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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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Post-academic, non-academic or alternative careers
The Career Centre at the University of Chicago has come up with an interesting turn-of-phrase to describe the career path of a PhD who decides against a traditional academic career. They call it a “Post-Graduate” career.
Hmm – definitely sounds better than “alternative” or worse, “non-academic” which are the phrases usually used. Career Centres struggle with these words because they imply that the norm is an academic career which, of course, is not the case for the majority of PhDs. So why pretend otherwise or make someone feel aberrant for exploring other options to an academic career?
So what do you think? Try it on – roll it around your tongue. How does it feel? What would it sound like to tell Mom and Dad that after 10 years of university you are ready for a post-academic career?
I’d love to know your take on this because it would really help those Career Centres that actually provide services for grad students to know what you would like careers outside academe to be called. Take a moment to fill in the poll below. Encourage your friends to do the same. I’ll lay odds that whatever you choose here will start popping up in the terminology used by your Career Centres come September.
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I voted post graduate career. Sounds better than non-academic.
I like some of the terms here, but because I was and continue to be a para-professional (as in an unofficial therapist/social worker/human service provider) as well as manager, despite being in the midst of working on my PhD, I call myself a professional (on the poll I ticked “other”). What the academy calls me is at this point irrelevant to the places that feed, shelter and clothe my kids and I–aka my employers. Although this might seem somewhat heretical, I still value my lived experiences far more than all the book-learning. It keeps me grounded, which is crucial in my field.