Graduate School Is a Means to a Job

[lifeofbai]

Graduate School Is a Means to a Job

I thought this was a pretty good article in The Chronicle; it gives some really good advice. It is geared more towards the humanities/social sciences so some of the advice applies more to those areas (e.g. going on the market while ABD... that seems to be much more common in these fields). But most of the advice

Comments

[heyiya]

That advice, with a few exceptions, hews fairly close to the actual path I have taken. But whenever I read it in Kelsky's words, I feel intensely depressed and disgusted with the world.

[nexrad]

This is really solid advice. Although, I'd like to pony-up some additional recommendations especially for those in the social sciences. As someone who's successfully defended the doctorate and is now a finalist at a half-dozen or so great positions ranging from post-docs to full tenure-track deals, I think what I've done has paid off (or seems very likely to).

Tips for Social Science Majors Especially

1) Publish publish publish! Beginning your first day of graduate school you absolutely must be thinking about publishing. Do absolutely anything at all necessary to get your own publishing ball rolling. Unfortunately I didn't realize how seriously critical publishing is for a career in academia until the end of my first year thanks to one bluntly honest professor. My advice is to talk with your faculty advisor and people who may be on your committee. Ask about any old data that have that's sitting untouched that might be good for a quick publication or at least conference poster. Get involved. During your first two years, getting your

[nexrad]

Continued...

3) Do not specialize. Specialization in a single narrow topic or subfield is probably the worst thing a contemporary social scientist can do. From sociology to psychology and beyond, the trend in research and in academia is for everything to go interdisciplinary. It is essential to cultivate a broad training and knowledge or else you will deeply diminish the number of academic jobs you'd qualify for. Accordingly, I strongly recommend all social science majors take significant graduate coursework in at least two subfields. And, if you really want to boost your chances at academic employment, embrace those graduate mathematics courses. In the social sciences especially there is a good demand for new faculty and post docs who have advanced statistics and research design skills. So go overboard in this area even if it is painful. Take statistics classes outside of your department if at all allowed, especially applied statistics offered by maybe the mathematics department or others.

4) Research > Classes > Socialization And

[roseofjuly]

Question: about how many articles do you think a graduate student should have published to have a good shot at 1) top postdoctoral positions and 2) assistant professor jobs? I know this will vary by field and by impact factor, but I seem to have had my ideas skewed by the ridiculously ambitious CVs of our most recent job search (ranging from 17-22 publications, and no one had more than 2 years postdoctoral experience). My advisor told me he had 2, but he also graduated in 1985.

[coendou]

I think the point of the article is a great one, but the specific advice is very humanities-centric and it would be nice if the author acknowledged that so that science grad students (or, especially, those applying to science programs) aren't misled. For instance, if you base your choice of math PhD program on TT placement right out of grad school, then research had better not be a high priority for you because 90+% of research-focused PhDs do a postdoc first, and all those TT placements are likely at teaching schools.

[lifeofbai]

I agree with you on that. This article is definitely humanities-centric, and it would have been nice to have a disclaimer about it.
- Ray

[roseofjuly]

Not only that, but I have never heard a single professor encourage students in the social sciences and natural/physical sciences to sole teach a class. It's unnecessary for job placement in our fields, and actually can be detrimental to research and publication. I was wondering how I was supposed to cram this all into 5 years, 2-3 years of which are spent taking coursework and passing exams, when your comment made me realize that he's making these suggestions based on graduate students who are looking at 7-10 years of study in their fields, and thus have time (maybe) to teach a sole instructor course.

I was also thinking that getting a recommendation from a scholar outside of your home department is what postdocs are for.

[cosmicwonder]

I wish I could have read this article before I started grad school.

[bitchy_vegan]

I agree with her advice as well, though I took a different route through the humanities PhD. Yet, I am sort of surprised at her emphasis on going on the market while still just ABD. My department would not support anyone's search unless they had a defense date already planned and which they could refer to in their application materials. I also have gotten the sense (I'm a Visiting Assistant Professor now, and our department is running some searches) that a lot of search committees aren't even looking at the ABD candidates--that their stuff just gets immediately passed over, what with all of the more advanced candidates on the job market right now. So, while on the one hand, it's good to get prepping on your app materials, you might not even get an interview or call if you're still ABD.

Now, I'm not sure if this applies far and wide--what have others observed about this?

[heyiya]

The idea is that you should go out for a 'practice year' with low expectations, I think... I am not sure I agree. I could have gone out last year and didn't, because I chose to use my last year of funding to write a dissertation I could feel really proud of and publish more instead. Having watched many close friends on the market, I knew it would be emotionally consuming. I did in fact go out ABD, but I had a full draft of my diss (albeit a still vague defense date) and I did well (I got multiple campus visits and a TT job)--but I know that some positions, for which I would have hoped to be a candidate of interest due to my research area and didn't get any bites from, seem to have interviewed mostly postdocs, so I think it's a factor.

Go out for a practice year if you really feel you need it, I think, and know yourself in terms of how much the emotional investment might hold you back.

[cosmicwonder]

I don't think this is always the case. At least at my university, ABDs have been short-listed for humanities/social science TT jobs although I haven't heard of one actually getting the job. I really think it depends on what the department is looking for. I've heard through the grape-vine that my university is interested in hiring ABDs because they want some young "fresh" faces in the departments, but also because they can justify paying them less. However, this doesn't make much sense if they aren't actually hiring these ABDs.

[coaldustcanary]

In my social science field, it's absolutely expected that everyone goes out on the market during their dissertation year. It's pretty common to hire ABDs in my field, though, especially now that hiring has picked up again somewhat. (Last year it picked up a little, this year it picked up significantly more, by the numbers, though of course it's still a rough market.) For instance, of the 4 people I know ABD on the market now in my department, we have one who scored a TT offer, and 2 who have gotten shortlisted to the top 2 or 3, with on-campus interviews, at major research schools. I don't think any of them had firm defense dates when they started sending out applications in September, and only the one who did score a job has one even now, I think. The rest are defending "in the summer sometime".

My guess is that this is very field-dependent.