There has been a lot of disparaging remarks on the internet on the value of a PhD and the poor job market in academia for recent graduates. With the slight nudging of Edmund Hart (@DistribEcology) and Jacquelyn Gill (@JacquelynGill), I thought would share my own experiences, in the hopes that it will give others support in the post-PhD job search.
Why did I go for a PhD in the first place? I had a wonderful job in New York City, and was doing well in my job, but there were a number of factors that pushed me to quit my job and go for a PhD.
a) First was my love of research. I was passionate about studying the fossil record, but with more time I become bored of reading and learning about other people’s discoveries, and wanted to make contributions myself. I dreamed of long days in a research area, collecting fossils; publishing my research in scientific journals, and seeing the culmination of my work in a dissertation.
b) Learn new things. Even after earning my Masters degree, I was struggling to learn how to do scientific research. After several years I had not published any research of my own, and most of my work done on weekends and at home was amateur and pretty dreadful. I wanted to learn how to be a professional.
c) I wanted some clout. My office mates who only had a Masters degree were often envious of those people with a PhD. A PhD gives individuals certain perks and they are often positioned in higher offices (such as PIs for large grants). This depends on the company or organization you work for, but there is no denying the clout that comes with a PhD.
d) I fell in love with teaching. I did not go into my PhD thinking that I would love teaching, but I came out of it with a great passion for teaching. This came from the many experiences I had during my graduate school days teaching others. When I graduated I was eager to teach. A PhD prepares you to be a great teacher. As a teaching assistant I gained experience in front of a classroom.
These were the four reasons I quit my job and returned to school.
I enrolled during the summer of 2004 at the University of Colorado (the only school out of the seven that I applied to that accepted me). I was excited and optimistic. I graduated in the spring of 2009, when the job market was not so good. In the year leading up to my graduation, I spent more time applying to jobs, than working on finishing my dissertation.
In that one year time span, I applied to 72 jobs. Here is what I learned.
1) If a job is your dream job you will likely not get it. Often jobs don’t go to those people who are most qualified; they go to the people who are most familiar to the search committee. Don’t think too hard about the job after you apply, move on to the next application.
2) Postdocs are rarer than jobs, apply for them, but don’t expect anything. I applied to a NSF postdoc, which required that I contact a host institution and a number of collaborators. The research proposal was a new line of research, which required a lot of time to research and write. Much longer than most job applications and in the end I did not get it. I still think the proposal is a great idea, and using my own funds might pursue it in the near future. (In truth I applied to several other postdoc positions during that year.)
3) Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. One of the things that I did was start thinking of fields outside of my own. I hung out with a group of physics graduate students, and we played around with predictive measures of the stock market. It sounds like a large leap away from paleontology, but at the time I was studying climatic oscillations (such as milankovitch cycles) and was curious to see if there were similar oscillations in stock prices during periodic dividend payments, and if one could profit from it with well-timed stock transactions. These physics graduate students were all interested in going into finance, because there were so few jobs in academia, and they could make more money that way. The ability to use math has its benefits outside of academia, and you may have skill sets that are highly desired in other fields.
4) You wrote a dissertation, why not write fiction? Yes, I wrote a science fiction novel.
5) When you met with job recruiters on campus don’t mention your esoteric research interests. Most graduates with a geology degree go to work for one of the big oil/natural gas companies, and I applied to each job posting and visited with recruiters whenever they visited campus. They will ask, but don’t mention your highly focused research interest, unless it would be of particular interest to that company. I made a fundamental mistake when I met with a recruiter after discovering a really cool fossil Pholidota (Pangolin). I gushed with excitement explaining to the company recruiter about this discovery and how important it was. He did not know what a pangolin was, I had to explain. Afterward I was all excited that I taught someone about pangolin fossils, and realized that I likely did not get the job. So if you meet with a recruiter only speak about what they do, even if they ask you about your research.
6) Network with people outside of academia. I finally landed a job outside of academia when I saw a job add for a company that was posted by old friend who I went to school with. He had started a company, which was taken over by another company, and they were looking for someone. I wrote to him, and he encouraged me to apply. I was interviewed over the phone and was hired.
7) Don’t be afraid to start your own company. The company that I started working for was started by a disgruntled academic that started a company, which today has offices in most of the western states. My job was as a paleontology consultant, which meant that I worked in the salvaging and surveying of fossils on federal, state and tribal lands in Utah that were being developed for oil and gas. I also worked on highway projects, as well as various construction projects. Companies were required by law to salvage any fossils, since they are the property of the land holder. Starting a company is a great way to find a job, since you become your own boss, and having survived six years of graduate school, becoming an entrepreneur would be easy. Right? Market your talents to particular problems that companies are looking to solve. The most valuable thing I learned in graduate school was how to learn quickly. Use that skill set to tackle problems that face companies. In natural sciences, this is working with companies to deal with federal and state regulations. With the sequestration of governmental workers, much of this work is contracted out to private companies.
After several years outside of academia, I returned by applying for a position at Utah State University. It did not come with a pay raise (the pay was the same), but it did allow me to do something that I love doing. Teaching! In all this discussion about why we go to school for so long, I rarely find that it is the love of teaching others which draws us to continue with our own education. It is because fundamentally we value an enlighten mind. We want to become experts in our field of study, and are drawn into leadership roles. Any act that increases ones knowledge will have a beneficial consequence for the rest of your life. This is why I highly value my PhD and the many experiences that it gave me.