{"id":754,"date":"2013-11-04T08:41:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T08:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/11\/alt-ac-post-ac-or-no-ac.html"},"modified":"2013-11-04T08:41:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-04T08:41:00","slug":"alt-ac-post-ac-or-no-ac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/11\/alt-ac-post-ac-or-no-ac.html","title":{"rendered":"“Alt-ac”? “Post-ac”? Or “no ac”?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The latest article making the rounds of my small world concerns the future of doctoral students:\u00a0 \u201cFinding Life After Academia \u2014 and Not Feeling Bad About It<\/a>.\u201d The article features Ph.D.s or Ph.D. candidates in the humanities who have left the academic world (in which they were generally still searching for a job, or\u00a0in one case\u00a0dissatisfied with the job they had found) in order to make their way in the business world, or in nonprofit or government employment, and it describes halting attempts by graduate programs to help their graduates find work outside academia, or outside the professoriate anyway.\u00a0 The term\u00a0\u201calternative academic,\u201d or \u201calt-ac\u201d \u201chas gained widespread currency (and its own Twitter hashtag) and can refer to jobs within universities but outside the professoriate, like administrator or librarian, as well as nonacademic roles like government-employed historian and museum curator,\u201d according to the article.\u00a0 Apparently (though it\u2019s not entirely clear),\u00a0the term is\u00a0also beginning to refer to any job that an individual with a Ph.D., or nearly so, takes upon leaving academia.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what the article misses:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 In the business world, people who spent time getting a doctorate and then want to find an alternate career path are at a disadvantage in getting hired, relative to someone straight out of school.\u00a0 The mere fact that the business world is their second-choice career is a negative, as well as the feeling that if they\u2019re really interested in literature, or philosophy, or whatever, they won\u2019t be able to \u201cget their hands dirty\u201d (even if only figuratively).\u00a0 <\/p>\n

2)\u00a0 There is a cost to graduate school.\u00a0 Of course, for the typical student, a teaching assistantship covers tuition and provides a basic stipend (and anyone attending graduate school, in a field which isn\u2019t explicitly career-oriented, should only do so with a stipend, or, exceptionally, with some other means of support, but should never be taking out loans), so it may seem like it\u2019s a cost-free way to pursue one\u2019s deep interest, but no one really seems to talk about the opportunity cost<\/strong>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I know this:\u00a0 I spent five years in grad school.\u00a0 (This was back in the days when we were all told that there was an upcoming cohort of retiring faculty so the job market would be great when we finished, and, besides, I was a stellar undergraduate student, with respect to my classroom assignments, so I didn\u2019t have any clue that graduate work, or, specifically dissertation work, would require a whole new level of initiative I didn\u2019t have.)\u00a0 When I left, and started an entry-level job in my current field (below<\/em> entry-level, in a way \u2014 I had to prove myself to enter the actuarial \u201centry-level\u201d program, starting as what was called an \u201canalyst\u201d doing more routine work), I was five years behind everyone else.\u00a0 By the time I was ready to have kids (and we didn\u2019t try any of this mid-30s nonsense), I had only just really started trying to build a career, because I had missed those first five years.\u00a0\u00a0And\u00a0this also meant five fewer years of retirement savings, of home down-payment savings, etc.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And many of these grad school, or post-grad-school career-changers have spent something more like a decade than a half-decade pursuing this.\u00a0 And I would imagine that the largest number of them have deferred student loans which have continued to accrue interest during this time.\u00a0 (I left college loan-free.)<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0 At the same time, in a lousy job market, the opportunity cost is much less than in a healthy job market.\u00a0 If I have a choice between working minimum wage and attending grad school with a roughly-equivalent stipend, I\u2019d choose the grad school route.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t you?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

4)\u00a0 Ultimately, this is about career-counseling in college, not in grad school, given that many future humanities grad students end up there because they end up with the major (maybe because they looove the subject, maybe because of friends, maybe \u2014 as was the case in my social group \u2014 because being a business major was something crass that we were too smart for) and don\u2019t know what else they\u2019d do.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve read hints that universities are trying to improve in this respect, moving away from that idolization of \u201cdo what you love\u201d that is so common.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Here is what an old friend of mine, who now teaches medieval English literature at a state university, told me:<\/p>\n

I do try to communicate both to undergraduates thinking about grad school and to graduate students that there is an opportunity cost\u2013especially to the undergraduates. But I\u2019m not going to imitate William Pannapacker and tell them simply that they shouldn\u2019t go, because most are already hearing that, and because I don\u2019t want grad students to be only those who are \u201cindependently wealthy\u201d or \u201cwell-connected\u201d or supported by a spouse or already in a job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article she refers to, and links, is this:\u00a0 \u201cGraduate School in the Humanities:\u00a0 Just Don\u2019t Go<\/a>,\u201d which dates to 2009 but presumably is just as relevant today, and many of the reasons it gives why students choose graduate school really fit me, 22 years ago, pretty accurately.\u00a0 Is it too pessimistic?\u00a0 Is my friend right that it would be a Bad Thing for the graduate\u00a0student body to consist only of those who have the funds and are at a place in life where going to grad school wouldn\u2019t put them at risk,\u00a0so each student should simply make their own decision, knowing the risks?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Maybe a part of the project of reinventing undergraduate education should consist of creating an environment in which bright students are not counseled, explicitly or indirectly, into the belief that only graduate school is worthy of their talents, but allow them to believe that they can love Medieval history, or philosophy, and still work at a (maybe not-so-soul-sucking) corporation.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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