My first indication that a student is interested in graduate school is typically abrupt. I’ll receive an email with a non-descript heading that asks sheepishly for a letter of recommendation. It’s certainly not wrong to ask a professor for a letter of recommendation over email, but when there are 3 sentences doing it then I know there’s some kind of problem.

The decision to go to graduate school is a serious one that should be made with input from your professors, friends, and family. Your experiences in graduate education will be incredibly important to your future career prospects. It’s much more important than an undergraduate degree, largely because undergraduate degrees are more general. Graduate degrees are specialized, and a good program can put you far ahead in your professional goals. A bad program can sabotage your future options, so take time in this decision. I always tell my students that it’s perfectly fine to take a year or two off before making this decision. You can’t be over-prepared for school, but you most certainly can be under-prepared.

In my decade of time in higher education, I’ve encountered a shockingly large number of professors and other academic staff that absolutely despise their jobs. I know this is incomprehensible to many students. It certainly was to me. From the perspective of a graduate student, my professors had everything I wanted. They were teaching graduate courses with amazing students, reading about whatever suited them, and they only had to go to campus two days a week.

Spending more time in academia will deepen your understanding of this issue. There is a lot to dislike in academia. Many graduate students and professors hate writing. Writing is hard, and writing for publication is even harder. Many academics have to force themselves to get writing done only to receive mean-spirited, unnecessarily cruel rejections from peer reviewers (I once received an 8-page, single-spaced rejection from one reviewer that called into question my academic credentials and sanity). Grad school or faculty work will be an absolute nightmare if you aren’t somewhat comfortable with writing and even more comfortable with a constant stream of rejections.

I know even more people that despise teaching. I’m not referring to a dislike here, but a deep-seated hatred for students, their condition, and the act of teaching. I knew one GA (graduate assistant, sometimes called a “GTA” or graduate teaching assistant) that was so terrified of speaking in front of people that they had panic attacks before teaching their courses (weekly at best, daily at worst). I taught next to one GA that was otherwise a quiet, even keeled sort of person- except when they were teaching. This particular GA had a habit of screaming at their students during and after class (like actually screaming!). I’ve known a whole mess of faculty that only show up to work when they are teaching. I worked with one faculty member that would drive to campus, wait in their car, teach four classes in a row, and then return to their vehicle and leave. This particular person confided in me that they so despised university work that they couldn’t stomach being on campus. In short, academia is like any other work place in that most people dislike their work.

Being a professor now is not the same as it was a decade ago. The job is changing considerably and constantly. Most people find that they are doing a large amount of work they did not sign up for. In particular, increased administrative burdens are falling on faculty. I began teaching in 2011, and, at that point, I was responsible for turning in my syllabus at the beginning of the semester and submitting my grades on time. That was more or less it. The administration of my course was my business and my business alone. The underlying logic was academic freedom, or the belief that professors are experts and should be allowed to lead their courses and research independent from the whims of administrators. This principle has eroded considerably in what is now often called “the administrative university.” I’ll briefly identify a list of new responsibilities that have crept in since I began teaching:

• Entering student progress reports into broken software 2x per semester (now 3)
• Submitting student athlete progress reports 4x a semester
• Coordinating with students success staff to support under-performing students (now coordinating with two offices)
• Completing a long and arduous process for travel reimbursement
• Submitting syllabi to multiple entities on campus (department, college)
• Completing mandatory IT training (now yearly)
• Completing title IX training (also yearly)
• Completing campus safety training (less frequent, but generally 2 a year)
• Completing anti-corruption training (semesterly)
• Completing yearly state-mandated motor vehicle training (even though I don’t have access to a state vehicle)
• Attending an ever-increasing set of “professional development modules” that are tangentially related to teaching
• Outreach to under-performing students early and often, providing proof of this
• Longer and longer yearly self-evaluation paperwork
• More meetings about campus initiatives that are not directly related to teaching or research
• Department/program advertising and outreach (now faculty work, often completed in conjunction with formal marketing departments)
• Creating flyers, websites, degree plans, and other marketing materials
• Traveling to schools to identify potential students
• Attending to students’ emotional well-being
• Filing expense reports for copy paper

Each of these items may seem rather small, and they are. Many of these responsibilities are very important, and have changed universities for the better. The trick is that they are added each semester, or perhaps year. Adding a single one does very little. It’s only after a period of time that they begin totaling several hours a week. In short, academic work is changing. It is becoming more managerial, less creative, and more like the soul-draining jobs available in the corporate world, the same jobs that many students are retreating from in the first place. Many students feel academia is an escape from corporate-style work, but the same management practices that have made corporate work so terrible have taken up residence in many university administrations. Ask any professor you know about this problem and they will have a similarly long list of creeping responsibility. It’s not isolated to a particular region or kind of school, either. It’s universal.

As explained in the previous chapter, there are many benefits of going to graduate school. It can be a great decision, and unlock a world of professional possibilities for a fresh graduate. That said, there are many drawbacks of going to graduate school. While coursework and research can be engaging, they can be enormously stressful. I’ve seen many, many students become utterly paralyzed during their thesis or dissertation phase. Certain programs are cut throat, and encourage constant competition between students.  Advisors can be downright nasty and abusive. The requirements for most degrees are a labyrinthine mess. It requires a kind of constant, heightened attention for years that contributes to depression and anxiety. Most graduate students suffer from symptoms of both of these conditions, and school works to exacerbate those issues. It took me years to not experience a spike in blood pressure when I got an email because I spent years waiting for major decisions in my life to be announced over email, like the results of my PhD qualifying exams or job offers.

A PhD, in particular, can take a decade in some cases leading to what is called “opportunity cost,” or the lost income and jobs that other individuals in your age group will get by virtue of not being in graduate school. I emerged from my PhD program with a computer, a mattress, and a handful of clothes. Most people my age spent my PhD years getting married or moving into their first (or second) house. Others were established young professionals that were now able to travel abroad and have some job stability.

Going to graduate school can, in many ways, feel like a giant step backward. Graduate stipends pay the absolute bare minimum. Many students, faced with long hours, sacrifice gym time and healthy eating for all-nighters and hot pockets. Graduate students must often live in student housing that is disgusting and cheap. Further, that giant step backward can seem normal when you are surrounded by other graduate students for years. One day, late in my degree, I attended a “lunch” with a bunch of graduate students that had quickly deteriorated into tequila shots. It was 1PM on a Tuesday. By 5PM people were puking in the bar’s trash can (and by people, I mean thirty-something adults). Depending on the culture of a program, this kind of behavior might be completely normal, or even encouraged. Some programs and some students treat graduate school like an extended undergraduate degree, a chance to permanently sleep in and get day drunk on a Tuesday.

You Want to Be a Professor

This is where I lose people. Why the hell would a person even consider graduate school if they didn’t want to be a professor?! Simply put, the odds are against you, doubly (if not triply) so if you are a first-generation student or you come from a less privileged background.

There is a bait and switch happening in academic departments across the country that is downright cruel, and professors are unethical for allowing it to happen. It works something like this: A professor receives the email I describe at the beginning of this chapter, a 3-sentence solicitation for a letter of recommendation. Rather than refusing to write the letter until enough information is known, the professor blindly agrees. To “write” the letter, they simply insert the name of a student into a few parts of a generic letter of rec. The student gets accepted to a middling or poor program of study, receives no proper mentoring, and is thus never actually qualified for academic work. They spend years of their lives toiling in academic labor without knowing they were set up for failure from the start, passively shoved down a growing pipeline of eager students. On the other hand, students that have access to working professors (like parents or close family friends) are informally mentored over their entire lives to not fall into these pitfalls. It’s a case of the haves and have-nots, and most students fall into the have-not category.

You’ve likely heard gloom and doom about the job market, and it’s largely true. Search for the employment statistics in your field and you will likely find nothing. Most professional organizations don’t even track open professor positions vs PhDs produced. You may some information for your field, and it probably won’t be good.

We have a problem with exceptionalism in academia, and it’s particularly strong among first generation students. We apply the all too familiar cultural logic of poverty and financial success to graduate school. We think “I’m going to be the one that gets out,” probably because our family members and teachers have been telling us this for decades. It’s easy to map that logic onto job prospects, and think “I’m different than those other people because I work 10x harder than everyone else.” It’s an identity issue, and it’s one way that we make up for our lack of parents that are professors. It becomes a personal goal for many students to try and escape their upbringing through higher education.

To be clear, we have been sold a lie. Advanced degrees will not automatically lift you to the middle class. In many cases, the lure of such things can be used to further your oppression, saddling you with debt and fewer prospects.

I frequently tell students the academic job market has very little to do with them. It’s a huge, incomprehensible numbers game. It’s cold, impersonal, and cares little for your ambition or work ethic. The odds are stacked against everyone save a few elite candidates from a few elite schools, and it’s not your fault. Every year, a huge number of fresh PhDs wades back into the job search with a little more experience, possibly a few more publications. The odds get worse over time. I’ve heard this referred to as a “the timer.” Failing to secure full-time employment within 3-5 years of graduation often means full-time work as an academic is no longer an option. After all, schools have access to this permanent, cycling crop of fresh graduate students. Why would they want one that’s stale?

I understand why professors don’t want to continually crush the hopes and dreams of their students, especially when we get to do it from behind a desk in an office on a campus. It seems like bullshit. Why should professors get to tell the next generation of students that they will never get to be professors? Simply put, we see how the sausage is made in higher education. We know the large number of people that didn’t get academic jobs. Those people were our friends, and they had the same hopes and dreams as all prospective students. We have seen close friends struggle for years to get academic positions while living in abject poverty without health insurance. It’s not pleasant, and I would be a bad person to not warn students of these realities. I hope seeing this perspective humanizes things and explains the logic of the job market a bit better.

Other professors have what’s called “survivorship bias.” They are surrounded by other people that also managed to secure academic employment. Over time, they become unable to view the job market from a less-biased stance, believing that they are exceptional and that any exceptional person should easily be able to secure academic employment. This is not true at all.

Many of the tenure track searches that I’ve observed or served on have attracted hundreds of qualified applicants, which is to say hundreds of people with a PhD, teaching experience, and a few solid publications under their belt. People from good schools with good reputations and good letters of reference. Many students feel as if I’m attempting to personally insult them when I explain the job market, and that I’m suggesting in some kind of roundabout way that they aren’t intelligent or don’t work hard. That’s not the case. Academia is absolutely full of individuals that are incredibly smart and hardworking. It’s not that most students aren’t smart; it’s that everyone else is just as smart and just as dedicated.

All of my advice and understanding boils down to this concept: you can do everything right and still not get a job. You can publish at a feverish pace in graduate school and still receive no offers for a first-round interview. Through no fault of your own, you may end up with no options for full academic work. None of this means you are a bad person, it’s just the natural result of an overloaded system.

The best metaphor for academic work that I’ve encountered is professional sports. Many players sign on to college teams with a distant dream that they will make it to the pros. Most get an education with part of their school paid for, and then they do something else. Academia is very similar. If you do intend on pursuing graduate studies, do it for the love of the game and not for the shot at the pros. There are also ways to prepare yourself for eventual non-academic work during your degree.

I advise all of my students to generate a plan A, B, and C before they go to graduate school. Plan D is professor. Plans A-C should involve jobs that are adjacent to academic work. For instance, if you are passionate about African American literature, you should investigate some potential career options that allow you to act on that passion. I’ve known graduate students that started nonprofits, moved into broad public sector employment, or started their own businesses. Developing plans A-C will allow you to tailor some of your coursework toward those ends. You could ask professors about building websites as a part of your seminar paper projects. This could allow you to experiment with web and digital publishing design. If you want to teach (at any level), you could build unit plans in conjunction with a traditional seminar paper. Many professors want you to succeed, but they are accustomed to students that let the professor drive the experience. Most of my professors in graduate school adopted a laissez faire approach to graduate instruction. They would assist students with just about anything, but the student needed to initiate the discussion. Ask questions and ask for help. This is something first gen students, in particular, are notoriously bad at. We are trained to not bother important people that are presumably too busy to accommodate our needs.

With some preparation and thinking, you could have three possible plans to begin acting on after graduation with some evidence of your proficiency in those areas that you could present to potential employers, but do not under any circumstances go to graduate school with the sole goal of becoming a professor.

Wasted Time, Wasted Effort

It is possible to secure full time academic employment. It happens all the time. Someone is accepting those jobs, so how are they doing it? Job hunting in academia is a full-time job. My first year on the market, I sent somewhere around 120 job application packets, which take, on average, 2-4 hours to complete (there are apps that can take far more time). Outside of prepping the packets, I also spent considerable time searching the far corners of the internet for academic work and cultivating other options should no academic work be available. Of those 120 job applications, I received roughly 10 first-round interviews and 4 offers to visit campuses with 1 offer for employment extended. To put this in context, PhD students spend their last few semesters finishing up a dissertation and applying for jobs. I wrote the bulk of my dissertation during summer and winter semesters, so I had a lot of time to devote to the job market and my teaching responsibilities. I firmly believe that I would not have gotten a job if I had to do the bulk of my dissertation writing during regular semesters. There simply would not have been enough time and energy to do both things well. A typical Fall/Spring day looked something like this:

7:30 Wake up, drink coffee, read over academic news

8:00- 10:00 Teaching/office hours/course prep/grading

10:00-12:00 Dissertation writing/edits/formatting (working lunch)

12:00- 4:00 Job applications

4:00- 6:00 Research on alternate career options/ other jobs in academia

All told, I spent about 4-5 hours a day for the better part of 9 months on finding a single job. That’s over 1000 person hours to secure a single position. I was one of the lucky ones. The job I found was at a large university that was not facing impending budget crisis. My teaching load was fair, there was support for research, and my colleagues were awesome. Many in my cohort were less lucky.  In that amount of time, I could have certainly found a full-time job, likely with better pay than what my academic appointment offered. I could have likely cultivated several skill sets during that 1000 hours that would have better positioned me for the larger job market.

The long odds and enormous amount of time it takes to get an academic job (or not) is emotionally draining to the extreme. It’s a lot of wasted time and effort, especially if you are one of the many that don’t get an academic job. That time could be spent on endeavors with greater chances of success.

Location, Location, Location

I listed location in this subsection because it’s a very important point. Most beginning students don’t have an insider view of the job market. Students with academics in their family have likely had to move several times, and perhaps move to less than desirable locations. When I told most people that I was getting a PhD, they often asked if I planned on living in the same city as my university. This is virtually impossible unless a person adjuncts. Universities are often thrilled to hire their graduates with advanced degrees for administrative jobs that have no business asking for an advanced degree. Universities rarely hire their PhDs for full-time instructional work, and I’ve never heard of a school hiring one of their PhDs for tenure-track work. I’m sure it’s happened in the history of this world, but the odds are so infinitesimal that it’s not worth considering.

PhDs move away, and, in many cases, very far away. You may receive a job offer from a small, rural school that is 2500 miles from your family. The school may be a two-hour drive from the nearest airport, making a quick trip home an impossibility. My first job was 9+ hours of flying from my family home. You may think this is an acceptable price to pay for a job, but your thinking will change as your family members age and have progressively worsening health. The unpredictable nature of the job market means that you may end up in a part of the country you have no desire of living in.

In my own experience, there are actually two job markets. The first job market is the one most people are familiar with. These jobs are at large, resource-rich universities in metropolitan areas. Most academics pursue their PhDs in cities with museums, theatres, music scenes, good hospitals, great schools, and easy access to airports. It’s understandable that most academics would rank these things as highly desirable. In addition, larger schools in urban areas will often pay their professors, much, much more. These are often called R1 schools (classified as Research Intensive, Rank 1). As such, this job market receives the fiercest competition.

There is, however, another market that receives less attention. This market is generally comprised of schools that are in less desirable areas with fewer prospects. Of immediate importance to most academics, the pay is less, and there are less campus resources for completing research. These are often rural schools that may be satellite campuses of larger universities. They often specialize in teaching and will feature substantial teaching loads. Important to many academics is the lack of cultural activities like museums and music scenes. Perhaps most important is the lack of primary and secondary school options. I know PhDs that quit academia before accepting jobs in areas with terrible schools. The future of their children was more important than securing a professorship, which is a fair decision.

I’ve interviewed as such schools before. Most of them are not bad places to work, per se, but they can be very different from the life that most PhD students have grown accustomed to. I interviewed at one teaching college in Texas that literally had nothing in the town. I rented a car at the airport, and drove two hours through a flat, featureless desert. There were 3 country music stations available, often playing the same songs simultaneously. Suddenly, I came upon a small collection of university buildings. The only other features in town were a gas station, a small BBQ restaurant, and a collection of abandoned buildings. All of the faculty lived 45 minutes to 2 hours away from the school, as did the students. When classes weren’t in session, the place was a ghost town. There were literal tumbleweeds skirting across campus during my visit. In disbelief, I turned to one of my interviewers. They told me the real danger of such a setting: tumbleweeds can scratch up the paint job on your car.

Many of the people that worked there were obviously bitter. In one car ride with a search committee member, I was told to run and not look back. Another committee member told me that their life was ruined by accepting this position. It caused the end of a marriage because there were simply no job prospects for the spouse out in the middle of a desert. Such jobs can not only sabotage existing relationships, but prevent future ones. An individual in my cohort interviewed at another small, rural college. They were single at the time, and the search committee chair said it was an excellent college to work at if the candidate had no desire to find a long-term relationship. The chair had been single for 20 years. These positions naturally have much less competition, but they come at serious costs.

First-gen students, in particular, are often eager to please, eager to accept any scraps thrown their way in the pursuit of success. This can be problematic in a job search. Women, people of color, and queer people have serious issues to consider when moving to certain parts of our country, particularly some rural areas. It’s far easier to find a job outside of academia in larger, urban areas.

Surely I’ll Get a Job at a Community College!

I somewhat frequently encounter students that believe they can go to graduate school and then somehow sidestep the pain and misery of the academic job market by parachuting into a cushy position as a professor at a community college. This is not a safe assumption to make.

First, there is nothing wrong with wanting to work at a community college. Many academics end up working at institution types that they are familiar with. Individuals who went to a SLAC (Small/selective liberal arts college) as an undergrad are often drawn to working in the same environment. An academic that began their studies in a community college may want to ultimately work at one. What’s a problem is that many prospective graduate students assume any community college would be desperate to hire a mediocre or low-quality PhD. CCs are just as enthusiastic to hire excellent teacher/scholars as everyone else, and they frequently offer a competitive set of benefits over 4-year schools. I know many academics that started out staunchly opposed to working at a community college that ended up happily working at one once they understood more about them.

The problem is that CCs are not uniform. Some CCs in the UC system, for example, are gigantic schools. If I were to blindfold an academic that worked at a 4 year and transport them to one of these campuses, they would likely tell you that it was a 4-year school. Larger CCs are just as competitive as 4-year schools in terms of jobs. They will offer similar support that 4-year schools do, including library resources and funding for research.

You can also never be too sure of who is applying to what institution and why. I’ve interviewed at a variety of smaller, rural schools. These places may not have much of a reputation in many fields. At one such school, a professor drove me from the airport to my hotel. After chatting for a moment, I quickly discovered this was a prolifically published person in my field that was a recent graduate. I wondered why such an individual was at a tiny college when they probably had many more offers. Unprompted, the person answered my question. Their mother had a stroke the year they were on the job market. While they had several amazing offers, that person opted for this small college because it was less than an hour from the mother’s assisted care facility. You never know who is in the job pool or why, and there are always qualified individuals competing with you in the stack of applications. Don’t underestimate their desire for positions.

You Want the Letters

By the end of my PhD, I was tired, a profound kind of tired. I drank so much coffee during my job interviews that I poisoned myself. Any amount of coffee gave me the shakes and triggered near panic attacks. I stopped drinking coffee entirely for 3 years. At one point, in late April of my last semester, I was planning my non-academic job search. There were about 3 weeks left in the semester. At the conclusion of those 3 weeks, I would be unemployed for the first time since I was 12. Too tired for anger, I floated through the experience.

One day, I went to campus to drop off the signature sheet of my dissertation, something I had done at least 3 times before (my school kept losing them, or making mistakes that required the process of securing 5 signatures start all over again). I was sucking on a vape pen (I did whatever I had to do to avoid re-starting smoking) outside of the English building when I encountered a second year. He congratulated me on a successful defense, which, by this point, seemed like it was years ago and an utterly meaningless exercise. I asked him what he wanted to do, what his career aims were. He told me, above all, that he wanted the letters PhD after his name, and the commensurate respect of all those he encountered. He wanted to know that he could hack it as an academic.

I’ve never heard a more embarrassing motivation for pursuing graduate school. As a matter of principle, I don’t fault first gen students for not knowing what they don’t know. In this case, however, it was hard for me to do so, particularly because I was working on applications for jobs in which I left those letters off my name. They were a liability more than a point of pride.

I’ve also never encountered the respect and deference apparently afforded to some in academia. When most people hear that I’m a professor, they wince, likely a recollection of some horrid professor they encountered in school. To put it in clear terms, the letters PhD are not some magical inscription that grants you access or respect. It is a credential, and, as such, it can help you get the kind of job you want. It does afford one some respect and deference in a classroom setting, though experience and professional conduct are far more important.

If you come from a working-class family like I have, a PhD might have a kind of dual meaning. On the one hand, my family is intensely proud of the fact that I completed an advanced degree. On the other hand, many individuals in my family view academia with intense suspicion. In general, working class families tend to view experience as paramount. Degrees often present a challenge to that model. An individual with a degree may supplant an employee with more experience, thus generating resentment. Those aren’t wrong feelings to have. They are rooted in the experience and culture of this group. It’s important to understand that a PhD may do very little for your reputation, and, in many cases, may actually harm it.

You Aren’t Sure About What You Want to Do, but You are a Good Student

In my personal experience, this is the top reason many students want to go to graduate school. Professionally adrift, academically talented students often view graduate school as a next logical step. There is nothing wrong with this approach. The end of my undergraduate study excited me. My 400 level courses were engaging, and I suddenly became a decent student (it took years for this transformation to occur). I was hungry for more. I wanted to continue studying and learning, though I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do professionally. These feelings and ideas can work as a solid starting point, a kind of springboard for studies, but they won’t be able to sustain you for long. I’ve known many, many graduate students that were good at “doing school.” They were studious, took immaculate notes, completed projects ahead of time. I’ve seen many of these students power through their degrees while being absolutely miserable. Coursework is usually fun for these individuals, but the prospect of writing a dissertation without firm input, deadlines, and rules is maddening. Simply put, being an excellent student will only get you so far in graduate school. If you enter school and discover that you aren’t having a good time, then absolutely consider leaving. You don’t have to stay in school just because you are a talented student.

Making the Decision

After reading these two chapters, the best thing you can do is think. I always tell students to discuss their options widely. Selecting an undergraduate institution is often a very public process, but selecting a graduate program is often much more private, probably because far fewer people are doing it. It’s important to not become too self-absorbed during the process. Talk to friends and family. Assess the impact your moving or pursuing studies would have on those closest to you. Talk to your significant other and/or friends in-depth. Ask your professors for honest evaluations of your work. Don’t just consider the fun parts like moving and studying a subject you are passionate about. Consider unemployment. Consider your local job prospects. Above all, cultivate plan A, B, and C. Research them and come up with some kind of road map for success.  Compare that road map with the likely road map of graduate school. As I mentioned in the first chapter, this decision is ultimately yours, but don’t make it hastily. If you are feeling overwhelmed and unsure, then commit to a year off. If you are overwhelmed and unsure now, then those feelings will likely be amplified in your application materials and in school if you should get in.

If you decide to take time off, but are still interested in graduate school, I recommend reading through this book. It will give you a leg up once you decide to return to the process. In particular, the next chapter will give you a timeline for how applications work in addition to some strategies for successfully pursuing a year or two off.