University Affairs (CAN) article: The PhD conversion experience

[secundem_artem]

I think that when people talk about "alternate academic" jobs, they tend to confound two things:
1. Whether somebody with a PhD can use the skills learnt in grad school/teaching/research in a non-academic job; and
2. Whether a PhD program is a good way of preparing yourself for a non-academic job.

I think that many people who go into academia later find that they cannot or do not want to make academia their life-long home. There are things that are learnt in academia that are also useful in other fields.

But it would seem wasteful and silly to train to be an academic with some other goal in mind.

Ii read an interview in the JAMA at my doctor's office recently with somebody who had been an auto mechanic and then, at 40-something years old decided to go to medical school and was now working in the ER at a local hospital. (He was also black and from a working-class background so the article was rather inspiring.) He said that many of the same skills he learnt as an auto mechanic were useful in being an ER doctor. From his description I believe him--and I think it is great that an auto mechanic can become a doctor or a doctor can become an auto mechanic, if he is so inclined and willing to do the hard work. But on a large scale, it would seem to be a wrong to think of being an auto mechanic as being good training to be a doctor, or vice versa.

I tell my undergrads that history is a good major and you can do any number of jobs with it. I do not tell students who are thinking of history grad school the same thing, because if they want to do something else, they should do it. It is good to have other options, but in general they should be the exception not the rule. If a few historians decide to do something else, that's great. If a large number of PhDs in history decide to go into other fields, that is a sign that either the historical profession or history grad programs are defective--which is probably the case.

Sometimes I think the only difference is that physicians must perform all repairs with the motor running.

Old joke -- An OB/GYN grows tired of the daily grind of medicine.  The bureaucracy, the insurance industry, the politics.  So she decides to go back to school to become an auto mechanic.  She does very well in her studies and the time comes for her final assessment, which is to replace the head gasket in a 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee.  It takes her an unusually long time.  Her teacher watches intently, with a worried look on his face. 

At the end, our student Dr Mechanic asks "Did I do something wrong?"

"Oh no" replies the teacher.   "You did a fine job.  It's just that I've never seen anybody do that by going in through the tail pipe."

Thanks folks  I'll see myself out.

[apl68]

None of this is new, even if it has become worse in the last decade. I got my PhD in 2003 and the situation was not much better then.

The situation in the humanities has never been good in my lifetime.  That's why it's bizarre that people keep acting as though this 'temporary' state that's lasted more than forty years is somehow easily solved but people just aren't taking action or was somehow unknowable for the people who recently graduated with a doctorate.

Kaysixteen's reference to the '90s is sighworthy.  It's been 20+ years and nothing has changed nor have individuals seem to have stepped up to learn something different in all the years that have passed that would get them another career. 

It has long since become clear that the post-World War II boom in PhD hires in certain fields was an anomaly that will never return (Some say that the demand rightfully should be higher.  The society that would have to provide the resources for this has made its disagreement with that abundantly clear).  That was not so clear around 1990, though.  The notion that the hiring situation would significantly improve seemed at least briefly plausible to those not in a position to observe how widespread replacement of tenured profs by adjuncts was the trend of the future. 

Are there really that many "death march" adjuncts who've just kept at it year after year after year?  Had I completed the PhD I can see having felt the need to try the academic job market for at least two or three years before giving up.  But if I hadn't at least found steady full-time non-tenure-track work in that time, I would have at last looked for something else. 

The people I most feel sorry for at this point are those who actually built an academic career, only to find their careers cut short in middle age by the shutdown of their departments or institutions.  As millions of former industrial workers have shown, that's a very hard blow to recover from.

[marshwiggle]

None of this is new, even if it has become worse in the last decade. I got my PhD in 2003 and the situation was not much better then.

The situation in the humanities has never been good in my lifetime.  That's why it's bizarre that people keep acting as though this 'temporary' state that's lasted more than forty years is somehow easily solved but people just aren't taking action or was somehow unknowable for the people who recently graduated with a doctorate.

Kaysixteen's reference to the '90s is sighworthy.  It's been 20+ years and nothing has changed nor have individuals seem to have stepped up to learn something different in all the years that have passed that would get them another career. 

It has long since become clear that the post-World War II boom in PhD hires in certain fields was an anomaly that will never return (Some say that the demand rightfully should be higher.  The society that would have to provide the resources for this has made its disagreement with that abundantly clear). 

Post WWII was 75 years ago!!! We might as well lament the end of the post-Reformation boom in hiring of Protestant clergy.

(And among other things, right after WWII probably most PhDs were awarded to men. So even if nothing else changed, the candidate pool has approximately doubled in most fields, and increased by much more than that in others. Not to mention the enrollment boom with soldiers returning. So even that was not likely to be sustainable.)
 

[mamselle]

Well, actually, there weren't any Protestant clergy to hire until after the Reformation....

M.

[nonntt]

This pretty much exemplifies why these fora are worthless as a replacement for the CHE fora. "The market has always been bad in the humanities" was a bad take in 2008, uninformed in 2014, and just plain ignorant today.

The "postwar" hiring boom in MLA fields was actually in the '60s and it ended precisely 50 years ago, but the "crash" was brief and the '70s, '80s, and '90s weren't entirely awful times to get a tenure-track job, no matter how much it seemed like it at the time. The ratio of job-seeking PhDs to TT jobs was better in the '80s and '90s than the '70s, but everything up through 2007 was about twice as promising as anything in 2008 and after. Earlier decades had their ups and downs, but bad years were followed by recoveries. There was never a recovery after 2008.

From 2003, the year I earned my PhD, to 2007, the fall MLA job list started with 33 new TT jobs on average in my field, and there would be 54 on average by the end of the year. The number of new PhDs each year meant that maybe 50-60% of PhDs had a shot at a tenure-track job. Those are not wonderful but also not terrible odds.

As of today, there is 1 tenure-track job currently advertised in my field, a field that has done little to nothing over the last decade to reduce the number of PhDs.

In the language of mathematics, 50% > 25% > 1%. One job for every 2 PhDs is better than one for every 4, which is better than one for every 100. To state it any more clearly would require crayons.

The job market of today is not like 2008-2019, which was not like 1986-2007, which was not like 1970-1985, which was not like 1962-1969.

[jerseyjay]

From 2003, the year I earned my PhD, to 2007, the fall MLA job list started with 33 new TT jobs on average in my field, and there would be 54 on average by the end of the year. The number of new PhDs each year meant that maybe 50-60% of PhDs had a shot at a tenure-track job. Those are not wonderful but also not terrible odds.

As of today, there is 1 tenure-track job currently advertised in my field, a field that has done little to nothing over the last decade to reduce the number of PhDs.

In the language of mathematics, 50% > 25% > 1%. One job for every 2 PhDs is better than one for every 4, which is better than one for every 100. To state it any more clearly would require crayons.

The job market of today is not like 2008-2019, which was not like 1986-2007, which was not like 1970-1985, which was not like 1962-1969.

To be honest, I find this like arguing whether you are more likely to win at PowerBall or MegaMillions. I mean, yes there are different odds, but most people are not going to win either one.

The history job market was awful in 2002-2005, when I was first on the market. (I got my PhD in 2003.) It is definitely true it was better than now, and I remember going to the post office during hiring season and sending 10 or more applications a week for a while. I even got several interviews each year.

In 2008, with the financial crisis, it crashed even more, and the number of positions slowed to a trickle and the interviews I had decline more. Now it is probably even worse. But most of the PhDs I knew in 2003 were working as adjuncts.

Yes, the job market has gotten progressively worse. But at least since I graduated with a BA in 1997 and decided to go to grad school, the job market in history has been awful. The secular decline of the job market in history is not particularly surprising, at least in retrospect. It seems true to say that the market in history has always been bad (if always means in my lifetime).

Of course, the job situation is never 100 per cent dismal. I managed to get hired on the tenure track 13 years after getting my doctorate. But I feel that my experience is more of a margin of error than a trend.


(Also, keep in mind that if 50 per cent of PhDs any year can get a tenure track job each year, there are always several years' worth of PhDs looking for jobs, since last year's PhDs are still looking.) 

[kaysixteen]

What did you do during those thirteen years between PhD and getting a tt job?   Were you consistently adjuncting?   Publishing?   What changed, IYO, to get you that position after all those years?

[jerseyjay]

What did you do during those thirteen years between PhD and getting a tt job?   Were you consistently adjuncting?   Publishing?   What changed, IYO, to get you that position after all those years?

To answer the first question: of those 13 years, I spent two of them as a VAP abroad, three of them as a VAP in the US, four of them working outside of academia (but in a cognate industry), and probably about nine years teaching part-time at probably about five universities (which includes the time that I was working outside of academia). I published one book and probably six or seven articles.

To answer the second question: to be perfectly honest, I think I was lucky. I mean, I think that my CV is competitive for the non-research school that I am now on the tenure track, but I am not the only one who can say that. The school that I was a VAP at, and where I taught part-time in the four years when I was working outside of academia, suddenly had somebody retire, and since I knew everybody there in the department, I got the job. Of course, on the tenure track, I have had to publish another book and about six more articles.  My department has not hired anybody since I have been on the tenure track, and I don't think we will for the foreseeable future.

So I don't think that it is impossible to get a tenure track job in history. But I don't think the odds are very good.

[Caracal]

This pretty much exemplifies why these fora are worthless as a replacement for the CHE fora. "The market has always been bad in the humanities" was a bad take in 2008, uninformed in 2014, and just plain ignorant today.

The "postwar" hiring boom in MLA fields was actually in the '60s and it ended precisely 50 years ago, but the "crash" was brief and the '70s, '80s, and '90s weren't entirely awful times to get a tenure-track job, no matter how much it seemed like it at the time. The ratio of job-seeking PhDs to TT jobs was better in the '80s and '90s than the '70s, but everything up through 2007 was about twice as promising as anything in 2008 and after. Earlier decades had their ups and downs, but bad years were followed by recoveries. There was never a recovery after 2008.

From 2003, the year I earned my PhD, to 2007, the fall MLA job list started with 33 new TT jobs on average in my field, and there would be 54 on average by the end of the year. The number of new PhDs each year meant that maybe 50-60% of PhDs had a shot at a tenure-track job. Those are not wonderful but also not terrible odds.

As of today, there is 1 tenure-track job currently advertised in my field, a field that has done little to nothing over the last decade to reduce the number of PhDs.

In the language of mathematics, 50% > 25% > 1%. One job for every 2 PhDs is better than one for every 4, which is better than one for every 100. To state it any more clearly would require crayons.

The job market of today is not like 2008-2019, which was not like 1986-2007, which was not like 1970-1985, which was not like 1962-1969.

Although, worth pointing out that this varies by discipline and sub discipline. There's not one humanities job market, there are a lot of them and they have different dynamics. I'm not going to  encourage anyone to go to grad school in history, but if I'm talking to someone who is a fluent Arabic speaker and reader who is considering applying to grad school to study Middle Eastern History, I'm going to have a very different conversation than I am if I'm talking to someone who wants to study 18th century France.

[jerseyjay]

Caracal is of course correct. I think that, given supply and demand, the higher the entry barrier is a subfield, the easier it will be to get a job. I met a historian who specialized in Chinese scientific history and was fluent in  Chinese and had studied physics. Near Eastern and Asian language skills are very valuable.

However, even there, this is all in the context of the broader history market. At my department, we recognize that we have too much emphasis on US, European, and to a lesser extent, Latin American history. (And to get back to kaysixteen's question, one of the reason I was hired was that I have experience teaching all three areas.) We want an Asian historian--and there are not too many of them compared to US or European historians. That said, we are not getting a line soon--not for US history, not for European history, and not for Asian history.

So somebody who speaks multiple languages and has multiple skills will often find it easier to get a job than somebody who doesn't, there is still a dwindling number of jobs overall. And many of those jobs will be far outside one's subfield. I spoke to a PhD in Chinese history who bemoaned the fact that many of the jobs she had got offers for were "World History" jobs at small, non-research schools. To somebody with a PhD in US or European history, that may sound like a great problem to have, but it is still a sign of a weak job market.

[mleok]

I'm unclear how the author proposes to create jobs for Ph.D.s who cannot be hired into traditional tenure-track positions, I assume the proposed solution is based on the so called reformation of the church of knowledge, but at least in STEM, there has been a decrease in corporate funding of basic research in their own research labs. Put another way, this is not going to be solved without addressing the oversupply issue.

"The Reformation of the Church of Knowledge is in fact already moving ahead, in the form of collaborations among the sciences, medical sciences, engineering and industry; the many public humanities projects; the socially creative work of sociologists and anthropologists; and the increasing rate of publication of all kinds for readers and interlocutors outside the academy. If we can draw together all these initiatives across the university system, we can begin to fashion a new knowledge ecology around universities as the hub. Within this expansive working space, funded by the universities, governments, foundations, industry and public agencies of all kinds, PhD grads could do the work they have trained so hard to do, mobilize their knowledge and research skills across multiple sectors of work and action, contribute in manifold ways to the public good, and never have to leave the sanctified place where they feel they most belong because that place has pushed out its walls and become part of the larger world."

[Caracal]

I'm unclear how the author proposes to create jobs for Ph.D.s who cannot be hired into traditional tenure-track positions, I assume the proposed solution is based on the so called reformation of the church of knowledge, but at least in STEM, there has been a decrease in corporate funding of basic research in their own research labs. Put another way, this is not going to be solved without addressing the oversupply issue.

It would be great if there was a lot more funding for libraries, outreach, foundations and all the rest. It just seems weird to think that somehow this is going to happen independently of what is happening at colleges and universities. If there isn't institutional support for creating more permanent positions to teach in colleges in universities, where is all this money to fund positions outside of the academy going to come from?

[kaysixteen]

What exactly is a 'cognate history' to being a history prof?

[jerseyjay]

What exactly is a 'cognate history' to being a history prof?

Well, I don't want to tell you exactly what it was because that would essentially be "outing" myself. That said, a "cognate industry" is a field that is not academic history but which requires postgraduate study in history to get a job. There are not that many such fields (which is one of the reasons alt-ac jobs are not that big a thing in history). They include various publishing and editorial work that are not teaching or researching history but in which familiarity with history is necessary.

[Hibush]

I'm unclear how the author proposes to create jobs for Ph.D.s who cannot be hired into traditional tenure-track positions, I assume the proposed solution is based on the so called reformation of the church of knowledge, but at least in STEM, there has been a decrease in corporate funding of basic research in their own research labs. Put another way, this is not going to be solved without addressing the oversupply issue.

"The Reformation of the Church of Knowledge is in fact already moving ahead, in the form of collaborations among the sciences, medical sciences, engineering and industry; the many public humanities projects; the socially creative work of sociologists and anthropologists; and the increasing rate of publication of all kinds for readers and interlocutors outside the academy. If we can draw together all these initiatives across the university system, we can begin to fashion a new knowledge ecology around universities as the hub. Within this expansive working space, funded by the universities, governments, foundations, industry and public agencies of all kinds, PhD grads could do the work they have trained so hard to do, mobilize their knowledge and research skills across multiple sectors of work and action, contribute in manifold ways to the public good, and never have to leave the sanctified place where they feel they most belong because that place has pushed out its walls and become part of the larger world."

The way I read this is that the author feels that a university that awards a PhD to someone is thereby obligated to provide lifetime employment. At least the Canadian system as a whole.

I put that kind of expectation in the "Extreme wishful thinking" category. Even is an individual is prone to that, a graduate education in any subject should train someone to consider whether the evidence is at all consistent with a proposition.

Why did that connection fail?

To what extent are the faculty at the university so isolated in their ivory towers that they are unaware that people work for a living, and that employers pay them to do something productive?

Are students rejecting every signal from a realistic faculty that they are on a path that does not lead to a TT job? (IHE published something recently by someone like that, who "persevered against every one of the many obstacles put in their way", and are now underemployed.)

Is there a subset of students who feel so entitled that they don't consider the possibility that their wishes won't be fulfilled?