Via Drew Conway, a great quote this morning from Stephen Curry, a professor at Imperial College London:
Students should think more broadly about what a PhD could prepare them for. We should start selling a PhD as higher level education but not one that necessarily points you down a tunnel…We should not see moving out of academia as a failure. We need to see it as a stepping stone, a way of moving forward to something else.
Curry was commenting here on changing the mindset of the students, but I would argue in many disciplines the problem isn’t the students, but the professors. Â There are still large groups of people in academia that not only disagree with this sentiment, but actively work to undermine students who choose to take their education and apply it outside of academia. Â My experience has been in the realm of political science, but certainly know others that have had similar experiences in other disciplines.
The skills one learns in graduate school are absolutely applicable outside of academia.  In many cases, students may be better positioned to apply what they’ve learned and have a more fulfilling career in either government or business.  Not everyone is cut out for this type of career, but then again not everyone is cut out for a life in academia either.  In many cases, it takes a different set of talents to thrive in either environment.  And when we take into account the utter dysfunction of the academic labor market, I don’t think pressuring students to seek a career in that market is the most responsible thing to do.
Bottom line: the focus should be on the students and what will be the best move for them, not what professors think is the ‘proper’ career for those pursuing and holding a Ph.D.
The problem I hvae is that I am not certain what other than academia a PhD might prepare one for. I'm all for helping people find the best way to exercise their vocations, but having never thought much about doing anything other than academia with a PhD, I confess to being puzzled when you say “The skills one learns in graduate school are absolutely applicable outside of academia.” What skills? Have they helped you?
I spend a lot of time discouraging people with no interest in academia from pursuing PhDs. But if there's a good argument about a PhD preparing one for somethine else, I might have to re-evaluate that stance. I've not heard one yet, though, so consider that an open challenge to the entire Duck readership, perhaps.
Apparently a PhD doesn't exactly help your proofreading skills — “hvae”? — so that's one thing that it's not good for ;)
Two skill types that are applicable outside academia are foreign languages and statistical analysis. Â I know several people who have leveraged this training into jobs. Â However, I agree with PTJ that getting a PhD in IR is not the best road to acquiring these two skills. Â As far as I can see the group of people that need 'repurposing' are those that want an academic career but can't get one without paying inordinate costs, like moving to a crap location or adjuncting for years on end. Â The jobs that these PhDs can get outside academic are mostly going to be way worse than Professor – generic white collar work or low paid 'research analyst' positions are the top end of these. Â Only the tiniest minority are going to work in a think-tank, which is the first thing people say when talking to me about jobs outside academia. Â
Well, let's split up the question into two parts: what “should” a person ideally do with a PhD versus what a person may, in fact, actually end up doing. I concur that a PhD is a degree that is meant for future aspiring scholars, and that people who have no interest in pursuing academic careers are of course not meant to make this commitment. After all 5-7 years is a huge commitment. However, looking at this realistically, if one compared the number of people who obtain PhDs versus the number that actually obtain full time employment (and tenure even) in the academy, how do we address the remaining individuals whose careers didn't turn out as expected? After all, there will inevitably be numerous brilliant and talented people who unfortunately will fit this category.
This is where I agree with Bill–a person who feels forced or even deliberately chooses to leave the academy for a myriad of practical reasons (financial, family, etc.) shouldn't be viewed as less of a person or a copout. Granted, others here can comment at greater length regarding what skills they obtained from a PhD program than I could, but I will add two cents here: as a person who was a research associate at a nonprofit organization this past year, I can say analytical skills, critical thinking, editing, and writing all were put to good use. Sure, the research and writing were different in both style and substance than typical academic works, but this doesn't mean that an academic program doesn't provide skills that can be used elsewhere. Furthermore, as part of my job, I assisted fellows who were either scholars or practitioners–having a basic understanding of research methods and methodologies was invaluable in terms of providing research assistance to both groups; language skills (proficiency in Arabic) was extremely helpful too.
At the end of the day, I question if a greater struggle occurs then over professional identity shift. To leave the academy even for a year or two and work for another institution with a vastly different culture and social practices requires dramatic readjustment, but ultimately, it can be very rewarding. As a person who is returning to the academy for grad school, I feel that I look at it, myself, and others through a broader lens than would have been possible otherwise. I myself hope and would love to have an academic career, but I know now that if it doesn't work out for reasons beyond my control, I wouldn't take it personally and wouldn't see my professional career as being over. In fact, I would argue that's a healthier way of looking at it, given that it would be unfortunate to see minted PhDs experience a professional identity crisis if their academic careers don't pan out.
@PTJ, that’s why the good lord invented spell-check ;)
It is a point well taken. I think there are two questions 1) should students who do not aspire to be professors invest in a PhD, and 2) once invested, if a student determines that they no longer want the life of an academic (or can’t find employment) how can their department support their move outside of academia.
We can have a long debate about #1, whose answer I think rests largely on what the market for non-academic PhD’s looks like. And I would agree that, on balance, students are not well served investing in a PhD program where the specific subject matter does not provide a great deal of variation in terms of professional opportunities. Admittedly, the non-academic job market is not that large or as coherent as the academic market, but there is one nonetheless. There are not many jobs that require a PhD in a specific field, but there are many that value the skills that can be obtained along the way—whether they be statistical, language focused as Talleyrand points out, economic or financial, or biological/chemical. The pharma industry hires tons of PhDs for both research and commercial positions. Wall Street hires PhDs in physics, mathematics, and finance. Consulting firms hire PhD’s for both technical, statistical skills but also for their research, methodological, writing, and critical thinking skills (this is where my training has paid direct dividends).Â
The options shrink for the specific subject matter of poli sci and IR, but I would argue that the broader skills are in demand—you just need to know where to look. And that is a big problem. Many people don’t know where to look and are not assisted either because their professors frown on those alternate career paths or because they wouldn’t know where to begin themselves. Given the ever increasing number of students whose money programs accept are going to face this problem they need to either become more accepting of alternate career paths and make a conscious effort to understand what is possible so they can help students with that transition or frankly drastically reduce the numbers they accept into programs.
I have actually never heard of our faculty telling advanced grad students that there is no world outside of academia. It is true that PhDs in IR or polisci that are highly specialized cannot easily be widely applied, but that's true for many areas. Students need to acquire and document specific skills: quantitative, analytical, linguistic, etc. preferably more than one.
       Where faculty need to be more frank is in discouraging students from pursuing PhDs in high hopes of a tenure-track research university position. Those interested in teaching institutions (e.g. liberal arts colleges, state colleges, etc) have a better crack.
There's also an ethical question of sorts worth considering here: should an educator/advsior take it upon his/herself to “discourage” any person from obtaining any form of education for any reason? Does this constitute an imposition of one's value judgment on others? Does it effectively silence alternative views of the profession and its role in the social world writ large?
One could argue there's a difference between laying the cards out as an advisor and telling students X decision will likely involve Y costs and produce Z consequences. However, this is arguably different from blatant discouragement, which seems to undermine the vocation of sorts here through telling students what they “ought” to do in a sense or which paths they “should” take, instead of allowing them to openly evaluate the consequences of multiple courses of action, then develop their own conclusion. It's an assumption worth questioning in order to elucidate as many aspects of the discussion as possible. Practically speaking, students should be aware of the heavy costs involved in pursuing a PhD and the mindset it requires, but I wonder is it possible to achieve this awareness without discouragement?