Yesterday I asked, “Should you quit grad school during the recession?” My answer was roughly, “Well, why not?” Related to this is the larger question–which a few people have asked me to post about lately–about timing. If you’re going to quit academia, when should you do it?
To me, the answer is, “Whenever it’s best for you.” How’s that for precision? But seriously, the answer is going to be completely up to you. The major considerations are many: financial (what will you do for an income if you leave at this stage?), career (what field will you switch to?), family (do you need to support family members? Are you all living together?), geographic (will you need/want to move when you quit?), and so forth.
But deciding on the timing of your departure also has to do with the delicate matter of cutting your losses. Calculating losses, though, is an imprecise science because there are so many unknown factors. For example, if you quit after, say, completing your comprehensive exams, are you cutting your losses by sparing yourself years of the gruelling dissertation-writing process (which can be totalled up in dollars, tears, therapists’ bills, damaged relationships, etc.)? Or are you incurring a new loss by not finishing a project you’ve started (an emotional toll) and having to work to explain what you did during those years on a résumé (a potential financial toll)?
Well, the answer is both, isn’t it? When you leave academia–regardless of when you do–you carry around a balance sheet of losses and gains. Gains: a deep relief, a feeling of freedom, a sense that you’ve narrowly escaped something that temporarily had control of your soul. Losses: debt, regret, the struggle to find a new career and life path.
Sometimes, the dividends blur and the gains start to look like losses; the feeling of freedom, for example, can quickly turn into a terrifying landscape of possibility with no clear direction of where to turn. Sometimes the losses look like gains: struggling to find a new life and career path reminds you of how many wonderful interests you have and all of the fun ways you can pursue them.
This is where the matter of the timing of your departure comes in. The dividends of leaving are going to be felt more and less sharply depending on when you jump ship. The longer you stay in your Ph.D. program, your debt load goes up, but so do your credentials. But do those credentials even mean anything to you if you’re depressed, disillusioned and miserable?
For those of you who are thinking of leaving mid-degree, and are tortured by the thought that you’ve wasted your time and money: here’s a timely link to a post Seth Godin wrote earlier this week. I think it’s brilliant, and although he’s not even thinking about grad students when he’s writing this post, it applies perfectly. The post is called “Ignore Sunk Costs.” Among other golden advice, Seth says:
When making a choice between two options, only consider what’s going to happen in the future, not which investments you’ve made in the past. The past investments are over, lost, gone forever. They are irrelevant to the future.
Here’s a breakdown of the balance sheet referring to different stages of leaving. I’d love to hear more thoughts on your analysis of the gains and losses in the comments section. If you…
1. Leave after the M.A. You’ve got yourself a valuable degree with great income-earning potential. But maybe you feel skeptical about your academic prospects, you don’t think you’d enjoy teaching and although you enjoy your research, you don’t feel crazy about doing 5-10 more years of it. So you quit.
Gains: High. You may have some student loans, but this recent report from StatsCan shows there is a 33% wage gap between someone with a B.A. and someone with a Master’s, but someone with a doctorate only earns 8% more than someone with a Master’s.
Costs: Low. Unlike a Ph.D., a master’s makes you feel good about your capabilities.
2. Leave after the first year of your Ph.D. You’ve had a taste of the program, the university, your colleagues and your potential supervisors. Maybe it’s not a good fit, and when you look at the faculty, you’re turned off by the constant search for external funding, the “publish or perish” mentality, and the lack of value placed on family time (like, uh, making one at all). So you quit.
Gains: Medium-high. You’re sparing yourself the time and emotional aggravation and expense of staying in grad school. You can be honest on a resume about what you did with your year.
Costs: Low. Some debt, maybe, and maybe a little bit of “What if…?”
3. Leave around the comps process (before, during or after). When I speak with former academics, this time of intense stress (comprehensive exams are now also called qualifying exams at some schools) can really bring one’s feelings about academia to the forefront. Maybe it’s taking you years to finish your comps, you’re riddled with insecurity, you feel like a total fraud, and you’re on the precipice of clinical depression. So you quit.
Gains: medium-high. Getting out before you lose any more of your precious time, precious money, precious brain cells and spend any more on prescription drugs is really smart. Living in a world where you don’t have to prove yourself through comps fuckin’ rulz.
Costs: medium. Suffering through the comps and STILL leaving without parchment in hand is gonna sting. You will have to explain to employers what it means to be ABD with respect to your transferable skills, which is kinda annoying.
4. Leave during the dissertation stage. Whether you’re struggling to get your proposal done, churn out that first chapter, or finally kick the final chapter to the curb, the dissertation process is a long, emotionally intense, wearing process that can tear down the mental health of the most balanced grad student. Maybe you loathe your topic. Maybe you’re burnt out. Maybe you’re making yourself miserable trying to keep up with the demands to teach, publish, present papers and produce a brilliant 300 page document all at the same time. Maybe you just don’t have it in you anymore. So you quit.
Gains: high. Though departments notoriously do not keep track of their attrition rates, I’ve read research (which I will cite for you in a follow-up post) indicating 50% of social science and humanities doctorates drop out of their programs before finishing. That means you’re in pretty good company among people who decided that life was too short to wait for a satisfying career, to move out of poverty, to save their mental health, or to just figure out that the academic life was not meant for them.
Costs: high. The niggly feelings of “what if?…” or “if only…” might linger for a long, long time. Feeling like a failure–or being worried that other people will see you as a failure–may be very intense. Your possible debt load may amplify feelings of anger, resentment, shame and bitterness. Feeling lost and unsure of how to orient your life is a strong possibility. Struggling with the concept of waste–a waste of your time, money, energy and potential–may stay with you.
5. You leave once you’ve finished the Ph.D. You’re done! Yahoo! But you got what you came for and you are outta there.
Gains: high. Freedom, sweet freedom. Sweet, quaking-at-the-knees, dripping-with-relief freedom.
Costs: medium-high. Severely compromised mental health, a significant debt, relationships that needed some nurturing after long periods of neglect. There is some belief (which I believe is a myth) that having a Ph.D. makes you unemployable.
(NB: Perhaps I’m biased here (since this was the path I chose and I’ve had three years to gain distance from the experience) by seeing the costs as “medium-high” and not “high.” To me, though, the gains far outstripped the costs, in terms of the feeling of freedom, the wild array of life choices I knew I could make, the ability to do the teaching and research and writing that I wanted that wasn’t limited by the classroom, and yes, the satisfaction of having the degree in hand.)
6. Once you’ve done contract/adjunt teaching, done your post-doc or gotten a tenure-track position. It might seem weird to lump these three types of academics into one category, but I’ll explain why below. Even if it’s news to some grad students, people do actually leave secure, tenured positions (Rebecca Stienitz is one of them–here’s her story–and so is Kenny Mostern of “On Being Postacademic” fame–which you can read here. NB: I’ll be interviewing Dr. Mostern and Dr. Stienitz for the podcast series in the next few weeks).
Gains: high. Once you’ve got your Ph.D., you can go anywhere and do anything with confidence. Contract faculty have a lot to gain by landing in a job that actually pays a living wage, and they, along with tenure-track faculty, gain by being able to move to the city of their choice, actually have free time, start a family, make more money, etc.
Costs: low-to-medium. I haven’t been there, and so far I haven’t done any interviews (yet) with people who’ve made this jump. So I am only speculating here. But making a career change at this point just makes a lot of sense to me in the same way that any other career change makes sense. I know someone who used to be an award-winning, professional Irish dancer and is now an IT guy at an art college. I know someone who used to be a professional chef and is now a naturopath. I know someone who used to make giga-bucks at Goldman Sachs and is now a freelance writer living in the English countryside with her young children. I admire people who make crazy career leaps because although there are potential costs (like failing), the gains (like actually being happy and/or satisfied) seem to be so much greater.
What do you think? If you’re going to quit academia, when is the best time to do it? What other factors are there that contribute to your decision? (You can also read a post-doc’s far more brief take on the matter here at Damn Dinosaurs).
Related posts:
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m just about the launch my own blog with a post on the same topic but more from the Masters perspective. What you have written here stirs up some of the same feelings I had when you discussed Rajeev Motwani’s comments about Masters degree but I will leave that to my own blog and just make this comment. Masters programs and responses to them at Universities are just too varied to presume that the cost of leaving academia after completion is low. In my field and sub-field, many BA/MA students are discouraged from publishing in peer-journals because we are seen as not having enough training. Sure, we can go to conferences and enter essay contests that are few and far between, but unlike the sciences, it is rare for honours and postgrads to publish unless there was a close connection to an editor. Furthermore, I did not get years of teaching experience.
I once thought that Academia was going to be my life and I threw myself into my school work. Now that I am leaving at such an inauspicious time, it is hard not to feel resentment for not having the transferable skills that some people attained in undergrad as well as regret for not sticking through to at least ABD for at least the appearance of having high level research and writing skills.
Bronwyn, thanks for your comment–and good on you for starting up the Terminal Masters blog! Please let us know when it launches, and I’ll be sure to help you promote it.
Your experience of your MA kind of reminds me of my own, in the sense that I was surprised that when I arrived, my cohort was actively discouraged from writing what the department called a thesis. They defined as thesis as an opportunity to conduct original research; my mouth watered at the prospect. Instead, I did what everybody else did and was supposed to do, which was write a smaller, more manageable paper with lower expectations. I was unclear as to why my department offered the thesis option yet suggested people not take it. So I hear your frustration about not publishing and your resentment about the transferable skills.
I have to say, though, that not teaching at the M.A. level seems like a good idea to me. I do not know if this happens in Canada, but I have heard of several instances in the U.S. lately where even undergrads are teaching. I think this is a terrible idea, not because undergrads and MAs would be bad teachers (doubtless they would have 100% more enthusiasm and dedication than many PhDs who are teaching!), but because it just strikes me as wrong, wrong, wrong for universities to exploit that level of labour. I do realize, like you say, that teaching is a professional development opportunity, and I can totally see how you’d be pissed to have missed out on that. But part of the crisis in universities precisely has to do with the exploitation of the cheapest labour, which I’m completely opposed to.
I’ll just say one final thing. I have a feeling that you’re an ambitious, organized, bright, committed person (given the initiative to start the blog, and the way you describe your relationship with academia and your desire to move upward professionally). I think that in spite of your withdrawal from school, you are going to have no problem demonstrating your research and writing skills (and all of the other skills you clearly have). You will just cultivate them and show them off in a different way (and probably one that pays better!). But please do stick around and keep me updated on what you’re doing. I really appreciate your insights about the cost of leaving academia after the MA, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
I enjoyed this post – especially #6 – since that’s the position I’m in. It made me laugh – and I’m not be sarcastic or critical here – because it’s not how I’ve been viewing my situation on too many days. Part of my laughter was certainly of the ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ variety, but only part and I think that was an automatic, cynical response. Most of my laughter, however, was delighted, at the recognition that here was a much better way to look at my situation and that, perhaps, I’ve been trapping myself in a negative view of my own creation. I love the idea that I can “go anywhere and do anything with confidence” – and indeed, why not?
I reconnected recently with an old friend from high school over facebook who wrote that my PhD was ‘impressive’ and I was surprised and again of two minds, first, that it wasn’t impressive (after all, doesn’t everybody have one, and I haven’t published six books with a tt at an R1), but second, maybe, actually, it is kind of impressive. Maybe I have done something kind of amazing and I should have confidence that I “go anywhere and do anything”!
Long comment, but I’d reread this post a couple of times and kept coming back to that line. I really enjoy the tone of this site — many thanks!
Greyeyes, after reading your comment, I did start thinking that the way I wrote #6 was perhaps a bit on the Pollyanna side. I don’t think I should have underplayed the massive challenges in being faculty (contract/adjunct or tenured and everything in between) and changing careers because it’s just as hard at that point than it is at any other point in the academic ladder. Career change is tough, no matter how you slice it, and when you’re coming from academia, you feel behind the eight ball in so many ways. So I’m sorry for potentially minimizing the struggle you’re having.
Of course, I am glad if my optimistic attitude gave you a bit of a boost. But in the absence of having done any interviews with folks in your shoes, I was shooting a bit in the dark. I did do my interview with the former professor Stienitz last week, which was great. I’ll be posting that in a couple of weeks, and maybe her experience will shed some light on yours (in a nutshell, she spent over a year sending out feelers and networking her butt off, letting people know she was looking for work, and ended up with 3 job offers by the time she cut her academic ties).
Thanks for being here, Greyeyes, and thanks for your honesty.
I am one of those unfortunate people who left a few years into the tenure track. All throughout my graduate career, I was always waiting for someone to pull me aside and tell me I didn’t have the chops; I just always had doubts and misgivings about academia and its culture. Well, no one ever pulled me aside; I actually did well in graduate school. After getting my PhD, I decided to apply to TT jobs (and only TT jobs) with the thought that if I didn’t get one that would be my cue to bow out gracefully and move to something else. Well, I got a TT job but not a prestigious one. The teaching load was high, service expectations were even higher, and there was also some expectation of research.
I didn’t perform well in this environment. Part of this might be explained by the appearance of two demanding, needy, and lovely babies, spaced out rather inconveniently at the critical years in terms of tenure evaluations. But, the larger issue had to do with me, that I am a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. My interests and work is interdisciplinary, grounded in social problems, and I came to find I don’t care very much about “theory” or advancing the discipline. I never really found an effective voice in my courses, never clicked with students. I loathed going to class, and I loathed some of the courses I had to teach. At a school where teaching was everything, this was an epic problem! I received a scathing, scalding, soul defeating performance pretenure review telling me to be a better teacher or else.
The only thing that kept me marginally interested was my research. I was able to publish some articles. But, I have always wanted to write a book and actually have. Right around the time I received this bad performance review, I also received a pass from an editor that had solicited the manuscript. This became the proverbial straw for me. Realizing there were no guarantees that I would achieve success as a “scholar,” (esp. given my unorthodox approach in the context of my field), I decided to say goodbye to my academic life. Teaching was taking up 90% of my time, there was no time for the part of it I liked the best, so what was the point? I decided I would rather spend time with my own kids than with someone else’s.
I have tried to remain an independent scholar, but just got word that my book was rejected by a second press (this time after external review). The editor was hopeful, so was I , and this was the one thing that kept my adult, non-mom, intellectual identity in tact- and now it’s gone. I think that is the hardest thing about leaving after you’ve been on the TT– it’s having held the brass ring but then you give it up and who are you now? I know I have other things in my life (great kids, good marriage, some friends), but this identity has been with me for over a decade now. And, now I have to start over as someone very far from the spring chicken days. If you have any doubts, I would say the best time to leave is after the Masters. I REALLY wish I had!!!! And, thanks for letting me vent and be something of a downer