Another kind of attrition rate

In my recent post addressing a reader's query on how to choose between PhD programs, I suggested the reader should focus less on the reputation of a program or particular advisor and instead focus more on programs' attrition rate (i.e. how many people don't finish the program) and job-placement rate. The other day, however, an anonymous comment inadvertently drew my attention to another salient issue that in my experience is rarely discussed: what I will (for lack of better words) call post-PhD attrition rates. Allow me to explain what I mean, and why I think it may be good as a new disciplinary norm to expect programs to track and make them clear on their placement webpages.

In an anonymous comment last week, a person who described themselves as suffering from bitterness signed off on a comment to me as "an old friend." I don't know who the person is. However, their description of themselves as an old friend got me ruminating about the many old friends I've had in the profession that I haven't seen or heard from in many years--friends from the two PhD programs I was in, as well as old friends I had met at conferences or online. "Whatever happened to them?", I thought, "are they still in philosophy? If so, where and in what capacity?" The more I reminisced about them, the more curious I became--so I did a little searching around on philpeople and elsewhere to find out the answers.

What I found was, to be frank, a bit disconcerting. While a fair number of old friends are still in the discipline--some currently tenure-track, others tenured--a surprising number of them, including friends who initially got postdocs or even tenure-track positions, appear to no longer be in the profession. I cannot tell, of course, why they may have left the profession. Perhaps some of them got tenure-track jobs but did not enjoy them. Perhaps others never got tenure track jobs. Perhaps others got tenure track jobs but not tenure. I simply don't know. What occurred to me, however, is that this is probably relevant information for people choosing PhD programs. Why?

I assume that many/most students entering PhD programs not only want to make it through the program and get an initial academic appointment. I take it many/most of them imagine themselves with a long-term career in the discipline. But in that case it seems like someone considering a PhD program should probably care about more than the kind of information listed on department webpages. Department webpages sometimes (though rarely, in my experience) mention attrition rates. More often, they list initial job-placements (i.e. the first academic job a person obtained). However, in light of what I described above, both of these sources of information are importantly incomplete. They at most give a prospective student an idea of how many people make it through a given program, and of those who do, how many of them initially get particular kinds of jobs (postdocs, VAPs, TT jobs, etc). By themselves, these sources of information provide no information on the proportion of students who make it through a program who go onto have stable, long-term academic careers--the thing, again, that at the end of the day I expect many/most prospective students to ultimately desire. Finally, it would not surprise me if different programs had substantially different numbers in this regard--namely, that some programs with similar initial-placement numbers to have substantially different post-PhD attrition numbers (since, plausibly at least, some programs prepare their students better for the world post-PhD, different types of jobs--teaching and research--have different tenure-rates, and so on).

As I am sure long-time readers of this blog know, more than a few commenters have suggested that they felt like they were "sold a lie" in their pursuit of an academic career in philosophy--that they didn't really know what they were getting into, didn't really know their chances of attrition and success in obtaining an academic job, and so on. Given how common these kinds of concerns are--and given the stakes that students have in pursuing this line of work (viz. spending a better part of a decade of their lives or more in pursuit of their career goals, with substantial costs such as student loans, foregoing other forms of gainful employment with more stability, etc.)--it seems to me that as a discipline we should expect programs to provide clear, transparent, and complete information for prospective students. If this is the case, it seems to me we should expect them to report not only their program attrition rates and initial job-placements, but also up-to-date reporting on where previous graduates are now. This may take some time and energy, obviously--to find, reach out to, and hear back from former graduates--but, I think, given the moral stakes involved, it would very much be worth it.

Or so I'm inclined to say. What say you?

Comments

[FormerPhil]

I left the profession after a postdoc. FWIW, I am happier than I was in philosophy. I work with smarter people now, make much more money than I ever could as a philosopher, and I deal with far fewer toxic/insecure people.

[Amanda]

It might be a good idea to do this, but I would like it to become standard for programs to anonymize student names (for example '02 graduate student 5') unless they have explicit permission from the grad to post their information. There is already more than enough stress about success in the field and many grads might not want their name posted on a website about how they didn't obtain a permanent job in 5 years, about how they left the profession etc. Another issue, of course, is it will take some time before we will know if a certain person ends up leaving. It also won't account for those who stay in the profession and are miserable.

Anyway Marcus, if you are in favor of this, you must assume that leaving the profession has something to do with one's grad school experience? Because it is not obvious at least, that if a grad student got a nice TT job, stayed in 3 years, and then left, that this has anything to do with the grad program. And I think the point of posting this information is to let potential students have information about the grad program, not the personal lives of the former students.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Amanda: Thanks for weighing in. I don't think automatically anonymizing is a good idea, as it precludes third-party accountability (i.e. anyone outside of the program verifying whether the information is accurate). I think accountability is important, as I heard rumors in the past that some programs did not have accurate information on their placement pages.

That being said, I think your point about privacy is important. I would suggest programs either make it clear up front that anyone entering the program may have their placement information listed, or alternatively secure the consent of graduates whose names and information they post online.

I don't think this sort of information assumes anything about why people may leave academia. What I do think is that it can be relevant to prospective students in gauging relevant likelihoods about outcomes they care about heading into grad school (e.g. a permanent, tenured job in academia). Further, clearer and more up to date information on the kinds of non-academic/industry jobs graduates leave academia for can be equally relevant to prospective students (as a program whose students leave academia for good, well-paying industry jobs is very different than a program whose students leave for poorly-paying or less stable non-academic jobs).

[Amanda]

Well I guess I value the privacy thing more than you. Sure you could ask a 22 year old who is sure he will get a job whether he is okay with having his information posted. 10 years later he might not be okay with it. And I get third party ability to verify...however I know grad programs still post if not false, very misleading, information about their grad students (suggest a student has a TT when it is really temporary) Most people don't check. So I guess I am not sure the reward of being able to verify is worth the intrusion on privacy. This would have to be empirically verified, but I suspect there would be only a slightly higher false information rate with anonymized data.

[Marcus Arvan]

In that case, simply asking graduates for consent seems to me the way to go. My own sense is that people who leave the profession out of frustration may be all too willing to have their info shared to better inform future students of the reality of the job market.

[anon]

Doesn't this information show up as long as departments make their placement information complete rather than incomplete? What I mean by "complete" is, say, listing all the graduates for a given year, and then listing the jobs that they got (academic, non-academic, or not at all), and including more jobs than their first jobs as time goes on (e.g., at least "initial" and "current"). I can think of at least one placement record that does all this, although I wouldn't be surprised if others were less complete.

And to echo FormerPhil, post-PhD attrition need not be a disconcerting thing. Some of the people I know who got one job and then stopped doing academic work didn't want that to happen, and were unhappy with the outcome. But others I know left because they found jobs with better pay and stability, and were happy about it.

[Amanda]

I agree Marcus. Asking is a good idea.

[Pendaran]

You really can't even trust placement data. I know for a fact that departments leave off people they fail to place and/or don't update properly.

As someone who's struggling to figure out a career path post philosophy PhD, I'd love to know what FormerPhil actually does if he cares to respond.

[Amanda]

Yes the data is often misleading to the point of often being more hurtful than helpful. It also doesn't include all the people who dropped out of grad school. So I guess I am conflicted about whether it is best to post anything. But if something is posted, permission to use names should be asked. Maybe it would be best if there was a third party group that did the work of collecting al the data and publishing it on a website not associated with any university.

[Lauren]

I’m with Amanda here on the privacy issue—I got a TT job, but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have wanted to be identified by name on a website. There is enough emotional turmoil with the job market that publicly identifying those that failed to get jobs really doesn’t seem necessary. (With that said, I might have been happy to speak frankly on an individual basis with potential students about my experience.)

On the attrition issue: there are all sorts of reasons people leave the profession, both during and after the program, and particularly in smaller programs, one or two students might have a big impact on how the results look. One of my friends, for instance, decided to concurrently pursue a professional degree because he and his wife had a two-body problem, and after finishing that, he received a job offer that would pay much more than any philosophy job while also being fairly flexible. In his case, I don’t think there’s really anything the department could have done differently. Overall, he doesn’t regret his decision, so I don’t think attrition like that is necessarily bad or even reflective of the department at all.