All in all, not a bad show ...

The conference is officially over. I managed to escape the closing reception after only two drinks and early enough to get a full night's sleep before heading out in the morning to fly back East.

Schmoozing went well. Met some potential collaborators who are interested in just the things the Petting Zoo is hoping to develop in months to come. And learned -- as I've been suspecting -- that the Great Problem of Our Time is social, cultural, and political rather than scientific. The Problem isn't a lack of information or understanding but a lack of credibility and trust.

Why? And what to do about it? Those are the questions we need to be asking ...

Also, Enviro Shark and I did have a chance to talk, and my suspicions about the tensions between Expanding Habitats and Survival in Captivity were not figments of my imagination. While I feared I was being paranoid, in fact I was spot on. But the good thing is that Enviro Shark now "gets" where I'm coming from, and I think we have a solid alliance that will prove useful in the weeks ahead as far as settling the tensions and moving forward.

All in all, a pretty decent conference experience. Wish I had more time to see the sights, as it is beautiful out here in the mountains, but I am looking forward to going home.

Godammit!

I was hoping to make it through an entire conference for once without anyone mentioning Foucault. But godammit, somebody had to go and do it yesterday! One more day to go ...

Perplexing

If your goal is to get the public to take science seriously, what difference does it make if the motives of some of the actors that help you accomplish this goal differ from yours? If your own motives are communitarian, making the world a better place, and theirs are individualistic, making themselves richer, so what? If working together nonetheless gets you farther towards this common goal than you'd otherwise get on your own, why should you refuse to collaborate?

(Note: I'm out West at a conference. I spent this afternoon on a university campus. Time for short reflections only but two things are eminently clear: 1. I'm glad I no longer work at a university, and 2. Far too many academics are well-meaning and thoughtful people, but they are out of touch with reality when it comes to what is required to get things done in the public sphere. More to come ... )

Academic Accent?

At an event the other day, as people were chitchatting over coffee before the presentations began, somebody asks me: "Where are you from?"

Me, thinking ze is asking where I work: "Organization X."

Other Person:  "No, I mean, I work with diplomats, and I'm good at picking up accents. I thought when you spoke I detected a bit of an accent. You're from here then?"

Me: "Huh???? Yeah. I am from here. Born and raised."

Other Person: "Oh, must be an academic accent then. I used to have one myself, but I lost it over the years. Haha!"

Me: "Yeah, I'm gonna go sit down now ... away from you. I think the presentations are about to start."

I walk away and sit down safely -- so I thought -- between two already occupied seats, but Other Person follows like a puppydog and sits right down in the row in front of me. Apparently ze wants to continue the conversation. The presentations have not started yet.

Other Person: "So, where was it you said you worked?"

 Me: "Organization X, but I just started there a few weeks ago."

Other Person: "And where were you before that?"

Me, thinking Think Tank and New Think Tank might be liabilities too complicated to explain in this environment: "I was at Grad U, stupidly teaching my way through a PhD in English."

Other Person, overcome with delight at hir clever detective work: "I knew it! You really do have an academic accent!!"

I stared momentarily at Other Person in disbelief. Thankfully, finally, the event began, as the moderator stepped up to the podium and told everyone to shut up.

*     *     *     *     *

An academic accent?????!?! WTF is an academic accent!! Have any of you ever heard of such a thing?

Maybe it really is true: You can take the post-ac out of academe, but you can't take academe out of the post-ac.

The job description is up on Versatile PhD

I posted it up there this morning, if anyone cares.

Seriously, one or some of you should apply for this. Within 24 hours of posting on nonacademic sites, we've gotten a FUCKTON of resumes. Like 80. Out of those, only a few sound like they might be pretty good. And by "pretty good," I'm talking about the smart kid with the undergrad degree in theater and a couple years of admin experience seems the best so far. And that's not really our ideal candidate. Our ideal candidate has stronger writing and editing skills, but we're mostly getting admin types who can only do about half of this job. The admin part is easy -- we can train you for that in a week. The writing and editing skills require an EDUMACATION.

We did express this in the job ad -- essentially that you don't NEED a graduate education to do this job but we'd prefer someone who had one or who had elsewhere acquired the skills we're looking for. I'm hoping something will come along through Versatile PhD because the attitude I got from Grad U Placement Doofus was totally condescending and full-of-shit contradictory. The gist of our conversation was:

Me : There's this job one of your ABDs or recent PhDs might like to have.

Placement Doofus: But it's not an Tenure Track ACAMADEMICAL job. Waaaaaaaaaaaa!

Me: No, but it pays better than being a fucken adjunct. Pays better even than what newly hired assistant profs in your department get.

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! A lot of our adjuncts have been trying for tenure track placements for several years now. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! Why are our placement rates so low? They never used to be this bad. They used to be pretty good. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! Why are our adjuncts so unhappy?? They just need to ride this out for another year or two, and things will improve.

Me: No, things aren't going to improve. Even if they do, somebody could take THIS job for the intervening time and get the fuck off food stamps for a little while. Your adjuncts have no money and feel like they have no future. Why do you think they're so unhappy? Why do you begrudge them the chance to move in another direction? To a place where they would be actually appreciated and compensated accordingly??

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! Our adjuncts are wonderful. They are too good for a crappy admin job. You yourself betrayed THE GREATEST PROFESSION EVER by leaving. Clearly, it was not your true calling. I must protect our graduate students and adjuncts from heretics like you.

Me: You are so full of shit the fumes are carrying across the internet.

Placement Doofus: By the way, your new job sounds really great. Can Grad U take credit for your success? It's so great to know our graduates are moving on to have such interesting careers. Our graduate students need to hear about this. They need role models. We should have you come back and talk to them one of these days after you start New Job.

Me: I don't have time for this. Can you just please circulate the job ad so that somebody else can move on to have, as you say, "such an interesting career"?

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaa! I'll ask around. There's Desperate and Pathetic Adjunct. Do you remember hir? Ze finished the year before you did and has been teaching for the department and going on the market every year since. Ze might be getting tired of that.

Me: Yes, I think I remember Desperate and Pathetic. But why don't you circulate to everybody? That way, everybody knows the job is available and they can make their own decisions about whether they're interested or not.

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!! You're a heretic. You're trying to get people to leave the department. We can't afford to discourage our cheapass limitless supply of permatemps precious graduate students. I might circulate it. I'll see what I can do. I'll have to warn them about you first ... But can Grad U still take credit for your success in getting New Job?

Me: Fuck you.

*     *     *     *     *

Maybe my attitude didn't help as far as getting word around. I was more polite, but I couldn't totally disguise that I thought Placement Doofus was full of shit. At least at New Think Tank (same as at Think Tank) you can tell people they're full of shit when they wax poetic about such free-market pipedreams as privatizing the sidewalks (dudes, that's actually in the job description, the "full of shit" part and everything!!). They appreciate knowing when they cross the line over to KrazyKrackpotKookville. Can't quite say as much about academe.

I think I'm gonna do another post when I get a little more time about what it's like being on the other end of the hiring process. Quite fascinating, actually.

"My graduate students are unhappy"

Somebody found this blog by Googling that phrase today.

No shit, Sherlock! Yes, your graduate students are unhappy. And you're just now figuring this out? You need to go read ALL of the posts over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School, then go read From Grad School to Happiness and the other post-academic blogs I've linked to in my blogroll, and then you need to come back over here and read my blog from the beginning to the present (though I do give you permission to skip some of the fluffy cat posts).

One of the many things wrong with graduate school is that too many professors view their graduate students through the lens of their own experiences as graduate students and subsequent paths to professorhood. While this may give you a warmfuzzy feeling of nostalgia, it doesn't make for having honest relationships with your graduate students today and can actually be harmful to them. in terms of preparing for both academic careers and nonacademic alternatives, if you base your guidance to them on the way things worked for you 30 years ago.

Case in point: A professor I had in graduate school used to frequently mention to us graduate students how ze had spent several years working in advertising before deciding to go to graduate school and pursue becoming a professor. Ze was fond of telling us how easy it was, as a newly graduated B.A. in English, to get hired as a copywriter for an ad agency, how ze came up with successful campaigns (one slogan is still being used by the client -- you'd recognize it!) , and how much money ze was making.

Ze gave all of this up because ze felt ze wanted to do something more meaningful with hir life than think up clever ways to dupe people into buying shit they didn't need. Humph. Noble aspirations, right? How many of my post-academic friends wouldn't kill for a job like this professor gave up? Luckily for hir, ze went to graduate school, "suffered" through the poverty of 6 years as a TA and adjunct cushioned by savings from the advertising job, and got hired in the early 80s onto the tenure track while still ABD.

This professor was smart and talented, but the times were different, too -- not just the academic job market but the nonacademic job market. Because today you can major in things like ... advertising (!) ... it's much harder to get hired for the kind of job ze had with a B.A. in mere English. And much, much harder if you compound your job search with the whole "overqualified/underqualified" shit us post-academics are dealing with.

So, in other words, telling graduate students they always have "other options" without encouraging them to prepare themselves for those options is disingenuous. It's you old professor types taking the narrative you've spun upon your own lives to explain the circumstances of your successful careers and comfortable lives and imposing it on the lives and careers of your graduate students. It's irresponsible to do so. Stop it!

Yes, your graduate students are responsible for making the decision to postpone money-making career objectives for the "life of the mind," but they also look up to you with somewhat rose-colored lenses, respect you, and seek to emulate you. A few years into the Ph.D. program, when their reality starts to bump up against the rosier narratives you represent, yes, they tend to get goddamned unhappy -- not to mention stressed about how they've fucked up their futures, frustrated by their increasingly limited options, depressed by their poverty, and generally messed up by the mindfuck that is graduate school.

And I'm telling you this as someone who basically, in a lot of ways, liked academe and wished I could have found a way to stay. You owe it to yourself to understand WHY your graduate students are so unhappy, and, if you care about the mentorship aspect of your job as a professor, you owe it to your students to help them figure out sustainable ways to cope with the realities of what academe has today become.

Funny

After reading about A Post-Academic in NYC's recent encounters with the dean at the place that could suck her like a giant vacuum back into academe, I was reminded of a certain undergrad prof I had who HATED university administrators with a vengeance. How did ze deal with these negative feelings without getting fired? Ze had pet snakes. The snakes ate live mice. Undergrad Prof named these mice before putting them into the snakes' cages ... after university administrators.

Nice, huh? Sorry about the light posting lately. I suppose I could just post random shit. Sometimes I do that anyway! But ... well, just stay tuned. Hopefully, the number of things I both want to blog about and can blog about will get back to normal soon.

Via

Sign This Petition

Better Pay for Adjuncts: Stop their Exploitation

Go to that link and add your name to the list if you haven't already. It's just one more way to attempt to be heard, to raise awareness. Because ... numbers count in this game.

And then, once you've signed the petition, go check out today's post at Transition Times, where blogger Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez neatly ties the plight of adjuncts to the trend towards distance learning. Contrary to critics of distance learning, Browdy de Hernandez first praises it and emphasizes its inevitabilty and significant potential, describing how a "virtual" classroom could bring together people who would be unlikely to meet in a traditional one:

[W]ouldn’t it be exciting to “hang out” in a seminar classroom with students from around the world? We higher ed folks like to trumpet the value of diversity and international education—well, distance learning provides the platform to make the dream of a truly diverse and globalized classroom a reality.

But Browdy de Hernandez goes on to discuss the "catch" to such a scenario. When distance learning is viewed as a cost-cutting measure rather than a means to enhance learning, both students and faculty lose out. "Outsourcing" instruction at U.S. colleges and universities to underpaid faculty, sometimes in other countries, and tasking them with responsibility for increasingly higher student loads and no one-on-one or small group face time, real or virtual, depersonalizes education, exploiting both students and faculty in order to support inflated costs at the top of academe's pyramid at the expense of its foundation.

And because smaller classes, whether virtual or real, are both a better educational model and more expensive, fewer and fewer students will have access to that kind of learning environment. The adjunctification of the professoriate, along with the outsourcing of instruction, will create a caste system, further separating poorer students from more affluent ones:

[W]e will be looking at an academic landscape where there will be a few highly paid tenured research professors and a vast majority of poorly paid adjunct professors all over the world, working mostly from their home offices via distance learning networks. While there will always be a few lucky students who will be able to again access to ivied classrooms through scholarships, those classrooms will increasingly be reserved for the children of the super-elites of the world. Ordinary kids who have the motivation and discipline to go to college will do it from home, a financial decision their parents will have no choice but to support.

Distance learning is often lauded as a way to level the playing field, since it makes higher education accessible to kids who would not otherwise be able to go to college.

This may be so. But it is also going to be yet another way to divide our society into Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons—in other words, to harden the de facto caste walls that are already making the old rags-to-riches, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps American dream a quaint memory.

Now, go sign that petition because I know you read the rest of the post and already forgot the beginning of it!

A Question of Ethics

A hypothetical situation, a hypothetical question:

A leading scholar/expert does something very unprofessional. The action occurs outside their professional sphere but is of a nature that, under most circumstances, would compromise their professional integrity. The action is, technically, unrelated to their research. It is, however, driven by an activist's inclination to "make good" on the policy implications of that research. Under most circumstances, such an action would cause things like the cancellation of speaking engagements and censure within, if not outright ostracism from,  professional associations and organizations. It might not automatically lead to the revocation of tenure, but it certainly could provide grounds for building a case.

However, the "victim" of the scholar/expert's unprofessional action, in this instance, itself has an unfavorable reputation in many circles. While the scholar/expert may have committed more than one crime, the "victim" has done nothing illegal but yet is perceived in a highly negative light by scholar/expert's colleagues, allies, and supporters. Because of this perception, scholar/expert's breach of professional ethics is dismissed, even laughed off. The "victim" deserved what it got. It is itself an affront to intellectual integrity and so scholar/expert's action is fair enough in kind.

Except, scholar/expert's action is the kind of thing we teach our children and our students not to do.We'd punish them if we caught them. We might even fail or expel them.

And yet, it seems, scholar/expert is exempt because, here, the "victim" is perceived as the truer villain.

Aside from any legal charges the "victim" may pursue, what should the professional consequences for scholar/expert be? If this individual were scheduled to give a lecture at your institution, would you support it to go on as planned or push to have it canceled?

What Counts as an Academic "Success" Story?

Spanish prof's post about how her department measures success among their recent BAs got me thinking about what counts as success at the graduate and early career levels for academics. Really, it's a matter of perspective, but whose perspective dominates and why? Perspective is relative to position, and it's worth observing how someone with a particular set of accomplishments looks very different to those comfortably ensconced within than it does to those on the margins of academia. And yet, not surprisingly, it's the dominant perspective that informs starry-eyed, prospective graduate students and other outsiders who romanticize what academic life must be like and prevents tenure-track faculty and administrators from having to confront the real life consequences for their students of the system they prop up.

Here are the facts of our "Success Story":

Success Story finished undergrad at the top of hir class and was accepted to a PhD program at Fancy Pants U. While a graduate student, Success Story continued to earn many accolades. Because ze produced poetry in addition to the required research and analytical writing, professors praised hir "originality," fellow graduate students admired hir "devil may care" attitude, and the undergraduates ze taught for nearly 8 years enjoyed the edginess of hir classes. As a graduate student, ze published a handful of poems in very respectable venues and handful of reviews in obscure academic ones, but ze never published any substantive criticism or interpretation. Nonetheless, during hir last semester ABD (hired ABD perhaps because ze went to Fancy Pants U and hir brilliance was a foregone conclusion -- I digress), ze was hired as Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) at a 3rd tier, teaching intensive, regional public university in the rural South, thus smoothly transitioning from graduate school to professorhood. A year into this 3-year appointment, ze publishes a book of poetry but still has no academic publications, other than a handful of reviews.

Here's how former professors, advisers,  and other drinkers of academe's Kool-Aid will see Success Story:

Ah, of course Success Story got a job! How could ze have done otherwise? Ze is brilliant, a brilliant poet with a promising future. And, of course, everyone from Fancy Pants U DESERVES a job. They wouldn't have gone to Fancy Pants U in the first place if they weren't true professor material, truly ready to dedicate themselves to the Life of the Mind. This wonderful VAP position is a great step ahead on the career ladder for Success Story, with the market as terrible as it is. Only the best and brightest get jobs of any kind, and this one will give Success Story the opportunity to prove hirself as a teacher with a VERY different set of much more challenging students from the ones ze taught SO successsssfully at Fancy Pants U. And we congratulate Success Story for having hir first book of poems published. Ze is as much a poet as a scholar, and we have no doubt ze will soon be able to turn hir attention to producing the scholarship ze needs to progress from successsssssful VAP to even more successssssssful tenure-track assistant professor. We have faith ze will be hired into an even better position when the term of hir VAP ends.

 Here's how other graduate students and adjuncting recent PhDs still entertaining hopes of an academic career but somewhat sobered (if schizophrenically) by the realities they see all around them might see Success Story:

Oh, Success Story is soooooooo lucky to have gotten a job, any job at all. I'd kill for a 3-year VAP position, even if it was in Rural Subtropical Wasteland. But ze really does have to teach a lot down there. The load is 4/4, which doesn't give hir a lot of time for research. No wonder ze chose to work on that book of poems. At least it was something ze wanted to do and is getting recognition for. But ... it won't look great to tenure-track hiring committees if, 3 years out from the PhD, ze still doesn't have any academic publications, not unless the position ze is applying for is in creative writing, ideally somewhere that offers an MFA. And we all know how many of those there are! Still, ze went to Fancy Pants U. Ze will get something. I sure wish I had gone to Fancy Pants U! Then I wouldn't be stuck adjuncting. Everyone knows it's not the quality of your scholarship but where you did your degree and who your adviser was that committees look at first. If only I had a better pedigree, if only I'd gone to Fancy Pants U! After all, I applied for that same VAP position. I have 5 full-length, peer-reviewed articles and a publisher is currently reviewing my monograph, and I didn't even get an interview. Sigh. Maybe next year. Success Story is an inspiration to us all. After all, you can never hope to get anywhere in this profession unless you try and try again.

 Here's how cynical post-academics might see Success Story:

Are you kidding me? You'd have to pay me a lot more than $37K a year to take a 3-year VAP in Rural Subtropical Wasteland teaching 4/4 to a bunch of brats who shouldn't have passed the 9th grade. Oh sure, it does have a decent honors program. But do you think, as a VAP, you're going to get to teach the honors kids? Hell no! Success Story is mostly teaching comp, not poetry, and that's hardly good for building hir CV. Moreover, I don't know whether Success Story is single or has a partner, but I certainly would not drag a partner to Rural Subtropical Wasteland. There's nothing there but the university and Walmart. Ze would be unemployed and we'd both have to get by on my $37K. Even if the cost of living is lower, what happens after 3 years when the VAP ends? If Success Story doesn't get another gig, tenure-track or otherwise, ze certainly wouldn't be able to afford to move back to Fancy Pants U City, not unless ze has rich parents. Maybe the book of poetry will bring royalties? Ha, good luck with THAT! And why hasn't ze published any scholarship anyway? It's not as if ze can get by on just having a degree from Fancy Pants U forever. Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Yet another awesome reason to leave academe!! Good luck to you, Success Story! You are academe's future, so make the most of it!

Good God, you get the nerdiest fucking people when you do a Google image search for "visiting assistant professor" and why-the-fuck are people who got their PhDs more than 10 FUCKING years ago at places like Emory, UNC Chapel Hill, and the London School of Economics still Visiting Assistant Professors (just click on the link)?

What You Know Matters Less Than Who You Know

Social capital, or whatever you want to call it, counts a lot, maybe more -- maybe a lot more -- than any of us postacademics struggling to figure out what to do next with our lives would like to think.

But it's not as if social capital is really separable from economic or cultural capital. These things go together. Unfortunately, though, cultural capital -- the thing we have the most of as an un- or underemployed post-academic -- is perhaps the least important when separated from the other two.

A Post-Academic in NYC has been posting lately about the humiliating shit formidable obstacles ze has faced while trying to find work. And we've all been there, to one degree or another. We all have stories about the difficulties we've faced at finding meaningful employment. The most recent post about signing on with a temp agency illustrates what you have to do when you don't know the kinds of people you can just call up and ask for a job or a referral. On the one hand, when you're unemployed, doing the kinds of things the temp agency asks if ze would "mind" doing is fine and dandy. A paycheck is a paycheck, whether you have a PhD or just a GED.

On the other hand ... filing? Filing?!??

I'm not being a snob. I'm not putting down mindless administrative tasks. Somebody needs to do them -- and get paid to do them. But I would bet that A Post-Academic in NYC has many other talents of greater use to society than filing. It's just that a PhD doesn't mean squat when you don't know anyone and don't have the economic capital to sit back and bide your time practicing your craft until the right "opportunity" comes along. You take what you can get.

Wouldn't it be nice, though, to be able to pick up the phone, call up your friend the editor of a major national journal, propose a topic for an essay you'd like to write, and be able to write what you want to write while building upon your already well-established reputation? Yes, dear readers, for some people it is that easy! No, you can't do this sort of thing if you're just some socially talented neanderthal or a rich jackass who has opinions but can't string together three coherent sentences. You do have to be a reasonably decent writer. You have to be tolerably smart. And you have to have a track record and an audience.

But ... how do you get those last two things (or whatever the professional equivalent is in your field) when your preeminent concern, now that you've left academe, is earning enough money just to get by?

Academics aren't known for their stellar social skills. The attraction of cultural capital -- which is something you can earn by being smart and studying and acquiring a fancy degree -- draws many people to academe who both lack social capital and don't have access to economic capital. I include myself in that group. As much as I enjoyed research and teaching, I pursued the path I did because, in part, belonging to "the profession" conferred a kind of status -- even as a graduate student and adjunct -- I didn't have access to any other way. Except ... when I left, it seemed, my career options were pretty much the same as they were when I finished undergrad. Here I am doing admin work. Yay! And there's no one I can call up to offer my talents and availability to do otherwise.

And what would I have to offer anyway? I'm a decent writer and tolerably smart. Tremendously distinguishing characteristics! Except ... not really. Not unless you have the other kinds of capital, too.

Via

Not Going to the Conference

In case you missed it, I've been bloviating about being invited to present at a conference for the past 6+ months now. Over those months, I put some time into thinking about what I wanted to present and sketched out an outline for the paper. I shrugged off the cost by putting off actually booking the hotel room and flights. I had a ballpark idea of what I'd be out-of-pocket, but I rationalized spending this amount because my conference travel was always funded in the past. I figured one last hurrah on my own dime would be worth it. And plus, I really was looking forward to going.

But ... this past weekend, I spent some more time thinking about the paper ... and then forced myself to confront the actual booking of travel. And ... the end result was, with credit card in hand, I decided it wasn't worth it. Not that my paper wouldn't be good or that I wouldn't have a good time ... just that I can think of better things to do with $750. A lot of them.

Like buying a pair of these little beauties:

Manolo Blahnik Colorblock Spectator Sandal $945

Kidding!! (Sort of...)

And that would be just the airfare and hotel. What about food, drinks, and cab fare to and from airports? It would end up costing almost $1000 for spending 3 days in a city I'd otherwise never go to present a 20 minute paper to, most likely, an audience of fewer than 20 people?? Even if I thought this would somehow open up magical networking opportunities to relaunch my academic career (and, trust me, I'm not that delusional!), what was I thinking???

So, I emailed the panel chair a little while ago with a lame excuse involving my "day job." And that's the end of that frivolous fantasy -- about as worthwhile as a ridiculously expensive pair of pretty pink shoes you can't walk more than half a block in.

Grad U Wants to Know What I'm Doing Now

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

I got an email from the department secretary the other day: "We are compiling data on people who completed the program within the past two years. (This is new. They never used to ask what happened to people.) What is your status now? At your earliest convenience, please let me know the organization you work for and your position title."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!

Two amusing assumptions there:

1. Clearly, I do NOT have a tenure-track job. If I did, they'd already know about it.
2. I am EMPLOYED. Somewhere. In a position with a title I'd be proud to share with them. WTF kind of crack are they smoking?

When I didn't reply, I got a second one. I suppose it would be helpful of me to let them know one of their former "stars" is doing scut work. But why would I do that?

They can Google me.

Perhaps the department secretary would like to trade jobs for a few weeks? Ze makes more money than I do. Ze ought to know how to Google someone.

Why Employers Should Hire PhDs

UPDATE: See below.

Several of my fellow post-academic bloggers have lately been expressing the frustrations they're currently experiencing as they search for nonacademic employment. A Post-Academic in NYC writes here about the problem of being perceived as overqualified. Unemployed PhD for Hire writes here about the problem of fit, which is a problem on the academic job market, too, but outside academe it's more concrete. For example, it's hard to re-brand yourself as a career changer when your highly "transferable skills don't match up to the competition who have EXACTLY the experience/training/skill set that organizations are looking for."

As I see it, these are problems of perception and stereotyping on the part of employers, rather than problems post-academics bring with them to the job search, but because the end result is that post-academics end up on unemployment instead of gainfully employed, these problems decidedly become theirs. Here's the thing, though: While most unemployed post-academics will eventually find jobs (Hang in there, guys! It really is just a matter of time!), the real losers are the employers who overlook smart, talented people who are potentially their most outstanding workers, people who have the greatest likelihood of progressing within the organization, and those with the highest probability of making important contributions. Remember, somebody will eventually hire these people and reap the benefits. Why not let it be you?

In no particular order, here are some specific reasons why employers should hire PhDs:

They will work for food.
OK, this is not literally true. You do have to pay them a salary. However, since they have been working for so little for so long, you can probably get away with offering them less than the person they're replacing was earning. To a former adjunct whose salary has been $20K for the last 8 years, $40K looks pretty good, even if the person who previously held the position was making $50K (that is, as long as your post-academics do not know this, but why should they?). Now, your post-academics will eventually wise up to things and you'll have to give them more money or they'll leave, but you can certainly save a little in the short-term. And, eventually, you will want to pay them more in order to keep them because they will be doing a good job. Even if you give them a raise, you might still be paying them less than their predecessors. All around, it's a good deal!

UPDATE: I feel compelled to tell you I am speaking only partially ironically here. In fact, given your salary history, it is very likely your first nonacademic employer will lowball an offer. While some positions do have fixed, non-negotiable salaries, this is the exception rather than the rule. You can and should negotiate. Know what the salary range is for that job type in your location. If you get an offer that seems low, it probably is. Probably, it is less that your predecessor was getting. Within reason, ask for more. Trust me, that $5-$8K means A LOT more to you than it does to your would-be employer. You will get taken advantage of if you are too naive to look out for yourself. And this has longer term consequences. If you start making $40K when you could have started at $48-$50K, this will impact what you're offered for your next "next" job. And you can't afford this because you have a lot of lost time to make up for.

They are flexible and adaptable.
It must seem ideal to HR folks to find an "exact" match for an open position, someone who's done exactly the same job somewhere else but for whatever reason wants to change jobs. Score! This person would hit the ground running. You'd have to invest very little in training. Why would you NOT choose this person over a post-academic? You'd have to be crazy, right? Wrong. As great as it might seem at the outset, let's consider the long-term, a year or two or three or ten down the line. Do you want a robot who can only do EXACTLY the same thing over and over and over again? No! We all know policies and procedures change. We know that technology changes. We know upheaval in the ranks of the higher-ups means doing things differently for the plebes, and sooner or later, there's always a change at the top. Somebody who ONLY knows how to do EXACTLY the job you hire them for in the short-term will likely be much less able to roll with the punches. In fact, that may be why this person is looking for a new job in the first place. By contrast, your PhDs may require a little extra patience and training at the beginning but down the line they will be much more flexible and able to use that new software or write those documents in the new and improved way or figure out how to complete whatever new task or project it is you need them to. Why? Because their expertise isn't just in their subject knowledge. Their expertise is learning itself. Since the most important thing you learn in graduate school is how to learn, your post-academics are a major asset to a growing, thriving, evolving organization.

They are risk takers.
It takes guts to walk away from a career you've put the kind of effort and energy into that most post-academics have put into becoming professors. It takes guts to expose yourself to the unknowns of the nonacademic job market. It takes guts to work at getting a foothold by applying for entry-level jobs your undergraduate students are likelier to get interviews for than you are. It takes guts to turn your back on the work you love for the sake of your integrity, your sanity, and the chance to put poverty behind you. Risk takers are an asset to almost any industry. They are good at looking ahead and will do what they think is right and lead others to do the same. They innovate, whether we're talking about more efficient administrative procedures or better ways of building team cooperation or strategies for improving an organization's operations and progress. Do you want to hire people who are just good at doing the same thing over and over and over again? No, you want those who are forward thinking and embrace change.

They are resourceful, responsible, and capable of doing the job with minimal supervision.
PhD candidates, over the course of the many years it takes to complete the dissertation, may meet with their advisers and/or other committee members only a few times a year. Some advisers give virtually no feedback other than a thumbs up or thumbs down on any particular chapter. To get to the end of the process and successfully defend a dissertation, someone with a PhD had to draw upon unfathomable intellectual and emotional resources and take responsibility for doing whatever it took to get to the end of the project. When an adviser says, "This chapter doesn't work for me. Fix it," without saying what's wrong with it or how to fix it, a PhD candidate heads back to the library, back to the prose of the chapter itself, back to the logic that apparently didn't hold up under scrutiny, and figures out how to fix it.

They are good at problem solving.
In addition to the above paragraph, which is also an example of problem solving, curiosity and inquiry lead to research that answers questions or resolves problems. Moreover, having spent time as teachers, they've had to deal with student behavioral problems, like plagiarism, and pedagogical problems, like getting apathetic students to engage with the subject and participate in class discussions. Often, they've had to do these things with minimal support from supervisors.

They are smart.
Hiring a Ph.D. doesn't guarantee brilliance. Probably, you're not getting the next Albert Einstein. But you are getting somebody who came up with a research project independently and had the mental wherewithal to carry it out successfully. Content expertise aside (and, really, you don't care about the subject of their dissertation), completion of the project says this person, at the very least, has functional frontal lobes. While many job listings for general, merely-need-basic-capacity-to-think-to-succeed positions specify "B.A. preferred," the B.A., these days, no longer guarantees that someone actually does have a fully operational brain (as a former college instructor, I speak from experience!).

 They get stuff done.
 Ever wonder what it's like to undertake a major research project independently, work on it (or the preparation leading up to it) every day for the better part of a decade, prep to teach three classes  every week, grade 100 papers or exams every 2 weeks, prepare to present your work publicly at conferences you travel to 2-3 times a year, and submit your work to peer-reviewed journals -- all while earning a salary of around $20K? Yeah, I didn't think so. If you need stuff done, your PhD will get it done, more than likely at warp speed.

Lastly, let's not forget they are also steadfast and reliable (it took them a decade, give or take, of sisyphean toil to get where they are now, without any promise of rewards at the end except completion of a project very few people will ever know about), have integrity (it would have been easier to have just forged the damn diploma!(, and will immeasurably bolster your self-esteem by validating your choice NOT to pursue a PhD yourself!


So, what are you waiting for? Go out and hire a PhD today!

17th century handwritten doctoral diploma

For the Love of Words

No wonder so many nonacademic employers view post-academics with distrust when it comes to writing. Even though academics produce a lot of prose, they tend to bloat it with static verbs and meaningless filler. How else do you get a sentence like the following from a scholarly article about a novel:

Many _______________ argue, then, that it is not so much the difference between ________ and _________ that is at fault in our _____________, as the way in which that difference has been used as a justification for __________________________.

You and I have both read much, MUCH worse (remember the academic sentence generator from this old post?), but this sentence reads like a template. I left out identifying words, but you could fill in almost anything in those blanks and plunk it down in the literature review in your article.

ZzzzzZZZZzzzzzzZZZzz. How boring! I'm asleep already and there are another thirty pages to go. In case you are wondering, I'm reading the article to catch up on where the "field" is at before writing the paper for that stupid conference I'm supposed to present at next month. (Note: I have NOT reserved a hotel room or booked a flight yet. What does that tell you?)

Really, I am still engaged with the subject of my paper and have read a handful of sources that have kept my attention. Nonetheless, I cannot escape bad academic writing. It abounds. It makes me embarrassed for my discipline. True, we taught something resembling templates in the freshman comp classes at Grad U to help students understand the rhetorical moves writers and speakers make, but the goal, after they'd practiced using the templates, was to have them make those same rhetorical moves in their own ways, to speak in their own voices.

It may have gone out of fashion in academe, but I still believe you cannot separate content from form. We are what we eat. You are what you speak.

I hope those of us who've had the clarity of mind to leave academe will also leave our bad habits behind. Outside academe, if you can write about complex things in clear and concise language, without reductively treating your subject yet without wasting words, you can call yourself a writer, people will respect you, and they will read what you write. Inside academe, unfortunately, everybody is a "writer," whether anyone reads what you write or not, and if you can obscure simplicity in arcane and turgid language, muddling your subject and bloating your sentences, then you can call yourself not only a writer but a scholar, too!

Haha. Ahem. Hmmmmph.

I love words. Have I mentioned that before? Not everyone in  academe does, especially literature people. Some of them hate words. Don't ask me what they're doing in academe. In some cases, it's their only opportunity to posture at being hipster intellectuals, carrying around heavy books, wearing black, drinking too much, chain smoking, looking down on everything and everyone. Or, at the opposite end, you have the frumpy dumpies. The ones who forget their glasses in the freezer and wear mismatched socks. They NEED something obscure to hide behind. Or be buried under.

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But I love nekkid words, my peoplz, sexxxy and unruly words!!! I love words that misbehave with grace, words that tumble like Olympic gymnasts, flip and twirl and cartwheel and balance perfectly, even upside down.

I love free and easy words dancing beneath my fingers, appearing on my screen and yours all at once!

(That's where you're supposed to say "Awwwwwwwww, we love you, too, recent Ph.D.!")

Happy Valentine's Day, friends! Here's some luuuuuv art from the streets of Crapitol City:

Consensus: "The Outrage of Adjuncts"

Over at Minding the Campus, there's a good piece up entitled "The Outrage of the Adjuncts." The author doesn't say anything astoundingly new. You've heard it all here and at other post-academic blogs before, many times over. Her main points are that 1) "By systematically underpaying and mistreating the non-tenured faculty who bear the burden of basic education, colleges are systematically cheating their own students," and 2) adjuncts, taxpayers (since they fund student loans and public colleges and universities), as well as students and their parents have a right to be outraged.

What's new in this piece is that the author is a conservative, and yet the point-of-view she expresses is that ending the plight of adjuncts and thereby improving the quality of education should be a bipartisan issue. She doesn't get into specific strategies for reform and the divisive and ideological rancor they raise -- e.g. Where would the money for better adjunct salaries come from if not from higher taxes? Or, how do you fix the adjunct problem without destroying the tenure system? (My take on where the tenure system fits in is here.) But she lays a foundation for consensus, and I think that's an important first step.

The author's experience attending the New Faculty Majority "summit" recently also illustrates how rhetoric can inhibit reform. She was initially skeptical and put off by the "Neo-Marxist phrases [that] filled the air: "wage theft," "neoliberal agenda," "corporate America," "under assault from the right," "privatization of the production of knowledge," and "marketization of the university." But "NFM's sole Republican board member, Matthew Williams, was able to advocate for the non-tenured without invoking Karl Marx, the Occupy movement, or anti-globalization guru Naomi Klein."

Let's be clear: I personally don't think NFM is wrong for invoking Karl Marx, the Occupy movement, or Naomi Klein. However, the mainstream audiences who need to understand what's up -- because, fundamentally, it affects them, their kids, their pocketbooks, and the future of education in this country (and, hence, this country's standing in the world) -- are more apt to respond to centrist arguments tying the plight of adjuncts to the quality of education rather than "radical" abstractions or down-and-dirty demonstrations (which, these days, are getting more attention for rodent infestations than clear politics, anyway). Again, not that I think NFM is wrong at all for making these arguments, but the theory you use to analyze something and the rhetoric you use to present it to an "outside" audience need not exactly match.

And the author does a good job of tying the plight of adjuncts to the quality of education without blaming adjuncts for being bad teachers, as often happens. It goes without saying (since you all know it and I've said it many times before and many of the blogs I link to regularly discuss it) that many adjuncts are very talented teachers. If you doubt or have forgotten, just go read what Anastasia currently has up to refresh yourself. Yet, I don't care how talented you are. Living on a salary under $20K, having no job security, no benefits, and no career future after you've spent a decade earning an advanced degree -- not to mention having no decent office space, no resources for research, no departmental support, and having to commute to multiple campuses -- will cause your teaching to suffer, no matter how talented you are. It's only a matter of time. So, it's a fine line to talk about the plight of adjuncts and how this impacts quality of education, but we have to do it. It's the only way we're going to get the attention of people outside acadene.

I tried to leave a comment over there, but I kept getting error messages. Here's what I wanted to say:

Absolutely right on with this: "By systematically underpaying and mistreating the non-tenured faculty who bear the burden of basic education, colleges are systematically cheating their own students."

I walked away a semester after finishing my Ph.D., but academic culture perpetuates the myth that if you hang on for a while and keep trying and keep up with your research and publication while you're adjuncting, you'll eventually get onto the tenure track. This has a powerful resonance for a lot of people, and it's not that easy just to "walk away," as many, including myself, often tell others. But I looked around and saw adjuncts who were great teachers AND had strong publication records, even books, and yet had been trying unsuccessfully year after year -- 6-10 years in a few cases. I didn't want to be them years down the line and so I left, but it wasn't without anger, frustration, and bitterness at giving up doing what I loved, what I was good at, a career I'd spent a decade of my life working towards, and a job that arguably was making a more valuable contribution to society than the general admin work I now do for a nonprofit (by which I simply mean you don’t need an advanced degree to do it well). Shouldn't university faculty, especially those with Ph.D.s, earn at least as much as their department secretaries?*

And I'm so glad you find common ground here between Right and Left. It's something we should all care about and work together to reform.

 *Department secretaries at Grad U earned between $40K and $70K when I was there, depending on how long they'd been there and what their responsibilities were.

Invitation to Help Develop Grad U Graduate Writing Website

The following found its way to my inbox today. I found it amusing. I thought you might, too:

Dear recent Ph.D.,

In Fall 2010, Dr. Very Important Campus Administrator established a Graduate Writing Task Force to devise a plan to enhance existing graduate writing resources and the quality of graduate student writing. The task force’s recommendations included the creation of a writing resources website that focuses on general resources, but also discipline-specific needs.

Because you were previously selected for Prestigious Graduate Fellowship and thus identified as an outstanding doctoral student who has acquired useful knowledge of the dissertation writing process, the Graduate School invites you to participate in a focus group that will help determine the design and content of the Graduate Writing Resources website. We anticipate convening the focus group sometime in February.

If you are willing and available to serve as a focus group member, please contact me by February 3.

Sincerely,

 Postdoctoral Associate for Graduate Education Administration

Hmmmmm. Well, I guess it isn't exactly a surprise that just because you're a graduate student working on a dissertation you're necessarily a good writer. I can cut the STEM folks some slack in this area. They just need to write well enough to communicate their research. However, while I can't speak for the social sciences, it seems that the primary fields in which writing really matters are the humanities. In the humanities, because your work engages so closely with other written texts, what you have to say (your research) is intimately caught up in how you communicate it to others.

Sorry, I'm rambling. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this seems like campus administrative bloat to me -- another attempt by overpaid campus managers to justify their existence (just reread the job title up there -- couldn't make that shit up if I tried). Such a resource for undergrads makes sense, and many such sites already exist, at Grad U and other institutions. But for graduate students? If you're a STEM person and your writing is so bad people can't understand you, you should hire a tutor and possibly an editor. You deserve to have to pay extra if you're that horrible. If you're in the humanities and you can't write, you probably should drop out long before you finish your diss and hit the job market ... because you will be TOAST. Burn your early diss drafts and maybe give business school a shot.

Maybe I'm being overly harsh and judgmental. Why not help graduate students? A website of writing resources that targets dissertation writing could be just the support some poor struggling ABD needs to get through to the end.

Except ... did it occur to Dr. Very Important Campus Administrator that, since I haven't adjuncted at Grad U in a year, I might have some other job, like, off campus and during normal business hours? How in the world would I be "available" to commute an hour each way for a one-hour focus group? And I should do this, even if I were still adjuncting or otherwise working on campus, as a form of "service," I suppose??

Hey, I got news for you, you high level college administrator types, "service" only counts if you're on the tenure track. Can we work on converting some of those adjunct positions maybe? In my old department, adjuncts outnumber tenure-track faculty 2 to 1. If you could do that and pay me, oh, roughly what I'm currently earning as a freakin' secretary, and offer, maybe, if not tenure, at least multi-year renewable contracts so I'd have some job security, I might consider coming back and doing for a living what you are here acknowledging I'm very good at.

Then I'd be happy to participate in your focus group ...

WTF Has Graduate School Come To?

Literally, just as I was about to begin a post about the "band camp" adventure I am about to embark upon this weekend (you'll have to wait for that!), Random Guy wanders purposefully into the office here at Think Tank and, without saying hello or introducing himself or anything, walks over to our wall of publications and starts looking through them.

Me: "Excuse me. Hi there. Can we help you with something?"

Random Guy: "This is Think Tank, isn't it? I am doing some research and someone told me you had some publications that would be useful."

Me, looking over at Coworker with mild puzzlement, "Yes, this is Think Tank. What is the subject of your research? Perhaps we can help you find what you're looking for."

Random Guy: "I'm a master's student, and I'm writing a paper for a graduate course I'm taking on Policy X. Somebody told me you guys had done some work on Policy X."

To myself, I am wondering if Random Guy has tried the library yet. Or, if that's too much trouble, a simple Google search? A Google search of Policy X would have brought up Think Tank pieces, as would, more directly, a search of Think Tank's very own website. I stifle something resembling a laugh and clear my throat.

Random Guy, rifling through our materials, clearly not finding what he's looking for: "Did you say something?"

Me: "Excuse me ... I don't think we have any of our publications on Policy X out on the shelves at this time. Have you been to our website?"

Coworker: "You know, we do more work on Policy Y at this office, which is why there's nothing on Policy X on the shelves, but recent Ph.D. is right. If you go to our website and search Policy X, you'll find a number of publications that will be of interest."

Random Guy, scribbling furiously on a notepad: "OK, thanks. Where do I find your website?"

Me, stifling something caught in my throat again, something large: "Ahhhem, you'll find us at www.ThinkTank.org."

Random Guy: "Oh, OK. Thanks. Are there any particular publications you recommend? Or authors?"

At this point, I remain polite but do not even try to disguise my mystification at Random Guy's approach to graduate level "research." What, am I supposed to do it for him?

Me: "Well, there's Supreme Expert on Policy X. He's done some work for Think Tank. You'll find his work on our site, but he also has his own site with more materials on Policy X, which you can find if you Google his name."

Random Guy stops scribbling and looks at me blankly.

Me, spelling it out for him: "That is, his name is spelled S U P R E M E   E X P E R T   O N  P O L I C Y  X."

Random Guy scribbles that down and then asks: "Do you have any general information about Think Tank? Any pamphlets that describe what you do?"

Me, picking up one such item from the shelf right in front of Random Guy: "Yes, here you are. This tells all about Think Tank and the work we do, and there's more information on our website, too."

Random Guy, heading for the door: "Thanks ... "

Me: "Good luck with your paper!"

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Was Random Guy actually a graduate student? I hope not. Given our proximity to street traffic, neighborhood oddballs, and the occasional policy nutjob who wanders in, Random Guy's clueless strangeness is far from the strangest behavior I've witnessed from a visitor. That prize goes to Barefoot Mumbling Guy, who was convinced the baristas at Starbucks down the block wanted to give him AIDS and wanted to use our phone to let his brother know. (You betcha that warranted some Lysol!) And, likewise, people that know who we are will sometimes stop by to say hello and tell us they think we're doing a good job. Sometimes they ask for publications, too, usually more general things we always keep around.

*     *     *     *     *

So, yes, I really do hope Random Guy was just some random guy who wanted to know more about Policy X, had heard something about Think Tank, and simply wasn't that educated or otherwise familiar with ordinary research methods but thought we'd respect him more if he said he was "doing graduate research." Because ... really? You know as well as I do that graduate school isn't a meritocracy anymore, not anymore than academe itself, but we would like to believe there are at least SOME standards, no?

Via

My Take on Academic Conferences

UPDATE: Apparently, according to this IHE article, my experience is not at all uncommon. But if you're reading this blog, you probably knew that already -- probably from your own "beer and circuses" conference experiences. And then there's this, too. How timely!

A few recent posts around the blogosphere, such as here and here, have exposed academic conferences for the expensive charades they often are. While my experiences differ somewhat from what others have written, I don't really disagree with their assessment. Here are some reasons why the conference I've been invited to and will present at this spring will most likely be my last:

Conferences really are too damned expensive to be paying for out-of-pocket, most especially if you are an underpaid graduate student or adjunct, since they are, for all practical purposes, "required" for furthering your academic career.
Didn't you just throw up a little in your mouth when I said "furthering your academic career"? Of course you did! In all seriousness, the only reason I participated in as many conferences as I did as a graduate student was I had funding. My department had a policy about allotting X dollars to each graduate student for X number of years to attend conferences IF AND ONLY IF you were presenting a paper. So, I presented a bunch of papers and got funding. When this source ran dry, I applied for outside travel grants and got them.

When I think about it in retrospect, what a waste! Providing travel funds to graduate students allowed the department to pat itself on the back for "supporting" us with what must have essentially been a mere drop in their budgetary bucket, certainly MUCH less than paying us a fair wage for teaching, while at the same time, in practical terms doing absolutely NOTHING to further our "careers." But I never would have gone without that "support," so I suppose I should be grateful, right? Right.

I will be paying for this upcoming conference out-of-pocket. Not a big deal, really. I can afford my own plane ticket and room, eat decent meals, and even buy myself a few drinks without draining my bank account. But ... if I had to absorb this expense every year, more than once a year ... on an adjunct's salary? Even an assistant prof's salary?? You've got to be kidding. What would be the point, if not "furthering your career"? Intellectual development? Yeah. I just threw up in my mouth a little more ...

Conference papers can be quite good but mostly are quite bad ... and what's the point anyway?
I've heard some astonishingly good papers over the years, papers that entertained, papers that made me think in ways I'd never thought before, papers that set my brain on fire through the sheer power and play of language. Papers that just plain blew my mind. But ... a lot of papers put me to sleep, too. More often than not, conference papers are less than brilliant.

Personally, I've been on both sides of the good/bad paper divide. I know well the time and effort it takes to write a paper that puts people on the edges of their chairs, a paper praised by a leading scholar in your field, a paper that leads to a publication. All of those things have happened to me. But I've also pulled papers out of my ass the night before I left town for the conference. Those papers were terrible. No doubt I put a few people to sleep. No doubt a few sensitive souls were embarrassed on my behalf.

My point, though, is this: What's the difference? Nobody cares if you read a boring paper. They'd just as soon sleep or surreptitiously pull out their laptops and work on their own papers anyway, pretending they're taking notes. On the other hand, if you read a brilliant paper, you'll certainly feel better about yourself ... you'll receive praise and possibly publication invitations. But none of this will lead to a job in academe. Simply going to "share ideas" may leave you intellectually enriched (wait, I think I just threw up a little in my mouth again!!), but you won't be able to appreciate your intellectual enrichment properly because you'll also be just plain broke.

Social events at conferences bring out the worst in the type of socially challenged people one often finds among academics.
I usually hide out in my hotel room and avoid these things like the plague. At the last conference I attended, I made the mistake of going to one. There was an open bar. Actually several. On my third drink, I found myself in a conversation with the chair of one panel I had presented on and a fellow presenter from my other panel (yes, I presented on two panels at the same conference and was loopy with the excitement of it all ... which is why I went to the reception ...). So, I'm talking to these people, and, as the alcoholic fog begins to clear, I realize that BOTH of them are A) drunker than I am and B) hitting on me. WTF?!? And, as if that weren't awkward enough, one is a man and the other a woman, and they ARE TRYING TO GET RID OF EACH OTHER so as to have my undivided attention. And (!!?) just as this is occurring to me, to my horror, I also realize a member of my committee (this is pre-defense, mind you), possibly drunker than all of us, has been watching the entire spectacle for god only knows how long. You better believe I excused myself and got the f#$k away from there as fast as I possibly could.

Hopefully, at the upcoming conference, I will have the sense to remind myself of this travesty and avoid similar situations. But, then again, who cares? Since I am no longer under the delusion that such "networking" will further my career, why not enjoy the free booze? Lecherous colleagues and leering committee members be damned.

*     *     *     *     *

In all seriousness, I will do my best to write a "good" paper rather than one that puts people to sleep, and paying my own way for once will help me better appreciate why this will likely be my last conference.

If you're still having conference envy, want a good laugh, and haven't read this book yet, I highly recommend it.

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

One thing us postacademics get really tired of hearing really quickly is some version of the following:

If I were in your shoes, I NEVER would have made the mistake of going to graduate school. Everybody knows there are no jobs in academe, and nobody in their right mind should spend that much time, effort, and money on education and professional training that will NEVER pay off with a job. I just can't understand why so many otherwise smart people make such a stupid choice.

To be fair, I don't hear this, personally, all that often. But just the other day, an acquaintance was telling me about a friend, somebody still in her 20s but gainfully employed as a journalist, who is seriously considering going for a Ph.D. in the humanities. "I just don't get it," my acquaintance (who does not have a higher ed background and never considered graduate school) says to me,

I keep pointing out to Crazy Friend there aren't any jobs and, like, why would she quit the job she already has and borrow money to go for a useless degree? That's just mind-warpingly unfathomable. Is Crazy Friend being willfully ignorant? As far as I can tell, you'd have to be. I really just don't get why people just shut themselves off from what they don't want to hear and believe. The facts are pretty stark.And there's no shortage of articles, news stories, and blogs telling everyone that cares to listen that going to graduate school in the humanities is a bad idea. Why don't people listen to reason? I told my friend not to go, but she won't listen. She wants to be a professor.

Via

I just shake my head at both sides. Sure, the "I don't get it" crowd has a point, but, rationally speaking, if so many otherwise intelligent people are continuing to ignore obvious signs that graduate school is a trap, there must be more to it.

There IS more to it. Consider:

Prospective (and, indeed, current) graduate students get a lot of conflicting information and mixed messages they aren't really equipped to sort through. For example, the student might have read some articles in Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle (or any number of mainstream publications) that talk about the dearth of academic jobs and what a big waste it is getting a Ph.D. To a nonacademic with no graduate school inclinations like my acquaintance, this is both the only information they have and the only information they think they need to be able to pass judgment on someone like Crazy Friend.

But the aspiring student has a host of other information -- some of it quite personal -- to grapple with. There is the praise from undergraduate professors, some of it no doubt truly misleading the student to believe they are the "special" exception -- a standout even among those talented enough, passionate and committed enough, to be distinguished from the masses. Of course, this praise does nothing but perpetuate the myth of meritocracy. Even if your undergrad profs are right about your talent (and ... well-meaning as they might be, they're probably wrong), how good you are only matters when How Good You Are Matters matters more than How Well You Fit Based on the Frantic Review of 600 Candidates Right Before Finals (all of whom were similarly praised and encouraged by their undergrad profs years ago).

So, if students can depersonalize praise and be objective, they would less likely fall into the trap, but most people would have a hard time doing that -- and the naysayers would, too, if they were on the receiving end of this encouragement and had an interest in further academic pursuits.

Also, the strong interest in further academic pursuits itself leads even those not drunk on their undergrad advisers' praise to believe "facts" and "statistics" about job placement rates used by departments to promote their graduate programs. Speaking personally, this was one of the largest factors clouding my judgment. Since a few years had passed between the time I finished undergrad and started grad school, I had some distance (like acquaintance's Crazy Friend). Rather than overzealous praise, my own desire to succeed in a profession I cared about, coupled with more disciplined work habits and more general maturity than the typical 22-year-old entering a grad program, led me to choose a program that, while not the most prestigious, for one thing, had what appeared to be a very robust number of job placements.

In other words, I DID look at career prospects. The larger picture represented in the media told one story, but the program I'd been accepted to and looked forward to attending told another. And this was 10 years ago, when the kind of information readily available today to anyone with Internet access wasn't out there -- was either not collected (and, in many cases, still isn't) or was misrepresented (i.e. placements are meaningless unless you know how many others who started the program the same year have since either dropped out or are working as adjuncts). At the beginning and throughout my time as a graduate student, I repeatedly heard announcements of tenure-track job placements, along with yearly totals that seemed impressive .......... impressive, that is, until several years in I started observing how many others the department was simply retaining as adjuncts, with and without the Ph.D., and how many just walked away, just disappeared without a trace to become postacademics. My understanding of who adjuncts were -- and how many of them my own department employed -- was limited by my experience. During the first few years, I saw them as failures, if I saw them at all. Duh, why weren't they following all the CV-building advice I was and publishing and presenting at conferences? But later ... well, who knew there were so many? And who knew so many of them were there due to no lack of competence on their part? They were doing the same things junior faculty on the tenure track were doing (they had to in order to stay competitive for tenure track jobs elsewhere); the university simply wasn't acknowledging it.

A very large department like the one at Grad U depends on a significant degree of invisibility, whether deliberately reinforced or not, to make the kinds of claims it makes about job placement that allow them to recruit and retain people like me -- and probably like you, too.

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There's a lot more to say on this subject, but this post is long enough for today. The bottom line is that there's a bigger picture the Shoulda Coulda Woulda naysayers outside academe aren't privy to. Take responsibility for your choices, but don't let anyone get away with telling you you're stupid for not doing your research before you got into this mess. It's more complicated than what some pundit writes for a general audience, however much truth she or he may tell.

Next time: Two very different ways of thinking about why academe NEEDS people who put their love for the pursuit of knowledge first and their best interests career-wise last ...