Universities are selling degrees. Period. You should at least be an informed consumer of their product. Ask how many previous degree recipients are working in their field. If it is a history Ph.D. ask how many are teaching college level history. Probably none. I was a career counselor in a professional degree program at a University. That was an oversold degree, but Ph.D.s? Sheesh. No deadended person who told me proudly he was going back to school to get a Ph.D. in art history or American Literature had asked if people who got that degree were teaching after 6 years and thousands of dollars put into the degree. They assumed the school was teaching something where the credential had value. No! It's like the infomercial where you send $35 to learn the secret of amassing wealth. The school wants to make money.

They do it by selling a degree to you! They know there are no schools in Missouri or Alaska that are hurting for people with your Ph.D. The country is swimming in Ph.D.s who are bartending. Run!

I teach in a university, though no longer full time. From my perspective I can think of two reasons NOT to do the video beyond those that Cary has raised:

1. Students are not all immature and do not all view their instructors as non-human adult authority figures, but enough of them are. All it takes is one to get a hold of a fetish video and it will be all over campus in short order, harming your credibility.

2. Academics may seem enlightened, but they are as immature and gossipy as anyone, and the profession as a whole is disturbingly status-oriented. If you do this thing outside of a work context (if you were doing it as participant observation as a scholar of sexual behaviour, or as a political statement by a women's studies scholar, etc. it would be different) then you will be tarred if it gets out. You would be surprised how petty some people are.

To me the risk wouldn't be worth it. If you wanted to do it, it might be worth it, but as you don't want to, I can't see how it is worth the risk.

Doing a Ph.D. is a risk itself. I can guarantee you that, without having done it, you don't realize what is involved and that your conception of what an academic life is like may not actually be accurate. There is no guarantee that when you finish your program that you will want to continue in academia. So a risk piled on top of a risk makes this decision a double-no.

If I were you I'd focus on trying to get research work, teaching assistantship, etc. related to your area of scholarship.

1. I would do the video ... easy money and no risk - but if your gut tells you not to do it DO NOT DO IT

2. a Ph.D. is not a panacea. I know people that have a Ph.D. from Berkeley and teach in community colleges for 20k. Please talk to someone that has a PhD in your desired field and check out the job prospects. I was one of the lucky ones that got a job in Wall Street :) Most PhD grads do NOT get the job of their dreams.

3. Most PhD students get TA and/or RA jobs and do NOT pay tuition. Not a lot of $, but enough to survive - get used to riding a bicycle, eating ramen noodles etc - trust me, I know about this lifestyle and it is fun but expect to live as a "poor grad student"

I don't know anything about fetish videos, and in fact had never heard of the things until reading this letter (the corrupting influence of Salon), but I found this interesting blog post by a woman called Cherry Bomb.

Ms. Bomb is a fetish work dropout and tells a very sad story of how this type of work drove her to the verge of madness. Soon after this post, she quit blogging.

Here is a taste:

"When people, academics and civilians alike, discuss sex work, emphasis is always placed heavily on the issue of choice. People like to try and posit choice as the defining element of sex work…as in: coerced/forced sex work is bad, sex work as a chosen career is good/liberated."

"All I know is that I cannot spend another night in a deserted loft building, pretending to be arriving for a “photo shoot.” I cannot bear to make any more sparkling yet insipid conversation with some guy who is paying to put his goddamn hands on me. And I cannot keep trying to tell myself that it’s worth it for the money. I fucking hate it. It is not worth the money to come home and be sick and cry into an empty pillow."

http://cherrybombnyc.blogspot.com/2006/11/death-grip.html

The whole article is worth reading.

I'm not posting this as a kind of Ann Landers type warning of the perils of this type of work, but you do this at your peril.

'Fraid so!

I am another dissertation writer, taking a break from the tedium to read Salon. My program is not the most elite. Still, it only selects 10-12 new students each year. Of those students, roughly a quarter drop out within the first year or so. Of those who reach the ABD level (all but dissertation), only about half will finish. This process involves weeding out the less than brilliant and less than diligent and the distracted and the emotionally un-tough. That latter quality, the ability to live in a pressure cooker & produce under scrutiny, appears to be the deciding factor. My career is not even underway and I feel that I have stepped over the bodies of the fallen. Frankly, I would have fallen with them with the added pressure of poverty and a TA gig. I am doing this as a stay-at-home parent.

LW does not have the chops for this. If she were smart enough & tough enough & industrious enough to succeed in a doctoral program, she would not be crying about cash & selling her panties. I would advise her to get her Master's & work as an adjunct. If she is lucky and charming, she might land a job at a community college. And, guess what?!! That job will have the same pay as mine!!!

All that said: Why do I bother? I am doing this - not as a means to an end - but as an achievement unto itself. I like my field of study and I want those letters by my name.

Those who said that a doctoral program is not job training were right.