Posted on 05/26/2014 1:25:04 PM PDT by rickmichaels
Jennifer Polk was a few years into her Ph.D. in history at the University of Toronto when she attended a departmental meeting and heard that 50 per cent of the school’s graduates were getting tenure-track professor jobs. “They were patting themselves on the back,” she says. “I was sitting there horrified.” She realized she needed another plan. Since that meeting several years ago, the number of jobs for academics has fallen further. The chance of becoming a professor is now estimated to be one in four.
Charmaine Grant began her Ph.D. three years ago partly because she couldn’t get a full-time job after finishing her M.A. in literature at Ryerson University. “I said to myself, there’s no way I can go through another year of this, just sending my CV into cyberspace,” she says. “I thought my time would be better spent in school.” She was thinking less about whether she would become a professor and more about how exciting it would be to continue her scholarship on black women’s hair. Today, still unable to see herself as a professor, she’s quit the doctorate and begun a job search.
Both women say that the culture of academia has made the transition from graduate school to work more difficult than it ought to be. “Everyone asks you, inside and outside the academy, ‘So are you going to be a professor?’ ” says Polk, “When you get to the point where you realize maybe this is not for me, you feel like a loser.”
A couple of recent studies, The 2013 Canadian Postdoc Survey and Beyond Labs and Libraries: Career Pathways for Doctoral Students, confirm that many graduate students aren’t getting the support they need to prepare for non-academic careers.
The Postdoc Survey, a partnership between the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars and Mitacs (an organization that coordinates industry-university research partnerships, including internships) consulted 1,830 of the estimated 9,000 Ph.D. graduates working as entry-level “postdoctoral researchers” in Canada. They found that their average age was 34 and roughly two-thirds earned less than $45,000 annually, many without benefits. Half reported no exposure to non-academic careers and 87 per cent said they either had no access to career counselling or were uncertain thereof. Nearly seven in 10 said their career goal was to become a professor—despite the odds. While large numbers agreed they wanted training in things like grant or proposal writing and project management, few were getting any. Some of their comments were revealing: one said non-academic careers were seen as “selling out or failing.”
The good news is that most master’s and doctoral graduates who leave the academy eventually find high-paying work. Statistics Canada’s 2013 National Graduates Survey looked at where the class of 2010 ended up three years later. Among master’s graduates, 90 to 95 per cent were working full-time, depending on the province (the rest were unemployed or not seeking work). Among doctoral graduates, employment rates ranged from 90 to 100 per cent. Median pay was $70,000 for master’s graduates and $75,000 for doctoral graduates, compared to $53,000 for bachelor’s graduates.
The other good news is that a group of Ontario academics is working to develop training to ease the transition. Allison Sekuler, AVP and dean of graduate studies at McMaster University, is part of a project that will, this fall, launch 18 learning modules for graduate students covering everything from resumés to networking. “They have a lot of skills but don’t know how to adapt those for non-academic careers,” she says.
Polk struggled to figure out how to apply her skills outside of the academy. She hadn’t enjoyed teaching, but she did build writing skills and community building skills, not only through her doctoral work but also through her indie music blog and at a part-time job where she worked with consultants. “I went straight through: high school, undergrad, M.A., Ph.D.,” she says. “When I finished I was 32 years old. I mean, thank God for the music scene experience. Thank God for the consulting.”
She’s capitalized on those strengths by starting a new blog, FromPhDtoLife.com, which includes interviews with other people who transitioned out of academia. One of her favourites is from a guy who, at age 36, finished his Ph.D. and spent months working for his brother-in-law’s duct cleaning company—and enjoyed it. After that, he found work at a museum consulting firm. The blog helps her drum up business as a life coach. She charges by the hour to help young academics plan their careers.
Grant, meanwhile, is wary of her lack of experience outside the academy but exploring options. She’s glad she took on a Mitacs internship and other work with the Diversity Institute while doing her Ph.D. because it helped her build new skills. “I had to learn how to work within a team and ask for help when I needed it,” she says. Her work on the Black Experience Project also taught her how grant-proposal writing differs from academic writing. She’s thinking of applying those skills in her career or maybe trying something entirely new, like learning American sign language. Whichever direction she takes, after a decade of university, it’s going to be a big change.
PhD art student...in debt to the tune of $120,000 because of it.
It’s as bad as getting a Pd.D. in Women’s Studies! Whatchya gonna do with that?
NOOOOO! A real job, surely you jest. Adjunct teaching positions for five years hoping a tenure track position will open up. $2000-$4000 per course taught usually no benefits.
If one can work summers, maybe $20,000 to $30,000 per year.
And of the course the waiting and hoping a professor retires or dies.
I was a Post-doc for 4 years, then industry for eight, now an adjunct at two colleges with benfits after 3 years (and some seniority). My PhD is in Organic Chemistry. I’m better off than most, but still you need a plan A, a plan B and a plan C. Be flexible!
I don't think she looked hard enough for a job.
Benefits...sorry.
I didn’t know Mcleans did satire.
Why does “Beauty School Dropout” from Grease, suddenly come to mind?
The question is, is she black? Not in a million years would any university hire a white woman who was an expert on black women’s hair.
Before it became fashionable, I took an interest in African American literature. Some of it is junk, but there is also some very good stuff. But I knew that I would never be allowed to teach it. I just read it (and much else) for my own interest.
Straight thru school, on history and literature, not even enjoying teaching, then expecting to find a career, which is viewed as being a failure, mind you, even a highpaying one - and one discontent finds a blogging career in, it gets better, career counseling.
The target goal of these grads being not taking a lesser salary to teach young children the delights of prose or the significance of America in the world, but grant-writing. That is, soliciting free government money on top of the free government money to go to school to begin with.
Perhaps they are grants to study the mating habits of pelicans in historic perspective. Or the literary skills of unemployed grads responding to blogs, or the mathmatical abilities of the four-tongued frog, written while sitting in a private ‘biosphere enclave’ in a national park restricted from the public, buffalo roaming by their airconditioned gert on an open prairie, where once ranchers worked their beef herds to feed the world. WTSHTF these are the people who become immediately useless.
And the punch line? we support them with tax dollars.
wait...how do you write a grant proposal again?
Apparently, a PhD in literature specializing in black women’s hair is almost useless unless it’s paired with a minor in Sub-Saharan Homoerotic Literature and Dance. Then she’d have a combination that employers would really be clamoring for.
there's one born every minute... or is t every 30seconds?
When you say things like that, a kitten dies.
/johnny
After 28 years in academia she learns her first useful thing.
Go to any university’s library, especially the ones with easier admittance policies. Peruse the dissertations section. You’ll realize what a scam academia has become. We could lose 90 percent of our humanities and “social science” faculty without any ill effects, and indeed, many positive ones.
I wonder how much she actually paid for the PhD?
Had the misfortune to read one of James Baldwin’s novels.
Really wish I hadn’t. Just drek - the whole damned thing.
“Engineering majors DO NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM; Feminist Poetry majors - yes. “
Fewer children are prepared to enter college. They lack basic math, reading and writing. They know all about gayness, gender inequality and green studies. Shockingly, there are few jobs in those subjects.
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