BY KELLY HAND
The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) recently released a research brief analyzing results of a survey of humanities PhD recipients who were three, eight, and fifteen years out of programs at thirty-five institutions. With a data sample of 882 respondents, the report focuses on PhDs working in academic and nonacademic jobs “closely or somewhat related to their degrees.”
Excluding from the analysis sixty respondents working in jobs entirely unrelated to their degrees, the report found that three years after receiving their degrees, PhDs in degree-related nonacademic jobs felt less positive about how their graduate studies prepared them for their careers than did those in academic jobs. Among those who had received PhDs eight and fifteen years earlier, there was no measurable difference in how respondents in academic and nonacademic jobs perceived their preparation, suggesting that they might have appreciated the benefits of their degrees more over time or eventually found jobs better suited to their training.
As a staff member in the AAUP’s external relations department, I consider my job “somewhat related” to my PhD in English literature, which I earned over fifteen years ago. The data from the CGS report fail to capture the complexity of my attitude toward my graduate studies and their utility. The study would have been more revealing if it had tracked career trajectories of individual members of a PhD cohort—including those in academic positions as well as those in nonacademic positions related or unrelated to their degrees—over time to ascertain how they draw upon their skills and experiences in a variety of situations. Data supported by individual stories would be even more meaningful, especially to those of us representing the targeted humanities disciplines.
“No Regrets” is the title of Inside Higher Ed’s article about the CGS report. It alludes to the survey’s finding that a majority of survey respondents—particularly those who had completed their programs eight and fifteen years earlier rather than three years earlier—would pursue a PhD again if given the opportunity to go back and make that choice again. While I imagine that those who truly do regret their degrees might be among the people who never bothered to respond to the survey, it’s not surprising to me that most people don’t consider their grad school years as “lost years” and would be willing to relive them.
If most PhDs are willing to relive the past, that is probably in part because passion for their disciplines motivated them in the first place and because at least some aspects of graduate study were satisfying. At the same time, because one life choice opens up new doors and leads to other life choices, we have a hard time imagining alternative life trajectories. And if anything good came of one’s graduate studies—such as meeting a spouse or a professor who later helped with the transition to a satisfying nonacademic career—how can we wish that part of our lives had never happened?
To the extent that my graduate studies helped me to be a better writer, editor, and researcher, I benefit from that training on a daily basis and always have—even in previous positions less clearly related to my degree. I appreciate those skills, but learning them on the job would have been more efficient and lucrative than dedicating several years of my life to studying medieval literature. The aspect of my studies most directly relevant to my current work is my firsthand knowledge of large research universities’ dependence on graduate student labor and my experience trying to organize a union with fellow graduate student instructors at Indiana University. It is that background that makes me wary of CGS’s relatively rosy survey findings.
About a quarter of the staff here at the AAUP have PhDs, with a disproportionate number in English. For some of us, those degrees are not truly essential to the work we do for the AAUP. Somewhat paradoxically, our graduate studies have helped to prepare us for work that we would be able to do, and that others are doing, without doctoral backgrounds. From a purely utilitarian standpoint, like the one expressed by a PhD recipient in this Economist article, such “surplus schooling” is a “waste of time.” Yet even if we can’t quantify a value for that surplus—to associations like the AAUP, to other employers, or to ourselves—education becomes an inextricable part of one’s experience and identity.
If I have any regrets at all, they are financial. I met my husband, who earned a PhD in anthropology, in graduate school, and he has a nonacademic position as a foreign affairs analyst for the US Department of State, where he works alongside BAs, MAs, and other PhDs doing more or less the same job. This is common in Washington, DC, where many PhDs work in government and in the nonprofit sector. Compared with those who began salaried employment earlier, we missed out on many years of saving for retirement and contributing to social security while we lived on fellowships and graduate student instructor stipends. As we prioritize saving now to compensate for that late start, we find ourselves facing outrageous college costs for our children. This is a major reason—aside from poor academic job prospects—that I would hesitate to recommend pursuing a PhD to a young person now, at least not in the United States, with its “pay-your-own-way” approach to the human life-cycle.
The CGS report, which is one component of CGS’s PhD Career Pathways project, recommends that universities provide PhD students more assistance with learning about diverse career paths during their studies and with transitioning to nonacademic careers. These are certainly good recommendations, but the underlying narrative about the ultimately high degree of satisfaction of PhDs suggests that more fundamental changes to the economic model of graduate education are unnecessary. It was obvious to me years ago in graduate school and is even more obvious now that fundamental changes are necessary.
Labor justice is key to the vitality and future of graduate programs. Even as graduate programs enable and contribute to the research activities and instructional needs of universities, they must do so in a way that reduces the stakes for graduate students. Graduate student instructors, like all faculty, deserve employee status with adequate salaries and benefits, including comprehensive health insurance and retirement contributions. They should be able to earn their degrees with no financial regrets regardless of the careers they ultimately pursue.
Collective bargaining has improved working conditions and compensation for graduate employees at many public institutions, and the National Labor Relations Board set an important new precedent for private institutions by ruling in 2016 that Columbia University graduate assistants are employees with the right to form a union. While such developments are promising, change must also come from other directions, including from university administrations seeking meaningful ways for doctoral education to thrive rather than survive. The Council of Graduate Schools is in a unique position to make a difference and to insist on labor justice.
