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Don’t let academia consume you

By Adam Ruben Jun. 12, 2020 , 3:20 PM

Academia has been called many un attering things: overpriced, top-heavy, bloated, unnecessary,
irrelevant, a scam, toxic, broken, pointless, a pyramid scheme, the edible nut of an Australian tree of
the plant family Proteaceae. … Wait, that’s macadamia.

The point is that the very institution we’ve relied upon to educate and train us in science is far from
perfect. Many Ph.D. awardees, on graduation day, feel less proud of their accomplishments and
more relieved to be done and headed out the door. Even those still interested in academia often nd
that academia—at least, the sparse academic job market—isn’t interested in them.

For years, professors seemed blind to this. Grad students were told, either implicitly or explicitly, that
any career outside the academy was tantamount to failure. Tenure-track professorships were
treated as amazing and abundant opportunities, while any other job was reserved for the students
who shouldn’t have been in a Ph.D. program in the rst place.

Luckily, that attitude is starting to change, an evolution I’ve witnessed rsthand as I’ve traveled
around the United States to speak at grad student training retreats—at least, I used to witness it,
back when traveling and in-person events were a thing. Grad students would pack into rooms to
learn about careers available outside academia. I found it notable that many of the events had “ rst
annual” in their names. At schools that are decades or centuries old, that gives you some indication
that program administrators have been missing an opportunity for a long time.

It’s refreshing to see these institutions nally get the message that a Ph.D. can help one nd a
rewarding career in a building not abutting a quadrangle. But academia’s self-focused mindset
hasn’t entirely gone away. I’ve had friends who were thinking of stepping outside academia—doing

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an industry postdoc, for example, or even taking a couple years off for parenting purposes—but they
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always hesitate, afraid that if they leave academia, they might never be allowed to return.

I was thinking about my own escape from academia recently when I happened across a blog post by
Inger Mewburn, director of researcher development at The Australian National University. Mewburn
decried the insular and dated academic model that forces students to kowtow to “an academia of
the past,” arguing that now, more than ever, is the perfect time to x the system—with academia
facing an economic crisis and careers outside academia growing in importance.

In Mewburn’s view, Ph.D. students are often dissuaded from spending time on activities that might
legitimately bene t them outside the university. They hone niche skills such as writing dense journal
articles that no one can read, for example, but they’re told that public speaking competitions are “a
waste of time.”

The previous Experimental Error

Experimental Error is a column about the quirky, comical, and sometimes bizarre world of scienti c training and
careers, written by scientist and comedian Adam Ruben.

How to tell whether you’re the victim of a bad peer review

Read more Experimental Error

This point certainly rang true for me. I don’t remember all of the details of my graduate education,
but it de nitely felt like the 7 years of my Ph.D. program contained less than 7 years’ worth of useful
instruction. Grad school is such a sizeable block of time in one’s formative years. Imagine if it was
lled with broad professional development—rather than years of repeating the same lab
experiments, or what Mewburn calls the “hazing ritual” of writing a dissertation.

I called Mewburn, partly to chat about the current state of graduate education and partly to avoid
having to homeschool my kids for an hour. She gave me even more reasons to question the
traditional academic model. “I did a little research project,” she told me, referring to a survey she
conducted in which she asked job recruiters about their views of academia. Respondents reported
back to her that they viewed academia as “an alien place” or “another world.”

“They felt that when someone had ‘Ph.D.’ after their name,” Mewburn explained, “they were
indoctrinated in a certain way of working that didn’t work in corporate land.” Academia, in other
words, by focusing on its own priorities, has been neglecting a broader enriching of skills that would
help graduate students go on to nd nonacademic jobs. And job recruiters can tell.

The meet-an-escapee-from-academia training events that some graduate programs are now offering
are important, but Mewburn thinks they should go further. She hopes programs will eventually
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recon gure themselves to provide more training that’s useful outside academia. But until that
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happens, Mewburn’s solution for grad students stuck in a broken system is a sort of selective
negligence. She asks them to consider which aspects of their education are worth pursuing
wholeheartedly, and which aren’t. For example, which arcane degree requirements might they satisfy
with token gestures, knowing that they’re ultimately unimportant in the long run anyway?

Cough cough … DISSERTATION … cough cough.

I feel like this is a conversation we have over and over again, like the daily struggle I have with my
kids after they’ve dumped their jackets on the oor. (“The coat hooks are right there. They came
from Ikea and they’re shaped like owls.”) The conversation inevitably starts when someone points
out that academic science training is mired in traditions that no longer make sense. Everyone nearby
loudly agrees—but those who truly need to be convinced remain silent because they don’t read this
section of Science anyway.

I hope that with all the hiring freezes in academia, more people will listen this time. But I’m not
holding my breath—and I do hope that graduate students will prize their own needs and desires
beyond what their advisers and programs expect of them.

So let’s say this together, one more time: Don’t let academic science training dissuade you from
considering nonacademic careers. If your university provides resources to help grad students nd
nonacademic job paths, that’s great—and if not, do your own research. Seek opportunities to build
skills in grad school that go beyond lab work. Make the most of your own training. Because the
system we’re working with right now? It’s just nuts.

Wait, I’m thinking about macadamias again.

Read more Experimental Error stories

Posted in: Experimental Error, Column, Non-disciplinary

doi:10.1126/science.caredit.abd3052

Adam Ruben
Adam Ruben, Ph.D., is a practicing scientist and the author of Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad
School and Pinball Wizards: Jackpots, Drains, and the Cult of the Silver Ball.
 Twitter

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