Attrition and ensuring better exit-options

I have been thinking about graduate school attrition--and indeed, other forms of "attrition"--in light of reading these two posts, the comments-section of the former post, and comparing my experience in philosophy with my wife's experience in a PhD program in a very different field (see below).

In order to have an adequate discussion of attrition--and how it should be treated--I think we need to have an honest discussion about what attrition is. At first, it might seem obvious what it is: it is students leaving their programs without finishing. However, I want to suggest that in just about every relevant sense (i.e. relevant to students and the programs they attend), there are several different types of attrition. First, the most obvious form of attrition--call it strict attrition--consists of students who leave their PhD programs without finishing their degree. A second type of attrition, however--call it soft attrition--consists of students who do finish, but end up never getting the kind of full-time academic job they entered into their PhD program helping to achieve. Although this isn't attrition from graduate school per se, it is in a broader sense an obvious sense attrition: attrition from the kind career-track that they attended their program seeking. It is a case of a person leaving the very field that their degree prepared them for a job in. Finally, there are particularly severe cases of soft attrition: students who end up finishing their PhD programs, but take absurdly long times to do (in some cases well upwards of ten years), and who consequently have little chance of obtaining the kind of academic job they entered grad school seeking. These too, in an obvious sense, are cases of attrition. They are students who fell through the cracks, sinking in some cases 10-15 years of their life to achieve a degree that once again will most likely not result in anything like the career they were seeking when they started out. 

Although data on these different types of attrition are hard to come by, just about every philosophy PhD program I have any knowledge of appears to have significant amounts of each type. Further, in my experience there are a variety of causes of attrition: poor student performance, poor graduate program culture or support leading to poor performance, traumatic life-events or poor decisions by students while in graduate school, and so on. While some of these causes can be plausibly addressed (department culture and support), others may be inevitable (some performing poorly, making poor decisions, etc.). Whatever the case, however, I believe it is high time for our discipline--and graduate programs--to take a more responsible approach to attrition and exit-options. Allow me to explain.

I have seen many philosophy PhD students live in utter terror of never finishing or getting an academic job. Indeed, I was one of them. I was a grad student who at times struggled mightily--one who felt, with real some justification after over 7 years in graduate school, that I would likely never finish and end up having to leave my program with nothing aside from a significant mountain of debt (which I had to take out in grad school to survive). In particular, given that graduate school had occupied almost all of my adult life (I started at the age of 22), I feared for a few years that my entire adult life had been one huge mistake, and that I had spent nearly a decade of my life doing something that would lead me to have few, if any, serious job prospects afterwards. It was a terrible situation to face. But, does anyone have to face it? I believe not.

My wife is currently in a PhD program in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Nobody in her program lives in the kind of fear I just described. Nobody lives in fear because her program has a robust commitment and institutional mechanisms for helping its students who do not or cannot obtain a full-time, well-paying academic job obtain jobs outside of academia. Whereas in my experience philosophy PhD programs tend to only have "placement directors" for academic jobs-- basically leaving students who leave their programs or academia after the PhD to their own devices--programs in my wife's field do not do their. Their graduate advisors and placement directors actively network in industry outside of academia, helping their students find jobs outside of academia. For the record, these faculty and programs are not always happy with this. They tend to want their students to "go academic", obtaining tenure-track jobs. Still, for all that, they are still deeply--and systematically--committed to ensuring that their students have good career options whether or not they complete the program.

Now, for obvious reasons, this sort of thing is easier to do, and comes more naturally, in my wife's field than in philosophy. Whereas there are a wide variety of non-academic jobs in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, there is no clear "philosophy industry" outside of academia. Still, I believe there is a lot more our PhD programs could do in this area, and that our profession owes it to our PhD students to see that our programs do so. For although there is no "philosophy industry" outside of academia, there is a growing network of previous philosophy PhD students who have gotten work --often good, well-paying work--in a variety of industries. Given the amount of time, effort and value (as low-paid teaching assistants or instructors) that philosophy PhD students put into their PhD programs while they are there, it seems to me only fair--and compassionate--for our discipline to expect our programs to do far more than they typically do to ensure that our students, both those who finish and those who leave our programs, have good career options. If PhD programs in other fields can do so (and they do), so can we. Among other things, in addition traditional "placement officers" (who tend to focus merely on getting PhDs academic jobs), philosophy PhD programs could have non-academic placement officers, or faculty charged with the task of networking outside of academia and placing students who leave their programs with non-academic jobs. I want to suggest that our discipline should hold something like this as a standard "best practice" for graduate programs--one that we actually expect programs to do, and perhaps even be monitored by the APA. Although this might sound overly "inteverventionist", or "asking too much" of PhD program faculty, with all due respect I disagree. For while some people out there maintain it is students' fault for taking risky gambles for attending PhD programs in the first place, in reality many people who begin graduate programs are young and naive. I, for instance, like many 22-year-olds, was predictably naive and irrationally optimistic about my own chances in academia. I had never failed at anything in my life--and while we can "hold people responsible" for their choices, quite frankly it just seems cruel to me. I've seen the pain that philosophy PhD students well into their thirties (and forties) have faced as a result of their decisions. The least our PhD programs could do for them is to conscientiously ensure that they have good career options if things do not turn out well.

Finally, I would like to comment on one other thing I commented on here. While I have heard that some programs have a policy of weeding out "poor students" early on--under the auspice that "early attrition is better than late attrition"--I think this is a really bad policy. I have seen way more than a few students who were lightly regarded at best by their PhD program faculty, not only early on in their programs but late in the game as well, who then went on to become spectacular successes after the PhD. In my experience, there are many reasons for this. Some people just take time to develop philosophy. Others struggle with immaturity and poor work habits before developing excellent habits later on. By and large, grad students are young people who can--and often do--develop in entirely unexpected ways. It is regrettable--insofar as we can avoid it--to push people out of programs before we (and they) have the opportunity to see who they can become. And, I want to say, as long as our programs ensure that they have good exit-options, there is nothing wrong (at all) with struggling students staying on board in programs. The responsible thing--both in terms of people and in terms of philosophy--is not to push people out of the field prematurely, before they have the chance to develop. It is to ensure, instead, that they have good exit-options if they need or choose to leave the field. And so it is this, I want to submit, to which our attention should be more directed.

Comments

[Clerk]

It might be both easier and more productive for placement officers to build good relationships with their local career centers. Likewise for directors of undergraduate studies helping majors to find work after graduation.

[Plato's friend]

Marcus,
It seems that philosophy faculty are probably not the best people to help those graduate students leaving a program with the intention of seeking non-academic employment. They are not especially qualified, and they have other duties directly related to their work as professors. Remember Plato's Republic; the just society is the one in which each person does her own job.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Clerk: Why would it be easier and more productive? In my experience, career centers are usually not very useful. Most jobs are found through actual networking, that is, through knowing people who know people. And this takes personal investment.

Why, if my wife's professors can do it, can't philosophy professors?

[Marcus Arvan]

Plato's friend: The only reason philosophy faculty are not "qualified" for it is that they do not, in fact, do it. My wife's faculty are not any more "qualified" to perform this function than philosophy professors--and they have at least as many academic obligations as philosophers (usually far more in fact, as they have to apply for grants, run research institutes, etc.).

In short, it seems to me just a (rather poor) excuse to let philosophers off the hook. If my wife's faculty can--and regularly do--help their students find fantastic jobs outside of academia, with no more training in it than us, why can't we do it?

Also, Socrates' "Just City" is, like, one of the worst ideas ever! Plato had this figured out by the time he wrote "The Laws", and Aristotle had it figured out too. It's no way to run a city. Nor is it a (moral) way to model graduate programs or faculty obligations after.

[Josh Mugg]

Marcus-

I tend to think letting students go earlier than later is a good thing, provided that students understand what the expectations are and are given the resources to meet these expectations. Granted, it is possible that their philosophical ability will develop later, but is this grounds for allowing them to stick it out in the program? It is also possible that they will never get their stuff together, that they will never secure employment within academia, etc. Even if you do not favor 'weeding out', surely there exist situations in which students should be let go because of their poor performance.

The amount of people who want to work in academic philosophy seems to be greater than the amount of academic jobs in philosophy. So they will have to be weeded out somewhere. I suggest that doing this in the first year or two of PhD might be a good place to do so.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Josh: I have simply seen too many counterexamples to be comfortable with a policy like that--real cases of grad students who were poorly-regarded in their department, and cases of people who might be encouraged to leave, who ended up surprising everyone. They are not, in my experience, uncommon exceptions. They are entirely common ones. And I think it is a big mistake--for all of us; for philosophy, and for individuals--to preemptively prevent such common exceptions from occurring.

Let me just give you a few examples:

(1) I was probably a PhD student who, in a program that encouraged people to leave, might have been encouraged to leave.

(2) Several other people in my program who were lightly regarded/struggled have now been wildly successful in the discipline (far more than I).

(3) My favorite case from another discipline. Einstein finished 2nd-lowest in his graduating class, and was discouraged by one his professors from pursuing physics further ("You can do what you like: I only wish to warn you in your own interest", Einstein: Life and Times, p. 61).

The fact is: often enough, well-meaning faculty are simply *way* off in their estimation of a person's promise. This is, in my experience, in large part because a person's 'promise' can dramatically change in unexpected ways as a result of their development as a *person*. Many people (myself included) struggle in grad school for all kinds of reasons--because of youthful immaturity, unexpected life-challenges, and so on--and yet can and do develop while in grad school, often in a highly irregular rather than linear fashion, but one that has good outcomes in the end.

We should not impose our views about what's 'best for people' because they have struggled in grad school or 'who's promising and who's not' because--the simply fact is--what is best for people, and who is promising, can and often does change. If someone clearly cannot cut it in grad school (they cannot do even halfway decent work), that's one thing. But, for all that, we cheat people--and our profession--by pushing people out before they have the chance to develop. I, for one, am more thankful than you can probably imagine that I was not pushed out.

[Josh Mugg]

Marcus-

But the fact remains that there are more people in philosophy who want academic jobs than there are academic jobs in philosophy. There will have to be some weeding out mechanism somewhere.

Also, there is already a 'weeding out' mechanism in place that is earlier than the PhD--PhD admissions. Folks who went to small schools, do not test well on the GRE, did not do well in the first two years resulting in a lower GPA than desired, etc. This student might flourish in grad school, but the profession's system currently weeds them out. Do you favor expanding PhD enrollment to give such students a chance?

If you did want to give the maximum students a shot at philosophy, you might push the weeding out back a bit. Allow lots of folks to join the PhD program, but make it hard so a high percentage drop out. There will have to be some mechanism by which folks leave. Without kicking folks out of a PhD program, the only two we have are PhD admissions and a bad job market.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Josh: I think the entire focus on weeding out is misplaced. Of course there will always be weeding-out procedures: grad admissions, inability to do coursework, inability to finish a dissertation, too few academic jobs for too many PhDs, etc. My point is that our focus should be more on ensuring good *exit* options at every weeding out point. Not everyone gets into a good program in my wife's field, and not everyone in good programs--but thanks to disciplinary norms in her field almost everyone has good exit options (the ability to score a decent job inside or outside the field). That, I think, should be our focus. It is almost entirely ignored as of now. Philosophy grad programs have few if any mechanisms in place to help thos who do not make it in academia (or choose to leave) to do well after leaving. That is the problem. I'm trying to say we should do much more to solve it.