<p>Iām an English prof. In the mid-1970s I was in the middle of a biochemistry major, and doing fairly well at it, when I decided to chuck that and do what I really loved and was good at. My parents were horrified, sure I would never be able to support myself. But in fact Iāve done pretty well for myself financially, and I love almost every aspect of my job.</p>
<p>Your daughter should inform herself thoroughly and get good advising from faculty mentors. Academic jobs in the humanities, especially tenure-track jobs at good universities, are very, very hard to get. The current recession has only made a bad situation worse, as many institutions replace full-time, tenure-track faculty with part-time adjuncts who are typically poorly paid, lack benefits, and have no job security at all. Your daughter should not ignore these facts. She will need not only to be talented and hardworking, but be willing to move anywhere in the nation or the world for that first job. She may have to spend years in a commuting relationship if married or partnered to another young academic. When I taught at Princeton in the 1980s, it seemed the entire junior faculty was on the train to the Newark Airport on the weekends, flying to Boston or Rochester or Los Angeles or Dallas to visit their significant others. Our best friends were a couple in a commuting relationship between Berkeley and NYU (and considered themselves lucky because they both had excellent jobs). The people who succeed are, on the whole, very singleminded about their professional lives and good at deferred gratification. The system can be hard on women because, for many of them, the period during which they are trying to qualify for tenure, and therefore teaching/publishing very hard, overlaps with their last chance to have kids. </p>
<p>Many people who love to read and think about literature wash out of PhD programs because they have trouble doing the highly independent, generally solitary work required in humanities research. Others have trouble on a day-to-day basis combining the short-term stuff (planning tomorrowās class) with the long-term stuff (writing a scholarly book that will take years to complete). As an undergraduate, your daughter should write an honors thesis, which will give her some experience framing a longer project semi-independently, and will show her whether she enjoys this kind of work.</p>
<p>Your daughter should go to the best program she can get intoāthe quality of her faculty supervisors and mentors will be criticalābut she should borrow as little money as possible. If sheās a topnotch student, she should be able to get a fellowship or teaching assistantship that will pay most of her expenses. Then she should get through the program as expeditiously as she can (in 5 or 6 years). Lots of people get stuck at the dissertation stage and have trouble either finishing, or committing to another career path. So they dither around for a decade or so. </p>
<p>If your daughter does a PhD within a reasonable time-frame and, in fact, isnāt able to get an academic job, all is not lost. She will be in her late 20s, and have excellent writing, research, and time-management skills. She will have teaching experience, which should give her some confidence presenting in front of groups. Most of my students have gotten academic jobs (not necessarily at the elite institutions they were originally dreaming of) but some work outside academiaāone is an insurance executive, several work in media and publishing companies, one founded a tutoring company, a few teach at private high schools. The jobs they get, in a variety of endeavors, donāt require a PhD but they are able to use their skills to succeed at them once theyāre hired.</p>