Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced) has a new post up at the ADPA blog describing the results of "ten years of data for around 140 [PhD] programs, nearly 50 of which have so far been able to verify our data."
There is also a new sortable table at the ADPA site where one can learn about job-market placements from different programs. As the following table illustrates, some of the data is very illuminating:
As Jennings explains:
The three groups are, in this case, sorted by permanent academic placement rate. Group 1 includes programs with the highest permanent academic placement rates, such as Yale and USC. Group 2 includes programs with the second highest permanent academic placement rates, such as Buffalo and Syracuse. Group 3 includes programs with the third highest permanent academic placement rates, such as Florida State and University of Georgia. The dividing line between these groups was chosen to best assist visualization, with near equal numbers of graduates from each of the three groups for this time period.
What can we learn from this graphic?
If you compare the thickness of the bars, you can pretty easily see differences in the three group's hiring patterns. Of these groups, Group 1 seems to strongly prefer hiring from its own group, hiring more than 2 times as many graduates from Group 1 as from Group 2, and 7 times as many from Group 1 as from Group 3. Group 2 seems to treat Group 1 and Group 2 as about the same, but hires 6 times as many graduates from one or the other of these groups as from Group 3. Group 3 hires from the groups in about equal numbers (visually, you can see that the bars are about the same width)...
Of those in temporary academic jobs, most are not in postdoctoral or fellowship positions...
Of those in nonacademic jobs, most are in the education sector (24% of all records for these graduates), followed by tech (15%), consultancy (14%), government (7%), arts (6%), health (6%), law (6%), finance (4%), media (4%), and non-profits/NGOs (4%)...
On this last note, one really nice thing about the new table--which might interest users of the Cocoon's Philosophers in Industry directory--is that it lists non-academic sectors where different programs' graduates have gotten "alt-ac" jobs. Further, if you click on particular programs, you can see where they placed their graduates, including particular companies. I imagine this might be a very helpful tool for new and recent PhDs who are interested in transitioning into non-academic industries. Transitioning out of academia can be a real challenge, and I imagine that tracking down companies that hire philosophy PhDs may be a useful tool for "alt-ac" job seekers.
In any case, interested readers can learn more about the data from Jennings' blog post!
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