Changing Dissertation Advising: CHE article

[Caracal]

In history about half of PHDs get jobs outside of academia. Obviously there are plenty of opportunities.

Did they really need a PhD for those opportunities?  Too many people getting grad degrees and PhDs that add little value.  If they want to do it as a hobby and pay for it without loans, that's one thing.  But racking up debt for unnecessary degrees?

Very few people rack up much debt getting humanities grad degrees. Most programs are fully funded.

Ummmm......I forget. Are you in the humanities?

They might be fully funded for a couple of years but if your research is tiny, picky, overseas and contested, it's not a walk in the park financially.

M.

Yes, I know. Generally, the better programs offer full funding. Some places, it can be more complicated. Really, nobody should accept an admission offer to a PHD program without guaranteed funding for at least four years.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

I don't really understand why suggesting students be patient for a year or two would necessarily be bad advice.

It is not necessarily bad advice, but it is a bad advice for majority of students in many fields who have little chances of getting decently paid academic jobs even pre-covid. There is a very large opportunity cost in persisting along academic path against the odds due to cumulative effect of many choices: e.g. teaching a class instead of taking an internship; taking extra year(s) to get more articles published instead of just finishing; not taking practical courses unrelated to the dissertation etc.

Very few people rack up much debt getting humanities grad degrees. Most programs are fully funded.

Based on conversations with my acquaintances in humanities, they have really peculiar understanding of "fully-funded", particularly, in respect to guaranteed funding duration.
Moreover, even "not much" debt may be a lot if there is no degree to show for it (as is the case for large fraction of students who do not complete their degrees).

[Caracal]

I don't really understand why suggesting students be patient for a year or two would necessarily be bad advice.

It is not necessarily bad advice, but it is a bad advice for majority of students in many fields who have little chances of getting decently paid academic jobs even pre-covid. There is a very large opportunity cost in persisting along academic path against the odds due to cumulative effect of many choices: e.g. teaching a class instead of taking an internship; taking extra year(s) to get more articles published instead of just finishing; not taking practical courses unrelated to the dissertation etc.

I think this is where the perception vs the reality of academic employment leads people to weird conclusions. I don't know enough of the details about other fields to say anything definite, but in history, my field, an AHA project found that a bit under half of people who finished their phds after the recession got tenure track jobs. That's not good, but its not anywhere near as dire as it is often made out to be. Obviously, the success rate varies enormously by institution, but also by advisor and field.

There is this assumption that getting an academic job in the humanities is an impossible pipe dream, but that just isn't true for many people. Of the people I went to grad school with, more ended up with tenure track jobs than didn't. Of course, things might get worse post Covid-but I don't trust anyone who professes to be sure of that. There are just too many unknown factors. Obviously opportunity cost is important to factor in, but opportunity cost is not some fixed thing that is the same for everyone, especially during a time when the economy in general is doing badly. If you're a grad student close to finishing and just got offered a job in some non academic position and its something you're interested in, it would be foolish not to give serious consideration to taking it. However, that isn't going to the situation for most people. There aren't tons of internship opportunities and jobs out there right now. In that situation, teaching some classes, making a bit of money, keeping funding and doing things that will make you a stronger candidate next year might be a better bet than just deciding that the academic job market is hopeless.

[marshwiggle]

I don't really understand why suggesting students be patient for a year or two would necessarily be bad advice.

It is not necessarily bad advice, but it is a bad advice for majority of students in many fields who have little chances of getting decently paid academic jobs even pre-covid. There is a very large opportunity cost in persisting along academic path against the odds due to cumulative effect of many choices: e.g. teaching a class instead of taking an internship; taking extra year(s) to get more articles published instead of just finishing; not taking practical courses unrelated to the dissertation etc.

I think this is where the perception vs the reality of academic employment leads people to weird conclusions. I don't know enough of the details about other fields to say anything definite, but in history, my field, an AHA project found that a bit under half of people who finished their phds after the recession got tenure track jobs. That's not good, but its not anywhere near as dire as it is often made out to be. Obviously, the success rate varies enormously by institution, but also by advisor and field.

The variation between outcomes needs to be considered when deciding how to advise. If someone is at an institution where 80% got TT jobs before, then waiting may not be a bad idea. But, if they're at an institution where only 20% got TT jobs before, then waiting is really bad advice. The best thing in that case is to embrace the non-academic future ASAP and get on with life.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

I think this is where the perception vs the reality of academic employment leads people to weird conclusions. I don't know enough of the details about other fields to say anything definite, but in history, my field, an AHA project found that a bit under half of people who finished their phds after the recession got tenure track jobs. That's not good, but its not anywhere near as dire as it is often made out to be. Obviously, the success rate varies enormously by institution, but also by advisor and field.

We appear to use different ways of calculating outcomes.
Yes, there was (past tense) around 50% probability of getting tenure-track job. But it is likely to be affected by a survival bias with completion rates in history being also circa 50% (old 2007 study). So, only around quarter of students (0.5x0.5) are getting the "advertised" outcome. 
Additionally, as marshwiggle has mentioned, there is a lot of variation in outcomes. Somehow, I suspect that many professors are not particularly open (even to themselves) about which side of the spectrum their program is on. And it may take students many years to understand the futility on persisting (realisation which is further delayed by advice to be patient for a year or two).

[mamselle]

The competition being stiffer, and the constraints of family, place, nearby research resources like libraries or museums, etc. all being factors, it might make sense to advise a time-limited period of "Patience."

That is, find a sustainable holding pattern that allows transitional options (rather like a post-doc) for, say, three years, and be prepared to develop options and find alternatives in that period of time, while still applying.

If that can be related to the field of study (working in the educational department of a museum or research library in one's topical area, for example) that would not rule the applicant out from finding a related position in, say, history, art history, or the like. It would be clear they had enhanced their value and applied their work in a different dimension, and they could possibly still do presentations in conferences, etc. (although I know one well-respected archivist for whom that never worked out; her boss didn't value her research--possibly because it showed up his lack of it--and wouldn't allow time away from her desk for such frivolous things as international conferences at which her papers had been accepted.)

The losses to scholarship from such situations are yet another drag on the field. Without the kind of transitional support post-docs get (VAPs are similar, but not quite the same) we lose folks whose background and contributions could further the work much faster.

But it doesn't directly or visibly contribute to people living longer, which is the whole point of the idolatry of the sciences, so it goes un-mourned.

Quality of life has yet to be appreciated as it is due.

M.

[Caracal]

I think this is where the perception vs the reality of academic employment leads people to weird conclusions. I don't know enough of the details about other fields to say anything definite, but in history, my field, an AHA project found that a bit under half of people who finished their phds after the recession got tenure track jobs. That's not good, but its not anywhere near as dire as it is often made out to be. Obviously, the success rate varies enormously by institution, but also by advisor and field.

We appear to use different ways of calculating outcomes.
Yes, there was (past tense) around 50% probability of getting tenure-track job. But it is likely to be affected by a survival bias with completion rates in history being also circa 50% (old 2007 study). So, only around quarter of students (0.5x0.5) are getting the "advertised" outcome. 
Additionally, as marshwiggle has mentioned, there is a lot of variation in outcomes. Somehow, I suspect that many professors are not particularly open (even to themselves) about which side of the spectrum their program is on. And it may take students many years to understand the futility on persisting (realisation which is further delayed by advice to be patient for a year or two).

If we are talking about people at the stage of applying for jobs that means they are on track to finish soon, so attrition rates aren't all that relevant in that context.

Agree about programs with weak placement rates. There are lots of places that should either scrap their grad programs or cut them to only their strongest areas where they have some success at placing students.

[marshwiggle]

The losses to scholarship from such situations are yet another drag on the field. Without the kind of transitional support post-docs get (VAPs are similar, but not quite the same) we lose folks whose background and contributions could further the work much faster.

But it doesn't directly or visibly contribute to people living longer, which is the whole point of the idolatry of the sciences, so it goes un-mourned.

Quality of life has yet to be appreciated as it is due.

Huh? Outside of medicine, there would be very few science disciplines which would make such a claim. Quality of life would probably be a much more reasonable claim in most areas. "Idolatry"??????

[Golazo]

I think there are some clear ways that students can use the whole PHD (not just the dissertation) to position themselves for non-academic opportunities, but this takes a lot of self-awareness about what opportunities are desirable, and a decision to start on this early:

Consider, for example, a friend of my who has a PHD in literature and has had a successful civilian career with DoD (some details changed to protect anonymity). She did several things deliberately: 1) studied Russian extensively, developing a high level of skill in it in addition to French, including a summer in Eastern Europe 2) wrote a dissertation on comparative political humor and rhetoric that clearly had relevance to current affairs 3) Got to know faculty in her school's policy program and 4) used these connections to organize a fellowship with a policy shop that led into DoD. This wouldn't have worked if she hadn't decided after year 1 that she didn't want an academic career in literature--midway through the dissertation is usually too late.

There is also sometimes an idea by academics without a lot of knowledge of a given non-academic sector that these jobs are easy to obtain. This is only (maybe) the case if you have the right set of skills and know how to package. Skill at discourse analysis has to be clearly framed as policy relevant. I have often advised people to find a way to write a chapter about X in their dissertation, to provide some tangible evidence that their skills are applicable to the policy world.

The question is how to advise for this, and this is complicated, because while a political science or economics program will happily list senior analyst, DoD on their placements and may have people on their faculty who can help with this, this isn't really what an English program is looking for.  I've had former students reach out to me about this because their PHD dept. is not helpful here.

[polly_mer]

I agree with others that the problem of not getting a non-academic job is mostly with the fields where the standard preparation and job openings for the graduate degrees are in academia and academia-adjacent market sectors.  The people who earn graduate degrees that have market value outside of academia aren't generally a problem, except, say, biology where all the markets are glutted and have been for decades.

As for the debt discussion, a study in 2016 found:

Debt for humanities Ph.D.s reflects a "feast or famine" situation. Almost half (48 percent) of humanities doctorate recipients in 2014 completed the Ph.D. with no graduate education debt. But 29 percent of humanities doctorate recipients finished with more than $30,000 in graduate education debt. For 7 percent of new humanities Ph.D.s, debt levels were $90,000 or higher.

The percentage earning doctorates without graduate debt (48 percent) is smaller than it was in 2004 (57 percent).

It is worth noting, of course, that many of those earning Ph.D.s have debt from their undergraduate educations. The average undergraduate debt for humanities Ph.D.s is just over $9,000. And while 63 percent of humanities Ph.D. recipients were not carrying debt from their undergraduate educations, 11 percent had more than $30,000 in undergraduate debt.

Sources of Graduate Funding

Another analysis released today by the Humanities Indicators Project shows that a plurality (41 percent) of new humanities Ph.D.s in 2014 said that teaching assistantships were the primary source of the financial support for their studies. That was more than the 35 percent who said that they relied primarily on grants and fellowships.

Humanities Ph.D.s are far more dependent on teaching assistantships than are other doctoral students. Across all academic fields, only 21 percent reported that teaching assistantships were their primary source of doctoral education funding.

The finding could be significant because many experts on graduate education say that some experience as a teaching assistant may be a valuable part of graduate education, but that pressure to be a teaching assistant over and over again as a graduate student can delay dissertation completion and increase time to degree.

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/28/new-analysis-shows-high-debt-levels-some-humanities-phds-and-no-debt-others

So, yeah, humanities folks may not be in huge debt after leaving some programs, but they likely didn't spend the majority of their time doing the things that get them hired outside of academia.  As for the transferrable skills old trope, https://community.chronicle.com/news/2223-odds-are-your-doctorate-will-not-prepare-you-for-a-profession-outside-academe covers it quite well from someone who wrote a transferrable jobs article for CHE when that author was a fresh PhD.

Those of us who have made a successful career transition out of academe have learned that the "transferable skills" we "developed in graduate school" are transferable precisely because they are the same skills that other professionals — equally smart and capable — are developing on the job in industry, foundations, or government agencies. Critical thinking, program and project management, qualitative and quantitative research, synthesizing evidence and data, data-informed decision making — none of those are unique to academe. They are transferable from academe precisely because they are already highly valued and cultivated in all sorts of labor sectors.

When they seek midlevel positions in, say, industry or government, Ph.D.s are competing against candidates who not only have those same skills from direct work experience but already know the jargon of the profession and can start without significant training. When Ph.D.s realize that their peers of similar age and skill are running nonprofit agencies and leading research teams and divisions — while they are struggling to land an entry-level gig — that fuels depression, anxiety, and doubt.

Source: https://community.chronicle.com/news/2223-odds-are-your-doctorate-will-not-prepare-you-for-a-profession-outside-academe

I think there are some clear ways that students can use the whole PHD (not just the dissertation) to position themselves for non-academic opportunities, but this takes a lot of self-awareness about what opportunities are desirable, and a decision to start on this early:

Yep.  At my non-academic employer, we are strongly encouraged to mentor graduate students who will then be in the pipeline for our jobs.  We have expanded from our traditional engineering, math, and physical science focus to other parts of human knowledge as part of our student programs.  However, almost never will we be taking someone who asserts that their humanities graduate degree taught them lots of transferrable skills into a great, professional level job.  We hire many people at the entry-level jobs that officially are only GED-required with evidence of some skills and promote the good entry-level people quickly once we see that they truly can do the more advanced organizational jobs we need.  We will hire PhD physical chemists, straight up physicists, and even biologists who have more traditionally academic backgrounds because they have relevant background knowledge on which more education will readily build.  For example, we already had epidemiologists on staff working in epidemiology who were redeployed to help with Covid.

For the PhD humanities holder, we want someone who has spent several years with us or our sister institutions working in relevant areas (e.g., the history that's relevant to our needs, the human observations related to our applied areas in either the humanities or social science) for their graduate work or earned their degrees in something that is truly a graduate-level skill (we hire archivists, librarians, and even a few lexicographers when we can get them).  We pay well while the folks are in their graduate and post-doc years with us, but it's definitely working for us that leads to an approved dissertation, not being paid to do menial tasks while the dissertation is on something else.

[marshwiggle]

I agree with others that the problem of not getting a non-academic job is mostly with the fields where the standard preparation and job openings for the graduate degrees are in academia and academia-adjacent market sectors.  The people who earn graduate degrees that have market value outside of academia aren't generally a problem, except, say, biology where all the markets are glutted and have been for decades.

As for the debt discussion, a study in 2016 found:

Debt for humanities Ph.D.s reflects a "feast or famine" situation. Almost half (48 percent) of humanities doctorate recipients in 2014 completed the Ph.D. with no graduate education debt. But 29 percent of humanities doctorate recipients finished with more than $30,000 in graduate education debt. For 7 percent of new humanities Ph.D.s, debt levels were $90,000 or higher.

The percentage earning doctorates without graduate debt (48 percent) is smaller than it was in 2004 (57 percent).

It is worth noting, of course, that many of those earning Ph.D.s have debt from their undergraduate educations. The average undergraduate debt for humanities Ph.D.s is just over $9,000. And while 63 percent of humanities Ph.D. recipients were not carrying debt from their undergraduate educations, 11 percent had more than $30,000 in undergraduate debt.

Sources of Graduate Funding

Another analysis released today by the Humanities Indicators Project shows that a plurality (41 percent) of new humanities Ph.D.s in 2014 said that teaching assistantships were the primary source of the financial support for their studies. That was more than the 35 percent who said that they relied primarily on grants and fellowships.

Humanities Ph.D.s are far more dependent on teaching assistantships than are other doctoral students. Across all academic fields, only 21 percent reported that teaching assistantships were their primary source of doctoral education funding.

The finding could be significant because many experts on graduate education say that some experience as a teaching assistant may be a valuable part of graduate education, but that pressure to be a teaching assistant over and over again as a graduate student can delay dissertation completion and increase time to degree.

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/28/new-analysis-shows-high-debt-levels-some-humanities-phds-and-no-debt-others

This leads me to a few obvious suggestions for prospective grad students.:

• If you had to go into debt for undergrad, (i.e. you didn't get scholarships), don't go into a deeper hole for grad studies. (There will be lots of other graduates better than you that you'll have to compete with.)
• If TAs are going to be your primary source of funding for grad school, reconsider. (There will be lots of other graduates better than you that you'll have to compete with.)

These two rules alone would reduce much of the glut in PhD's, while being easily identifiable criteria.

[jerseyjay]

I am a historian.

To me, the advice to be patient until the Covid situation sorts itself out seems eerily similar to the advice that I heard as a grad student to wait until the baby boomers retired. It is not that it does not have elements of truth (I got my particular t-t position to replace a retiring baby boomer) but because it is based on the idea that things are going to return to some better time. However it is not clear to be whether this better time was an aberration or not, but in any case, does not seem to be returning any time soon. The history market has been bad since I started grad school in the 1990s, and seems to be undergoing a secular decline. It may fluctuate but the fact is there are too many PhDs chasing too few jobs.

It is not impossible to get a tenure-track job in history (I did--but only more than a decade and a book after earning my doctorate) but the odds of getting one do not seem worth all the effort unless one is really dedicated and really good. Fifty percent of PhD holders in history may end up with a tenure track job, but this does not take into account the sizable number of people who do not finish the degree they start. It would seem that the real change in doctoral advising needs to take place BEFORE somebody enters a doctoral program rather than WHILE he or she is studying.

It is true that there are other jobs you can do with a PhD in history. But by definition people with a PhD in history(as in any field) are well read, smart, and educated. They have various skills that could be parlayed into non-academic jobs. But very few of these jobs require (or even desire) a PhD in history, and often PhDs in history would be competitive for these jobs without a doctorate in history, and all the debt, effort, opportunity cost, and heartache that that requires. Time was, an undergraduate degree in history would indicate skills in writing, research, argument, and other such things.

Personally I would feel better advising somebody to become a pro-golfer instead of a professional historian. I mean, I suppose your chances of winning a big title are less, but most members of the PGA work in pro-shops or something like that, which are while perhaps not sexy, are respectable careers. There is no pro-shop track for historians. There are of course fields where teaching IS the pro-shop track, because the real glamor and money comes in industry. But that's not the case for history, and I assume literature, etc.

[apl68]

I am a historian.

To me, the advice to be patient until the Covid situation sorts itself out seems eerily similar to the advice that I heard as a grad student to wait until the baby boomers retired. It is not that it does not have elements of truth (I got my particular t-t position to replace a retiring baby boomer) but because it is based on the idea that things are going to return to some better time. However it is not clear to be whether this better time was an aberration or not, but in any case, does not seem to be returning any time soon. The history market has been bad since I started grad school in the 1990s, and seems to be undergoing a secular decline. It may fluctuate but the fact is there are too many PhDs chasing too few jobs.

It is not impossible to get a tenure-track job in history (I did--but only more than a decade and a book after earning my doctorate) but the odds of getting one do not seem worth all the effort unless one is really dedicated and really good. Fifty percent of PhD holders in history may end up with a tenure track job, but this does not take into account the sizable number of people who do not finish the degree they start. It would seem that the real change in doctoral advising needs to take place BEFORE somebody enters a doctoral program rather than WHILE he or she is studying.

It is true that there are other jobs you can do with a PhD in history. But by definition people with a PhD in history(as in any field) are well read, smart, and educated. They have various skills that could be parlayed into non-academic jobs. But very few of these jobs require (or even desire) a PhD in history, and often PhDs in history would be competitive for these jobs without a doctorate in history, and all the debt, effort, opportunity cost, and heartache that that requires. Time was, an undergraduate degree in history would indicate skills in writing, research, argument, and other such things.

Personally I would feel better advising somebody to become a pro-golfer instead of a professional historian. I mean, I suppose your chances of winning a big title are less, but most members of the PGA work in pro-shops or something like that, which are while perhaps not sexy, are respectable careers. There is no pro-shop track for historians. There are of course fields where teaching IS the pro-shop track, because the real glamor and money comes in industry. But that's not the case for history, and I assume literature, etc.

That all sounds about right.  I too was in grad school in history in the 1990s (For all I know, we might have been in the same department).  I was one  of the "sizeable number" who didn't finish the degree.  Thank goodness I didn't accumulate debt, but those six years as a failed PhD student inflicted a heavy opportunity cost.  Not to mention the psychological toll. 

The observation about the need for better advising BEFORE entering the PhD program is right on target.  With hindsight I should never have been let in.  In the postwar era, when there was a unique boom in the need for academics, I'd probably have done fine.  In a hypercompetitive job market such as we've seen for the past 50 years, a second-generation college student from a blue-collar background and a nice but obscure SLAC undergrad institution never stood a chance.

[Hibush]

This leads me to a few obvious suggestions for prospective grad students.:

• If you had to go into debt for undergrad, (i.e. you didn't get scholarships), don't go into a deeper hole for grad studies. (There will be lots of other graduates better than you that you'll have to compete with.)
• If TAs are going to be your primary source of funding for grad school, reconsider. (There will be lots of other graduates better than you that you'll have to compete with.)

These two rules alone would reduce much of the glut in PhD's, while being easily identifiable criteria.

There is an intermediate step that could make a fair difference and don't depend on the students to know and the tacit rule nor think it applies to them.

What would happen if graduate schools had a policy of requiring full funding for every admitted PhD student? That policy exists in some fields and universally at some schools.

It would automatically reduce the enrollment by no admitting those who would be accumulating debt in order to attend. That would drop PhD production by 30% or more based on the 2016 stats Polly cited. It would also reduce PhD admission because the ones who did not complete for financial reasons and are not part of that figure.

[jerseyjay]

Upon reflection, I am afraid that my post might seem arrogant. I do NOT think I am "really dedicated and really good". I mean, I think I am good, but not really better than many others. I think I am really lucky. But just because I won the lottery does not mean I think everybody else should sink their life savings into it.

I do not think that people like apl68 ("a second-generation college student from a blue-collar background and a nice but obscure SLAC undergrad institution") should be denied entry. In fact, I think they would make the field better. But I think that somebody should sit down with every aspiring historian (etc) and point out the difficulties. It is not impossible to become a tenure track historian, but it is not easy, either. And, to be honest, when luck means getting a 4/4 load (often with 3 or 4 preps) at an open-admission school where the bathroom runs out of soap, it might make sense to look into some other life path.

For the record: I am not bitter about my life path, and I am happy where I am. But I recognize that I was lucky, and I would not advise most graduating seniors to try to emulate me.