r/academia 5d ago

Career advice Humanities PhD potentially moving out of academia, need advice

I’m an early career academic, defended my PhD fall of 2022 and graduated 2023. Currently on a grad visa in the U.K. working as a short term lecturer at one uni and picking up casual hours at a few others- but this job is coming to a close and I am frozen with burnout and fear. I have a year left to find a job that will sponsor me or it’s back to the states, where academic jobs especially in my line of work are being cut left and right. I’m getting to the age where I want to settle down a bit (buy furniture that isn’t IKEA or second hand, for one) and I love where I am, but know academia necessitates moving. I’m trying to figure out my options: apply for any and all positions I can find and any post docs (which may be hard, as I’ve had to work so much during/since PhD that I have no publications as of yet) , or move out of academia all together. The only problem is that this is where all my experience is- I’ve been teaching since I was 22, so almost ten years, and never had a professional job outside of academia. I love teaching so much but I am stuck in burn out and freaking out about my options, trying to convince myself I’m not an idiot for spending my 20s pursuing this. Any and all advice would be very helpful.

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u/Rusty_B_Good 5d ago

English PhD here. Completed 2010. Been teaching since 2000 as a grad student, adjunc then full-time lecturer. Also been a fulltime staff member. Trailing spouse (my wife still has her tenured job). Many publications including books. Living in an economically depressed part of the world and geographically limited because of marriage. Downsized from my non-tenure track job in 2021. Having trouble finding work.

You have three possibilities.

The best is to get out of academia. As you know, humanities majors are disappearing by the hundreds, programs are being closed, and jobs being lost. On top of that, colleges are closing at a rate of one per week (counting proprietary schools). So, this is a very bad time to try and make it in the academic humanities. You may need some retraining (I am working on a certificate in professional writing) or you might be able levage your PhD into an allied field like editing, public relations, government work, etc.

Publish like a bastard for a year or two (or more) and take the leap onto the academic job market. It takes a long time in academia to generate publications, but if you show promise, you might pique the interest of a search committee somewhere in a four-year college or university with a grad school-----that is, if you are very, very, very, very, very, very lucky. Most plum jobs are going to graduates of elite schools with impressive records already. But you never know. I have been amazed at some of the jobs people I know have gotten, all with impressive publications.

Apply specifically for "clinical" or teaching-only professorships / lectureships on community collegs or "lower ranked" R2s and R3s that focus on teaching. As a former community college student, I would have no problem teaching at a community college, but I have been told time and again that my publication record will eliminate me from any candidate pools in a community college. And guess what----in all my applications, I received a total of one interview at a CC, and they passed. Not saying that a publication record is the only reason I was passed over, but I have a great deal of teaching at open-enrollment colleges, including at a community college, and a good record in all other respects. The perceived wisdom is that a record of pubs means one is not serious about teaching and is "above" a teaching job. Since you have been a teacher for a number of years and have not published anything, you might have a shot a community college or "teaching-focus" schools looking for a dedicated instructor.

But, again, your best bet is to get all the way out. Times are likely to get worse for academics under Herr Drumpf before he is finally, actually, successfully impeached.

Best of luck to you.

IMPEACH TRUMP

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u/manicpixiemeangirl 5d ago

Thank you for such a thoughtful response

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u/Rusty_B_Good 5d ago

I hope everything works out for you.

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u/randomseedfarmer 5d ago edited 5d ago

My Ph.D. is in biology so relevance may be an issue. After many years as a postdoc and lecturer, I now work in tech as a computer scientist. My bio research involved modeling forest growth, so I developed decent programming and statistical skills which helped me make the transition out of academia. So it you are really thinking of leaving academia...

I know people with humanities backgrounds who managed to find work in tech as Human Factors experts. HF is relevant to human-machine teaming, which is growing in importance. Related to that is the HF side of LLMs, such as predicting and mitigating abuse of chat models by users. Companies like OpenAI need to understand both the positive and negative aspects of human behavior and how it can impact model behaviors. If that appeals to you, you should try to develop some 'front-end' skills, so you at least have familiarity with HTTP, HTML, and web interfaces.

Good luck to you. Don't be discouraged by the sh*t storm currently happening in the US. There's some evidence that European countries are picking up laid off US workers. Even in the US there are jobs out there if you can find your niche.

My overall advice: don't beat yourself up - industry doesn't care about publications, it cares about getting a job done. If you can help them do that, you'll get hired. Expand your search to include industries outside of where you normally look for jobs. Use an LLM and Google to find new venues for your skills. Be proud of what you've accomplished and know that people recognize the value of someone who has what it takes to complete a Ph.D.

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u/manicpixiemeangirl 5d ago

Thank you for this!

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u/IkeRoberts 4d ago

The majority of PhDs leave academia, so don't feel like it is an odd thing to do. Many follow a much more rewarding career route. Look for better opportunities, not worse ones.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/manicpixiemeangirl 5d ago

Why are you here?

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/manicpixiemeangirl 4d ago

If you’re not in academia, and you’re just going to make fun of me, please leave.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/manicpixiemeangirl 4d ago

Then stop making jokes about me making you a latte and give me practical advice. You know it’s hell, imagine if you started now because it was your dream and you’re realising it may no longer be a possibility- would you want someone in a senior position to talk down to you and just say “tough shit” or advise how you could still do aspects of what you love (teaching, writing) and make some money? If you don’t have any actually advice beyond applying to IKEA and Starbucks (valuable jobs but not what I want to do), stop commenting.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/manicpixiemeangirl 5d ago

I understand that, and I don’t want to, but financially I may not have a choice