Beyond the Ivory Tower

Questioning the Promise

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By Natalie Henderson

"Waist deep in the big muddy / And the big fool said to push on." Pete Seeger's refrain has haunted me lately, and not just because of current world events. It could be that I've waded into my own personal quagmire, and I don't know whether to push on or change course.

I finished a Ph.D. in history at a top state university in the late 1990s. For a couple of years, I taught happily as an adjunct and didn't worry much about my professional future, occupied as I was by the birth of my children. Staying home with them after that and revising my dissertation for publication with a respected university press, I let getting a job fall low on my to-do list.

In 2001, however, after my husband left his full-time job and the stock market tanked (in that unfortunate order), the financial pressures facing my family spiked, and casual wondering about my eventual employment prospects abruptly gave way to an intensive job search.

For six months I surfed the Web, networked, submitted applications, and interviewed for several locally available jobs. I anguished over how to land something -- anything -- that would help us pay the mortgage and meet the other obligations of our otherwise happy life in the college town where we wanted to stay.

In fairly short order, I found myself drawn into the world of what are sometimes euphemistically called "alternative careers" for humanities Ph.D.'s. -- i.e., jobs anywhere outside the professoriate. That world, I found, has its own discussion forums, article literature, Web sites, and institutional initiatives.

Especially useful for me was attending a national professional conference that featured workshops on alternative careers for historians. Imbued with a new confidence that the world hungered for my hard-won skills of writing, research, analysis, synthesis, administration, teaching, and communication, I refocused my search and landed two job offers within two months.

The better of the two, an entry-level administrative position in an academic program at a local university, promised a stimulating intellectual environment, opportunities to learn new skills and influence programming, a measure of autonomy, attractive benefits, and advancement opportunities. I was thrilled to accept the job at a salary on par with that offered to my peers on the tenure track.

For a while I remained on my newly hired "high." My experience, I thought, was evidence that the rhetoric about alternative careers for humanities Ph.D.'s was true: We really were chock full of marketable skills that employers would recognize and reward if only we were entrepreneurial enough to sell ourselves in ways they could understand. If we broadened our minds, compressed our vitas into résumés, arranged informational interviews, and willingly took entry-level jobs, we would before long be promoted to something more on par with our training, where we would enjoy both professional satisfaction and good pay.

I had taken the first steps to crossing over, I thought. I had "left academe" (well, the professoriate part of it), and I would soon be scrambling up onto the safety of the far shore.

Fast forward to more recent days. The job I have offers much that many underemployed humanities Ph.D.'s crave: a bright and pleasant office, interesting colleagues, flexible working hours, intellectual challenges, learning opportunities, a decent salary, and (not least these days) health insurance. The work is manageable, times of intense pressure are intermittent, and workplace camaraderie is high.

Yet, after two years here, I've begun to feel restless. I'm chafing against what has turned out to be relatively lowly institutional status and lack of broad decision-making control, and I'm eager to find work that is more engaged with the issues I've been passionate about ever since I began my dissertation more than a dozen years ago.

The situation would be less frustrating if I felt like I was providing adequately for my family. Yet our household finances remain tight, and the salary I'm making will not, over the long term, meet my family's needs.

I'm surprised to find that instead of striding confidently on dry ground, I feel bogged down and unclear about how to proceed.

If I push on just a little farther, will my humanities Ph.D. and my accumulated skills take me where I want and need to go, both professionally and financially? Or should I realize that the water is getting deeper, and that it is time for me to admit that I started in the wrong direction 15 years ago when I opted to go into a graduate program in the humanities? Should I turn back and get myself quickly to law school?

Over the past few months, I've chosen to push on. I've continued to try to leverage the skills and training I already have to land that not-often-discussed second postacademic job -- the one where I climb from the entry level to something that (pardon my arrogance) is more congruent with my education, interests, and abilities. To this task I've taken two approaches often suggested to Ph.D.'s transitioning out of faculty life.

First, I've tried to seize opportunities for advancement at the institution where I am, where the quality of my work is well known. I've been networking extensively to learn about new directions I might take (for example, in university development), and I've asked for help in tracking down new opportunities. I've investigated open positions that seem promising, and have actually applied for two jobs.

The best prospect came a couple of months ago, when a higher-level position in my own small program became vacant. It offered greater visibility and a large role in setting intellectual priorities, more administrative control, new challenges that would expand my skill set, and moderately higher pay.

Given that I had, in fact, already been doing many of the tasks involved, it seemed like the obvious next move for me. In the end, however, the position went to someone with many more years of administrative experience.

Meanwhile, I have also tried a second tactic aimed at aligning my work more closely with my long-term research interests and expertise: I scheduled informational conversations with people in a state agency that deals with many of the same issues engaged by my forthcoming book.

After four such conversations, and four job applications dropped into the hopper, I made an inside contact and went for a formal interview (despite being stamped "unqualified" by a box checker in the agency's human-resources department). In what seemed to me a productive conversation, I explained how my Ph.D. and years of training in directly pertinent historical research could translate into effective analysis of present-day projects and policies.

The hiring officers were not convinced, however, that I had, or could acquire rapidly enough, certain technical skills they needed, so I remained "not qualified" for their open position (which turned out to pay less than my current job).

Some readers are no doubt thinking: Get over it! You've got a great situation, and you've only applied for a few new jobs. Be patient. Your time will come.

I acknowledge those things. I know that my experience is, on the whole, perhaps more successful than that of other struggling Ph.D.'s. Perhaps I'm only ankle-deep in a mud puddle.

Yet at the same time, these recent rejections are testing my patience and shaking my faith in the cheerful predictions I have heard about the wide array of opportunities open to humanities Ph.D.'s. Those predictions are built, it seems, on the assumption that the first steps out of academe are the hardest, but that while the crossing is narrow, the road will quickly get easier.

Implied is the idea that an "alternative" career path will not become the quagmire familiar to anyone who has tried adjunct teaching as a route to advancement.

But having waded into an "alternative" career, I still feel somewhat stuck: wrongly qualified, overeducated, and having to explain, convince, beg, and cajole someone into giving me a chance to do work I know I could do well.

Although such feelings are familiar, they are not tempered this time around by the optimism I felt two years ago. I'm now experiencing some "second level" frustration, which suggests the need for some "second wave" thinking about Ph.D.'s transitioning out of the ivory tower.

The first wave of commentary on that subject has focused on helping recent Ph.D.'s reconfigure their self-concepts and skills so that they can get that first non-faculty job. But what then? Where does that first job lead, and how does one get there?

What do you do when you find yourself pushing 40 -- your Ph.D. rapidly outliving its "shelf life" -- but discover that the path from the foot-in-the-door job to more challenging, interesting, well-compensated, and responsible work remains long and murky?

Is there a chance that the alternative-careers movement (which in many ways I laud and admire) has unwittingly sold humanities Ph.D.'s yet another professional pipe dream? Could it be that all of us -- both those still "in" academe (that is, in the professoriate) and those in the nonacademic realm -- still share a misguided optimism about the marketability of a humanities Ph.D.?

Could time spent paying dues in a low-level job be better used getting a practical, readily marketable master's degree? Instead of forging a way out, might I in fact have waded deeper into the Big Muddy?

I'm not sure yet about the answers to those questions. But what I am seeing is that for people like me who finished a traditionally configured graduate program, the cold truth is that translating a humanities Ph.D. into well-paying and personally satisfying employment beyond the faculty ranks is a difficult slog with an unpredictable outcome.