The academic job market is brutal nowadays, and I see no evidence that it is likely to improve. So here is a small exercise I suggest to people who are wondering if they should do a PhD. Here are some questions you need to answer if your goal is to make a decent living and have an enjoyable life as a college professor:
1. Have you done, are you now doing, or are you planning to do a Master’s degree?
If the answer is negative, stop and go away right now. Do the Master’s, come back, and then we will talk. Right now you are like a football player who breaks his own leg before going out into the field.
And to people who are about to inform me that they did a PhD without a Master’s twenty years ago and have been happy ever since, I’ve got to say: we are not talking about 20 years ago. We are talking about 10 years from now. Please go read my posts on the collapse of the nation-state if you don’t see the difference.
If the answer is positive, please proceed.
2. Once you are in the process of getting your MA, here is what you should do. Apply only to the most famous and prestigious grad schools in the country where you plan to work. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown. If they don’t accept you, forget the whole thing and go do something else.
The method I outlined here doesn’t guarantee anybody a job worthy of the name in academia. But it does cut down somewhat your chances of wasting 15 years of your life pursuing a dream that you had no chance of making come true. A PhD from Harvard doesn’t secure a tenure-track job for anybody. But it does give hope. A PhD from the University of Rimouski* doesn’t.
Sadly, if you are not good enough for Harvard as a grad student, you will not be good enough for U of Rimouski as a tenure-track professor.
If you do the Master’s, then do a PhD at Princeton or someplace comparable, manage to get at least 5 publications before getting awarded the PhD (not in any graduate or open-access journals, obviously), acquire extensive teaching experience, and don’t believe that any of the following entitles you to despise Rimouski as a prospective employer – then you will at least have a fighting chance on the job market.
*Sorry, Rimouski, I’ve been using you as my way of saying “the boondocks” for many years and I’m not ready to let go of you.
Clarissa's Blog 
I don’t see a career in academia as the only reason for gettting a phd. The opportunity to see how far you can go in a chosen field is enough reason in itself.
LikeLike
“I don’t see a career in academia as the only reason for gettting a phd.”
Rich people who can get degrees for fun are no concern of mine. I’m sure thy will be more than Ok without my input.
LikeLike
Saying you’re getting a Ph.D in the humanities and planning not to go into academia is like saying you want to go law school and not practice law. Both can be done, but it’s an expensive waste of time and money.
LikeLike
There’s no need to become an aca-demon.
LikeLike
You only become an Aca-Demon if you graduate from a Dark Satanic Degree Mill. 🙂
LikeLike
Not necessarily. In any case I have a PhD, but I am not CULTURALLY qualified to pursue the matter further, since I cannot be a Western liberal, even though my affiliations are leftward.
LikeLike
Yes, I understand, you’d have to be able to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid and pretend you weren’t being poisoned whilst attempting to survive. 🙂
LikeLike
True that.
LikeLike
You could always return to mother Africa. The weather here is great today. 😎
LikeLiked by 1 person
Funnily enough I was just researching Mozambiquean horse safaris, but I have no idea how to make sense of their currency.
My father had a lot of this Moz stuff going on and Portuguese is a dominant gene in me, although divided by the generations.
LikeLike
Looks like it is now 34 to the dollar.
LikeLiked by 1 person
For 2 and 3, I give similar advice (not quite the same but similar.) I also add that the students need to be geographically open. If they want to live in a certain region or a certain state, then a career as a professor is not for them. I also, to follow up lamestllama tell them that if they want the PhD for the experience in and of itself, then they should go ahead and fulfill their dreams. For me, getting my PhD was a pleasure and–even if it didn’t lead to a job– it was an experience that I would never trade for anything. But if they will be crushed if they don’t get a job in academia and only want a PhD because of it’s career prospects then perhaps graduate school isn’t for them.
I’m not sure I agree with the Master’s degree thing though. MA programs generally charge tuition and don’t typically offer stipends. PhD programs on the other hand never charge tuition and almost always offer stipends. So I suggest that students find a MA/PhD program. There is no penalty for dropping out after the MA. And that way they get an MA that’s free.
LikeLike
“So I suggest that students find a MA/PhD program. There is no penalty for dropping out after the MA. And that way they get an MA that’s free.”
When I arrived at my PhD program, I had taken 32 courses (not credit hours, courses) specifically in my discipline. And the US undergrad programs get people to take between 10 and 15 courses in their discipline. And that’s too little to begin a PhD and do it successfully. By successfully, I mean in a way that makes you marketable.
LikeLike
I don’t know. I don’t think MA’s make you more marketable. And if a student wants a PhD (which are free) then the MA (which cost) seems like an unnecessary expense?
LikeLike
Nobody looks at the MAs directly on a CV. But a person who has taken 10 courses in a discipline will not be able to publish. Then such a person ends up on the job market with nothing but an unfinished dissertation and zero publications. This is not a strategy that leads to a good place nowadays.
As for the expense, I believe that it’s much better to pay for an MA in one’s twenties than spend 8 years as an adjunct in your 30s, having no idea where you went wrong. And the time in the Master’s program can be used to build a teaching portfolio.
LikeLike
Looks like it is now at 34 to the dollar.
LikeLike
When I started my PhD lo these many years ago, my supervisor asked me: “if after spending 3-4 years* working your socks off and living like a student, watching your friends from college start to live like adults, you choose not to work in academic science and/or can’t get a job in the field** and end up going on a graduate trainee accountancy scheme with people 4-5 years younger than you, will you feel that you wasted those years? If so, don’t start” and he also said repeatedly to all his new PhD students “the odds of you getting a faculty job are not zero, but at this point in time they are so close to zero that you can’t see the difference. So plan accordingly!”
Interestingly, over 50% of the researchers (grad students and postdocs) in the lab in the three years I was there are still working in the same field of science, about 35% as academics and the rest in some of those very rare and elusive industry positions using our field’s research skills – looking back, I think many of us were determined to prove him wrong, and he offered us the opportunities to do the things we needed to do to make ourselves employable (teach, publish, network, meet people working in the industrial side, take courses in generic skills like, oh, I did a “preparing science graduates for the business world” residential where we did all sorts of team working and inbox exercises and role plays and a week-long enterprise run-your-own-business thing which was incredibly useful… in convincing me that world wasn’t for me. But others who did it and went into ‘industry; tell me it really helped with stuff like those selection test interviews and with knowing how to present themselves and their skills to a business recruiter). It also didn’t hurt that we were, as you advise, at a top-10 institution. Brands matter!
*note: UK system. money for 3 years, PhD expected within 3.5 to 4. Did mine in three years on the nail and that definitely really helped me get my post-doctoral positions since people saw me as someone who could cut to the chase and deliver work on time, which set me up for the job I have now
** which was already one with far fewer jobs of any kind (limited industrial opportunities)
LikeLike
“When I started my PhD lo these many years ago, my supervisor asked me: “if after spending 3-4 years* working your socks off and living like a student, watching your friends from college start to live like adults, you choose not to work in academic science and/or can’t get a job in the field** and end up going on a graduate trainee accountancy scheme with people 4-5 years younger than you, will you feel that you wasted those years? If so, don’t start” ”
LikeLike
This is also a system difference – see, I started my PhD at 21-nearly-22 and finished it aged 25. I think guessing what I would feel like in my 20s was viable. The difference between 25 and 35 is, as you say, HUGE – but the norm in the UK is to have your PhD by your mid-late 20s, so the advice was more reasonable. I find the whole idea of 6-8-10 years to get to the PhD rather difficult to justify (and sure, I only got 3 papers out of my 3 year PhD – I got 8 out of the 2 year post-doc that followed)…
I think the strength of the question was that it laid out the likely consequences very clearly – the risk you are taking is that you will be x years behind your current peer group if things don’t pay off – which is an important tool in decision making.
LikeLike
“I find the whole idea of 6-8-10 years to get to the PhD rather difficult to justify”
The US higher ed system is the best in preparing people for the workplace and offering great undergrad education but it’s not that amazing for preparing people for graduate studies. And them people with PhDs end up being unemployable.
LikeLike
I’m going to try the “apply to the best of the best” trick once I’m in the thick of my Master’s, thanks!
LikeLike
So I should have become a chef instead?
LikeLike
Once again: this is not about the past. This is about the future. The world is changing. All I can do is issue a caution. Of course, people are free not to listen.
LikeLike
In Europe it’s compulsory to do a master’s degree before the phd. You can’t even enroll the phd course without that. American phds who don’t have a master’s, won’t be competitive with their European counterparts. I don’t even understand, are there actually people who enroll a phd course only with a single bachelor degree? And then they want to work in academia and do research? With a 3-year college degree + a phd? Wow. I’m not affected by the question in any way, it just sounds weird.
LikeLike
“I don’t even understand, are there actually people who enroll a phd course only with a single bachelor degree? And then they want to work in academia and do research? With a 3-year college degree + a phd? Wow. I’m not affected by the question in any way, it just sounds weird.”
LikeLike
I looked into a program at one of the local universities, and they did not offer master’s at all — only Ph.Ds. Since I had no interest in doing a Ph.D, I declined to apply.
LikeLike
“I looked into a program at one of the local universities, and they did not offer master’s at all — only Ph.Ds. Since I had no interest in doing a Ph.D, I declined to apply.”
LikeLike
Good advice. The only modification I’d make, as someone holding a Ph.D. from one of the Ivy-League schools mentioned above (and an undergrad degree from another), is to consider looking at the top 5 or so flagship state u departments in your discipline instead of or in addition to the Ivies. The problem with the Ivies (especially but not, I suspect, exclusively,Princeton) is that they stress fairly short (4-5-year) time to degree, which sounds like a good deal until you take into account the very real need to publish while a grad student. It can be done (especially if one has a stand-alone M.A.; I didn’t), if one publishes diss chapters as articles, but it’s still tough, and, if one defends on or close to on time, one is likely to need to spend several year post-degree catching up with publishing, and, probably, gaining wider teaching experience by adjuncting (because the other downside to a short program with good funding is not much teaching experience, especially with more difficult-to-teach students). An Ivy League Ph.D. can also actually be a limitation on the job market, at least unless/until one has shown willingness and ability to teach a variety of student populations through adjuncting; schools won’t invite you to an interview at all, because they assume you would never accept a job offer from them, or they’ll invite you just to see what a Ph.D. from an elite school looks like.
Also, I hope it goes without saying, but don’t get a Ph.D. unless you really want to spend a good deal of your time teaching introductory/distribution classes, because that’s where the majority of the teaching work is (though, sadly, usually packaged in ways that makes it hard to make a living). The more the (very good) advice above is followed, the fewer grad programs (especially Ph.D. programs) there will be, and the fewer grad classes will need to be taught. That needs to happen (at least until we find a way to restructure the academy in a sustainable way), but it’s only going to speed up the trend toward most of the teaching, even for those on the tenure track, being at the introductory/core undergraduate level. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but people getting Ph.D.s need to genuinely want to spend a considerable proportion of their working hours teaching on that kind of teaching.
LikeLike
Thank you for this great comment! I’m sure people will find it helpful.
“The problem with the Ivies (especially but not, I suspect, exclusively,Princeton) is that they stress fairly short (4-5-year) time to degree, which sounds like a good deal until you take into account the very real need to publish while a grad student.”
“if one defends on or close to on time, one is likely to need to spend several year post-degree catching up with publishing”
“Also, I hope it goes without saying, but don’t get a Ph.D. unless you really want to spend a good deal of your time teaching introductory/distribution classes”
LikeLike
Maybe it is not true outside of mathematics, but I think a person should choose a grad school by choosing a person she or he wants to work with based on a passion for a particular field, NOT by the prestige of the institution. Someone with the passion to finish a Ph. D. will find a way to make a living doing something interesting, whether in academia or not.
For example, I would recommend that someone interested in my branch of topology go to either University of Alabama in Birmingham or Missouri University of Science and technology, since these have among the best people to work with in my field.
LikeLike
Tying your entire future to a single person you don’t even know, a person who can retire, get sick, die, hate you, have different political beliefs, dislike everybody whose name starts with the same letter as yours, or simply be opposed to placing graduate students in jobs for ideological reasons – if people want to take this enormous risk, that’s their right.
“Someone with the passion to finish a Ph. D. will find a way to make a living doing something interesting, whether in academia or not.”
LikeLike
I’d second the concern about tying your decision to a single possible advisor (or even several of them, though, realistically, there are unlikely to be more than several people specializing in a particular discipline at a particular school, so that may be unavoidable; still, at the very least, I’d look for somewhere with a couple of tenured possibilities and several at various stages of the tenure process, especially the near-tenure stage). One of the things that severely impeded my own progress through grad school was the departure of pretty much all the faculty in my field with whom I’d taken classes (including both of my advisors) the spring I passed generals. To some extent, the departures were the result of serious problems with the specific departmental and institutional culture, but to some extent they’re endemic to the higher echelons of academic culture, and perhaps, especially, Ivy League institutions (which, because of their emphasis on hiring only the best of the best, tend both to lose perfectly-good hires due to delay, and to be subject to poaching by each other).
This kind of movement may be more common among humanists, who don’t have to set up labs, reassemble research teams, etc., etc., when they move, but, even since things settled down a bit, there’s been a good deal of movement in departments and programs in which I studied or taught over the past several decades. In fact, one of my original advisors returned before I defended (but too late to serve as may advisor again), and one who arrived well after I began my studies left before I defended. Add to that a “star” for whom I taught who left my grad institution for another Ivy, returned, and left again in the space of the last 15 years or so, and you get the picture: relying too much on a potential advisor/advisee relationship, important as it is, is not a great idea, especially when you’ve got two or more years of classes and the dissertation proposal process to complete before you may be able to “lock in” that relationship.
LikeLike
“One of the things that severely impeded my own progress through grad school was the departure of pretty much all the faculty in my field with whom I’d taken classes (including both of my advisors) the spring I passed generals. To some extent, the departures were the result of serious problems with the specific departmental and institutional culture”
“relying too much on a potential advisor/advisee relationship, important as it is, is not a great idea, especially when you’ve got two or more years of classes and the dissertation proposal process to complete before you may be able to “lock in” that relationship.”
LikeLike
I know several people who finished PhDs and are now unemployed. And a veritable crowd of people with PhDs who are barely eking out a living in horrible and hopeless adjuncting gigs.
I do, too, of course. And one of my Ph. D. graduates is perfectly happy working in an office doing something not directly related to mathematics at all. It is all about ones goals and ones mental health.
LikeLike
Of course, a much better advice would be “take care of your mental health before embarking on any project” and then everything will be great. 🙂
LikeLike
Even having been someone like Alfred Tarski’s assistant might not be a guarantee of success in the field …
Then again, mathematicians in the United States may have a fall-back position they can take that will ensure they don’t become entirely broke and destitute.
As it turns out, the National Security Administration is the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States.
JOIN THE NSA
SPY ON YOUR FRIENDS
DISH DIRT ON YOUR ENEMIES
DISCOVER UNKNOWN THEOREMS YOU CAN NEVER TALK ABOUT
[ahem] 🙂
LikeLike
Obviously this was meant to be a reply to David Bellamy … 🙂
LikeLike
Well, Rimouski seems to be much better than Tuscaloosa!
(Tuscaloosa is a town I’ve seen mentioned in other academic/scientific blogs to convey the same idea that you did with Rimouski.)
LikeLike
I’m Canadian, hence the weird frame of reference. 🙂
LikeLike
I like Bugtussle (I’ve also heard Biloxi and Poughkeepsie but I think Podunk, Iowa, or Idaho, is the classic example for Americans, though neither actually exists).
LikeLike
I’ll throw out that the example I use tends to be Gopher Pit, Arkansas, which does not exist either (but should!)
LikeLike