Saturday, November 02, 2013

Outside academia

The NYT has an article on "The Repurposed Ph.D.: Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It." I didn't see anything too insightful to quote, but there were some links to blogs that might be worthwhile. Are there really lots of people entering PhD programs who are not aware of the meager job prospects?

6 comments:

Alex said...

We don't have a PhD program, and we only send a handful of people to PhD programs each year. However, we have a "pipeline" enthusiast who is trying to promote the PhD path to our students. I should ask him what he tells them about job prospects when he promotes the PhD.

Anonymous said...

Well you got a job, how hard could it be?

Anonymous said...

Unemployment among Physics PhDs is incredibly low. Or do you just mean, job prospects to be a professor at an R1?

Angry said...

Yes, unemployment is low generally, but tenure-track positions, not just at R1 schools, are difficult to get.

As for me, true I found such a job, but I don't think that data point says much about the prospects generally. Indeed, looking around in my field, I see more than a handful of folks whose success in finding tenured employment speaks to...let's just say the non-meritocracy that sometimes dominates.

Unknown said...

When I went to school nobody talked to the profs. They never promoted ms or PhD programs. The scheduling computer was the only friend.

I worked 5+ years in research then went into the real world. I would feel guilty if I had stayed in axhedemia.

Anonymous said...

Why do you assume everyone who gets a PhD wants to go into academia?