Each August, my team and I lead a Faculty Job Market Bootcamp, a weeklong virtual conference for graduate students and postdocs interested in applying for faculty positions. This year, we asked participants to share their biggest fear about the job search. What was clear: They know the academic market is very competitive, and that the odds of securing a tenure-track position are steep. What keeps them up at night is figuring out what to do about their lack of options.
How, they wonder, do you assess your odds of finding a teaching job? At what point should you make the decision to pivot to another career path, and where do you start?
I lead the Center for Graduate Career Success, which works with 80 colleges to offer digital job-search training to graduate students and postdocs. In May, I wrote about how to prepare for what looks to be the “worst job market in a generation.” What I want to share in this article are steps you can take to evaluate the job market in your discipline, gauge your competitiveness for tenure-track positions, and figure out if a faculty job is even right for you. I also want to offer a few tips on how to identify work options outside of academe where you can build a meaningful career while being true to your values.
Are there faculty openings in your discipline? Temporary teaching and research positions abound, but not the permanent, full-time ones. For several decades now, the trend has been fewer and fewer tenure-track openings, even as the number of people graduating with Ph.D.s has steadily increased. So your job search needs to begin with a realistic assessment of the faculty market in your field.
The best place to start gauging that is to look at crowdsourced job boards, such as the Academic Jobs Wiki, that track searches by discipline. Job candidates post information on those boards about openings they’ve applied for, and then give updates on whether they were asked to submit documents, were granted an interview, or received a job offer.
Start scrolling though the relevant job boards, but don’t just look at this year’s postings. For each of the last three or so years, count the number of openings in your subfield. Don’t include jobs that are outside of your discipline. Keep in mind that the most hard-to-get positions tend to be those that don’t list a specific rank or specialization. Go ahead and include such open-rank jobs in your count — just be aware that the odds of landing one are exceedingly slim and your goal in this exercise is to gather a realistic picture of the market in your field.
For example: My Ph.D. is in early American history. According to the jobs wiki for history, there were between seven and nine tenure-track jobs in my subfield for each of the past three years. Early American history is a popular subfield that produces a lot of new Ph.D.s each year, so clearly, if I were going on the job market now, it would be rough going. While I could still apply for those few openings, it would make sense to begin exploring my nonacademic options.
In fields with few openings and lots of applicants, leaving the faculty-career path can feel less like a choice and more like being kicked out of the academic club. It can be a painful realization that the profession you’ve been working toward for years isn’t viable. I certainly felt that way in 2012 when I left academe.
What you learn from this exercise can help you decide whether to stay the course on the faculty market or start a nonacademic search. It’s very difficult to do both types of searches simultaneously and do them well. You may decide to try your luck on an academic job first and see if you land interviews. Most academic jobs are posted in the fall, so you should know by December or January if you have any viable options. If you don’t, consider pivoting in January to an industry search. It typically takes six to nine months to land a nonacademic job, once you’ve identified a new career path.
Are you a competitive candidate for the available faculty positions? Once you have your list of job postings from recent years, go to the faculty page of each hiring department and see who they chose. Take a look at people’s CVs: Where did they earn their doctorates? How many publications, postdocs, grants, and fellowships did they have?
Does your CV look like theirs? If not, the odds of securing a tenure-track job are not in your favor. I frequently receive emails from doctoral students and postdocs asking some version of “How can I compete with someone who has more publications than I do?” — and the answer is, you can’t. Search committees will always lean toward hiring someone with lots of publications and/or prestigious grants. That’s because the scholarly output of faculty members is a key part of how institutions are ranked.
Keep in mind, though, that small regional campuses tend to favor candidates with area ties (maybe they earned their Ph.D. at one of the state’s universities). Such hiring committees are interested in candidates who share the college’s mission and culture, understand the student population, and prefer living in their state or region. So even if your degree isn’t from an elite institution, you may find that you’re competitive for jobs at regional campuses.
Besides doing research on the faculty market in your field, look into how alumni from your Ph.D. program have fared. Map out what it looks like to be a competitive candidate for the kinds of positions you are most interested in (research or teaching, large university or small college).
It’s not easy to set aside a dream, but if the facts you’ve marshalled suggest that (a) there are few jobs in your subfield and that shows no signs of changing, and (b) you’re a long shot for the openings that do exist, then you have a choice to make:
- Pursue adjunct positions for a few years in the hopes of increasing your prestige. Proceed with caution. These jobs must add prestige to your record. They must be steps you’ve seen several others take in your discipline. I’ve spoken with Ph.D.s who have held multiple adjunct positions while trying to publish, but being an adjunct isn’t prestigious. I’ve also seen people stay in the same postdoctoral position for years while more successful applicants moved to more prestigious institutions or labs. Not all opportunities are equal. And don’t ignore the financial implications of working in a series of low-paying academic jobs.
- Exit academe and pivot into a career field where you have a future. My recommendation to most Ph.D.s and postdocs is that you cut your losses. People typically double down on more academic work experience because they worry they won’t be happy doing something else, or they don’t think they’re qualified for other types of work. But once you realize that there are plenty of things you can do in life that will pay you a living wage, provide work/life balance, and be intellectually engaging and rewarding, you realize that staying in higher ed indefinitely and at all costs makes little sense.
Should you leave academe sooner rather than later? Answering that question is not just a matter of combing through employment stats. An academic job requires a lot of sacrifice, so before you start chasing the few tenure-track opportunities in your field, consider if you’ll truly be happy doing faculty work. I have spoken to many midcareer faculty members making career transitions who confess that they never really enjoyed being a faculty member — they were just good at the work and felt obligated to keep going. It’s OK if, during your time in academe, you’ve had second thoughts about faculty life.
Everyone defines career satisfaction differently. A good job doesn’t have to fulfill every aspect of your life or identity. Career satisfaction is achieved when you have colleagues you like and respect, are engaged in tasks that utilize your key skills and talents, and work for an organization that aligns with your values and compensates you fairly.
Build a metric you can use to evaluate various career options, including the faculty path. Take some time to reflect on the things that energize you about your research, teaching, and service to the profession. Think about the types of people you enjoy working with, your work style and approach, and your short- and long-term financial goals.
Working as a postdoc or a graduate teaching assistant gives doctoral students a taste of academic life, but being a full-time faculty member is quite different. On the tenure track, you are responsible for developing, designing, and teaching multiple courses while also publishing, serving on committees, writing grants, managing a lab, and advising students — all of which is quite different from the work obligations of a TA or a postdoctoral researcher.
Plus, you will very likely end up working at a different type of institution from the university where you did your graduate training. A tenured faculty position at a regional comprehensive, a small liberal-arts college, a historically Black college, or a community college is not the same as being a professor at an R1 university.
To learn more about different types of faculty positions, reach out to alumni and set up informational interviews. Talk to faculty members at teaching-intensive colleges about their course load and advising obligations. Learn more from university professors about the pressures of grant writing to fund a lab and of hiring and managing research assistants. Ask people about their work schedules and compensation. How is tenure determined at their type of institution? What do they enjoy about their work? What do they wish was different?
Then turn the career spotlight on yourself. Compare what you’ve learned with your own values and interests. Which teaching positions would you find most enjoyable? Which aspects of faculty work matter most to you?
An academic search can be all-consuming. I’ve heard many Ph.D.s and postdocs say they feel pressured to prioritize getting a tenure-track job — any tenure-track job — over everything else (location, family, friends, lifestyle). Some are even embarrassed to admit that other things matter more to them than the job, especially if it means relocating to a place they don’t want to live (as it often does).
Walking away from a faculty career isn’t giving up; it’s choosing your battles. Maybe you prefer to live in a city rather than a college town. Or you hate traffic and can’t stand big cities. Maybe you don’t want to live in a state or a region that is unfriendly to people who are LGBT or members of racial-minority groups. Maybe a swim in the ocean is the best medicine after a long day. Or you love the mountains. Maybe you have a heart condition that requires you to be near a hospital. Or you don’t want a high-stress job that mentally exhausts you every day.
All of those factors — however big or small — are important. Leaving academe means you can put your own priorities at the center of your job search.
Where else can you find career satisfaction? Ph.D.s and postdocs often stay in higher ed by default. Most of us have had very little work experience outside of a campus, so we stick to what we know and feel stuck.
But there’s no big secret to finding career options. The best way to start imagining a new professional pathway is to talk with Ph.D.s from your discipline who already have. Learn what they do. What do they love (and hate) about their new work? Do they ever think about going back to academe (for most, I’d wager, the answer is no)? What advice do they have for a Ph.D. who wants to break into a new profession? Focus your questions on your core workplace values and key skills.
In my experience, former academics are generous with their time, and happy to talk with Ph.D.s mulling a similar leap. They know what you’re going through — the doubts you have about giving up on faculty life — and they will offer you sound advice and realistic encouragement.
Challenge your assumptions. Be curious. Cast a wide net and talk to anyone who will talk to you. Most Ph.D.s who leave academe end up working in careers that do not require their specific subject-matter expertise. That will no doubt give you pause. But likewise, most former academics discover that nonfaculty careers can be incredibly rewarding — with better compensation and work/life balance, not to mention more choices about where to work and with whom.
Looking back now on my own departure, I have no regrets. My company is tiny, with five people, including me. Four of us have Ph.D.s, and we all agree that not getting an academic job was the best thing that ever happened to us. We left faculty life because of a combination of factors: the lack of opportunity, the need to make a living, the desire for a personal life.
If you decide to leave, it won’t be easy. And you will have moments of despondency and stress in the transition. Just know that there’s an entire army of Ph.D.s out here rooting for your success.
