Two Recurring Discussions

Although this is only my third year of graduate school, I've already noticed a pattern that emerges in the blogosphere during January and February. At this time of the year, online discussions of the same basic issues resurface: the competitiveness of the job market, the seemingly arbitrary nature of the selection process, the financial and emotional toils of applying for jobs, and the despair created by all of these factors. (I don't mean to imply that these issues are only discussed in January and February: these are just the months where the frequency of such discussions seems highest.) There are a lot of important questions that arise from these discussions, but I want to focus on just two. First, is there a one-size-fits-all formula for getting a tenure-track job in academic philosophy? Second, in light of the poor career prospects, how should we advise undergraduates about whether to pursue graduate study in philosophy? (Notably, Marcus offered some personal insight into the second question in a recent post.)

Based on the many anecdotes I have read in the blogosphere and heard from fellow philosophers in person, I think it's fairly clear that the answer to the first question is a resounding no. The process includes three stages. First, from a large applicant pool (of at least 100+), 8-12 people are identified to be interviewed (over the phone, via Skype, at the APA Eastern, etc.) based on their CVs, letters of reference, etc. Second, 3-4 people from this smaller pool are designated as finalists and get to visit the university's campus, meet with that university's philosophy faculty, give a research talk to the department (or teach a class, depending on the university), etc. Finally, an offer is made to one of the finalists. Given that different schools are looking for philosophers with different research interests, different personalities, different degrees of teaching experience, and so on, it's inevitable that the criteria for who makes the cut at which stage will vary substantially from school to school. Applicants are not likely to have much insight into what particular criteria a given school considers important beyond vague generalities (e.g., a teaching-oriented university will value your teaching experience more than a research oriented university), so it's pretty difficult to know what one's chances are of getting past each stage, even if (for instance) you feel good about how well you interviewed.

When you add to the picture above that there are far more people with PhDs in philosophy than there are academic jobs, it is unavoidable that many very qualified, very capable philosophers will be denied a tenure-track job. This fact is a source of great stress and despair for many people, and a general formula for how to build one's CV and structure one's career so as to optimize one's chances for a tenure-track job would seem desirable. The problem is that beyond fairly obvious generalities that everyone knows (e.g., it's good to publish an article in The Philosophical Review, it's good to present a paper at the APA, it's preferable to come from a highly ranked school on the Leiter Report), there's just not much more to say. And even here, there are exceptions - people from top programs who don't get interviews, people from lower ranked programs that snag excellent jobs, people with multiple publications that can't land a permanent position, and people with no publications out of graduate school who glide smoothly into tenure at a Reseach I university. Given the plethora of variables involved in what a particular school is looking for and who one is competing against in the applicant pool, I suspect the search for any one-size-fits-all formula for getting a job is a futile one.

So what does this mean? What should we tell our undergraduates who are contemplating graduate studies in philosophy? Surely we're obligated to be honest and forthcoming with them about their career prospects since a decision to attend graduate school and pursue a career as a philosophy professor could make a big difference in their future quality of life. Simultaneously, I can't help but think that Mr. Zero's outlook on graduate school in philosophy - "don't do it if you can think of anything else" (recently discussed here) - is too bleak. I suspect the best advice is an intermediary between overly optimistic (i.e., unrealistic) advice to pursue your ambitions and overly pessimistic pleas to avoid graduate school in philosophy at all costs. Eric Schwitzgebel already articulated this message several years in his opening entry in a series of 2007 blog posts about applying to graduate programs in philosophy, a resource I consulted when first pondering whether to apply to graduate school in philosophy. To quote him, "I advise students not to consider graduate school in philosophy unless (1.) they'd be happy teaching philosophy at a low prestige college and are willing to move almost anywhere in the country, and (2.) even if they never finished the degree they would have found the process of studying philosophy at the graduate level intrinsically worthwhile."

In trying to capture the heart of this idea, I once advised an undergraduate major to ask himself the following question: "If I pursued graduate school in philosophy and never finished the degree or never found a stable job after finishing the degree, would it have been worth it?" I encouraged him to study philosophy only if he could give an affirmative answer to this question.

I think the study of philosophy is too valuable for us to adamantly discourage undergraduates from pursuing it, but we need to make sure they understand that they should not pursue it for its career prospects. Anyone have differing opinions or additional insights regarding this matter?

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Comments

[N]

Great post. A few thoughts on the first few things you said:

"a general formula for how to build one's CV and structure one's career so as to optimize one's chances for a tenure-track job would seem desirable."

1. Such a 'formula' will, paradoxically, only work if it is not generally followed. That's another weird thing about the situation. Also, if every grad student started optimizing their chances, the system would be utterly swamped. I get the sense that this is already happening, to some extent.

2. A question that might be worth asking ourselves, here, is: there seems to be a large number of grads/postdocs (particularly on the internet) who spend a *lot* of mental energy worrying about job prospects. I can imagine someone saying--though I am not myself in a position to say this--that your chances of getting a job will rise (ceteris paribus) if you make sure that you are not in this group. That is to say: if you try to concentrate on doing what you love and doing it well. As I understand it, a lot of modern psychology would back this person up: we are at our best and most creative when we are doing things because we love them, and not because we are worried about some future failure.

[Anon]

The stuff at the end sounds like good advice, but I wonder whether many undergraduate philosophy majors would really be in a position to seriously think about these questions. Suppose Joe Undergrad thinks "Yes, I would be happy teaching philosophy at a community college in the middle of nowhere" but doesn't understand all the administrative duties and department meetings involved or can't foresee that he will end up marrying someone who would be miserable in the middle of nowhere? Or what about Jane Undergrad who thinks philosophy is great on the basis of taking classes in a very narrowly focused department? She might go to grad school and become disillusioned by the grad courses she takes. I can imagine her saying, "I thought it would have been worthwhile even if I didn't get a job, but now the only good thing I can see coming out of this is gainful employment."

I don't disagree with the advice, but I don't think it's fool proof.

[Marcus Arvan]

Trevor: Thanks for the stimulating post. I have to say that I still disagree with the advice ("Only go if it would be worth it even if you never got a degree or job"), for the reasons I gave in my previous post.

I simply don't think a person *can* know if grad school will be worth it. To use LA Paul's recent paper on the rationality of choosing to have a child as a jumping off point, I truly believe that growing up is a transformative experience. You might think at *22* that grad school would be worth it if you never finished. Still, when you're actually 30 and failing out of grad school, your beliefs at 22 may be small consolation.

For these reasons, I think the most responsible advice is this: "You can't know whether going to grad school will be worth it. It may be a disaster. It may leave you 30 and alone with no career to speak of. You may feel that it wasn't worth it at all. There's no way to know. It's a *risk* going to grad school -- a grave risk. You have to make your decision knowing this."

[Trevor Hedberg]

Thanks for the first few comments, folks. Here are some brief replies.

N -- Both your points are well-received. I had not considered the fact that any widely known formula for getting a tenure-track job would quickly become too widely followed to be a successful formula. All the more reason to think no one-size-fits-all approach can be found.

Anon and Marcus -- I interpret you both as making a similar point. We have limited insight into what our future preferences will be, and naturally we can be wrong. Someone can think one thing at 22 and quite another at 25. But when we make these sorts of decisions, we have to make our best assessment at the time and make the decision that best fits with our evidence (in this case, our knowledge or our values, preferences, etc.). Though we never have the luxury of certainty, I think we have enough insight into our preferences that it is not a total crapshoot regarding whether graduate school will suit us or not. If I genuinely perceived graduate school in philosophy as a "grave risk" for everyone who attended it, I would probably fall back to Mr. Zero's position and discourage anyone from pursuing it unless they could not think of any other field or career that appealed to them.

[Daniel]

Given the importance of pedigree on the academic job market, I think it's at least worth emphasizing to undergraduates considering going to graduate school that just *how* risky it is depends substantially on where you go to graduate school. I don't think it's an unreasonable attitude to be willing to go to graduate school, but only if you're going to a department with a good enough placement rate that, while you cannot be at all certain of finding academic employment afterwards (there's no place like that), the chances are good enough that you're willing to roll the dice. While it used to be hard to figure out just how placement rates varied from department to department, a lot of places now have relatively detailed information up online.

[anonymous grad student]

One piece of advice that I give to undergrads (I'm a grad student, but have a lot of contact with undergrad majors) contemplating grad school is to spend a year or more doing something else after college, before applying. This doesn't harm anyone in the application process (as far as I can tell), and a lot of the time, undergrads have never had any sort of real full-time job or done anything with *most* of their time and energy but school. It's a lot harder to think about your choices and what you enjoy doing if you haven't even tried anything but school. I feel like the reasons that I really value philosophy grad school, and the reasons that I have been able to be somewhat successful (at least so far), are tied up in the choices I made to a) work/do other things between high school and college and b) work/do other things between college and grad school. Though I also worked 30-40 hours a week through college, so perhaps even if undergrads are working at "real" jobs, there's something different about not going to school--I really think that for some people, obviously not everyone, it is the only way to figure out whether you actually like going to school.

I can't see taking time off harming anyone, especially if she does something interesting with the interim time. But given the state of the economy, maybe this is harder to put into action than it was when I had just graduated from college. Anyway, I think the advice to try something different for a while can be really helpful for at least some students who have been living in a world of overachievement in academics for basically their whole lives.