Search The Site
 
More options | Back issues
Home
News
Opinion & Forums
Careers
Multimedia
Leadership Forum
Technology Forum
Resource Center
Campus Viewpoints
Services
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle Review
A weekly special section
Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind John L. Jackson Jr.

Postdoc or Tenure-Track Job?

The semester has begun; I had my first course yesterday. And I am happy to say that I’ve started to reconnect with colleagues this week, including a few that I haven’t seen all summer.

We mostly had the usual conversations about respective summers (and about this unprecedented election season), but I also got into a longer (and more substantive) discussion with a faculty member (in a different field, an important variable) about the relative value of postdoctoral fellowships and tenure-track jobs for new Ph D ‘s.

He advises his students to focus on jobs, not postdocs. He’s skeptical of the entire postdoc thing for several reasons: the way it can be deployed by universities as an exploitative cost-cutting measure and at the expense of more secure tenure-track offerings (my fellow Brainstorm blogger, Marc Bousquet, could say more about that), and because it runs the risk of trapping some people out of the job market and into a secondary track of consecutive postdocs and adjunct positions.

I was arguing that a postdoctoral fellowship can actually increase one’s value on the market in subsequent years (which he grudgingly conceded, a little), and that two- or three-year postdocs give people a kind of head-start in the tenure-track rat-race. My dissertation adviser was a proponent of the postdoc (at least as a potentially viable option), and she’s made me one, too.

I was fortunate enough to have a three-year postdoc that allowed me to turn my dissertation into a book, start research on a second project, and even dabble in some orthogonal intellectual interests — and all that before I had to serve on my first thesis committee, teach a single course, or attend monthly faculty meetings.

Even the right one-year post doc (without unreasonable teaching expectations) can get that dissertation housed at a publisher and a little more ready for prime-time.

I thought I’d made a compelling case, but this colleague still walked away skeptical, which made me wonder. Am I overstating my case? Might it work differently for different fields in the humanities and the social sciences? For different kinds of academics? Are there other factors at play?

Posted at 07:01:30 AM on September 5, 2008 | All postings by John L. Jackson Jr.

Comments

  1. My Ph.D. is in Architecture, specifically a small sub-discipline called Environment-Behavior Studies. My research life has focused on how American teenagers make use (and make sense) of their physical environments. I took an aggressively interdisciplinary approach, and put together a dissertation committee including an architectural historian, a cultural geographer, an environmental psychologist, an architectural theorist, and a novelist.

    I soon discovered that interdisciplinarity is something that only the (tenured) grown-ups get to do. I really struggled to find a position that didn’t want someone tightly bound to a single discipline (and architecture schools have shifted their attention to computer-assisted design and sustainability; EBS was on a significant decline, so architecture schools weren’t looking for that knowledge).

    I got my Ph.D. back in 1996, and continued to sell furniture for a couple more years. Then I got two professional gigs, neither of which were satisfying (out in the business world, it’s often the case that the problem is 95% defined before they call you in, which means you get to tinker with a well-established, if not very bright, solution).

    Finally in 2002, after seven years on the market, I got a teaching postdoc in an interdisciplinary writing program. I loved it. It was a 3/2 teaching load with small course sizes and a lot of freedom in creating one’s own syllabus. Good colleagues, good students, not such a hot income (started at $36K, ended up at about $39K).

    After four years (the postdoc had a five-year limit), I became an administrator at a small architecture school in the northeast. My salary more or less doubled, and they weren’t so concerned about my inability to define myself within a knowable discipline. I have to sacrifice a lot of personal time to teach a course every semester and to keep my research life alive, since my administrative duties have averaged 60+ hours a week.

    So for me, the postdoc was a lifesaver, a foot into the otherwise closed academic world of disciplinary thinking. I’m thinking about looking again for a new, more traditional faculty position, and again running into postings that have remarkably narrow disciplinary blinders. I may have to make my career through academic assessment and curricular reform — both of which I like, but neither of which is as fun as teaching and ethnographic research.

    — Herb · Sep 5, 09:15 AM · #

  2. The post-doc as a true research year (as it normally was in the sciences) might indeed meet the host’s desired goals. BUT in general this is not how they are being set up in the humanities and social sciences. They are simply “adjunct” teaching positions under a different label and, further, tend to ratchet up the teaching and publishing entry requirements for the rare tenure-track positions.

    It’s all a budgetary juggling game to exploit the newly-minted Ph.D. without the commitment or the intention of creating more tenure-track positions in universities. The trend is clear: there are increasingly far fewer tenure-track full-time positions in the majority of colleges and universities, with contingent faculty passing the 50% mark in many.

    No, the post-doctoral fellowship, which is rarely a “fellowship” at all, is just one more add-on to the exploitative mechanisms devised to reduce the number of tenured full-time faculty overall, reducing salaries and benefits in a cost-driven corporate model.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Sep 5, 09:30 AM · #

  3. I am a social scientist who leans toward the humanities in many ways. My PhD topic was health related, but used methods and approaches from folklore, history, narrative studies, and comparative religion. I was awarded an NIH training postdoc for which I am incredibly grateful. I acquired health services research skills including statistics, economics, organizational analysis, and I earned a masters-level professional degree. I was well-mentored, and my only responsibilities were to pursue my training and start publishing to the best of my ability. For the sake of confidentiality, I cannot identify the program, but I wish I could. The program doesn’t exist in the same form any more anyway, because new leadership turned it in a more clinically applied direction.

    My own life and career have run ashore in many ways. But the fellowship was one of the best three years of my life. And as my life comes together again, I see that my credentials are still my credentials, and all is not lost. My postdoc training may be more important to my future than my pre-doc work.

    Thank you to those who took an interest in my postgraduate development. I wish I could name you.

    — Maria · Sep 5, 10:34 AM · #

  4. While I am most pleased to read the testimonials in Comments 1 and 3, I daresay that not all, indeed, probably not even most of the current “post-doctoral” positions in the humanities and social sciences are fully research positions. Most, to my knowledge, involve teaching. Where that is not the case, all the better; however, that is not my understanding of the evolving trend in these positions.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Sep 5, 11:25 AM · #

  5. AHA, I agree that many teaching post-docs operate for the reason you indicate in your second and fourth comments. But I was lucky to be in one with a more specific purpose, which was to train a whole bunch of early-career scholars in a particular writing pedagogy, have us push against and test and expand that pedagogy, and then have us go forth and spread the work as we went on to other schools. It also got the job done of teaching first-year writing to 1700 students a year, and very well I might add. But the host school could have paid for that with the money they had left over from their gardening budget; cost-savings wasn’t their primary interest.

    — Herb · Sep 6, 09:03 AM · #

  6. On Comment 5:

    Yes, such post-docs do exist and they are, as indicated in the comment, most often in the more well-endowed institutions. I would add that they are also often endowed positions or positions funded by an external agency, e.g., the Mellon Foundation. The institutionalization of such positions within the annual operating budget of a university in the humanities occurs far less often and, when it does occur, usually entails the service model I described – thus perpetuating the model of contingent, lower-cost labor in the humanities.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Sep 6, 10:08 AM · #

  7. AHA: Full agreement with comment 6. And one of the things you raised in #2 that we haven’t commented on yet is that the post-doc really does serve to “ratchet up” the requirements for faculty entry. In somewhat blithe moments, senior faculty often say three things that infuriate me:
    1) “I could NEVER have gotten a position nowadays with the requirements we ask for” (and in many cases, they still couldn’t after a career’s worth of work…);
    2) “The university is becoming far more interdisciplinary” (often said at the same time they’re on a search team looking for extraordinarily narrow disciplinary qualifications); and
    3) “When I first started, I bought a lifetime membership to the American Historical Society (or whatever) for $90.” Well, congratulations on that — I’m usually a couple grand a year out-of-pocket for memberships and conference travel.

    Bragging about good luck is rarely tasteful.

    Job-market dark humor from a friend of mine: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb? Only one, but 613 applied.

    — Herb · Sep 6, 10:27 AM · #

  8. Herb, there was a time, not so long ago it seems to me, that people were regularly being told they were over qualified for the job for which they had applied. See how standards have changed. Now certificates and qualifications are required for even the most mundane jobs. Someone the other day told me he was a certified welder! On the other hand Ph.D’s are being bought on the internet, people without any qualifications at all are hanging certificates on their walls. Is it worth it in the end?

    — Job's Comforter · Sep 6, 11:05 AM · #

  9. In raw economic terms, it’s a toss-up. I’ve had years where I’ve made less money than a retail-store manager, and other years where I’ve made as much as an entry-level corporate lawyer. But I can tell you that the five years I spent getting my doctorate was the most invigorating, enlivening, and healthy time of my life. And it’s made me a better person than I was, too: more curious, more broadly read, more empathetic. So yeah, definitely worth it in the end, even though I don’t get extra consideration at Starbucks for it.

    — Herb · Sep 6, 11:14 AM · #

  10. Post-docs are somewhere between tenure-track and part-time labor in terms of exploitation. Post-docs are given a decent though not generous wage—enough to live on—and a manageable teaching load. 2/2 or 3/2 typically. They get health benefits, and they can count on a job, if they’re not lunatics, for up to six years at some places.

    Adjuncts get no benefits, are paid scut wages, and do not know from one semester to the next whether they will be employed.

    In our department, there are post-docs (really a euphemism for full-time lecturers, there’s nothing “post-doc” about them) who use the opportunity shrewdly, like John, and typically they do so because they have a good mentor—also like John—who has advised them to go this route. Most seem to get lulled into complacency and are surprised when their three or six year tenure is up and they scramble to get…another post-doc! Or should we call it a post-post-doc at this point?

    I guess what’s confusing to me, AHA, is how this differs substantively from the arguments for giving tenure to adjuncts: minus the longer-term security, it’s pretty much what that would look like, I’m guessing.

    Which is why I keep cautioning against inadvertently institutionalizing exploitation, a two-tier system in which one group is treated as the drones, lesser paid and viewed with barely veiled contempt. (Post-docs, by the way, are not treated with such contempt: they’re still bright new things who may indeed, like John, land an Ivy League job.

    We should either eliminate tenure or tenure everyone in a university. Tenure is itself just a version of unionization: guaranteed job security. No reason why everyone worth hiring shouldn’t be similarly entitled and live out their lives with the same sense of security. Righto?

    — rabbit ears · Sep 6, 10:58 PM · #

  11. Righto.

    AHA-Erlebnis

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Sep 7, 06:59 AM · #

  12. That’s “righto” on everyone should track to tenure, and not on eliminating tenure.

    AHA-Erlebnis

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Sep 7, 07:31 AM · #

  13. So the business administrators, the ITs, the department support staff, the program coordinators, directors, associate directors, the librarians, the residential/university life staff: all should track to tenure?

    — rabbit ears · Sep 7, 08:05 AM · #

  14. On Comment 13:

    Actually, that was not the original intent of, for example, the founders of the AAUP. Academic freedom and tenure were for faculty – and librarians are considered faculty, BTW.

    However, the AAUP now also appears to be supporting such a rule since it has recent statements on professionals – which were necessitated, I presume, by their presence in many of the unions at the campus level.

    I know that New York State’s Public Employee Relations Board considers that professionals and faculty form a “community of interest” and they are in one bargaining unit. To my knowledge, tenure for such professionals in colleges and universities was thus a “first in the nation” for SUNY dating back to the early seventies.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Sep 7, 05:17 PM · #

  15. It has all been worth it. I learned a lot in graduate school and got in the habit of being scientifically productive. When I was near completion of my dissertation, jobs seemed scarce. In fact, I was only able to find two prospects in the world. One was at University of the Witwatersrand and one was at the University of Washington. The one at Washington was a research postdoc. The one at Wits was a regular entry level teaching and research job, similar to our tenure track jobs in the US. I applied for both and was interviewed for both. I was offered and accepted the job at Washington half an hour before I received a call from Johannesburg offering me the other one. I have never regretted doing the 3-yr post-doc at University of Washington. My mentor for that position became a good friend, and we are still close today. I was able to do a lot of research and published the results of most of what I did. I had a number of student research assistant and trainees, and we had a fine and productive time together.

    But money was a problem. The agreement we made was that I would get standard NIH postdoc pay: $10.5K the first year, $12K the second year, and $13.5K the third year. Not too good, eh? But that was back in the 1970s and was the typical scale. The governor froze state wages, while I was still in my first year—which did not allow me to be compensated at the levels contemplated at the outset. It was simply amazing idiocy on the part of the state and the university. My salary came from federal grant dollars and carried with it indirect costs. The more I got, the more the university would have gotten in indirect costs. My mentor was pleased with my productivity and tried to change me from a postdoctoral research associate to a research scientist track position, but the university denied his recommendation (as an inappropriate effort to get me paid more—even though he had brought all the funding in in federal grants). So, my mentor and other colleagues applied for and got got funding for an innovative educational course in research methods for me to teach as a way of gettting me more compensation (as well as additional student research assistants). The course went very well. All the student participants got multiple professional research publications. But in the end, the university refused to compensate me for teaching the course, as I was already a full-time employee as a post doc. Oh well, the experience was great! But the compensation problems left me feeling that the University had not sufficiently valued my service. I was offered a continuing position, but accepted an offer elsewhere with a 50%+ raise over my final salary level for the post-doc.

    Unfortunately for myself and many other people, the college I moved to lost its core funding and went out of business. I ended up teaching as an adjunct for four years—for appalingly low wages. I got a lot of teaching experience—often with very little advance notice of what I would be teaching—but many of the courses were good and interesting courses that I enjoyed teaching. The compensation simply was inadequate, so, at that point I left academia for good.

    When I stopped trying to be a professor, I was never again unemployed or under employed. My three jobs in my career until I retired were a curatorial position at a major zoo, a scientific journal editor for National Geographic, and, eventually, as a VP and division head for an NIH biomedical research contractor. These were all good, interesting, challenging, and adequately compensated jobs.

    After retiring in my early 60s I again toyed with being in academia. An NIH funded position in a medical school got all tangled up in political conflicts that had nothing to do with me, so that ultimately foundered. I taught a senior seminar in a state university as an adjunct, and the students and I had a fine and productive time. The compensation, however, barely covered my transportation and lodging costs, so that was not a sustainable activity. I taught a couple of courses in a small private liberal arts school. There the compensation was not good, but it was not terrible. It was okay for what it was. BUT, and there’s always a big BUT, isn’t there, I found that only about 10% of the students really had a serious interest and commitment to learning what I could teach them. I felt that I was ineffective and that I was wasting my time, and I declined to continue the following semester.

    So, my academic involvement continues as a research collaborator to some truly great friends and scientists and a couple of non-paid affiliate professorships at good places—which affords me library access. If I have a regret about not taking the tenure track, it is that I was not able to mentor my own students. Fortunately, I had continuing collaborative involvement with the students of other people who were interested in things I was doing—so I got to do a certain amount of mentoring and building of the kind of affiliations and networks that come from that sort of activity. My involvement has been very interdisciplinary (mainly psychology, anthropology, ecology, and zoology) and has involved collaboration with students and faculty from many institutions. I’m not entirely sure a regular tenure track position would have accommodated the range of activities in which I’ve been involved.

    So, in sum, I have very few, if any, regrets, about not staying in academia. I should mention that not long ago I was asked to teach a course as an adjunct, and decided against doing so. The compensation offered was incredible! I think I would have been more likely to have taught the course had they asked me to teach for nothing than for compensation that worked out to less than minimum wage and would not have even paid the cost of the gasoline to drive to and from campus.

    People should not allow themselves exploited as adjuncts. I’m kind of thinking that adjunct teaching should not be for desperately poor academics who have not been able to find gainful employment. Adjunct positions should be for people who are gainfully and successfully employed outside academia, to teach an occasional course and benefit the university and its students by connecting them with the nonacademic world. If the universities are unable or unwilling to pay adequate wages, they should hire only people who don’t need the compensation.

    This is waaaaay too long, and for that I apologize. But one more thing. A disadvantage I faced after doing a three-year research post doc was the “overqualified” barrier. At the state university where I was an underpaid adjunct, I was told that I had no prospect of getting a “regular” job because I had published too much. Most faculty members claimed to take pride in being teachers rather than researchers or scholars, and the fact that I had published many more papers while I was in grad school than they had in their entire careers, led them to brand me as an “elitist” or “hotshot,” or something. Oh well….

    — Joe Erwin · Sep 7, 07:37 PM · #

  16. I’m in the position of finishing my PhD and having been awarded a SSHRC (Canada) post-doctoral fellowship in Germany. I’m very excited. There are no teaching requirements for this contract. The only downside that I can see is two-fold: I’m not sure the mentor for the project is such a good fit and I’m worried about being a Canadianist and taking myself out of the running to another country for two years.
    But I don’t think those two disadvantages are all that insurmountable.
    Does anyone have any advice for what my priorities should be during these two years? Ideally, I’d like to come back to Canada. I’m imagining I should focus on publishing out of my dissertation, applying for jobs, teaching a course and maybe learning some new skills and starting a new research project (in that order). I’d be grateful for your thoughts and advice!

    — Joe Roberts · Sep 7, 08:18 PM · #

  17. Living abroad is a wonderfully enlightening experience. If you immerse yourself in the language and culture, travel to places you have never been, and get out into some rural communities that have some comparability or connections with Canadian rural communities, your time will be well spent. Of course you should spend some time writing, including writing for publication, but try to keep this in balance. Your mentor will have some expectations of you, but also will be invested in your success. As an old guy who has been around quite awhile, I can truthfully say that any regrets that I have in my career have been over opportunities not taken. I am confident that you will enjoy and learn much from this experience.

    — Joe Erwin · Sep 8, 03:33 AM · #

  18. I think it definitely depends on the discipline. I am still a student but I have a job starting in the Fall 2009. Several of my colleagues got post-docs. Our PhDs are in business so there are many job openings and salaries are high (in comparison to those in other disciplines).

    Let’s imagine that two years from now my post-doc colleagues and I find ourselves in the job market. I would have two years of experience as an Assistant Professor (research, teaching, and some service), while they will have experience as a post-doc. In a discipline with plenty of job opportunities this could be interpreted as lacking the confidence to get a ‘real’ job.

    I don’t think this is the case in all disciplines. If they come out with 3 top-tier publications, then nobody will care. But if they don’t … the question will arise, why did my colleagues leave $100,000+ per year on the table to take less than $15,000?

    — lg · Sep 8, 07:43 AM · #

  19. Professor Jackson,

    Last paragraph, third line: “overstating”; also, third paragraph, fourth line: is “almost” necessary?

    — Dan · Sep 8, 07:51 AM · #

  20. As a provost involved closely with faculty hiring, I often see applicants who have had a post-doc or a non-tenure-track teaching position. At our institution, they do well in the job search process and are often hired because they come to the interview process with more experience than the freshly minted Ph.D. We are a liberal arts college that values both teaching and research, so positions thhat have included some teaching are actually preferable to us. So the idea that a two or three year non-tenure track position at a good institution can help you land a tenure-track job has merit, in my experience.

    — Golden Rose · Sep 8, 07:56 AM · #

  21. On Comment 15:

    Thank you, Joe Erwin, for the biographical comment. Of course, it is likely that, had you taken the Frostian path less traveled (a tenure-track position abroad), you would have had a successful career in academia. But one easily understands that the multiple facets of your actual career were most enriching to all concerned.

    I believe the original concept of the adjunct position was precisely what you recommend: the influx of a particular course now and then from a recognized expert outside of academia itself. It has been perverted into the current system of academic labor exploitation.

    On Comments 16 and 17:

    Having “been there and done that”, yes, indeed, the experience of living and working abroad is life-transforming, for yourself and for your career.

    That said, the job search from abroad to land a position back home is sometimes fraught with strange obstacles. Search committees occasionally are bound by budgetary or legal constraints to use travel funding only for candidates who are already in the country, preventing them from “importing” a candidate for a campus visit. This was the case, in my experience, with some state universities in the U.S. – once the candidate got stateside, the university could pick up the domestic tab. However, it is possible that some search committees routinely eliminate such candidates from consideration. There was considerable embarassment in one search committee chair’s voice when he had to ask me to pay for my own transatlantic travel.

    Thus, if your field holds an annual conference where preliminary job interviews may be held, prominently announce in your applications for positions that you will, yourself, attend that conference and be available. This will permit at least a member or delegate from any search committee to have an opportunity to vet you on the spot when they otherwise might feel constrained to eliminate your candidacy for reasons having nothing to do with your credentials.

    Good luck!

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Sep 8, 09:00 AM · #

  22. Joe, Your message # 15. Par 7. kind of begs my question “Is it worth it in the end?” You start your piece by saying “It has all been worth it.” other people too have gone to great lengths to explain why it was all worth it; but what I was getting at was in terms of public recognition and financial reward, not the joys of academic life.- Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,- sentiment, or what you have gained personally.

    After having completed years at university and leaving eventually with one’s head in the clouds and an overinflated opinion of one’s self worth, suddenly we are confronted by stark reality. Not everyone is as impressed by our qualifications as we ourselves or our parents are! We thought the world was our oyster! The world has a different view. We, here, seem a fairly well adjusted bunch, but what of post graduate depression? We have our hearts full of hope such as Joe Roberts (No 16) only to find rejection after rejection. Does university prepare us adequately for this? I think not. The reality is that we sensitive academics mostly shielded from the hard knocks of life have to quickly learn how to survive among people of lesser talent and fewer qualifications but who have been out working for their living far longer than we have. These are the people who conduct the interviews and know how to intimidate the greenhorns. They know academics straight out of university know nothing about negotiating or about fair market value, that is why you were offered such insultingly low pay Joe.

    On Par 9. This endorses what I said in my message No 8. that there was a time not so long ago when people were being told that they were over qualified for the job, but now more and more paper qualifications are required, which is a way of thinning out numerous applicants. (As Herb noted it only takes one mathematician to screw in a light bulb)

    We all know this as well, that paper qualifications however impressive mean little at the side of aptitude for the job, and a string of letters behind your name says nothing of this. That is why I do not agree with the conclusions of Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray.

    — Job's Comforter · Sep 8, 11:18 AM · #

  23. Perhaps my experience was good because it was an NIH training fellowship, designed to turn new PhD/MD/JD/DPharms into health services researchers. My cohort included an anthropologist, a lawyer, an oncologist, and a dentist. I wasn’t hired to teach. In fact, I did adjunct one class, but the next semester my mentor strongly suggested I concentrate on my training.

    My experience isn’t typical.

    — Maria · Sep 8, 01:11 PM · #

  24. I appreciate your insights, JC, but actually, the places where I succeeded best—and continue to do so—have been outside academia (although I have maintained contacts and collaborations with academics throughout my career and have continued to publish and present papers and occasional colloquia).

    Fortunately, I had sufficient practical experience in addition to my academic preparation that I was able to manage departments, administer budgets, supervise personnel, develop new programs, negotiate contracts, design facilities, supervise construction, edit manuscripts, write copy, patent inventions, etc. From the day I stepped out of academia until I tried to step back in all went well.

    I was offered insultingly low pay in academia after a full career with much practical experience outside of academia. I was offered low wages in academia because the rate for adjuncts was set in stone, not because I was naive. I was always paid decently outside academia. And I was not so naive as to accept such insultingly low pay as adjuncts were paid.

    I often urge people to not settle for an academic career. I also urge students to assemble an array of practical skills. My son, a biochemist and molecular biologist by training has found a continuing niche in scientific companies by having many practical skills (e.g., plumbing and welding, as well as IT). My son-in-law trained to be a zoologist, but wound up in IT management because he had the necessary skills.

    Do you really think the notion that academics are airheads is both pervasive and accurate? I don’t think so, and I hope it isn’t so.

    — Joe Erwin · Sep 8, 09:23 PM · #

  25. Yes, I think the pervading NOTION is accurate among employers who exploit graduates in the job market. There are so many competing for the same job, and post doctorates have been at university a long time, they need to get out there to earn some money to pay their debts. Some are married with young children, some still relying heavily on parental support; they can’t afford to say “stuff your job,” they swallow their pride and accept hoping things will get better long term. but what happens long term? New hungry graduates come along prepared to work for a pittance and it’s bye bye Joe.

    Your son is a multi-tasker and perhaps that is the key to survival. My own qualifications are MB. B.Ch., F.R.C.S. I am no good at fixing toilets.

    John has been fortunate to be able to make some money from his post doctoral thesis thereby splitting his income between teaching and authoring. Herb by his account has not been so lucky yet.

    It all depends on values, what one considers most important in life. The second home, the top of the line Lexus, or expansion of the mind.

    The cloistered life of academia becomes addictive. Like minds, stimulation, camaraderie, etc., etc. It takes an effort to tear away. If you feel protected and safe in that environment then by all means stay, just as long as your wife is content to bargain basement shop. Otherwise my advice would be to read a book called “You Can Negotiate Anything” by Herb Cohen, get out there and don’t sell yourself cheap.

    — Job's Comforter · Sep 9, 08:31 AM · #

  26. JC, I agree that I haven’t been so financially “lucky yet.” But I eagerly took a 50% pay cut in 2002 to take on my first post-doc, because I was in complete despair over my ability to address real issues in corporate and institutional work. My experience of human research in corporations is that it’s most often intended as corroboration of the product and marketing plan already in place. Products from buildings to high school curricula are almost completely resolved before the client brings in the consultant, so the changes we get to initiate are minor tinkerings. Intellectual independence is a vast reward, worth driving an old car for. And if we actually believe any of the stuff we say about teaching, then we might be helping another generation not fall into our culture’s stunted and habitual patterns.

    I’ll keep driving the ’94 Ford Aspire, and be happier than I was as a professional.

    — Herb · Sep 9, 09:28 AM · #

  27. So, Herb, what is your “dream job?” And, JC, did you get the Lexus and the second home, or whatever you were/are seeking?

    So, JC, you had to bring the wives into it…. But it is true, my wife came to me during my fourth year as an adjunct at the university nearest the place where I grew up—the place where I would have been content, I think, with a tenure track job, had one ever materialized—and she said, “I know you want to live here, but our combined incomes cannot pay the bills. You’re going to have to get a real job.” After scrambling around looking for the usual array of probation officer, social worker, hospital attendant, and custodian jobs, I applied for a job at CDC, a job as a zoo curator, and an NIH-supported program that would have given me an additional Ph.D. All three came through, so I had a choice. I chose the zoo, and have not regretted the choice, even though I left for an editorial position at National Geographic after less than three years, I maintained my zoo connections and they have paid off in many ways. Those connections are still opening doors to interesting activities more than 20 years later.

    One important aspect of the “zoo biz” is wildlife conservation, of course, through captive breeding and conservation of wild populations and their habitats. Really engaging those topics requires excursions into reproductive biology and behavior, but also understanding of the challenges of natural populations, leading to travel, field studies, and a great broadening of perspective.

    I imagine that any field, these days, has global touch points, and that travelling widely can add value to any career. At some point one “gets” that s/he can go nearly anywhere one wishes and do things that interest them. I try to impress this on students, and try to get them to take charge of their lives. Some get it.

    Herb will be liberated from his Ford Aspire when and if he so chooses—but hasn’t he chosen a vehicle with a wonderful name? His primary aspirations have little to do with the car.

    — Joe Erwin · Sep 9, 01:49 PM · #

  28. Yes Joe, I’m almost ashamed to say, but since you asked…. I did get my second home and my Lexus, – but I DO know how many homes I’ve got.

    — Job's Comforter · Sep 9, 02:07 PM · #

  29. JC, good for you. There is no need to feel “almost ashamed” about it. There are good reasons to have more than one residence, and I can’t find fault with people having good cars. For me, having what I want to drive has some priority—I feel it is kind of an extension of myself in the sense of being symbolic of who I am. I want good reliable transportation that performs well in the climate where I live, so my wife and I each have a Subaru Forester. Plain. Reliable. They get us through winter conditions. We bought both of these new for what our son’s little Lexus cost him—but his is a very nice vehicle. I could get used to a Lexus.

    The thought crossed my mind recently (and this reveals a little of what a sick mind I have), of putting a Lexus logo on my old Toyota T100 pickup. The old ’98 T100 just seems sufficiently refined to deserve the Lexus label. If I am not mistaken, in Japan, the Lexus retains its Toyota label, or, at least, did so for awhile. I’m pretty pleased to have just what I have in the way of vehicles. Nothing too showy, but everything works.

    And about the houses, yes, I have two, and I can count that high and remember how many. One is a town house that cost four times what I thought it was worth and has now, ostensibly, doubled in value. Our daughter and grandchildren live there, and we camp in the basement when we need to be in town. The second is a house in the country on 14 acres in rural south-central PA, on the edge opf Appalachia. I designed the house to look like it belongs here, and it does. The property and all the improvements and the house altogether cost less than the townhouse cost us. It’s a better place than I ever expected to live, so I’m enjoying it. My wife insisted that we have running water and indoor plumbing, so it is a cut above the place where I grew up. We even have electricity and telephones—not to mention satellite internet access and TV! All that stuff I had never dreamed of 60+ years ago growing up on a remote ranch. But the best part is that there is wildlife all around, and room to roam without trampling on someone else’s feet (even though I do that figuratively, virtually, globally, and too often).

    — Joe Erwin · Sep 9, 05:17 PM · #

  30. Ah, the “dream job” question…

    Well, I primarily identify myself as a writer. That’s the way I make sense of the world. So the dream job would be as an independent scholar/writer, a Mike Davis or Joan Didion with the freedom to turn my sights on questions that interest me, and that I can help to make interesting for others.

    Combined with that, I don’t think I’d be happy if I wasn’t teaching at least a little bit. That’s just way too much fun to give up.

    Hmm… sounds like a post-doc :-)

    I don’t need much stuff (although it would be lovely to have a pool table) — good food, good beer, lots of books and CDs, cat food. My dream car would run about $25K (Honda Civic Si, in Habanero Red — you can tell I’ve been looking at the websites…).

    My hesitation is having come from a working-class family in which security is both uncertain and linked to a stable paycheck. I see the wolf at the door. And I feel like our collective economic straits are going to get tougher before they get better.

    — Herb · Sep 10, 10:06 AM · #

  31. On Comment 30:

    The wolf is at the door!

    The government can’t even trust Fannie Mae any more, the mortgage and loan crisis is not resolved by any means, and there is a finite amount of crude oil on the planet, etc., etc., and so forth.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Sep 10, 11:29 AM · #

  32. Yes, AHA, these are tough times. Democracy is a great process when the electorate has wise choices to make and makes them wisely. If they don’t? Not so much…. I am fearful that more unwise choices are ahead.

    Herb: I like and empathize with your aspirations. As you are aware, I’m sure, richness of experience can really fuel writing—i.e., having something to write about. And, fortunately, writing is a craft/skill that is valuable—even critical—in a variety of vocations. The potential exists of doing what one must do to have a reliable income while doing some writing on the job or off the job. There are many touch points between journalism and nearly any field one might find interesting, and good writers can also be good editors, and can even get productively involved in copy writing for business or advertising (to support one’s other writing aspirations). And if you persist, you can build a body of work, published or not, that can have future value. And if you keep writing and keep trying, you may find commercial success that meets or exceeds your expectations. Meanwhile, you can find a pretty acceptable used version of the $25K Honda for 1/2 or 1/3 that much money until you are ready to buy a new one. As I mentioned before, I think, I just bought a used 1998 Toyota T100 for $8K that meets my needs and wishes better than anything I could have gotten new for 5 or 10 times that much. It sounds to me like you are in a pretty great position to build and enrich you experience. Where that takes you later depends largely on your own effort.

    — Joe Erwin · Sep 10, 01:40 PM · #

  33. Yes, AHA, these are tough times. Democracy is a great process when the electorate has wise choices to make and makes them wisely. If they don’t? Not so much…. I am fearful that more unwise choices are ahead.

    Herb: I like and empathize with your aspirations. As you are aware, I’m sure, richness of experience can really fuel writing—i.e., having something to write about. And, fortunately, writing is a craft/skill that is valuable—even critical—in a variety of vocations. The potential exists of doing what one must do to have a reliable income while doing some writing on the job or off the job. There are many touch points between journalism and nearly any field one might find interesting, and good writers can also be good editors, and can even get productively involved in copy writing for business or advertising (to support one’s other writing aspirations). And if you persist, you can build a body of work, published or not, that can have future value. And if you keep writing and keep trying, you may find commercial success that meets or exceeds your expectations. Meanwhile, you can find a pretty acceptable used version of the $25K Honda for 1/2 or 1/3 that much money until you are ready to buy a new one. As I mentioned before, I think, I just bought a used 1998 Toyota T100 for $8K that meets my needs and wishes better than anything I could have gotten new for 5 or 10 times that much. It sounds to me like you are in a pretty great position to build and enrich your experience. Where that takes you later depends largely on your own effort.

    — Joe Erwin · Sep 10, 01:49 PM · #

  34. I just want a job, to hell with a car.

    Do not get sick in this country, you can end up losing everything. There are limits to SSDI, bullying in academia is real and can be very subtle, and there are many ways around the ADA. Many jobs do not provide disability insurance.

    Or if you have to get seriously ill, I suggest you completely fall apart,permanently, get a good lawyer, and fight for 2-3 years to get on SSDI.

    In the interim, get a bus pass and patronize food pantries.

    — Maria · Sep 10, 08:13 PM · #

  35. Colleagues, let’s find Maria a job.

    Maria, what do you most like to do? What are you best at?

    — Joe Erwin · Sep 11, 07:53 AM · #

  36. I’m really kidding! Forgive me

    — Maria · Sep 11, 05:57 PM · #

  37. Oh, I just can’t resist this:

    What do I like to do? What am I best at?

    Well, I have the same superpowers that Anthroman has! Just call me Ethno-grrl. Unfortunately, like the Incredibles, I have been forced into retirement.

    — Maria · Sep 12, 08:08 PM · #

Commenting is closed for this article.
Copyright © 2009 by The Chronicle of Higher Education | Contact us
User agreement | Privacy policy | About The Chronicle | Site map | Help
Subscribe | Advertise with us | Press inquiries | RSS | Today's most e-mailed
Home | Chronicle Careers | The Chronicle Review