https://www.chronicle.com/article/She-Wrote-a-Farewell-Letter-to/242564
Interesting piece on a academic who is giving up.
It’s just a case of supply and demand.
plus a fundamental shift in third level structures. The number of tenure positions has fallen substantially- ~20% in the last 20 years, and the number of contract positions has more than doubled, but the structure of the jobs hasn’t changed so your choices as a prof are either tenure (fewer and fewer, but safe forever) or contract (more and more, but no benefits and no job security- 1 to 3 year contracts with no promise of renewal). Very few jobs where the minimum requirement is a PhD but you have less job security than the department secretary or the custodian.
yup, academe is a really tough industry.
To many universities have forgotten their most important constituents: students and professors. The cost of a university education had far outstripped inflation. More and more of their budgets go to bloated administrative staffs and debt service on impressive new buildings. Professors are getting squeezed with higher workload and fewer tenured positions. Students pay higher and higher tuition. This is a disturbing trend for both private and public colleges.
For public universities, state support has declined somewhat, but not as much as is often reported on a constant-dollar basis.
It’s supply and demand but there are policies (university, governmental, etc.) that are shaping both the supply and demand sides.
I think what it means for young folks trying to enter a PhD program, though, is that they should think critically about this career decision. These days, becoming a tenure-track professor (particularly in the humanities) is difficult and far from guaranteed. So if someone wants to get a PhD - especially if they don’t have the chops to get into an elite PhD program - they should consider whether they’d be okay with the idea of studying something for 6-8 years and then pivoting into a completely different career field at the end. If that person really loves studying English literature or history or philosophy or whatever, then that may end up being fine for them - they can spend 7 years answering questions of deep interest to them, try their hand at the academic market, and if it doesn’t work out go into Plan B. But if you entered the doctoral program with the primary goal of becoming a professor and will be disappointed if it doesn’t happen…well, maybe consider doing something else.
The over-production of PhDs is not news by any means. 40 years ago, I attended a conference session at the annual meeting of the primary association for my then undergraduate major on the topic of what to do outside the field with your PhD. The presenters on the panel had all given up the tenure hunt, and had transitioned into something else. The only detail that I can specifically remember from the presentation was that at least one had found work as a grant-writer.
Several career changes later (no PhD but two un-related master’s degrees) I now work in an adjunct-only situation. I hate the lack of promotion possibilities, the lack of benefits, and the hovering administrators who bean-count my teaching hours to make certain that I never get more than the set maximum of hours. However, my job is basically secure, and as the second job for the family is not absolutely necessary to keep us afloat. Those who are their own bread-winners are in a very different situation, and my heart truly goes out to them.