Daryl Morini, an IR PhD candidate at the University of Queensland whom I know, has put together an interesting global survey for undergraduate and graduate students of international relations. It looks pretty thorough and might make a pretty interesting student couter-point to the Teaching and Research in International Politics (TRIP) report on scholars’ attitudes. Eventually the goal is an article on our students’ attitudes toward the discipline; here is the full write-up of the project at e-IR. So far as I know, nothing like this has been done before (please comment if that is incorrect), so this strikes me as the interesting sort of student work we should support. Daryl’s also made an interesting effort to use Twitter as a simulation tool in IR, so I am happy to pitch this survey for him. Please take a look; Daryl may be contacted here.
PS: That pic is dead-on accurate.
Robert E Kelly 
Sadly…an international relations degree is a good supplementary degree if any. But not the best choice for employment prospects in this day and age.
Lots of kids choose this major because they don’t want to use Excel or Math…Not many jobs in this day and age want highly opinionated and articulate liberal arts students. They require analytical and technical graduates that can operate in a corporate world.
I thoroughly enjoyed my studies in IR, but luckily I was backed with a commerce degree. Even then it was a hard time trying to find employment. Proper Graduate employment.
Maybe in the LONG run in the decades to come, my further education and wider pool of knowledge will be useful. But for fresh grads, the number of summer internships, work experience and proficiency with workplace IT systems is more important.
Sadly many of the McDonalds jokes regarding Arts students is true…
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Well, IR is not really intended as an undergraduate major. At that level, it’s more about Political Science. I don’t have the sense that PS major job prospects are awful.
As for a grad school, I think it is pretty well-established now that there are too many IR PhDs and not enough jobs. But that is a problem throughout academia. It’s much, much worse in the humanities. This is why so many universities have so many adjuncts now.
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