4 ms·

Every student considering going to graduate school should read this article. Professors are very misinformed about how likely someone is to get tenure (most of

Every student considering going to graduate school should read this article. Professors are very misinformed about how likely someone is to get tenure (most of them got it > 20 years ago, in a much better academic job market). This misinformation trickles down to students. The simple fact is that right now the average professor is graduating more than 10 phd students, only 1 of which can become a tenured professor at a research university. The job options in academia other than tenured professor are horrible and exploitative. I know many post-docs who have gone into industry after slaving away at temporary and low paying jobs for over 6 years. These post-docs were very bright and dedicated people, but the tenure track position requires lots of luck in addition to skill.

jseliger 10y ago
Academia expanded enormously between 1945 – 1975, when virtually everyone who got a PhD could get an academic job. Since then, time-to-degree for PhDs in all subjects has increased dramatically, post-docs have become the norm, and academic jobs have become scarce. I wrote about this in "What you should know BEFORE you start grad school / PhD programs in English Literature: The economic, financial, and opportunity costs" (http://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and-opportunity-costs/ http://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befor...), but the overall point can be generalized to a large number of fields. As you note, academia has become increasingly exploitative, even when most individual professors remain well meaning. In addition, many people considering grad school or who have recently begun it seem not to know quite how bad the situation is, or quite how bad it can be to be in your 30s and to have effectively wasted the career part of your 20s.
- carsongross 10y ago
  One of my most infuriating moments at Berkeley was when I attended a symposium on pursuing an academic career (I was interested in one at that point) and a professor complained that students were too concerned with academics and weren't spending enough time protesting, like she had. It was the academic equivalent of Old Economy Steven. Very triggering.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - schoen 10y ago
    In my first week as a Berkeley undergrad, I attended a workshop put on by the student activities office about student protest (sort of a mixture of history and how-to). Clearly at least some portions of the administration considered it part of their brand.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    >a professor complained that students were too concerned with academics and weren't spending enough time protesting, like she had. Given that one of the few factors capable of really changing an exploitative labor market is labor organizing, she might have a point.
yeukhon 10y ago
Yes. The market is very narrow for academia. I live in NYC. there are a handful of universes and colleges. If the large institutions are not hiring, you are left with the small fish normally just looking for teachers not professors. Also, to grow your career a healthy environment is collaboration. If you end up being a Professor at a small pond, your bet is external collaboration. If you don't like the small ponds, you have to find jobs somewhere else, that means moving to another state. Since there are thousands of post doc actively looking to join a good research institutions, the job market is so competitive. For engineers, say you got rejected by Google, there are still hundreds of engineering teams you can apply to. Should there be a policy to force retirement? Is it fair?
- cpitman 10y ago
  > Should there be a policy to force retirement? Is it fair? No, artificially creating jobs does not seem like the solution. We should be requiring all schools, for all degrees, publish relevant employment figures for that degree. And for doctorates, that should mean giving percentages that have tenure after X years and the percentage employed in jobs that required their doctorate. Informing students lets them make the choice. If they are getting a PhD for the love of it, and don't care, power to them. But they should be given real data for their job prospects.
  - yeukhon 10y ago
    I agree we should publish the figure. But IMO this info is quite intuitive even without one. The market is small.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- twblalock 10y ago
  Many universities did have forced retirement policies for professors above a certain age. I don't think those policies are common anymore. I'm not sure how much they would help anyway. A few more jobs would open up, but not nearly enough. It would be a drop in the bucket. The bottom line is that there are way too many graduates for the size of the academic job market, and even if the number of newly minted PhDs dropped by half, there would still be too many. In some fields, the number of new PhDs could drop nearly to zero before it made sense to get one.
rdtsc 10y ago
I heard a professor with tenure encourage my friend to try to get PhD by saying things like "Find an out of the way small college, get tenure, once you get it you don't have to do anything, you'll always have a job, you'll have time to travel, go to the pool do whatever you want". In a way that mirrored what that professor was doing -- teaching stuff that was last relevant in mid 80's, doing absolutely the minimum required, reading off the slides all lecture, then have TA grade everything. It was scary imaging the wasted potential and thousands students over decades who missed on what could have been a useful course. That was a state college, so besides taking parent's money and wasting them, they were taking state' money (although they'd been a lot less of that lately). Most professors were very good and not saying we should not have tenure, as that would undermine the ability to do some green field research that perhaps doesn't have dollar signs attached to it, but at the same time, I think a few bad apples like that are ruining the image and idea behind it.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Oh tenure. I get why it existed but it also seems so easy to abuse. I think most of my great profs did not have tenure. Maybe 1 or 2 did.
  - audleman 10y ago
    Of all the exploitable opportunities tenure is one of the worst. Your plan has to be "I will go to school for an additional 4-6 years. Then I will become a low paid professor. I'll take on increasing responsibilities for 5-7 years and apply for tenure. Then I may just get it and I'm set!" Seems like somebody with enough smarts to do that could just go work in industry, make a bunch of money, then retire and do what they want.
chriskanan 10y ago
I'm a tenure-track professor and a former researcher at NASA JPL. It is true that the market for tenure-track professors is terrible. One needs to have a number of high impact papers and come from a top-5 program to be really competitive without doing a postdoc in engineering. In the sciences, even that isn't true and a postdoc is usually needed even if finishing at a top program. That said, there are many good reasons to pursue a PhD. A PhD in engineering/sciences gives one training in research, and there are tons of awesome applied and basic research jobs that require a PhD that aren't professors. Working at NASA JPL was amazing, and it required a PhD. If a person wants to do research, then a PhD in engineering/sciences opens many doors. I think more graduate students need training in career planning and that they need to have realistic expectations. Too many people think they will win the lottery.

jseliger 10y ago

Academia expanded enormously between 1945 – 1975, when virtually everyone who got a PhD could get an academic job. Since then, time-to-degree for PhDs in all subjects has increased dramatically, post-docs have become the norm, and academic jobs have become scarce. I wrote about this in "What you should know BEFORE you start grad school / PhD programs in English Literature: The economic, financial, and opportunity costs" (http://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and-opportunity-costs/ http://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befor...), but the overall point can be generalized to a large number of fields. As you note, academia has become increasingly exploitative, even when most individual professors remain well meaning. In addition, many people considering grad school or who have recently begun it seem not to know quite how bad the situation is, or quite how bad it can be to be in your 30s and to have effectively wasted the career part of your 20s.

carsongross 10y ago
One of my most infuriating moments at Berkeley was when I attended a symposium on pursuing an academic career (I was interested in one at that point) and a professor complained that students were too concerned with academics and weren't spending enough time protesting, like she had. It was the academic equivalent of Old Economy Steven. Very triggering.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- schoen 10y ago
  In my first week as a Berkeley undergrad, I attended a workshop put on by the student activities office about student protest (sort of a mixture of history and how-to). Clearly at least some portions of the administration considered it part of their brand.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >a professor complained that students were too concerned with academics and weren't spending enough time protesting, like she had. Given that one of the few factors capable of really changing an exploitative labor market is labor organizing, she might have a point.

yeukhon 10y ago

Yes. The market is very narrow for academia. I live in NYC. there are a handful of universes and colleges. If the large institutions are not hiring, you are left with the small fish normally just looking for teachers not professors. Also, to grow your career a healthy environment is collaboration. If you end up being a Professor at a small pond, your bet is external collaboration. If you don't like the small ponds, you have to find jobs somewhere else, that means moving to another state. Since there are thousands of post doc actively looking to join a good research institutions, the job market is so competitive. For engineers, say you got rejected by Google, there are still hundreds of engineering teams you can apply to. Should there be a policy to force retirement? Is it fair?

cpitman 10y ago
> Should there be a policy to force retirement? Is it fair? No, artificially creating jobs does not seem like the solution. We should be requiring all schools, for all degrees, publish relevant employment figures for that degree. And for doctorates, that should mean giving percentages that have tenure after X years and the percentage employed in jobs that required their doctorate. Informing students lets them make the choice. If they are getting a PhD for the love of it, and don't care, power to them. But they should be given real data for their job prospects.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  I agree we should publish the figure. But IMO this info is quite intuitive even without one. The market is small.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
twblalock 10y ago
Many universities did have forced retirement policies for professors above a certain age. I don't think those policies are common anymore. I'm not sure how much they would help anyway. A few more jobs would open up, but not nearly enough. It would be a drop in the bucket. The bottom line is that there are way too many graduates for the size of the academic job market, and even if the number of newly minted PhDs dropped by half, there would still be too many. In some fields, the number of new PhDs could drop nearly to zero before it made sense to get one.

rdtsc 10y ago

I heard a professor with tenure encourage my friend to try to get PhD by saying things like "Find an out of the way small college, get tenure, once you get it you don't have to do anything, you'll always have a job, you'll have time to travel, go to the pool do whatever you want". In a way that mirrored what that professor was doing -- teaching stuff that was last relevant in mid 80's, doing absolutely the minimum required, reading off the slides all lecture, then have TA grade everything. It was scary imaging the wasted potential and thousands students over decades who missed on what could have been a useful course. That was a state college, so besides taking parent's money and wasting them, they were taking state' money (although they'd been a lot less of that lately). Most professors were very good and not saying we should not have tenure, as that would undermine the ability to do some green field research that perhaps doesn't have dollar signs attached to it, but at the same time, I think a few bad apples like that are ruining the image and idea behind it.

brianwawok 10y ago
Oh tenure. I get why it existed but it also seems so easy to abuse. I think most of my great profs did not have tenure. Maybe 1 or 2 did.
- audleman 10y ago
  Of all the exploitable opportunities tenure is one of the worst. Your plan has to be "I will go to school for an additional 4-6 years. Then I will become a low paid professor. I'll take on increasing responsibilities for 5-7 years and apply for tenure. Then I may just get it and I'm set!" Seems like somebody with enough smarts to do that could just go work in industry, make a bunch of money, then retire and do what they want.

chriskanan 10y ago

I'm a tenure-track professor and a former researcher at NASA JPL. It is true that the market for tenure-track professors is terrible. One needs to have a number of high impact papers and come from a top-5 program to be really competitive without doing a postdoc in engineering. In the sciences, even that isn't true and a postdoc is usually needed even if finishing at a top program. That said, there are many good reasons to pursue a PhD. A PhD in engineering/sciences gives one training in research, and there are tons of awesome applied and basic research jobs that require a PhD that aren't professors. Working at NASA JPL was amazing, and it required a PhD. If a person wants to do research, then a PhD in engineering/sciences opens many doors. I think more graduate students need training in career planning and that they need to have realistic expectations. Too many people think they will win the lottery.