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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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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 09:21 |
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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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