It’s that time of year. No matter what you celebrate (if anything) you are going to be invited to parties. Many of these parties will involve talking to people you don’t know very well — the husband of your department chair, the best friend from out of town, the new neighbor from a few streets […]
Read More »Finding Your Way: Academic life as a journey
One of the great attractions of an academic career is the level of autonomy and freedom that you have. Some possible paths are clearly marked. Others are less obvious. Roadblocks are a frequent problem. Regardless of your stage of career, posts in this section help you identify the signposts and make decisions.
PhD programs are not career training
A degree may be necessary but it is never sufficient
There is no job for which an educational qualification is enough to get you hired.
There is no job for which an educational qualification provides all the necessary skills and knowledge.
A degree, whatever it is, is always but one piece of a complex puzzle.
Read More »Shifting the career focus in doctoral education
On Wednesday November 17th, 2010, I spoke to graduate students at Carleton University about careers after grad school. This post is based on part of what I said. It is directed not only to graduate students but also to the faculty that advise them. For most doctoral students, the tenure-track position is the daisy in […]
Read More »What if teaching really is your thing?
As I’ve said before, not all academic jobs are the same. Some people really value teaching. They do it well. They figure out how to do it better. Seeing students get it is what motivates them. They are, as Chris Atherton noted recently, “exactly the kind of person you’d want teaching your kids when they […]
Read More »On advice about publishing before securing an academic job
Your doctoral supervisor (and indeed the entire department) has an interest in you getting a tenure-track job. It is in their interests to give you good advice.
That said, sometimes their knowledge of the labour market is limited. Assume that they have good intentions, but don’t treat their advice as gospel. Things have been changing fast.
Read More »Maybe I’m not crazy
Sometimes I think that you will all just think I’ve lost my mind. (cue Robbie Williams “…It was mine to give away…”) The academic labour market, heck the entire labour market, is going to hell in a handbasket and I’m telling you to think about your passion and your best contribution. I’m suggesting that you […]
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What is your best contribution?
Instead of asking yourself: what you are going to do with all this education you have … Instead of wondering: what you have to do to get someone to hire you … Instead of focusing on all the external expectations, constraints, etc … Why not ask yourself this question? What is my best contribution? How […]
Read More »The value of education
Trying to articulate the value of your PhD is complicated by the fact that debates about the value of education (at any level) are dominated by an instrumentalist, employment preparation discourse. I recall having a conversation with a friend back in the early 1990s in which she told me that her 6 year old son’s […]
Read More »Useful answers for “What are you going to do with that?”
It’s all well and good for me to say it isn’t the right question. People still ask it. People you care about. People you have trouble ignoring or being snarky to. So what do you say? Assume the best intentions Whenever you are faced with a stomach cramp inducing question like this, it is always […]
Read More »What are you going to do with that?
How many people have asked you this question? I bet you’ve lost count. It is such a common question, someone used it as the title of a book. About non-academic careers for PhDs, of course. (It’s a good book. Well worth it.) And it’s probably your number one source of anxiety while working towards your PhD and […]
Read More »Taking responsibility for your PhD
There is a lot of discussion out there about attrition rates (high) and time to completion (long). Beyond asking questions of your prospective programs, what can you do to make sure that you finish and finish in a reasonable time? Take responsibility. Here’s an extended example from one cur
Read More »Why universities are recruiting PhD students
There is a lot of debate about whether we are training too many PhD students (given the demand for academic labour) or too few (given the needs of the so-called knowledge economy). At an individual level, plenty of unemployed PhDs are wondering how they ended up in such a precarious labour market position and why no […]
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