PhD graduates struggle to build careers in academia
Universities staffed up to accommodate millennials, she says, and now they’re trying to cope with declining enrollments, which are predicted to continue indefinitely. “there’s nothing wrong with a PhD,” says Wood, chief executive of beyond the Professoriate, whose platform is currently used by harvard and bC. “the problem is there are no jobs.”
Wood holds a PhD in history, and her breaking point was in 2011 when she came in second place for a job thousands of miles away. the gig was a oneyear position. in Reno. And she was told the pay wouldn’t even be enough to live on.
the woman doing the hiring encouraged Wood. “You came in second place!” she exclaimed. “for what?” Wood asked. Wood had hoped to be a professor. She had been a top student and earned her PhD from the University of North Carolina. but it didn’t take long to realize: Despite the fact that she had a prestigious degree, there were virtually no decent jobs in universities.
often, those with doctorates serve as adjunct professors — sometimes while they look for a more permanent gig. to students, adjuncts and tenure-track faculty may appear to be the same. they have PhDs. Students call them “professor.”
but when it comes to stability, they’re worlds apart. Adjuncts rarely get health care. they’re generally paid between $3,000 and $7,000 per class, and you might have to drive considerable distances to get from one job to another.
over 30 percent of nontenure-track educators in higher education make under $25,000 a year, according to a 2019 survey by the American federation of teachers. Another 30 percent make between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. but over the past few decades, the number of adjuncts has grown much faster than the ranks of full-time faculty.
the dearth of jobs has been particularly tough on those in the social sciences, humanities, and some sciences, including biology. Richard larson, a professor of data, systems, and society at Mit, has noted that many professors churn out lots of doctoral students over the course of their careers — and a good chunk of those students would like to be professors themselves.
but the math simply doesn’t work. only a few of those grad students — fewer than 20 percent — can get the sort of job that their advisers have. (though there are certainly disciplines — including chemical engineering and computer science — in which graduates can find jobs fairly easily, often in industry.)
Kristina Aikens, who earned her PhD in English from tufts University, initially tried to piece together a living as an adjunct. for a year and a half, she says, she was teaching four or five classes in two or three locations, which is a common — though brutal — workload.
Aikens doesn’t believe that doctoral students — particularly in humanities — understand the real threat of finding themselves in an unstable position. “i think people think it won’t happen to them,” she says. “it’s not because they think that they’re better than anyone else. it’s just a denial that they’re in.”
but the threat of job instability is considerable. Massachusetts is not only the state with the highest percentage of people with undergraduate degrees; it also has the highest percentage of those with graduate degrees. And while many of those degree holders are thriving, too many live in precarious situations — situations made all the more precarious by the extraordinarily high cost of housing in the boston area.
So if the supply of academic jobs has waned, why don’t doctoral programs simply slim down and admit fewer students?
Most of the people i spoke with noted that professors may be loath to give up their graduate students because they genuinely enjoy working with them. grad students can talk about esoteric areas of scholarship, built on years of deep study.
“i think that faculty want to believe that they’re doing good,” says Wood. “i think that graduate deans generally believe that graduate education does good. And the fact that universities have paid so little attention to career outcomes means that they don’t actually have good data to work with.”
it’s also possible that schools’ reluctance to admit fewer graduate students is financially motivated. Universities often run on the work of grad students, as the boston University strike has demonstrated. grad students teach sections of large classes. they work in labs. they perform in-the-field research.
“the business model only works with a lot of cheap labor,” Corbin says. “i think it’s bad. i think it’s bad for students. i think it’s bad for the classroom. i think it’s bad for the grad students and the perennial adjuncts.” but, he believes, doctoral students represent an enormous pool of untapped talent.
Corbin is now a tenure-track researcher at harvard Medical School’s Center for bioethics. it’s a job he likes, and life feels much more stable. “it’s becoming less desperate,” he says.
Aikens — who now serves as the program director of writing support at tufts — says she doesn’t regret getting a doctorate, and she doesn’t think we should preclude people from pursuing that sort of intense study.
Coming from a working-class background in West Virginia, she had wanted to see if she could do it. And the six years she spent getting a PhD were hard. but she knew that success wouldn’t necessarily lead to employment:
“At my graduation, literally at the ceremony, i turned to my friend and said: ‘Should i apply to law school? because i don’t think this is going to work out.’”