move out of the profession, and the possibility that the production of new political science Ph.D.s will increase despite adverse demand.

Political Science: Seeing Like a Subversive Social Scientist

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-437
Author(s):  
Meredith L. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Global Patterns ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
New Democracy

Much of the work of political science revolves around institutions—the structures through which politics happens. Leaders enter the frame, of course, but often as institutions in human form: presidents, premiers, populists, and mobilizers who serve to channel and direct who does what and what they do, much like an agency or law. We might trace this pseudo-structural, largely mechanical reading of human agency to political scientists of an earlier era: the behavioralists of the 1950s and 1960s. James C. Scott began his career as just such a scholar. For his dissertation-turned-book, Political Ideology in Malaysia: Reality and the Beliefs of an Elite, Scott surveyed a gaggle of Malaysian bureaucrats to examine, effectively, the extent to which their values and assumptions supported or subverted the new democracy they served. Although itself fairly prosaic, that work foreshadows the political grime and games that soon pulled Scott in more promising directions theoretically, whether scrutinizing Southeast Asia or global patterns: disentangling structure from norms, finding agency around the margins of class and state, and rethinking how power looks and functions.

Harold D. Lasswell's Political World: Weak Tea for Hard Times

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Merelman
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Science Courses ◽  
Political World ◽  
Terra Incognita ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The Law ◽  
The 1950S

I first encountered the work of Harold Lasswell in the late 1950s, when I was a barely awake undergraduate at a university whose reputation for mediocrity was richly deserved. I opened Politics: Who Gets What, When, How to the first paragraph: ‘The study of politics is the study of influence and the influential. The science of politics states conditions; the philosophy of politics justifies preferences. This book, restricted to political analysis, declares no preferences. It states conditions.’ I had never heard of Lasswell, for my political science courses limited themselves to subjects like Congressional seniority and Cabinet responsibility in Britain. One course discussed the law of piracy, a subject I had trouble linking to international politics in the 1950s. Some enterprising instructors occasionally discussed the balance of power, and one even assigned David Truman. But Lasswell was terra incognita to me, as he no doubt was to most undergraduates in those years.

Modes of Experience–On Eric Voegelin's Theory of Governance

2006 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Jörg Sigwart
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Early Text ◽  
The 1950S

Whereas Eric Voegelin's main works from the 1950s to the 1980s are well known and have been widely discussed, his early work has gained academic attention only recently. Voegelin scholars have now entered into a wide-ranging discussion of the specific nature of those early writings. The following reflections seek to contribute to this general discussion by focusing on one of the most interesting—and, at the same time, the most puzzling—of Voegelin's early unpublished texts. Concentrating on the fragment entitled the Theory of Governance, this article will also present certain sources that have not yet appeared in English. Its aim will be to clarify some of the crucial questions and principles of Voegelin's early conception of political science in general. After presenting that conception, the article will indicate that Voegelin's later critique of the modern ideologies of political collectivism has not yet come into focus in this early text.

Field Specializations among Beginning Economists: Are There Gender Differences?

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 86-91
Author(s):  
Eva Sierminska ◽  
Ronald L. Oaxaca
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Industrial Organization ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Public Economics ◽  
Dissimilarity Index ◽  
Institutional Variables ◽  
Academic Employment ◽  
Macro Finance

We examine the process underlying field specialization among beginning economists. Our multivariate logit framework accommodates single-and dual-field specializations with correlated choices. Including field-specific relative salaries and expected probabilities of academic employment is a novel aspect of this research. After conditioning on personal, economic, and institutional variables, we find that women graduate students are less likely to specialize in labor/health, macro/finance, industrial organization, public economics, and development/growth/international fields and are more likely to specialize in agricultural/resource/environmental fields. The Duncan dissimilarity index suggests that 14 percent of either sex would have to change specialization in order to achieve complete parity.

Contemporary Challenges and Preschool Teachers' Education in Croatia

2016 ◽  
pp. 1024-1042
Author(s):  
Sanja Tatalović Vorkapić ◽  
Lidija Vujičić ◽  
Željko Boneta
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Intrinsic Motivation ◽  
Preschool Teachers ◽  
Continuing Professional Development ◽  
Graduate Study ◽  
Positive Perception ◽  
Study Program ◽  
Professional Needs ◽  
New Graduate

The evaluation of the new graduate study program Early and Preschool Care and Education (EPCE) was conducted recently in Croatia. Preschool teachers and graduate students were asked about their motivation for enrolling, the level of competencies developed during their study, and the predictive power of three significantly connected motives in relation to those competencies. Statistical analysis revealed highly positive perception of relevant competences gained. This finding confirmed the hypothesis that continuing professional development through formal higher education contributes significantly to improved preschool teachers' performance while coping with changing and growing job demands. Moreover, subjects demonstrated highly intrinsic motivation for enrolling. Extrinsic motives were indicative of a more negative, while intrinsic motivation led to more positive, perception of learning outcomes and gained competencies. Overall, the evaluation was highly positive and the findings confirmed the importance of satisfying the professional needs of preschool teachers.

New Political Science and Black Lives Matter Statement

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-417
Author(s):  
Jocelyn M. Boryczka ◽  
Sarah M. Surak ◽  
Robert E. Kirsch
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
New Political Science
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