The following comment on Philosophy Smoker (which I anonymize, since blog posts get more visibility than comments) was from a member of a search committee that got over 700 applications. After some wild speculation about how much of those applications were obviously of unqualified candidates (e.g., people whose dissertation is not finished or nearly completed), the person commented:
I'm a member of the [ommitted] search committee. We received 738 applications and no more than 50 were "junk." There are hundreds and hundreds of exceptionally talented philosophers without a job. Reading and then rejecting their files was depressing and I can no longer in good conscience encourage anyone to enter our profession.
This is depressing indeed. I'm still inclined to believe it is a good thing to encourage promising undergrads to pursue a career in philosophy - I have encouraged people in the past and thought it was the right thing to do. And I think we should make a special effort to keep those people who may be discouraged for various reasons (e.g., economically disadvantaged, minorities). But this is just a gut feeling. Surely, philosophy would improve if we could manage to attract a diverse and highly talented pool of graduate students. But is it in their best interests? Or only in our profession's best interests?
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