As a newly minted Associate Professor, I sort of feel like I ought to say something about the recent tenure discussions. These were kicked off by Rob Knop’s recent despairing post (though it should be noted that Rob’s been worried about this for a while), and most of the discussion has taken place at Cosmic Variance, with the discussion expanding into comments about academia in general, via Sean’s illustrative example.
Really, though, my chief reaction to most of this has been “Thank God we didn’t have academic blogs back when I was an undergraduate.”
As Mark Trodden notes, the discussion has tended toward the soul-crushing. The tenure system is fundamentally broken, academia is a pyramid scheme, nobody should ever think about pursuing an academic career, etc. It’s no surprise that one student reading the discussion is quoted in Mark’s post as having second thoughts about the whole thing.
Had I seen this litany of woe as an undergraduate, I don’t quite know what I would’ve done. I was a B/ B+ student in college– at one of the most elite liberal arts colleges in the country, mind, and my overall GPA owed a lot to my misspent sophomore year, but I wasn’t a superstar by any stretch. I got rejected by most of the graduate schools I applied to, in fact, and I didn’t even apply to the Harvard/ MIT/ Caltech tier of schools.
And yet, my plan heading into grad school was, well, to end up where I am, as a faculty member at a liberal arts college. Given the discussion at Cosmic Variance, you would have to think this was an act of utter madness, but I didn’t have anybody telling me about the odds.
Which is not to say that I got bad advice. My undergraduate advisor gave me extremely sensible advice about the grad school application and decision process, and was very clear that the only reason to go to graduate school was in order to pursue a career in research– which, it should be noted, is not identically equal to academia. A Ph.D. is the key credential to do research in academia or in industry, and while the job market wasn’t good at the time (1993), the options for a Ph.D. were a lot better than those for a BA, so I went to graduate school.
I’ve been extremely fortunate in my career. I got into a great research group as a graduate student, and I got an excellent post-doc after that. When I got hired at Union, I was able to get an external grant to fund my initial proposal, and I lucked into an idea that led to getting an NSF grant. I have a fairly high opinion of my own abilities, of course– I wouldn’t blog if I didn’t– but at the same time, I’m aware that I’ve had good fortune along the way.
But at the same time, I think the picture painted by a lot of blogs and blog comments is much too bleak. Yes, everybody knows stories of incredibly brilliant students who go off to graduate school and get crushed by the system. At the same time, though, there are middle-of-the-pack students who go off to graduate school, and one way or another manage to make a good career for themselves. And, as Rob notes in comments, it’s a good life, when it works out.
My point, then, is that if you’re a student in the sciences thinking about graduate school, don’t give too much weight to the negative things that you hear. You should absolutely be aware that the odds of getting a tenured professorship at a top-tier research university aren’t good, and it would be folly to count on ending up in one of those places. But there are plenty of good career options outside the very top rank of institutions (look at, well, most of the physcis bloggers out there– I can only think of a handful who are at Top Ten research universities, and one of those is barking mad), and you can make a good life for yourself by going into academia with your eyes open.
Grad school is not a path to fame and fortune, but it’s also not a sure path to having your soul destroyed by the academic system. If you really love doing science, it can be a great experience, provided you go in with your eyes open, and keep a realistic view of what your options are.