The Philosophers' Cocoon

Doubts about continuing on in academia: to carry on, or not?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Questioning Their Career asks:

I'm close to finishing my PhD - I could be done this coming year if I so choose - and I'm not sure what to do next. I'm just not sure that I really like this work anymore. In the last month or so, I have absolutely dreaded the very thought of writing, and even just talking about philosophy, whether with professor, friends, or students, feels painful at times. I know this is a common reaction to finishing up a dissertation - none of my friends have liked their work by the end of it - and so this could just be the result of burnout. I also know that I now am closer to a professional philosopher than I've ever been, though. I have a much clearer sense of what the job is now than I ever did in the past. I don't think I should just dismiss my current antipathy because it might go away in the future.

I also currently have an opportunity to pursue a very different kind of work that I have good reasons to think I could find deeply meaningful and enjoyable, and my life on that path would be much easier if I started the pursuit sooner rather than later. I plan to finish my dissertation regardless, but my plans for going on the job market and all that would entail would seriously conflict with my ability to start on this alternate path.

This has all left me feeling deeply conflicted. I've poured so much of myself into pursuing this degree and a position in this profession. Being an academic feels like a deep part of me. I've also, historically, loved it. It's sometimes been bad just like any job, but that's never made me doubt that I should pursue it. It feels like I could be throwing something away needlessly because of a temporary setback.

I'm hoping for some insight into what sorts of factors have lead folks either to decide to carry on with academia despite some significant doubts or to leave the profession. I think hearing about others' experiences would help me to better understand whether what I'm experiencing now is a case of mere burnout or something more serious. Thank you all so much for any insight you might have!

I'm sorry to hear that the OP is going though this, and I empathize. It is a great and very understandable query, and I'm curious to hear from readers.

Referrals for 'the professor is out' (or other non-academic job search services)?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Hey, asking for a friend: has anyone used/consulted 'the professor is out' for help making the transition to a non-academic career path? I know a while ago there were some threads on another site about their academic services, but wondering specifically about whether they would be helpful in thinking about non-academic options. Thanks in advance!

Good question. I was well aware of the Professor Is In, but wasn't aware of their Professor Is Out services until now. One reader submitted the following response:

I have not used "the professor is out" for that. I did reach out to them in my first year on the TT, and I was surprised at how unreceptive they were to my inquiries. Ymmv. If this is appropriate, may I suggest reaching out to Larry McGrath, https://www.larrysmcgrath.com/career-consulting. He himself found a way out, from a phd in French intellectual history (and plenty of familiarity with philosophy), to private industry work. He now consults with other scholars looking to go a similar road, and I believe he has worked with a number of philosophers. Disclosure: although I have not worked with him in this regard (I'm still toiling away in philosophy), I know Larry socially.

Anyone else have any helpful tips or experiences to share?

Helpful stories from those who left academia?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Perennial Candidate writes:

Since this year's job market is shifting into the next phase (fly-outs, offers), I wonder if it's time to revisit stories from people who have left academia — how they knew it was time, what they're doing now, their feelings on the transition, whether they're thriving. I think it might be helpful to those of us who are pondering how to prioritize our career development in the new year.

This is an excellent query, and it would be great to crowdsource more stories like these. We put together an Alt-Ac Transition Tips series and Alt-Ac Workshop series a while back featuring some helpful stories, and have a more general continuing Alt-Ac series that the OP may find helpful.

One reader submitted the following reply to the OP:

May I humbly suggest my podcast which interviews PhDs and almost-PhDs from humanities fields who now work in the alt-ac. Although it's not focused on philosophy, a number of my guests happen to be philosophers (because I'm in philosopher's circles, I suppose). https://offcampus.buzzsprout.com

This podcast looks really great. Do any other readers have stories of their own or links to stories to share? It would be great, in particular, to hear answers to the OP's specific queries ("how they knew it was time, what they're doing now, their feelings on the transition, whether they're thriving"). 

Explaining your work to non-philosophers?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Recent Grad asks:

How do you explain your work to non-philosophers in small talks or non-academic interviews? I recently went from philosophy grad school to a non-academic job market, where potential employers and colleagues love to ask me to explain the research I did. My work was quite theoretical (some issues in epistemology and meta-ethics), and I don't know a good way to explain my work to them in a short conversation. Most people either have a hard time understanding the topics or don't see why they are meaningful. But I HAVE TO make an interesting conversation that makes them happy and satisfied!

I feel tempted to pretend that my research was in an area that they might find more interesting, perhaps political philosophy or ethics, but I'm also reluctant to do so - after all, I spent several years of my life studying the theoretical issues (sometimes even meta-theoretical issues).

I would appreciate any advice!

This is a great question. We had some helpful advice for philosophers seeking non-academic jobs in our Alt-Ac Transition Tips and Alt-Ac Workshop. But I wonder whether any readers might be able to help with the OP's question specifically?

Alt-Ac Job-Market Tips (quick links)

Here is a list of links to our Alt-Ac Transition Tips series:

1. Supporting non-academic careers (Kevin J.S. Zollman)

2. Moving from academia to a think tank (Jason Schukraft)

3. What I learned from leaving academic philosophy (Samuel Kampa)

4. My Path into Project Management (Katharine Schweitzer)

5. Tips for transitioning into tech industries?

6. Leaving academia for industry: 7 years later (Zachary Ernst)

7. Networking and 'Leaving Academia'

8.  Interview: ‘How to Shawshank your way out of academia’ (Aaron Kagan)

9.  How to leave philosophy (Greg Stoutenburg)

10. How to make yourself hireable outside of academia as a philosophy grad student or PhD (Aaron Kagan)

11. Alt-ac careers podcast: 'Off Campus'

12. Crowdsourcing job ads thread

And here is a list of links to our Alt-Ac Workshop series:

1. Marketable Skills, Potential Jobs, & Networking (Calvin Warner)

2. How to create an Alt-Ac Philosophical Company and do work that you love (Claartje van Sijl)

3. Phil Skills - an Alt-Ac Resource website (Eleni Manis)

4. Pursuing a Career in Government (Carl Baker)

5. Navigating grad program politics when leaving?

Alt-ac careers podcast: 'Off Campus.'

A reader wrote in to draw my attention to a cool new podcast, Off Campus., featuring interviews with academics who left the academy for alternative ('alt-ac') careers. Here's the full podcast description:

Each episode features a guest who has completed substantive postgraduate education in the humanities and who currently works in an alt-ac career. By listening to their stories, this podcast aims to shed light on life beyond the academe, what scholarship can do in the broader world, as well as how graduate training in the humanities helps or fails to help us prepare for the path off campus. Listen to the entire podcast here.

There are three episodes up so far, and it looks to be a great series that many of this blog's readers might find helpful!

Crowdsourcing job ads thread

A reader writes in:

I wonder how you felt about having a post about job ads. I was thinking even one that might have a pinned link on the side. Many of the jobs are posted on PhilJobs, but there are plenty that are not. UK jobs and postdocs are sometimes only on jobs.ac.uk; European jobs are in other places sometimes as well; society of fellows things, who knows where those are; etc. This seems like a great occasion for crowd sourcing. I’ve been placement director at [redacted] for a while and each year I have to ask the students if they found things in unexpected places. Anyway, I thought it would be a handy resource for people on the market. What do you think? 

I think this is a fantastic idea. It could be cool not to only crowdsource academic job ads in unexpected places, but non-academic ('alt-ac') job ads too. So, that's what I propose we devote this thread to, which I will pin on the right side-bar of the blog in perpetuity (or at least until the comment thread gets so long that it makes sense to start a new one). So, please do feel free to use the comment thread below to draw attention to job ads (academic or non-academic) that philosophers might be competitive for that are not PhilJobs or HigherEd Jobs!

How to make yourself hireable outside of academia as a philosophy grad student or PhD

The aim of this blog post and interview is to give readers a primer on how to create the conditions that make you hireable as a philosopher outside of academia. The Cocoon also has other practical advice on alt-ac careers such as how to write a resume and how to network outside of academia, and you can find earlier advice by Aaron Kagan here.  The focus here will be on mindset: on overcoming cognitive obstacles and preconceptions. This is an interview with Aaron Kagan (UX Researcher- formerly at Google, now at Facebook Reality Labs). I asked Aaron about how he made the transition from being a philosophy graduate student and PhD at Fordham University, with a PhD with a focus on the role of the body in emotional experience, to a researcher working at big tech companies such as Google and FaceBook. 

Q: Could you tell me a bit about mental obstacles and how to overcome them for philosophers seeking alt-ac jobs? For philosophy grad students (and postdocs, VAPs, etc…) it seems like gaining the skills, connections and mindset to get outside of academia is an insuperable problem.

It might be worth reminding ourselves that we are talking about the practical world.  I say this to draw a distinction from the “rational” or “theoretical” world.  Trying to collapse these two worlds when thinking about life outside of academia is a great source of pain and suffering (at least it was for me, and yes, I know I’m playing fast and loose with metaphysics, but hear me out). 

In the rational/theoretical world, you are a catch: You are highly educated.  You can pick apart and construct arguments of all kinds. You can take highly complicated topics and technical information, distill things down, and communicate them to non-specialists (e.g., your teaching).  Your academic work/specialization may also have strong or direct theoretical ties to a certain industry.  

What’s more, you’re willing to start at any entry level position; any employer can get you for cheap, at least by non-academic standards.    

In the practical world however: You have no previous work experience–none. And you don’t “make sense” to employers.  Why are you leaving academia? What does your work have to do with this organization’s? How exactly can you help make us money?  From this perspective, you’re also “overeducated”. 

How to leave philosophy (Guest post by Greg Stoutenburg)

By Greg Stoutenburg

I recently announced on Facebook that I left my NTT position for a non-academic one and offered to talk more about it. Marcus then asked if I might write something up for PC, which is something I am very happy to do!

It is very easy to get a non-academic job. All that you have to do is contact a friend who can get you hired and ask that friend to get you hired. Then, you interview with some people, possibly as a formality, and eventually, you get hired.

***

But the process of getting to the point where one can call upon such support can be frustrating and time-consuming and feel at times demeaning and hopeless. I started looking casually at non-academic positions a few years ago and much more seriously over the past few months. Looking back at various relevant conversations, interviews, and activities over the past couple of years, and the strategy that I cobbled together from others and applied in fits and starts, I now think that I could have successfully transitioned out of academia into an interesting and rewarding position in six months or less. The same should apply to you.

What I will do from here is state some things that I’ve learned and provide some personal commentary on each. These will be tidbits, and I hope to revisit this topic in more detail later. Although it makes me a little uncomfortable to offer advice, I am going to write this largely as advice, because that’s what I needed during my job search. I won’t spend any time on how hard it is in academia, or why a person would want to leave. I’ll write this for the person who already wants to leave. I’ll assume that’s common ground. I previously told the story of my academic search struggles here Sweat Equity on the Philosophy Job Market - The Philosophers' Cocoon (typepad.com).

Before I start, I do think it’s fair to say that mine is a success story. In the past month, I have been a candidate for a few positions in four distinct fields and had serious offers for further discussion about still other positions once I accepted the first offer. (Has that happened to you in philosophy? You tell someone, “I published yet another epistemology paper!” and they say, “Oh, really? We’re looking for epistemologists right now!”) The position I accepted is partly commission-based, so if I manage to make a non-zero commission, I will immediately earn more money than I did in my philosophy job, and potentially 50% more than in my philosophy job—at that’s all just the first year, while my philosophy job would pay the same until I die. On a personal note, I love the outdoors, and I am excited to finally be able to go camping in September again, which is impossible as an academic; I’ll be working remotely, so I can go anywhere I want to go and see my family regularly throughout the day; the work is interesting to me; and the career growth potential is astounding, especially in comparison to continuing in academia, where in your entire life you either get one promotion (two depending on how you count) or none (if you’re NTT, like me).

1. Having a Philosophy Ph.D. Is a Liability, Not an Asset

In one final interview for an analyst position at very well-known logistics company, the hiring manager I’d been talking with brought in someone who once held the same role and went on to climb the company ladder. After I had the opportunity to show in specific, clear, vivid detail how work I had done in my academic job, in epistemology, and otherwise applied specifically to the job requirements, she said, “You know, when I saw your resume, I said to [hiring manager], ‘Philosophy Ph.D.? Are you serious’ But when you explain it it makes sense.”

A senior HR director at a global marketing company said she would not have given my resume more than a second’s glance after seeing my education unless she’d already known more about me. I have had other interviews with similarly negative remarks about my education and academic work history. How many times was my application thrown out because of my education, which I always thought was a significant accomplishment?

An email list for government jobs (by Madeline Martin-Seaver)

Madeline Martin-Seaver (postdoc, Auburn University) writes in:

I am a philosophy post-doc at Auburn and a longtime appreciator of the work you and your teammates do at the Cocoon! You’ve definitely helped me with my jobs and teaching.

I recently started an e-mail list compiling job USAJobs postings for which humanists might be good fits...The first post is here: https://andgovcheese.substack.com/p/jobs-for-humanists-64 It’s on Substack, but free.

I also have a little blurb on the “about” page..: https://andgovcheese.substack.com/about

"Wine and Government Cheese is a weekly e-mail of federal jobs for people with advanced degrees in the humanities and social sciences. You have a particular set of skills. Allegedly, they’re fungible. Also, there are 10k openings on the USAJobs website and the search engine doesn’t let you exclude terms or reverse sort. W&GC points out at least some of the positions that are 1) open to the public and, 2) applicable to people with MAs or PhDs in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.

Subscribing gets you a weekly e-mail with highlights from the job descriptions and links to the questionnaires so you can do a better job searching and applying for jobs."

This looks awesome. I thank Madeline for her kind words about the blog, for her work putting her initiative together, and for sharing it with us!

Interview: ‘How to Shawshank your way out of academia’

I came across this very interesting interview yesterday with Aaron Kagan, who received his PhD in philosophy at Fordham and now works at Google. The interview not only covers his own path out of academia. Kagan also gives a ton of helpful tips on how to do so, including things to do during grad school, how to network, how write a good non-academic resume (1 page only!) and cover letter, how interviews differ, and how to present oneself to a non-academic audience--to name just a few. It is a great interview, almost certainly the best that I have come across on this topic. Here are just a few choice snippets (not in the same order as in the interview), and again, there's a ton of other good stuff:

Did you have to deal with feelings of grief or anything else surrounding leaving academia? Did you find there were other consequences of making that choice?
I beat myself up pretty badly at first. However, once I ‘left’ (i.e., started working somewhere that wasn’t academia) I was so happy. People cared about the work I did, more than 3 people actually read stuff I put together, people depended on me for things, and I was a part of a team, plus I got paid like real (livable) money.

If I think back to my decision, the grief associated with it was largely internal (e.g., how I felt about myself), and a bit of vanity (e.g., not telling people I’m a professor, that I’m not sure what I’m doing, that I’m a “Junior XYZ” at some corporate so and so). But once I got a job this all instantly vanished, I had a massive community of people, co-workers, teams, and others in the industry that also worked as a ___.

What should someone thinking about leaving academia do to figure out what kind of career they would enjoy?
Talk to as many people as you can outside academia and ask them all kinds of questions about their life and their job(s). We have a tendency to get tunnel vision in the ivory tower and only surround ourselves with academic perspectives. Most of the world is not academia, so cast a wide net.

Research non-academic stuff…
This is a lot easier than the kind of research work you’re probably used to. It consists largely of looking through the morass of information on different job roles. There’s loads of free information and training out there.

Try your hand at a bunch of different stuff…
If you’re a business owner and someone comes along and says “Hi, I’m a functioning adult and would like to work for you for free”, you’ll probably get their attention if you’re not totally off putting. There are plenty of opportunities to try your hand at a variety of jobs. In all likelihood, you’d very quickly start to discover the kinds of things you like and don’t like.

What kinds of resources did you utilize to help transition out of academia? Are there resources you see available now to job applicants that you wish you had been able to access?
I wish I had forged even more connections outside academia without the guilt that I was somehow “cheating” on my academic career. There are so many resources nowadays with respect to ‘free education’ on pretty much any topic. I think I could have chased down a lot of dead ends much faster, for example.

Most of the resources I utilized I mentioned above–viz. reading a lot of non-academic stuff, talking to people outside of academia, and sweat equity (i.e., free work for experience of trying your hand at something).

 

Networking and 'Leaving Academia'

I just came across this really interesting interview of Christopher Caterine, author of the new book, Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide (Princeton University Press). Here are a few choice bits of the interview focusing on networking:

Q: Networking is a subject in your book. How is networking different for nonacademic careers than for academic careers?

A: I was such a firm believer in meritocracy that it never crossed my mind to network while I was in academe! At best, I saw it as an imposition on other people's time; at worst, I viewed it as a type of cheating -- trying to convince someone to hire you because of a relationship instead of for the quality of your scholarship. I think part of that block was that I assumed networking was solely about helping yourself get a job. That's one of the reasons why you do it, of course, but if it's your only goal, you won't get very far. To be good at networking, you need to make it about learning from others and positioning yourself to help them. Enter every meeting aiming to learn as much as you can about your contact’s professional history, goals and current challenges. That knowledge allows you to connect them to people who can help them solve their problems faster than they could in a vacuum. At that point, you’re returning value to them on the time they invested in your meeting. The benefit to you is information about their line of work, the skills required to do it and an improved perception of what it would be like to do that job on a daily basis.

To my mind, scholars could be much more effective and efficient in their work if they applied these skills inside the academy. But the culture of grad school seems to condition most people not to behave this way. When I first started networking, I was terrified that I would annoy people by asking for their time. Most -- maybe 80 percent -- quickly volunteered an hour to tell me about their career path when I emailed my request. That's probably what's most different about networking between academia and the rest of the professional world: nonacademics prioritize networking and relationship building even though their calendars are far more constrained and far less flexible...

Q: Can you describe your job outside academe and how you came to get it?

A: I'm a communications strategist and proposal writer for a global consulting company. On a fun day, I work with senior members of the firm to craft a compelling sales message or collaborate with the rest of our creative team to convey that message as memorably as possible. On a boring day, you might find me applying a style guide to a massive technical document or checking to make sure that everyone's name and title are correct in an organizational chart. Essentially, I apply a wide array of skills I learned earning my doctorate: synthesizing information, weighing ambiguous evidence, writing clearly and framing what is usually quite boring information in an exciting way that can hold an audience’s attention. I used to travel almost weekly to work with teams on site -- and will be first in line for a COVID-19 vaccine if it means I can do so again!

I found the job through networking. Someone I had cold contacted for an informational interview put me in touch with someone he knew at the company, and a good chat with that individual led to a call with a superior of his who had also been an academic. The focus of that call -- and this is important general advice -- was that people with advanced degrees look overqualified when applying for entry-level jobs: to his mind it was far better for people like me to seek midcareer positions. At the end of our discussion, he hesitated slightly before asking me for a writing sample. He was apparently happy with what he saw: shortly after receiving it, he referred me for a position that was about to become available. I didn't even know I was being considered for a job until I was asked to schedule the first interview! At the time that seemed crazy, but I now know that most midcareer positions are filled by referral rather than application. That fact makes it essential for academics to step outside their comfort zone and learn how to network. It really is how you create your own luck -- especially in a job market as competitive as today's.

I hope some of the Cocoon's readers find this helpful. Feel free to share tips and anecdotes of your own in the comments section below!

Humanities for All - Project Director Position

Shay Logan (Kansas State) wrote in to draw my attention to this Project Director position with the National Humanities Alliance in Washington, DC. I think it would be great if a philosopher were to get the post! Here's a brief description of the position:

The National Humanities Alliance (NHA) is a nationwide coalition of organizations advocating for the humanities on campuses, in communities, and on Capitol Hill. Founded in 1981, NHA is supported by over 200 member organizations, including: colleges, universities, libraries, museums, cultural organizations, state humanities councils, and scholarly, professional, and higher education associations. It is the only organization that brings together the U.S. humanities community as a whole.

What we do:

• Cultivate support for federal funding for the humanities. 
• Promote the public value of the humanities.
• Promote the value of studying the humanities.
• Convene the humanities community to explore best practices for advocating for the humanities on campus, in communities, and on Capitol Hill.

As a part of its ongoing work to promote the public value of the humanities, NHA seeks a project director to work on the Humanities for All initiative. Humanities for All documents and promotes publicly engaged humanities work in U.S. higher education, including research, teaching, preservation, and programming conducted with and for diverse public partners. It is a resource for scholars carrying out their own publicly engaged work, educators teaching on the public humanities, and scholarly societies and funders looking to support public engagement efforts in the humanities

The project director will have the opportunity to develop expertise in the state of the field of publicly engaged humanities work and gain experience in project management and advocacy. This expertise and experience will provide a foundation for subsequent work in both academic and non-academic settings.

Interested readers can apply at the website linked to above!

Leaving academia for industry: 7 years later

Zachary Ernst, former Associate Professor at University of Missouri-Columbia now working in the tech industry, has a really interesting new post at Medium entitled, "Leaving Academia for the Private Sector: Seven Years Later". (H/t Mark Barber) Here are few choice passages:

To my great surprise, I discovered that business is actually interesting! Coming up with the right strategy for growing the business, collecting the right data about the company’s performance, understanding the larger challenges in the market, evaluating the competition’s strengths and weaknesses, figuring out how to differentiate yourself from your more entrenched competitors — all of this turns out to be fascinating. In fact, I usually find it to be more interesting and challenging than my previous academic work in philosophy. Personally, I’m shocked to find myself reading articles from McKinsey & Company or the Harvard Business Review in my spare time. But I often do, and they’re just as interesting as anything in an academic journal....

My move out of academia has spared me the pain that faculty are enduring now that the financial state of the university system is spiraling downward....

I have literally never wished, for even one second, that I’d stayed in academia. My professional life is more interesting, more impactful, and more lucrative than it used to be. Based on the number of questions from current faculty I receive on a near-weekly basis, I expect that my own career trajectory will be much more common in the near future.

Tips for transitioning into tech industries?

A reader writes in:

As an academic philosopher considering leaving the field, I've found your recent alt-ac posts, and the resources posted, very valuable. One possible trajectory I would be interested in learning more about, if this is possible, is the tech trajectory. In other words, suppose one has a doctoral degree in philosophy, but now, all the terrible things about the present considered, one wants to do something quantitative in the tech or adjacent industries. What does that path look like? How does one start to build credentials or the equivalent?

Great question! It's interesting to see that quite a lot of people in my new Philosophers in Industry directory are in tech. I think it would be great to have a guest-post or two on this from people who transitioned into tech fields. Any readers out there interested in contributing a guest post? If so, please just email me at [email protected]. In the meantime, I encourage any readers with experience in tech to post any tips they have in the comment section below!

My Path into Project Management (Guest post by Katharine Schweitzer)

The following is a guest-post by Katharine Schweitzer, a former academic philosopher who recently transitioned to a non-academic career in project management, and who also kindly volunteered to be listed in my new Philosophers in Industry directory. Katherine's post seems to me a profoundly helpful step-by-step guide detailing the general kind of process that an effective transition from academia to non-academic industry can involve. I am very grateful to her for putting it together and encouraging me to share it here!:

By Katharine Schweitzer 

Many job descriptions include “project management” as a responsibility. Project management is also a profession. Learning about how to manage projects is useful in many domains of life.

The Project Management Institute defines a project as “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.” A project has a beginning and an end, is carried out for a purpose, and is comprised of a series of related activities. As a graduate student or a university professor, you have probably managed many projects, such as:

1. 1. Applying for a grant or fellowship
   2. Creating the curriculum for a class and teaching it
   3. Designing and carrying out a piece of independent research
   4. Supervising a student’s independent research project, such as an honors thesis or independent study
   5. Establishing and running a research lab
   6. Organizing a conference or a conference session
   7. Creating and publishing a website for a professional organization
   8. Chairing a search committee to hire a colleague
   9. Chairing a committee to create a component of your university’s core curriculum

Many of my friends and family are engineers, and project manager has become an option in the professional advancement of engineers after they prove that they are competent individual contributors. I learned about the profession of project management from my engineer friends. When they told me about their job responsibilities, I thought, “I would be great at that!” Managing projects involves being attentive to details, communicating clearly and concisely with people at all levels of the organization, and gauging the interpersonal dynamics of the team members who are carrying out the project work.

In summer 2018, I had no technical qualifications in engineering or IT, but I had plenty of project experience after five years of being a philosophy professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. For three years, I considered leaving academia. In June 2018, I communicated to my department chair that I intended to resign my position as a tenure-track professor, effective June 2019. In my final year as a professor, I created and executed a plan to start a non-academic job in project management in July 2019. Here’s how I did it. I hope that sharing my story will help others if they are considering a similar career pivot.

What I learned from leaving academic philosophy (Guest post by Samuel Kampa)

By Samuel Kampa

By the end of April 2019, my academic career was over. My on-campus interview did not yield a TT job. For personal reasons, I made the wrenching decision to turn down a one-year postdoc offer. Every other opportunity ended in polite rejection, impolite rejection, or ghosting. With mixed feelings, I applied for non-academic jobs and eventually accepted a position at an education technology start-up called Yellowdig.

My story is not exactly a page turner. So why am I telling it? I'm encouraging you—no, urging you—to consider a similar "alternative" path, especially in light of the inevitable recession to come. A year ago, "TT or bust" was a common but ill-advised attitude toward the job market. That attitude should be unthinkable today. COVID-19 is an accelerant to a fire in academia that has been raging for at least a decade. When that fire is finally extinguished, the landscape of higher education will be unrecognizable at best and decimated at worst. Philosophy departments will stop hiring. Universities will receive less funding from states and lower yields from endowments. Enrollments will shrink at an even faster rate. Driven by the necessity to teach at scale, colleges will increasingly shift classes online. One by one, non-elite liberal arts colleges will shut their doors. And all but the most elite graduate students will feel the pain of the contraction. You might have thought staying in academia during a pandemic was the safest course of action. You'd be wrong.

If my story matters, it's only because it highlights lessons I learned too late. Like many of my grad student colleagues, I knew less about what it took to get non-academic jobs than I thought I did. My current position is a product of dumb luck, charitable interviewers, and just enough personal preparation. Be smarter than me; learn these lessons now. My intention is not to scare you, but to inspire concrete action. And if I'm "catastrophizing", it's because graduate education really is a catastrophe⁠—albeit a very white-collar, first-world catastrophe. How you respond to this catastrophe will determine the amount of needless pain you'll experience in the near future.

Moving from academia to a think tank (Guest post by Jason Schukraft)

I’m a senior research manager at a small, academically-unaffiliated think tank called Rethink Priorities. I’m paid to conduct original research, much of it philosophical in nature, that helps charities decide how to allocate their resources. It’s not a career I planned for, but it’s a great job, and my doctorate in philosophy turned out to be pretty good training. The demand for the sort of work I do seems to be increasing, and newly minted philosophy PhDs would be a good fit for many comparable positions. I’m writing about my experience so that others might pursue similar opportunities.

My Alt-Ac Journey

When I was accepted to PhD programs in philosophy in the spring of 2010, I naively believed that becoming a professor was more-or-less a given. Over the next several years, I was exposed to a variety of evidence to the contrary, but through a combination of confirmation bias and wilful ignorance, I convinced myself that the base rate of failure I observed on the academic job market didn’t apply to me. Since nobody in the department was talking much about alternatives to academia, I never really investigated my options, and I certainly did not tailor my research interests to appeal to the non-academic market. (My dissertation is in metaphilosophy.)

In my final year of grad school (2016-2017), I applied to 50 academic jobs and was rejected by all of them. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our second child. I could have applied to even more jobs, but I wasn’t willing to move my family across the country for a one-year VAP or adjunct position with uncertain prospects. (I’m not certain I would have received a VAP or adjunct position even if I had tried.) I was pretty despondent and totally unsure what to do with my life.

I assumed I would end up in a boring, entry-level, nine-to-five office job, probably in the tech industry. (There’s a lot of that around here.) I heard about Rethink Priorities through a newsletter I subscribed to. I didn’t think I was well-qualified for the position, but Rethink Priorities is a remote-only organization and thus offered flexible work hours. As the parent of two young children, that really appealed to me, enough so that I decided to write to one of the founders and inquire more. He encouraged me to apply, and I ended up being a good fit.

Supporting non-academic careers (guest post by Kevin J.S. Zollman)

Kevin J.S. Zollman is an associate professor and director of graduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University. His research is on the application of mathematical models to social behavior, and he is author of the popular book The Game Theorist’s Guide to Parenting. 

When I was a kid growing up in Kansas, someone asked me “what church do you go to?” While (perhaps) not intended, the phrasing of this question communicated volumes to me. The presumption of the question is that I go to a church, not a synagogue, mosque, or temple. What’s more, it presumes that I visit houses of worship regularly. Being raised atheist, it stayed with me: I was so unusual for my time and place that one should assume me away. Many of you reading this post have had similar experiences, especially those of you who are members of groups historically excluded from western philosophy.

We are sensitized to these micro-aggressions against marginalized demographic groups.  But we may miss how we do similar things to those who ultimately leave the academy. Just think for a moment about all the ways philosophical culture talks about getting a PhD. “Placement” means “academic placement”, “a job” is synonymous with “an academic job.” Even that phrase I just used, “leave the academy” implies something like abandonment or at least departure from expectation. Happy, important, and gainful employment outside the academy is treated as abandoning one’s path and is the equivalent to unemployment.

It doesn’t take much effort to realize how cruel this is. In a field where more than half of our students won’t get academic jobs, we are actively creating a culture where most of our students will view themselves as failures. Even those that manage to escape the self-hating trap may still worry that others view them that way.

While I still often make mistakes, I have tried to change the way I talk with students in our graduate program. I always preface relevant sentences with “For those interested in academic employment, …”  I ask students, when I first talk with them about employment, if they want a job in academia. I repeatedly reinforce the question (“are you still planning for a job in academia?”) giving students the opportunity to change their minds.