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I need your help goons. I'm 26 years old and entering my third year in a Ph.D program in the humanities (philosophy, if it matters) and, for a variety of reasons (most significantly the utter lack of quality employment prospects), have decided that I need to get out of academia. My primary goal is to transition into a career that at least promises a comfortable existence with good prospects of employment, preferably with only a year or two of additional education. I'm pretty agnostic about what sort of career I end up in; my overriding concern is to make good money to start/support a family in an industry where I can expect decent job security. I do not want to attempt to pursue and "alt-ac" career that keeps me in higher education doing something other than teaching. My "assets" (construed loosely) are: -No student loan debt - ~$50k from an inheritance sitting in a money market account I'm willing to put towards further education - a B.A. and an M.A. in Philosophy from decently ranked (but not amazing) schools - 4 years experience teaching/TAing - a year of guaranteed income from my stipend to give me time to plan my exit out My main problem at the moment is that I'm just overwhelmed by possibilities, and I'm getting a bunch of different advice on career options from friends/family. A few of my close friends work in digital forensics/infosec and tell me that there's an large amount of money and a dire shortage of qualified people, but I have no real idea how to approach breaking into that field (Are certifications enough? Do I need to go back to school? Do programs even exist?). Many of my relatives have been pressing me to go back to school for accounting, but I'm unclear as to whether that would require another bachelors or whether I could just take classes. The academic in me is also worried that this sample of advice is too small to be any good, so please, internet, let me know what you think I ought to do.
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Sep 13, 2015 23:39
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How much additional time and money would it take you to finish your PhD? I really don't know very much about academia, but it seems like your best bet would be to finish the PhD (assuming the remaining requirements aren't huge) and then be willing to relocate anywhere in the country to teach at the high school or college level. I have friends who are both in their early 30s, one who is going back to school for digital forensics and one who is going back for accounting. The forensics program is like a 2 year type thing at a community college, and I am honestly not sure what his job prospects will be like after he finishes. He said they have a lot of guest lecturers, and basically 90% or more of what the professionals say they deal with is child porn. Accounting seems relatively safe, but it's a longer program and also seems like more of a personality transition to go from philosophy to accounting. What made you come up with these two choices? Are they just what people randomly told you you should do?
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Sep 14, 2015 00:18
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Droo posted:How much additional time and money would it take you to finish your PhD? Time to finish the Ph.D is probably 3-6 more years (and 0 cost, I'm funded), but there aren't any jobs. To put this in perspective, it's not unheard of for an opening in a tenure track position to attract 500 applications. There are adjunct jobs, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life making <$30k/year with 0 job security and no benefits (adjunct positions are typically one year). My Ph.D program has graduated around two dozen people in the last ten years and only one of them has secured employment in the profession. This state of affairs probably seems insane to people outside academia, but the job market really is that bad, and will probably only get worse. I do not want to teach high school under any circumstances, but even if I did I'd have to do at least another year of school to get a teaching license. And yeah, I suppose I am just taking random advice, but it's advice from people who I trust and who make the sort of money and live the sort of life that I think I could see myself living (and who have job security/good prospects for employment). I realize that at any other point in time the obvious answer would be law school (it's maybe the only career where the skills of a philosophy grad student are actually useful), but I don't want to jump from one sinking ship to another and I really want to avoid going into debt if at all possible.
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Sep 14, 2015 00:40
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A Melodic Miner posted:A few of my close friends work in digital forensics/infosec and tell me that there's an large amount of money and a dire shortage of qualified people, but I have no real idea how to approach breaking into that field (Are certifications enough? Do I need to go back to school? Do programs even exist?). I left graduate school relatively recently and went into IT security after about a year of working. Your friends in infosec probably have some good ideas on how to get into their industry. Based on my the people I've met, I'd go for certifications over going back to school. I've met a lot of people working in IT security who have computer scienc-y degrees, and plenty of people with degrees in other fields. My degrees are in math. There is an IT thread which would probably give you more well-rounded advice on the best way to go about it. My company has an IT security component, so I found out what certifications they liked, passed the exam for one, was able to use that fact to get an internal transfer+promotion.
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Sep 14, 2015 01:28
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Droo posted:How much additional time and money would it take you to finish your PhD? A PhD is more than just time, if your heart isn't in it you will be miserable and more than likely simply won't be able to complete the degree. Also the OP is correct, there are no jobs in the humanities. Like even if you are in one of the best programs in the world- it's not unusual for many subfields to have 1-2 job openings a year in the entire country. Unfortunately OP unless you have an unusual background the high pay/high job security/ lots of jobs fields are a completely different skillset involving lots of math, computer skills and so on. You could very well be looking at starting from square one in a lot of those areas. If you are good in math though computer science and data science are booming for the foreseeable future. You really ought to have something in mind beyond money+job security though. e: Accounting really isn't that great right now either, they are suffering from a similar problem as Law, though to a lessor degree- a lot of the stuff that paid the bills in the past is now automated. There are jobs, but there's much better ways to go with better pay. TROIKA CURES GREEK fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 02:03
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OP, I know you want career advice, but I just want to say that I think you're making the right move. I was at the same stage in an English literature PhD, fully funded, etc. I jumped ship and haven't looked back. It's very hard to make that move, because the deeper you are in it, the more you are just surrounded by people urging you to stay, who only know that world. It's an insane, precarious existence. For a lot of people it's just the epitome of the sunken costs fallacy ("only a few more years...") The funded MA a d teaching experience has occasionally come in handy... After bailing out, I joined the peace corps and managed to leverage the government hiring advantage to get a federal job. Not sure if that's the sort of course you want to pursue (no guarantees on fed jobs... they are notorious in their hiring practices).
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Oct 4, 2015 06:03
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If you're in analytic philosophy, teach yourself Excel and SQL, and then pick one of R or Python, and be a data analyst.
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Oct 4, 2015 07:14
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Does anyone know anything about private consulting firms that recruit Ph.D.s? Boston Consulting Group and McKinsky Collins seem to want humanities Ph.D.s, but I don't know why. I've read about their interview process, and it seems easy compared to what I deal with as an academic. But I don't want to end up figuring out that Hormel would save more money if it killed the pigs while they were alive and awake or something.
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Dec 6, 2015 19:12
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A Melodic Miner posted:Time to finish the Ph.D is probably 3-6 more years (and 0 cost, I'm funded), but there aren't any jobs. To put this in perspective, it's not unheard of for an opening in a tenure track position to attract 500 applications. There are adjunct jobs, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life making <$30k/year with 0 job security and no benefits (adjunct positions are typically one year). My Ph.D program has graduated around two dozen people in the last ten years and only one of them has secured employment in the profession. This state of affairs probably seems insane to people outside academia, but the job market really is that bad, and will probably only get worse. I do not want to teach high school under any circumstances, but even if I did I'd have to do at least another year of school to get a teaching license. I don't know if it works this way in Pholosphy, but have you done enough work that you could get awarded an MA? I know in science getting handed a master's is a bitter consolation prize, but if you're only 3 years in that is ok for a master's. Can you do a short write-up, or something, and get an MA? That'd give you an additional degree (albeit a less-useful one) with little to no time or effort added-on. Where you've got the guts to admit it earlier-on, getting an MA after 3 years is actually a pretty good exchange of time+effort for a degree. MA or no, one thing I'd recommend is just spending a lot of time looking at job ads. Maybe not even to apply, but just to see what kind of stuff is getting done. Open up your local craigslist, go to open jobs, and just start reading. Everything from "plumber's helper" to "VP of analytics". See if there's anything appealing right now where you live. You never know- maybe there's a job open 5 mins down the road from you that you'd love and would pay the bills. I'd recommend against spending on further formal degree-seeking schooling. It's tempting coming from academia to see degrees as some kind of essential component of life, but honestly at this point you've got plenty of letters after your name, you've spent plenty of time and effort, just go with what you got as far as degrees go. If you want to get into InfoSec or whatever get all the Certs you want, mind you. It's still good to invest in yourself. If you're not happy in grad school now and you want to get working and moving on with your life, don't go back to school again. I'm sorry to say but the days of just getting the right degree and getting a guaranteed job are over for all but a handful of specialties. If you had an undergrad in petroleum engineering, that'd be different, but you don't. Getting more school than you already have will make little to no difference in your employment prospects.
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Dec 7, 2015 17:22
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Uncle Enzo posted:I'd recommend against spending on further formal degree-seeking schooling. It's tempting coming from academia to see degrees as some kind of essential component of life, but honestly at this point you've got plenty of letters after your name, you've spent plenty of time and effort, just go with what you got as far as degrees go. If you want to get into InfoSec or whatever get all the Certs you want, mind you. It's still good to invest in yourself. If you're not happy in grad school now and you want to get working and moving on with your life, don't go back to school again. This. My perspective on obtaining degrees is that your life is on hold until you've finished studying. There are degrees that feed directly into fields with shortages. Other than those short courses (1-2 years) to give you enough skills to work in an area are sufficient.
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Dec 7, 2015 23:43
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TROIKA CURES GREEK posted:e: Accounting really isn't that great right now either, they are suffering from a similar problem as Law, though to a lessor degree- a lot of the stuff that paid the bills in the past is now automated. There are jobs, but there's much better ways to go with better pay. Industry accounting maybe, not not public accounting by any measure.
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Dec 8, 2015 00:53
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Software development. There are tons of ways to break in; I had a ba in english and did a 2 year masters and got a full time gig half way through. Look in the newbie programmer get a job thread in cavern of cobol.
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Jan 4, 2016 23:17
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Have you thought of being a business analyst? You can probably study up on the side and knock out a certificate in a few months, claim some of your school projects and teaching work as relevant experience, and get an internship or entry level position (might have to bite the bullet for the first job). There's a lot of observation and analysis of business process and company goals, documenting them, and then suggesting solutions to improve. That might be a good mental outlet while letting you observe first hand various aspects of the business environment to see if there's something else that interests you. As mentioned earlier, Excel and SQL are valuable, and you can get quick certifications in each (not that they're required, but if you're lacking specific work experience it at least tells an employer you know enough to get the cert). A lot of business analysts gravitate toward tech because that's where a lot of the solutions to their analysis are. Starting salaries are decent, and if you specialize in an area (like tech) can get pretty baller.
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Jan 10, 2016 04:02
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Doghouse posted:Software development. There are tons of ways to break in; I had a ba in english and did a 2 year masters and got a full time gig half way through. Look in the newbie programmer get a job thread in cavern of cobol. Caveat, you have to have the right mental knack to be good at programming, which is not universal.
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Jan 10, 2016 15:42
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feedmegin posted:Caveat, you have to have the right mental knack to be good at programming, which is not universal. The best philosophy professor I ever had in my undergrad was an adjunct teaching at night who worked as a software engineer by day. There's a lot of shared logic in both disciplines.
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Jan 11, 2016 08:25
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Sales. Make a ton of money, will always have a job, and acquire a skill set that can be used in any industry. You do sales everyday. From pitching and selling your professor during your capstone presentation. Telling your S/O how amazing Star Wars movies are. Getting more money from your Dad for expenses. Everyone sells and we sell all the time. Now is the time to take this basic skill you have, and making a living on it. I've found that history and philosophy students, along with athletes, make some of the base sales people. The best part of sales, you determine how much you make. If all you need to be happy is 90k a year, you sell that. If you want 5x that amount, you can find a job and product to get you there. gently caress being paid some arbitrary number based on how much the company thinks your worth and getting basically an allowance every month (aka a salary.) Make your money yourself and live the way you want. Snatch Duster fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jan 13, 2016 |
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Jan 13, 2016 20:25
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Are you on LinkedIn? People love talking about their jobs more than you'd think, so I'd get on there and if an old classmate or friend or anyone you may know (and probably even people you don't) has a job title that looks interesting then shoot them a message and ask if you can meet, call, or email to talk about what it is they do then decide if you'd like to know more. If you just want someone to pick something for you, do like the guy above me says. Sales is super easy to at least break into somewhere. Car dealerships do sales, pharma does sales, manufacturing does sales. Generate a resume, type "sales" and your desired area into Indeed and apply away. You'll get something.
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Jan 13, 2016 21:07
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Snatch Duster posted:Sales. Make a ton of money, will always have a job, and acquire a skill set that can be used in any industry. Agreeing that sales is a good idea, but I would add two things: 1. You have to have the right personality and outlook 2. You have to make sure you don't get a poo poo sales job 1 is pretty self explanatory. You don't have to be a stereotypical used car sales man, but you have to be willing to work with people and drive to numbers. 2 is there are just sales jobs that basically are scams, and while smart people figure it out quickly, anyone can make a mistake and it can be a bad first experience.
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Jan 15, 2016 13:02
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