Really beautiful and sad and accurate and thoroughly recognizable. Your article identifies a chasm that has only grown over the past two decades -- between calling and career, deep study and career prep, and between the academy as monastic passion project and as big business that eats its young. Your experience is both heartbreaking and reassuring -- you rode successive waves of change and have made your writing both an art and a service. Thank you for all of it.
There are so many lines here that snagged me--that academia leaves you with no marketable skills, a long CV but no resume, that an academic life makes it impossible to cultivate other quadrants of your life, that if you left you felt like you might cease to exist, and that it has taken years to normalize what a reasonable workload looks like. I always thought it was impossible to pull together my disparate, painful, but somehow still tender thoughts about academia until I read this. Thank you.
You know, it's funny. I still adjunct a full load because my writing isn't established (yet!), but I've never told any of my department chairs that I write fiction because I'm afraid they might feel that my attention is divided and consider it a liability. Never mind that the logic behind adjuncting has always been that you do it in *addition* to another job. But I still want to keep the illusion alive for my departments--the work is my life. As another commenter said, it's like Stockholm syndrome.
One last thing. My first novel was considered "dark academia" (ugh) and I was talking/complaining to another academic about this and she said, "I fucking hate that moniker. It's redundant. All academia is dark. That's the default." And then we cackled like witches. Now every time someone says "dark academia" I laugh and laugh and laugh.
Omg you’re THAT Katy Hays. I truly loved The Cloisters and felt it was closer to home on the life of early academics than anything else I’ve read. A really delightful(ly dark) and thoughtful read that stayed with me.
omg! I've never been called "THAT" Katy Hays before and i don't think I want to be called anything else ever again! No, but in all seriousness, thank you for reading! I'm a long-time AHP reader and love the comments section on her posts so much!
(The people in my life are tired of hearing about it, but I say all the time that the comment section of Culture Study is my favorite corner of the internet, BUT MY GOD IT'S SO TRUE)
I read your book last fall and LOVED it!! One of the things that really resonated was how clearly you *know* the dark side of academia and the hopes we harbor as students in the system. (And now I want to mine your bibliography about Renaissance tarot cards!!) :)
Interestingly I know work in research development (which I actually love). It is a weird career where you can talk about research and work with faculty but in a very different way. So maybe I am still stockholm syndromed? But it is my (counts on fingers) sixth career and it is the most satisfied I've felt.
Whoa! I loved your book The Cloisters & have rec’d it to friends. (No spoilers for those who havent read it) - your third act turn in the plot is masterful!
Thank you for writing this. You touched on so many hard truths about academia, and the one truth that broke my relationship with it: the exploitation of faculty. Universities are businesses that thrive on unpaid labor and they get away with it because “service” usually comprises a significant portion of the job requirements. How does one avoid service? By getting external funding. Bring in enough money and first the service requirements start to go and then the teaching requirements. If an institution has enough faculty to run things — always by committee — they can hire more administrators. Numbers of faculty are governed by numbers of students but numbers of administrators seems to be governed by God only knows. I routinely worked 60-80 hours a week for 30 years. When I loved what I was doing, it was my life. It was my identity. I learned during Covid that my job is merely my job and I do it to pay for my actual life. So many of my colleagues woke up to the same realization, and so many of us are trying to figure out who we are outside of our jobs. Being an academic requires a single mindedness that eliminates the ability to see options outside of academia and the sunk cost of the effort to get and keep the job…it’s just a job.
The board of trustees at my institution have proposed using AI to teach lower level classes.
I’m out. I’m retiring and this summer is the first time in over 30 years I’m not doing research (for free), advising new students (for free), or planning new instruction for the fall (for free).
Right there with you. Retiring this summer after 25 years at my institution (also a 4-4 load, with tons of service) and 30 years of teaching. I always thought I'd be that professor who taught until age 70, that they'd have to pry me out with a crowbar. I was so afraid of losing my professor identity that I balked about leaving for a long time. Now that I am doing it, I cannot believe how much lighter and better I feel. It's astonishing.
Humanities PhD who managed to get the "prize" tenure track job. Terrible commute, poorly run institution 4-4 load and research expectations but I still wanted to stay! It was like stockholm syndrome. I was denied tenure after having a baby and I am so much happier in my current job and life ten years later...
Reading this as a very recent PhD graduate currently on the job market and feeling so seen. I like to think that I pursued my degree with a full awareness of the landscape you describe, but having it articulated this way makes me wonder if I am actually one of the many “excellent students with very little experience of failure in search of some way, any way, of revisiting a structure they associate with nurturing and safety.” Going to have to go sit with that and laugh-sob all over my many diplomas.
I fel like I could have written this, but from a law school perspective. I was always top of my class earning full rides to college and law school. I knew from a young age I wanted to practice public interest law. While my classmates competed for "big law" jobs earning in the 6 figures, I *knew* I'd get a job easily. I thought there'd be less competition for the kinds of jobs I wanted. The starting salaries at these jobs was in the high $30k range (in 2006), I was published, on law review, won so many awards, and I ranked high in my class. No one would want to be paid that low who was as wonderful as me. I had the internships in this area. I was ready! After graduation, I moved 1500 miles home, took 2 state bar exams, and applied for jobs. *Crickets* I initially applied for 20, then 40, then 80, public interest and government jobs. Even after passing 2 separate state bar exams, I had only 2 interviews and no offers. But I was brilliant, and special, and the best ever! LOL I had so, so much to learn. I knew nothing about networking. I moved to my hometown with 3 law schools in the area, one being among the best in the nation, and the other 2 are well-respected. I was competing with people who interned in this city, had family connections, and their law schools were local; hence, their career and alumni services focused on this town, or friends and family lived here with these social networks. I had none of this. In interviews, I was an unknown quantity. They didn't care about past success. Although I was a hometown girl, they didn't know my law school, where I interned, or any of my references. In law (and many other places) it's all who you know. Hence, I widened my net, applying everywhere in a 100 mile radius because no one hired me. Despite the full rides, I still had to take out about $75k in loans for money to live on in law school (that included money for medical emergencies- your parent's insurance ended at 21 then- and bar exam expenses for 2 states). I was living with my parents, where I hadn't lived since I turned 18, and it was crowded and tense. I grew up in poverty and my family's lot had only improved to working class. Hence, I was a licensed attorney waiting tables to contribute to family expenses. I found a full-time attorney job paying $31k a year about 9 months from when I began applying. That led to TEN years of low-paying legal jobs in public interest and state government, where I worked hard to locally establish myself in my field, make nearby connections, and obtain local references. Ten years later, I got my dream public interest job I thought I'd be handed when I graduated. I only got this job, I think, because a person on the hiring team was an attorney who was my opposing counsel in previous cases of mine, and they were impressed with my work. Although I was basically qualified for the job, I lacked experience in this area of law, but still got it. I hated most aspects of my career in those 1st 10 years, but I am thankful for it. I was knocked down a peg. Lots of pegs. Being the brightest or most award-winning doesn't mean shit. It's so much luck and who you know. As a student I was never told this. Coming from a poor family, I never saw networking in action. This is another way that poverty repeats itself, but that's another topic. I graduated into a decade where there were no jobs for anyone. I was poor. I worked in a city where I had no lawyer contacts, connection, and didn't go to school there. No one warned me or even hinted at it.
Yes, networking counts for SO much and working class or poor kids just don't learn that. I was SO lucky to get a job at a big 4 accounting firm just before the financial world imploded (2006) and having that one big name (and 13yrs of tenure there) catapulted me into bigger roles at equally prestigious firms for higher pay. This was miraculous considering my undergrad is in television/film production (lol at starting salaries that were less than my tuition even back in 2003). I now advise my younger coworkers (and kid) that good grades/working hard are one tool in your toolbox but that networking and connecting with peers are equally important. My oddball field is teeny and literally all my jobs have been word of mouth referrals. Do they need to know I can do the work? Yes. But I've been explicitly told I was hired because of positive referrals/references more than my work experience.
This is a beautiful piece that will resonate with many (and get sent to many colleagues and children, I’m sure).
My kid just graduated and was warned off of academia for precisely these reasons. I’m incredibly grateful. That said, my kid is a gifted teacher, an insightful researcher, and someone I’d love to see write and help define the world in their subject.
It really, really kills me that folks like AHP, the many commenters in this thread, my brilliant kid, and the friend who warned them off, can’t contribute to our culture in the ways that would benefit us all. This cancer of overwork, undervaluing, and underpay is killing k-12 education (which I recently left), medicine, and so many other vital fields. It breaks my heart, and it’s breaking our country.
I'm an academic, tenured (full) professor; 30 years of experience. Your kid sounds wonderful, and I hope they can open the doors to non-academic careers. I know -someone- will Do All the Things to possibly end up with a college teaching job, but I'm hoping your talented child will choose other ways to do the things at which they excel. I would love it I didn't have to write one more ref letter for a student hoping for a PhD. I try to talk them out of it, spend loads of time helping them do values clarifications, exploring job ads and markets, and thinking deeply about themselves. I try to give them insight into the quotidian existence of this profession. For many of us, we do not "get the summer off." We don't get scheduled time or support funds for academic research. We don't get more than two raises in a career, and that's if we get promoted the two times available to tenure-track employees. We don't get trained in the student support that is now needed to ensure that learners make it through four years. Etcetera, etcetera.
So beautifully put. It hurts my heart that our culture simply doesn’t value the arts and humanities, even going so far as to mock artists and writers and educators for wanting to do something meaningful with their lives.
More needs to be written about the “unstable and dying industries.” As a member of one of them, it’s disheartening to see so many new grads pushed forwards academia, journalism, law. Those fields were once a friendly catch-all for bright and curious students, but—buyer beware!—many of these grad programs aren’t equipped to teach folks how to survive in a rapidly shifting financial landscape. Thank you for bringing more attention to this issue!
Thanks for your good comment. Makes me think about how There is good work happening in the “sustainability space” aka “how big business deals with climate change” - the most useful framing I know of is to midwive the new, hospice/bury the dying industries. The hitch (imo) has been how hard it is to acknowledge the sunk costs of a dying industry or enterprise, plus the golden handcuffs that make it hard for actors to stop doing the bad stuff when their continuing comfort/perceived safety relies on them doing to do the status quo. It doesn’t work, but *it seems to work* for the few and protected.
Oof yes I would love more conversation about the unstable and dying industries. I’m a freelance print journalist for horse magazines. The horse industry and print journalism are both waning industries…that I love. And I don’t know if I should jump ship, or where I would go with my skills and interests.
There are so many issues in the horse industry, and God knows the profit margins are paper-thin (maybe thinner than paper), but horses are miracles on four legs. Those of us who love it have a responsibility to make it accessible to kids for the future so it stays loved. One of my favorite tiny nonprofits I support in my tiny way is a program that makes transportation and lessons available to inner city kids. And thank you for your work. Horse stories and pictures are my happy place.
This actually made me tear up, thank you. I completely agree with you and it’s my mission to introduce more people to the magic of horses because they mean so much to me. I hope I get to keep doing this work for a long time!
I am in tears. I was a fifth generation educator. That was just what the smart, independent women in our family did with our leadership skills. My masters is in early childhood & elementary education from the best progressive educator training program in the country (my resume now only says that I studied "education".) I taught in independent schools (one of them in Seattle) for all of four years before moving into administration in K - 8, 9 - 12, & community college. None of it was deliberate or with an eye toward a career. The closest I got was a brief foray into fundraising (because there were always well-paid jobs- it was also the most boring thing I have ever done).
I stayed education adjacent through work at a foundation, consulting, workforce development, and now back in administration at a floundering private four year institution.
It has taken me YEARS of fruitless job searching based on "NOT ACADEMIA" and long stretches of unemployment to begin to articulate my unique skill set as well as the kind of environment I want to work in. The bigger utility of my un- and under-employment, however, has been the gift of learning who I am outside of what I get paid to do. I'm setting boundaries now because that Who I Am is too precious & important to sacrifice to a job that does not respect me the same way.
I should have pursued a MBA. It has taken me decades to understand that I am an entrepreneur, a catalyst, a generalist, and a leader. I am now retrofitting myself through data analytics certificate programs to help business leaders see beyond where I've done the work. It will never not feel insulting that people with business backgrounds are welcomed into NGO spaces but the reverse is not true.
We cling to putting people in buckets and silos. Once you understand your genuine value, that becomes anathema.
You know, I did get an MBA. It took me a long time to land where I am now (10y after my MBA) but I had to really embrace sunk costs. Academia is brutal but this article resonated for me because so many forms of work are exploitative and if you derive your value from the markers of success work dangles (titles, pay, special projects, DEI) you will find yourself with all your eggs in one basket, overly committed to an organization (that will let you go at the drop of a hat) and without the things that make us whole - hobbies, friends, community. I dont have a job that requires an MBA anymore but I gained time and my sanity. So many of the MBA women I know who are successful in all the traditional ways have struggled and are pursuing alternative paths. Like Anne, nobody regrets their decisions per se, but I totally agree we need to help our kids expand the ways they derive meaning in their lives and that work is but one aspect of a rich life.
I got the MBA too. And it still didn't let me in to business spaces with a nonprofit resume. That one way revolving door is real and bothers me on innumerable levels. Letting corporate folks run roughshod over nonprofits hasn't helped a lick, for one.
Excellent piece. I was not a professor but I worked in higher ed admin as support staff for 25+ years. The world of academia does not fulfill the promises it makes. In this day and age, the expenses you accumulate with the promise of solid employment are extreme. Free labor is the norm (so wrong). I've seen academia turn into profit machines---upper admin only cares about new buildings that (surprise) fall apart quickly, and making everything into an "event" with "student swag". (Spoiler alert---if you make everything an event, NOTHING is an event. And students have enough water bottles from previous events.) It's been on the horizon for YEARS that the student population is dwindling (fewer births) and the race to attract them to their institution is fierce. And yes, students as undergrads are still sold a false bill of goods. Recruiting makes universities seem like a utopia where there, and only there at their institution, your dreams can be fulfilled. And then after acceptance, students and their parents have to navigate the difficult world of financial aid that somehow wasn't mentioned in recruiting materials. The university where I worked (cough---University of TN---cough) also has a housing crisis and oversells admissions. This is truth---students sold on making friends at your new dorm were, instead, forced to live in a Holiday Inn Express instead. Upper admin vowed to lower their admissions so the housing need would not be so critical. But guess what? The next spring the promise was forgotten and a "new record class" was admitted. SO GLAD I RETIRED.
Interestingly, you were one of the few people who really inspired me to pursue graduate school, namely a Ph.D (and yes, I am one of your Hairpin followers). This piece does nothing to degrade that! I'm your reverse. I spent 15 years of my career writing online, and wanted to do more. I wanted to go bigger. I looked at writers like you and Emily Oster, and thought... I need more school to tell the stories I want to tell, in the way they ought to be told.
My husband was like... I don't think you need to go to school to write what you want to write about, and sure, he's right. But if I wanted to write at your level, I did. I wanted to just be a talking head. And, now two years into my master's (with a continuation to my Ph.D in Positive Organizational Psychology.), I completely see why. The way I write and the way I think is totally cracked open. I'm more thoughtful, more diligent, and I question more. My still novice ability to research has helped me tremendously in all areas of my life.
Ultimately, I'd love to teach for fun, but my goal is applied work in the field, working with creative leaders and organizations to shift work culture. After being in the corporate world for so long, I could not entertain academia full time. It's too limiting financially and in mindset. (I also do not understand the race for journal pubs.. it's weird to me. Why wouldn't you want a NYT piece???) As one of the "elders" in my program, I can see younger students getting sucked into the vortex you described, so I am grateful you wrote this.
I was always wary of grad school, and now I am not. However, grad school should not be for when you are lost, but rather FOUND, and the education will put you on a clear path. The moment I read the description for the program I ultimately joined, I didn't want to waste a single moment not pursuing that work (a la NYE Harry monologue). I was six months pregnant with my second child when that happened. As a result, grad chool has become an absolute joy and respite from my work in advertising/PR and my responsibilities at home with two small kids. I'm taking it slow and savoring every class. Anyway, I'm so sorry you had to go through so many challenges in academia to get where you are. But, I'm so so glad you're hear. And, I'm so so glad you inspired me to go into higher education. I promise not to chase a tenure track or a million journal pubs 😆.
I hear you HARD on this, Heather! I actually never considered grad school, had many careers, wound up in a realm with loads of writing and editing, and found my way to a creative writing MFA. All the while (a) I never considered academia (not avoided, it just didn't cross my mind). Which is wild, because (b) my husband was on the academic ecology track the whole time! When he moved into a postdoc, I did the MFA (which I didn't realize was a prestigious one because it was just the one where we were and I was naive to all that). And, I taught English Composition to get paid, which, along with the MFA being a terminal degree, opened doors I didn't know existed for me as a 1st-gen kid. I've been contingent since 2017, but in 2021 found/negotiated a role that is incredibly fulfilling. It weaves together so many of my skillets from previous lives. I have some flexibility in what I do, and it's not a lectureship, so I'm allowed to "count" a mix of admin, scholarship, teaching, service, etc. I feel like I've hit my stride. (But, I'm also always looking over my back knowing this job could evaporate. And, I am a bit of a loud-mouth and pushing always for systems change, so I'm probably sticking my neck out.) For now, though, I'm really enjoying what I do and want to keep doing it, though *every* criticism AHP listed is very real. All that to say, there is no chance on the planet I'd have been able to do, appreciate, or secure this position and work therein if I had gone to grad school straight out of undergrad. I was 10 years post BA before I came back. Made a massive, positive difference. I write a lot about threading all these needles in my blog/newsletter Zest: Makin' Academic Lemonade: https://www.commnatural.com/blog
Hooray! It's just wonderful to connect with folks who are coming to cademia with intention, later in life. I really appreciate connecting with people like you who see what we can get from (and contribute to) academia without being shocked that it's not all warm and fuzzy in this space. I often critique it, but I come from community non-profit work, and I really do believe we can make some changes. And in the meantime, academia is currently a good fit for me. I try to remember that every time I get really frustrated or burned by it.
Yoga girl is what I'm trying to channel this month! I'm on a 9-month contract, and for a decade, that just meant working g all au.mer for free. But I fried myself this spring (extra fried, I guess). And I've at least now learned to recognize the symptoms. So, I'm taking this month away. It's hard...I have at leat 5 projects I'd like to finish before stepping away. But I'm gonna try to sustain enthusiasm for my work, which means I need to take a break if I'm not getting paid. So, hooray for yoga girl! :)
This landed in my box the morning after going through my old job application files, tenure application boxes. I'm one of the lucky ones, but it was depressing to see in these artifacts how earnest I was, how devoted, how much I sacrificed. It's so hard to explain to my partner (a therapist) how much this career has taken from me. I realize that many professions are demanding, but what outsiders don't see is the length of time we commit, how we often must live far away from community/family, the long delays of starting our lives...
And one of the things that makes it bearable is having incredible colleagues. It’s hard to imagine what our early years would have been like if we hadn’t all met as teaching scholars. Miss you😘😘
We’ve all been subjected to thousands of news articles about the state of higher education in the US in 2024 centered around the impact of protests at elite universities, but I can’t recall reading a single piece that captures the pyramid scheme that is contemporary academia. I wish higher ed beat reporters and editors were covering these issues as you unpack them here.
If/when you write more on this I’d be curious for your thoughts on administrative bloat and its relationship to faculty/grad student support bottoming out. I don’t think anyone woke up and decided to build new student gyms or have a massive student orientation program over paying adjuncts a living wage, but it’s where we seem to have wound up nonetheless. What’s the relationship between the surge in student life/admin bloat and the collapse of support for actual teaching? And are there solutions we’re not thinking of?
Reading this quickly saying Holy Shit over and over at how precise and accurate your writing is. Rocked at your insights and ability to describe the shifts and transitions. Reading again now. Thank you
I dropped out of a History PhD program after two years around the same time you left academia, and a substantial contributing factor was realizing what my actual employment prospects were. I have no regrets about leaving, but there are things about it that I deeply miss and have struggled to replicate in my life. The academic job market, which my spouse (who has a PhD in Theology and Philosophy) continues to be thrown around by, remains bleak.
I'm glad that you've found happiness outside of academia, and I hope this piece helps others do the same.
One of my closest friends, now dead, never fully got over her shame at failing to complete a PhD. But none of her publishing colleagues nor friends considered it a failure. Partly because she was so very, very good at editing professionally. Mostly, though, she was a truly wonderful human being. But clearly not getting her PhD made her feel less worthy somehow. That was a tragedy. I hope fewer people have such burdens these days.
I just want to write and read academic books/papers, tbh! It's so hard to cultivate that practice outside of academia when you have a non-academic full time job.
I left my program officially this February. I don't regret leaving, either, and not getting the PhD actually *helped* my job prospects (I love my job as an instructional designer!), but I am still mourning what could have been. It's hard not to feel shame, anger, etc. even though I know I made the right choice.
JUST REALIZED THE SUBSCRIBER LINKS DIDN'T GO THROUGH AND THEY WERE SO GOOD THIS WEEK! Don't worry, I'll send them out Wednesday.
Really beautiful and sad and accurate and thoroughly recognizable. Your article identifies a chasm that has only grown over the past two decades -- between calling and career, deep study and career prep, and between the academy as monastic passion project and as big business that eats its young. Your experience is both heartbreaking and reassuring -- you rode successive waves of change and have made your writing both an art and a service. Thank you for all of it.
Claire Sommer already said it, but holy shit.
There are so many lines here that snagged me--that academia leaves you with no marketable skills, a long CV but no resume, that an academic life makes it impossible to cultivate other quadrants of your life, that if you left you felt like you might cease to exist, and that it has taken years to normalize what a reasonable workload looks like. I always thought it was impossible to pull together my disparate, painful, but somehow still tender thoughts about academia until I read this. Thank you.
You know, it's funny. I still adjunct a full load because my writing isn't established (yet!), but I've never told any of my department chairs that I write fiction because I'm afraid they might feel that my attention is divided and consider it a liability. Never mind that the logic behind adjuncting has always been that you do it in *addition* to another job. But I still want to keep the illusion alive for my departments--the work is my life. As another commenter said, it's like Stockholm syndrome.
One last thing. My first novel was considered "dark academia" (ugh) and I was talking/complaining to another academic about this and she said, "I fucking hate that moniker. It's redundant. All academia is dark. That's the default." And then we cackled like witches. Now every time someone says "dark academia" I laugh and laugh and laugh.
Omg you’re THAT Katy Hays. I truly loved The Cloisters and felt it was closer to home on the life of early academics than anything else I’ve read. A really delightful(ly dark) and thoughtful read that stayed with me.
omg! I've never been called "THAT" Katy Hays before and i don't think I want to be called anything else ever again! No, but in all seriousness, thank you for reading! I'm a long-time AHP reader and love the comments section on her posts so much!
Also adding this to my TBR list!
(The people in my life are tired of hearing about it, but I say all the time that the comment section of Culture Study is my favorite corner of the internet, BUT MY GOD IT'S SO TRUE)
I just looked up The Cloisters on Libby and holy smokes, this book sounds like it’s very much my shit. So excited to go read it!
Holy cow I am absolutely adding The Cloisters to my TBR list too!!!
I read your book last fall and LOVED it!! One of the things that really resonated was how clearly you *know* the dark side of academia and the hopes we harbor as students in the system. (And now I want to mine your bibliography about Renaissance tarot cards!!) :)
Interestingly I know work in research development (which I actually love). It is a weird career where you can talk about research and work with faculty but in a very different way. So maybe I am still stockholm syndromed? But it is my (counts on fingers) sixth career and it is the most satisfied I've felt.
now not know!
Whoa! I loved your book The Cloisters & have rec’d it to friends. (No spoilers for those who havent read it) - your third act turn in the plot is masterful!
Well, Claire, I thought your "holy shit" was masterful! (But also thank you!! Third acts are so hard to land!)
I read that first novel and really liked it! (And, as you say, found it only about half a shade darker than off-the-page academia....)
Why, thank you!
Holy shit! I just bought your book LAST WEEK and now I'm moving it up to the top of my TBR because of this comment.
Thank you for writing this. You touched on so many hard truths about academia, and the one truth that broke my relationship with it: the exploitation of faculty. Universities are businesses that thrive on unpaid labor and they get away with it because “service” usually comprises a significant portion of the job requirements. How does one avoid service? By getting external funding. Bring in enough money and first the service requirements start to go and then the teaching requirements. If an institution has enough faculty to run things — always by committee — they can hire more administrators. Numbers of faculty are governed by numbers of students but numbers of administrators seems to be governed by God only knows. I routinely worked 60-80 hours a week for 30 years. When I loved what I was doing, it was my life. It was my identity. I learned during Covid that my job is merely my job and I do it to pay for my actual life. So many of my colleagues woke up to the same realization, and so many of us are trying to figure out who we are outside of our jobs. Being an academic requires a single mindedness that eliminates the ability to see options outside of academia and the sunk cost of the effort to get and keep the job…it’s just a job.
The board of trustees at my institution have proposed using AI to teach lower level classes.
I’m out. I’m retiring and this summer is the first time in over 30 years I’m not doing research (for free), advising new students (for free), or planning new instruction for the fall (for free).
Right there with you. Retiring this summer after 25 years at my institution (also a 4-4 load, with tons of service) and 30 years of teaching. I always thought I'd be that professor who taught until age 70, that they'd have to pry me out with a crowbar. I was so afraid of losing my professor identity that I balked about leaving for a long time. Now that I am doing it, I cannot believe how much lighter and better I feel. It's astonishing.
I took a buyout from my place, got 3 weeks notice to leave. Turning 70 in a few months and cannot wait to leave!
Humanities PhD who managed to get the "prize" tenure track job. Terrible commute, poorly run institution 4-4 load and research expectations but I still wanted to stay! It was like stockholm syndrome. I was denied tenure after having a baby and I am so much happier in my current job and life ten years later...
Reading this as a very recent PhD graduate currently on the job market and feeling so seen. I like to think that I pursued my degree with a full awareness of the landscape you describe, but having it articulated this way makes me wonder if I am actually one of the many “excellent students with very little experience of failure in search of some way, any way, of revisiting a structure they associate with nurturing and safety.” Going to have to go sit with that and laugh-sob all over my many diplomas.
I fel like I could have written this, but from a law school perspective. I was always top of my class earning full rides to college and law school. I knew from a young age I wanted to practice public interest law. While my classmates competed for "big law" jobs earning in the 6 figures, I *knew* I'd get a job easily. I thought there'd be less competition for the kinds of jobs I wanted. The starting salaries at these jobs was in the high $30k range (in 2006), I was published, on law review, won so many awards, and I ranked high in my class. No one would want to be paid that low who was as wonderful as me. I had the internships in this area. I was ready! After graduation, I moved 1500 miles home, took 2 state bar exams, and applied for jobs. *Crickets* I initially applied for 20, then 40, then 80, public interest and government jobs. Even after passing 2 separate state bar exams, I had only 2 interviews and no offers. But I was brilliant, and special, and the best ever! LOL I had so, so much to learn. I knew nothing about networking. I moved to my hometown with 3 law schools in the area, one being among the best in the nation, and the other 2 are well-respected. I was competing with people who interned in this city, had family connections, and their law schools were local; hence, their career and alumni services focused on this town, or friends and family lived here with these social networks. I had none of this. In interviews, I was an unknown quantity. They didn't care about past success. Although I was a hometown girl, they didn't know my law school, where I interned, or any of my references. In law (and many other places) it's all who you know. Hence, I widened my net, applying everywhere in a 100 mile radius because no one hired me. Despite the full rides, I still had to take out about $75k in loans for money to live on in law school (that included money for medical emergencies- your parent's insurance ended at 21 then- and bar exam expenses for 2 states). I was living with my parents, where I hadn't lived since I turned 18, and it was crowded and tense. I grew up in poverty and my family's lot had only improved to working class. Hence, I was a licensed attorney waiting tables to contribute to family expenses. I found a full-time attorney job paying $31k a year about 9 months from when I began applying. That led to TEN years of low-paying legal jobs in public interest and state government, where I worked hard to locally establish myself in my field, make nearby connections, and obtain local references. Ten years later, I got my dream public interest job I thought I'd be handed when I graduated. I only got this job, I think, because a person on the hiring team was an attorney who was my opposing counsel in previous cases of mine, and they were impressed with my work. Although I was basically qualified for the job, I lacked experience in this area of law, but still got it. I hated most aspects of my career in those 1st 10 years, but I am thankful for it. I was knocked down a peg. Lots of pegs. Being the brightest or most award-winning doesn't mean shit. It's so much luck and who you know. As a student I was never told this. Coming from a poor family, I never saw networking in action. This is another way that poverty repeats itself, but that's another topic. I graduated into a decade where there were no jobs for anyone. I was poor. I worked in a city where I had no lawyer contacts, connection, and didn't go to school there. No one warned me or even hinted at it.
Yes, networking counts for SO much and working class or poor kids just don't learn that. I was SO lucky to get a job at a big 4 accounting firm just before the financial world imploded (2006) and having that one big name (and 13yrs of tenure there) catapulted me into bigger roles at equally prestigious firms for higher pay. This was miraculous considering my undergrad is in television/film production (lol at starting salaries that were less than my tuition even back in 2003). I now advise my younger coworkers (and kid) that good grades/working hard are one tool in your toolbox but that networking and connecting with peers are equally important. My oddball field is teeny and literally all my jobs have been word of mouth referrals. Do they need to know I can do the work? Yes. But I've been explicitly told I was hired because of positive referrals/references more than my work experience.
Networking! I wish I had understood anything about networking when I was 20. Such a gap. Such a vital gap.
Thank you for sharing this story!
This is a beautiful piece that will resonate with many (and get sent to many colleagues and children, I’m sure).
My kid just graduated and was warned off of academia for precisely these reasons. I’m incredibly grateful. That said, my kid is a gifted teacher, an insightful researcher, and someone I’d love to see write and help define the world in their subject.
It really, really kills me that folks like AHP, the many commenters in this thread, my brilliant kid, and the friend who warned them off, can’t contribute to our culture in the ways that would benefit us all. This cancer of overwork, undervaluing, and underpay is killing k-12 education (which I recently left), medicine, and so many other vital fields. It breaks my heart, and it’s breaking our country.
I'm an academic, tenured (full) professor; 30 years of experience. Your kid sounds wonderful, and I hope they can open the doors to non-academic careers. I know -someone- will Do All the Things to possibly end up with a college teaching job, but I'm hoping your talented child will choose other ways to do the things at which they excel. I would love it I didn't have to write one more ref letter for a student hoping for a PhD. I try to talk them out of it, spend loads of time helping them do values clarifications, exploring job ads and markets, and thinking deeply about themselves. I try to give them insight into the quotidian existence of this profession. For many of us, we do not "get the summer off." We don't get scheduled time or support funds for academic research. We don't get more than two raises in a career, and that's if we get promoted the two times available to tenure-track employees. We don't get trained in the student support that is now needed to ensure that learners make it through four years. Etcetera, etcetera.
So beautifully put. It hurts my heart that our culture simply doesn’t value the arts and humanities, even going so far as to mock artists and writers and educators for wanting to do something meaningful with their lives.
More needs to be written about the “unstable and dying industries.” As a member of one of them, it’s disheartening to see so many new grads pushed forwards academia, journalism, law. Those fields were once a friendly catch-all for bright and curious students, but—buyer beware!—many of these grad programs aren’t equipped to teach folks how to survive in a rapidly shifting financial landscape. Thank you for bringing more attention to this issue!
Thanks for your good comment. Makes me think about how There is good work happening in the “sustainability space” aka “how big business deals with climate change” - the most useful framing I know of is to midwive the new, hospice/bury the dying industries. The hitch (imo) has been how hard it is to acknowledge the sunk costs of a dying industry or enterprise, plus the golden handcuffs that make it hard for actors to stop doing the bad stuff when their continuing comfort/perceived safety relies on them doing to do the status quo. It doesn’t work, but *it seems to work* for the few and protected.
Big old ball of wicked complexity
You just described the province of Alberta.
I don’t know a lot about Alberta, but I think it’s the seat of Canada’s oil production
It is. We're often called Texas North (it's also pretty conservative, politically, here.
Oof yes I would love more conversation about the unstable and dying industries. I’m a freelance print journalist for horse magazines. The horse industry and print journalism are both waning industries…that I love. And I don’t know if I should jump ship, or where I would go with my skills and interests.
There are so many issues in the horse industry, and God knows the profit margins are paper-thin (maybe thinner than paper), but horses are miracles on four legs. Those of us who love it have a responsibility to make it accessible to kids for the future so it stays loved. One of my favorite tiny nonprofits I support in my tiny way is a program that makes transportation and lessons available to inner city kids. And thank you for your work. Horse stories and pictures are my happy place.
This actually made me tear up, thank you. I completely agree with you and it’s my mission to introduce more people to the magic of horses because they mean so much to me. I hope I get to keep doing this work for a long time!
I am in tears. I was a fifth generation educator. That was just what the smart, independent women in our family did with our leadership skills. My masters is in early childhood & elementary education from the best progressive educator training program in the country (my resume now only says that I studied "education".) I taught in independent schools (one of them in Seattle) for all of four years before moving into administration in K - 8, 9 - 12, & community college. None of it was deliberate or with an eye toward a career. The closest I got was a brief foray into fundraising (because there were always well-paid jobs- it was also the most boring thing I have ever done).
I stayed education adjacent through work at a foundation, consulting, workforce development, and now back in administration at a floundering private four year institution.
It has taken me YEARS of fruitless job searching based on "NOT ACADEMIA" and long stretches of unemployment to begin to articulate my unique skill set as well as the kind of environment I want to work in. The bigger utility of my un- and under-employment, however, has been the gift of learning who I am outside of what I get paid to do. I'm setting boundaries now because that Who I Am is too precious & important to sacrifice to a job that does not respect me the same way.
I should have pursued a MBA. It has taken me decades to understand that I am an entrepreneur, a catalyst, a generalist, and a leader. I am now retrofitting myself through data analytics certificate programs to help business leaders see beyond where I've done the work. It will never not feel insulting that people with business backgrounds are welcomed into NGO spaces but the reverse is not true.
We cling to putting people in buckets and silos. Once you understand your genuine value, that becomes anathema.
You know, I did get an MBA. It took me a long time to land where I am now (10y after my MBA) but I had to really embrace sunk costs. Academia is brutal but this article resonated for me because so many forms of work are exploitative and if you derive your value from the markers of success work dangles (titles, pay, special projects, DEI) you will find yourself with all your eggs in one basket, overly committed to an organization (that will let you go at the drop of a hat) and without the things that make us whole - hobbies, friends, community. I dont have a job that requires an MBA anymore but I gained time and my sanity. So many of the MBA women I know who are successful in all the traditional ways have struggled and are pursuing alternative paths. Like Anne, nobody regrets their decisions per se, but I totally agree we need to help our kids expand the ways they derive meaning in their lives and that work is but one aspect of a rich life.
I got the MBA too. And it still didn't let me in to business spaces with a nonprofit resume. That one way revolving door is real and bothers me on innumerable levels. Letting corporate folks run roughshod over nonprofits hasn't helped a lick, for one.
UGH, Jessica. That is so annoying.
It's not even like I've worked for little nonprofits- the biggest brands on my resume operated like corporations.
I've heard the key is finding a hiring manager who made the leap themselves or having a recruiter champion you.
Excellent piece. I was not a professor but I worked in higher ed admin as support staff for 25+ years. The world of academia does not fulfill the promises it makes. In this day and age, the expenses you accumulate with the promise of solid employment are extreme. Free labor is the norm (so wrong). I've seen academia turn into profit machines---upper admin only cares about new buildings that (surprise) fall apart quickly, and making everything into an "event" with "student swag". (Spoiler alert---if you make everything an event, NOTHING is an event. And students have enough water bottles from previous events.) It's been on the horizon for YEARS that the student population is dwindling (fewer births) and the race to attract them to their institution is fierce. And yes, students as undergrads are still sold a false bill of goods. Recruiting makes universities seem like a utopia where there, and only there at their institution, your dreams can be fulfilled. And then after acceptance, students and their parents have to navigate the difficult world of financial aid that somehow wasn't mentioned in recruiting materials. The university where I worked (cough---University of TN---cough) also has a housing crisis and oversells admissions. This is truth---students sold on making friends at your new dorm were, instead, forced to live in a Holiday Inn Express instead. Upper admin vowed to lower their admissions so the housing need would not be so critical. But guess what? The next spring the promise was forgotten and a "new record class" was admitted. SO GLAD I RETIRED.
Interestingly, you were one of the few people who really inspired me to pursue graduate school, namely a Ph.D (and yes, I am one of your Hairpin followers). This piece does nothing to degrade that! I'm your reverse. I spent 15 years of my career writing online, and wanted to do more. I wanted to go bigger. I looked at writers like you and Emily Oster, and thought... I need more school to tell the stories I want to tell, in the way they ought to be told.
My husband was like... I don't think you need to go to school to write what you want to write about, and sure, he's right. But if I wanted to write at your level, I did. I wanted to just be a talking head. And, now two years into my master's (with a continuation to my Ph.D in Positive Organizational Psychology.), I completely see why. The way I write and the way I think is totally cracked open. I'm more thoughtful, more diligent, and I question more. My still novice ability to research has helped me tremendously in all areas of my life.
Ultimately, I'd love to teach for fun, but my goal is applied work in the field, working with creative leaders and organizations to shift work culture. After being in the corporate world for so long, I could not entertain academia full time. It's too limiting financially and in mindset. (I also do not understand the race for journal pubs.. it's weird to me. Why wouldn't you want a NYT piece???) As one of the "elders" in my program, I can see younger students getting sucked into the vortex you described, so I am grateful you wrote this.
I was always wary of grad school, and now I am not. However, grad school should not be for when you are lost, but rather FOUND, and the education will put you on a clear path. The moment I read the description for the program I ultimately joined, I didn't want to waste a single moment not pursuing that work (a la NYE Harry monologue). I was six months pregnant with my second child when that happened. As a result, grad chool has become an absolute joy and respite from my work in advertising/PR and my responsibilities at home with two small kids. I'm taking it slow and savoring every class. Anyway, I'm so sorry you had to go through so many challenges in academia to get where you are. But, I'm so so glad you're hear. And, I'm so so glad you inspired me to go into higher education. I promise not to chase a tenure track or a million journal pubs 😆.
I hear you HARD on this, Heather! I actually never considered grad school, had many careers, wound up in a realm with loads of writing and editing, and found my way to a creative writing MFA. All the while (a) I never considered academia (not avoided, it just didn't cross my mind). Which is wild, because (b) my husband was on the academic ecology track the whole time! When he moved into a postdoc, I did the MFA (which I didn't realize was a prestigious one because it was just the one where we were and I was naive to all that). And, I taught English Composition to get paid, which, along with the MFA being a terminal degree, opened doors I didn't know existed for me as a 1st-gen kid. I've been contingent since 2017, but in 2021 found/negotiated a role that is incredibly fulfilling. It weaves together so many of my skillets from previous lives. I have some flexibility in what I do, and it's not a lectureship, so I'm allowed to "count" a mix of admin, scholarship, teaching, service, etc. I feel like I've hit my stride. (But, I'm also always looking over my back knowing this job could evaporate. And, I am a bit of a loud-mouth and pushing always for systems change, so I'm probably sticking my neck out.) For now, though, I'm really enjoying what I do and want to keep doing it, though *every* criticism AHP listed is very real. All that to say, there is no chance on the planet I'd have been able to do, appreciate, or secure this position and work therein if I had gone to grad school straight out of undergrad. I was 10 years post BA before I came back. Made a massive, positive difference. I write a lot about threading all these needles in my blog/newsletter Zest: Makin' Academic Lemonade: https://www.commnatural.com/blog
I love your story!! I’m going to give you a subscribe. Thanks for sharing ☺️☺️🧘♀️
Hooray! It's just wonderful to connect with folks who are coming to cademia with intention, later in life. I really appreciate connecting with people like you who see what we can get from (and contribute to) academia without being shocked that it's not all warm and fuzzy in this space. I often critique it, but I come from community non-profit work, and I really do believe we can make some changes. And in the meantime, academia is currently a good fit for me. I try to remember that every time I get really frustrated or burned by it.
Didn’t mean to press yoga girl but why not!
Yoga girl is what I'm trying to channel this month! I'm on a 9-month contract, and for a decade, that just meant working g all au.mer for free. But I fried myself this spring (extra fried, I guess). And I've at least now learned to recognize the symptoms. So, I'm taking this month away. It's hard...I have at leat 5 projects I'd like to finish before stepping away. But I'm gonna try to sustain enthusiasm for my work, which means I need to take a break if I'm not getting paid. So, hooray for yoga girl! :)
This landed in my box the morning after going through my old job application files, tenure application boxes. I'm one of the lucky ones, but it was depressing to see in these artifacts how earnest I was, how devoted, how much I sacrificed. It's so hard to explain to my partner (a therapist) how much this career has taken from me. I realize that many professions are demanding, but what outsiders don't see is the length of time we commit, how we often must live far away from community/family, the long delays of starting our lives...
And one of the things that makes it bearable is having incredible colleagues. It’s hard to imagine what our early years would have been like if we hadn’t all met as teaching scholars. Miss you😘😘
We’ve all been subjected to thousands of news articles about the state of higher education in the US in 2024 centered around the impact of protests at elite universities, but I can’t recall reading a single piece that captures the pyramid scheme that is contemporary academia. I wish higher ed beat reporters and editors were covering these issues as you unpack them here.
If/when you write more on this I’d be curious for your thoughts on administrative bloat and its relationship to faculty/grad student support bottoming out. I don’t think anyone woke up and decided to build new student gyms or have a massive student orientation program over paying adjuncts a living wage, but it’s where we seem to have wound up nonetheless. What’s the relationship between the surge in student life/admin bloat and the collapse of support for actual teaching? And are there solutions we’re not thinking of?
Reading this quickly saying Holy Shit over and over at how precise and accurate your writing is. Rocked at your insights and ability to describe the shifts and transitions. Reading again now. Thank you
I said the same thing when I finished this essay: holy shit.
Holy shit.
I truly believe it's because of her Ph.D. that she's such a phenomenal colloquial writer!
I dropped out of a History PhD program after two years around the same time you left academia, and a substantial contributing factor was realizing what my actual employment prospects were. I have no regrets about leaving, but there are things about it that I deeply miss and have struggled to replicate in my life. The academic job market, which my spouse (who has a PhD in Theology and Philosophy) continues to be thrown around by, remains bleak.
I'm glad that you've found happiness outside of academia, and I hope this piece helps others do the same.
One of my closest friends, now dead, never fully got over her shame at failing to complete a PhD. But none of her publishing colleagues nor friends considered it a failure. Partly because she was so very, very good at editing professionally. Mostly, though, she was a truly wonderful human being. But clearly not getting her PhD made her feel less worthy somehow. That was a tragedy. I hope fewer people have such burdens these days.
I just want to write and read academic books/papers, tbh! It's so hard to cultivate that practice outside of academia when you have a non-academic full time job.
I left my program officially this February. I don't regret leaving, either, and not getting the PhD actually *helped* my job prospects (I love my job as an instructional designer!), but I am still mourning what could have been. It's hard not to feel shame, anger, etc. even though I know I made the right choice.