Today’s post is for my readers who are considering grad school, most especially those who are aspiring scholars and college or university professors. Rather than a nickel’s worth of free advice, here are many years’ of university tuition (and hard work) worth of free advice.
First off, as you should do before undertaking any program of advanced study or technical or professional training for any career path, if you would like to be a college or university professor in the United States, please research the academic job market thoroughly and consider preparing yourself to do something else, like teach high school or work outside education altogether.
The job market for full time college teaching is incredibly impacted and it has been for a long time. The reality is that most faculty jobs (~3/4) are unbenefited and pay less than a living wage. If you want to teach college or university after you graduate, a non-tenure-track position is your more likely outcome because there simply are not enough tenure-track positions to go around. I would suggest that tenured faculty tend to seem out of touch with how difficult, and doomed, adjunct teaching really is for a variety of reasons, the most important being: they’re too busy, it’s not in their best interest, and most of them haven’t experienced it (not that lack of firsthand experience excuses absence of empathy, but I can’t think of any better reasons). Graduate programs want to keep enrollment numbers up, so they continue to enroll students, and, to be fair, you might get lucky and they don’t want to crush your dreams. Well, let me tell you: the odds that you will get a tenure-track position are against you.
Before you consider this career path, ask yourself three questions: 1) Do you have an alternative source of income? and 2) Do you think you could be happy being compensated in only the fulfillment that comes from teaching and diving deep into your favorite subject matter? 3) How can you use that education of yours outside the ivory tower?
If you’re really determined to go to graduate school to become a professor, go ahead, but plan equally for an alternative or two while you are still in your graduate program. Consider whether you can afford to work in an adjunct teaching position after graduation, and for how long, in case you do not find something on tenure-track right away. More than likely, after graduation, you will want and need to be paid in more than just personal and intellectual fulfillment.
You’re considering graduate education so you can become an educator, yourself; presumably you’re smart, resourceful, love your academic discipline, and you think you would love to teach and share your subject matter with others. There are other options for you, but you will 1) have to seek them out and 2) be more likely to have success if you don’t save preparing for them as an afterthought. You may even find you like the other options more than you like academia.
Why should you consider my recommendations? You may be thinking I am just a disappointed wannabe academic struggling with classic failure-to-launch frustration. Not exactly. True, I fell for the dream, but not all at once, and I had an exit strategy. Before I earned my doctorate, I taught adjunct for several years (I also taught while earning my doctorate). The purpose of my master’s degree had been to be able teach at institutions for which that degree was sufficient preparation (which I did, for 5+ years, not counting my student teaching experience); I went for my Ph.D. because I wanted to be eligible for more tenure-track positions, especially those wherein research and advising graduate students would be components of teaching.
As Karen Kelsky of The Professor Is In has written, when you hit the academic job market, you should already know whether or not you are a top contender in your field or subdiscipline. You know on some level how you measure up to your peers. After a few years on the market (assuming you started looking as soon as you were ABD), you should know for certain. Me, I had some interviews, but my final-round campus interviews, at schools I would have been thrilled to teach at, were not at top schools and did not result in offers (even worse, one was just a fake search to give an internal candidate a promotion). A top contender would have been interviewed by better-known schools and received, at the very least, one offer. Would I have had success if I kept looking and tried to get more publications under my belt? Maybe. If I weren’t a top contender before, I’m not so sure. Remaining unemployed for another year or more to find out, by conducting unfunded research that wouldn’t actually guarantee me a future job, was never an option.
I knew from my coursework in higher education, my colleagues’ experiences, and reading an abundance of post-academic lit that spending years struggling financially as an adjunct, trying to keep up research productivity at the same time (for free), almost never leads to a tenure-track position and, more often, leads to longterm penury and PTSD. Hiring committees overwhelmingly prefer new graduates over seasoned adjuncts. One year after graduation, I took up my backup plan and I consider myself lucky I found work relatively quickly. I had multiple offers to teach adjunct, but instead opted to work outside academia for a steady paycheck, rather than work for less than $10,000 a year teaching courses for 1/3 (or less) the rate tenure-track faculty are paid to teach the same course. Now, like a part-time professor, my days are packed and I don’t have time to devote to publishable research that would be helpful in the academic job market. Unlike an adjunct professor, I’m not broke.
Yes, I miss academia. I would go back in a heartbeat if a tenure-track job were offered to me (if only it worked that way—it doesn’t). I was looking forward to being a scholar and doing more teaching. Yes, there’s FOMO knowing my colleagues are paid to teach, conduct research, publish, go to conferences, and have job security. At the same time, I’m financially solvent for the first time since I entered graduate school. I’m a lot better off than I would be as an adjunct professor. But, you don’t have to take just my word for it:
References and Recommended Reading If You’re (Re)Considering The Ivory Tower
Adjunctforlife. (2014, August 10). We Have Choices. Adjunct Purgatory. https://adjunctpurgatory.com/2014/08/10/we-have-choices/
Anonymous. (2014, November 4). An Inconvenient Truth, A Guest Post. The Professor Is In Blog. http://theprofessorisin.com/2014/11/04/an-inconvenient-truth-a-guest-post/
Benton, Thomas H. (2009, January 30). Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846 (if you only read one of these suggested articles, read this one and then click through to Part Two, also linked below, published under William Pannapacker’s pseudonym).
Benton, Thomas H. (2009, March 13). Just Don’t Go, Part Two. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Just-Dont-Go-Part-2/44786
Benton, Thomas H. (2010, February 8). The Big Lie About The Life of The Mind. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of/63937
Kelsky, Karen. The Professor Is In. http://theprofessorisin.com (I stumbled across Kelsky’s website and book by the same name when I first started interviewing for tenure-track positions—I cannot recommend both highly enough, both for job market advice and a post-academia exit plan).
Langer, Jessica. (2015, April 7). Three Ways In Which Academia Is Your Abuser. The Professor Is In blog. https://theprofessorisin.com/2015/04/07/3-ways-in-which-academia-is-your-abuser-langer-postac-post/
Lesko, P. D. (2019, January 13). Why FT Faculty Will Never Speak Out for PT Faculty. Adjunct Nation. https://www.adjunctnation.com/2019/01/11/why-ft-faculty-will-never-speak-out-for-pt-faculty/
Patton, Stacey. (2012, May 6). The Ph.D. Now Comes with Food Stamps. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795
Saccaro, Matt. (2014, September 21). Professors on Food Stamps: The Shocking True Story of Academia in 2014. Salon. https://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/professors_on_food_stamps_the_shocking_true_story_of_academia_in_2014/
Scott, Debra Leigh. (2018, October 22). There Is No Such Thing As An Adjunct Professor. Adjunct Nation. https://www.adjunctnation.com/2018/10/22/there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-adjunct-professor/
Westneat, Danny. (2015, September 25). Gifted Professor’s ‘Life of The Mind’ Was Also Life of Near Destitution. Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/gifted-teachers-life-of-the-mind-was-also-life-of-near-destitution/