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Career Sense is a blog for academic job seekers.
- Read full bio: Carolyn Steele (formerly our “Dr. Jobs” columnist), is a career adviser of 10 years, and a PhD candidate herself.
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It’s time for a new ‘normal’ in academe
I’ve been watching with interest the poll from last week that asks if readers would still pursue a PhD if they didn’t think it was leading to a tenure track job. As I write this, 74% of respondents have answered “no”. This represents a potential crisis for universities. What would happen if 74% of doctoral students decided to opt out of graduate education? Would it be possible for undergraduate courses to continue without a steady supply of cheap labour? Yet, if grad students were told the truth about their academic job prospects, the survey results of this admittedly small sample suggest that that supply would quickly dry up. I can’t help but wonder what a huge disincentive this scenario poses for universities to actually come clean with doctoral recruits about their career outcomes.
Now before I am accused of being a naysayer, let me emphasize that I do not mean to suggest that a PhD has no value other than leading to a professorship – nothing could be further from the truth. Quite the opposite I would claim. Based on my interactions with doctoral candidates over the past 10 years, I firmly believe that a PhD is a bit like a “get out of jail free” card in the knowledge economy. That is, there is not much you can’t build on with a doctoral education as your base — good news in a rapidly fluctuating economy. The skills and knowledge acquired after 10+ years in the academic context, along with the sheer level of ability the average PhD possesses, are immensely transferable to many other contexts.
That is perhaps one of the least acknowledged aspects of a doctoral education — and one of the least understood. Provincial governments sort of get it, but for the wrong reasons. They have been pushing to expand enrollment in graduate programs for the past few years, which I would provisionally applaud. But they have, erroneously I believe, justified this in terms of market demand in specific fields. Given the timelines involved in obtaining a doctoral degree in particular, basing policy decisions on current trends is always a gamble. The current paucity of family doctors is a good example of such policies run amok. This misguided thinking is further exacerbated, as I argued recently, by the failure to also fund the professional development support these students will need to enter the workforce at levels higher than undergraduates.
It would have been better, revolutionary, in fact, if politicians acknowledged that in an economy built on innovation, rapidly shifting knowledge and unpredictability, the need for people not only to able to function in this environment, but to lead the way, is imperative. That will be the primary contribution of graduate level education in the 21st century – to produce the visionaries and policy makers who will help rebuild a strained society on some other basis than avarice.
Inevitably, some of these graduates will become teachers and researchers with universities, but most will permeate other sectors of society where they will develop and implement radically new approaches to a sustainable economy, social reform, knowledge management and technological advances. While some will bring expertise in particular fields, many more will morph into areas far removed from their disciplines, but closely aligned with their unique and highly developed abilities.
We can no longer afford to keep our brightest minds tucked away in disciplinary cloisters of the ivory tower while our society crumbles. Nor is it fruitful to force those who do forge a “non-traditional” path to do so surreptitously (in most departments, a graduate student who openly discusses an interest in a non-academic career all but closes the door on their own academic career prospects because they aren’t considered “committed”).
Our governmental agencies and industry recruiters would do well to develop mutual connections between themselves and graduate programs. Graduate students, with the support of their programs, can jump start this process by demanding that they have access to the same level of career resources and support afforded to undergraduates. Employers, in concert with graduate faculties and university career centres, can provide multiple venues to develop realtionships with graduate students before they graduate. Governments can increase the number of internships and other experiential learning opportunities for graduate students early on in their degrees. Most importantly, graduate faculty can stop talking about an academic career as if it is the only viable option for serious students. It’s time to put that hoary legend to bed.
Carolyn, thank you for the follow-up article. I wonder how many of those graduates who don’t become teachers and researchers with universities will actually “permeate other sectors of society” in some way that fully uses their knowledge. The longer one is out of academe, the harder it is to get back in, particularly in a faculty position. The disheartening part is that recent PhDs who don’t want to change cities are even more limited in their already limited choices (but this goes for any type of job). The alternative of pursuing a pdf doesn’t even seem viable when it pays less than the take-home pay for someone with non-taxable doctoral awards plus other income. Personally, I’ve spent as much time during the last few months as a doctoral candidate writing my thesis as I have planning, talking with faculty, and applying for/creating opportunities for jobs that will use my skills and pay at least what I was making as a doctoral student. So yes, it’s not surprising that 74% said they wouldn’t have pursued a PhD if there weren’t a faculty position at the end of it.
i agree with Grace: it’s not easy to get a job outside the academe when you’ve devoted your whole life (assuming people get their degree at 28-30) to precisely continuing inside the academe.
I am empathetic to the plight of our current post-graduates. I “doctored up” at the end of the Harris era in Ontario. Hiring freezes pocked that inglorious time and it took me four years of demoralizing contract teaching (and no publications) before I got my first of three successive LTAs. Seven years out I finally secured a tenure-track position, and then very early tenure. The sad fact is that my academic biography is not unique. As a contract prof at Queen’s, I met a female sociologist who had just wrangled a t-t position six years after graduating (this for all those who think there is an overt feminization of hiring). I have friends who’ve had their PhDs for more than 10 years and who still need a t-t. I guess my point is that a PhD is not for the bourgeois faint of heart, and certainly not a guarantee of employment (is this why we do it?). Some lucky ones simply breeze into a job before they graduate. But some suffer–I use that word deliberately–and that condition for many is not unique to the last decade.