First a confession: I spent over thirty years teaching – several of those years in a two-year college and then in a university. 

Brennan’s book is a good introduction to graduate school and to the search for a position once you have finished your degrees. It is not easy!

Recently an acquaintance asked me about teaching at a Junior College.

My response:

What advice would you give to young graduate students and aspiring university professors?

First: there is no better job in the world! To get paid to read books and talk about them is quite amazing.

Second: do not look down on community or junior colleges. They are great institutions for teaching and for influencing students. Some of my best teaching experiences come from teaching in the two-year college.

Third: always respect your students. Be honest and open with them. Camus wrote in his Notebooks: “For a generous psychology:

We help a person more by giving him a favorable image of himself than by constantly reminding him of his shortcomings. Each individual normally strives to resemble his best image. Can be applied to teaching, to history, to philosophy, to politics. We are for instance the result of twenty centuries of Christian imagery. For two thousand years man has been offered a humiliating image of himself. The result is obvious. Anyway, who can say what we should be if those twenty centuries had clung to the ancient ideal with its beautiful human face.“

Fourth: a biblical suggestion: Find what it is that you can do and do it with the best of your ability.

In a recent discussion on Facebook a colleague, who teaches at Rutgers University, contributed this:

I got similar advice from Dale . . , who taught me my first philosophy course. I never did look down on community colleges and was always happy to work at them.

However, what Dale didn’t tell me was that the job market for philosophy was utterly terrible back in 1998 when I asked him about it, and it’s far worse now. I don’t recommend the philosophy profession to anyone — not because the work isn’t great, but because it’s a huge investment to get the qualifications you need now, and most people who earn them will never be able to work, no matter how good they are, and will make themselves miserable trying.

And my guess is that with the pandemic raging the job market in academia at all levels will be difficult. How to proceed? Read this book first. From it you will learn some practical advice for deciding on a graduate school, for preparing for the tough job market, and for any number of practical moves: how to write your cv, how to prepare for an interview, and how to sell yourself.

Do you want to go to graduate school? Then you’re in good company: nearly 80,000 students will begin pursuing a PhD this year alone. But while almost all of new PhD students say they want to work in academia, most are destined for disappointment. The hard truth is that half will quit or fail to get their degree, and most graduates will never find a full-time academic job.

In Good Work If You Can Get It, Jason Brennan combines personal experience with the latest higher education research to help you understand what graduate school and the academy are really like. This candid, pull-no-punches book answers questions big and small, including

• Should I go to graduate school—and what will I do once I get there?
• How much does a PhD cost—and should I pay for one?
• What kinds of jobs are there after grad school, and who gets them?
• What happens to the people who never get full-time professorships?
• What does it take to be productive, to publish continually at a high level?
• What does it take to teach many classes at once?
• What does it take to succeed in graduate school?
• How does “publish or perish” work?
• How much do professors get paid?
• What do search committees look for, and what turns them off?
• How do I know which journals and book publishers matter?
• How do I balance work and life?

This realistic, data-driven look at university teaching and research will make your graduate and postgraduate experience a success. Good Work If You Can Get It is the guidebook anyone considering graduate school, already in grad school, starting as a new professor, or advising graduate students needs. Read it, and you will come away ready to hit the ground running. – (from the Amazon page)

The book is easy to read (and the author reminds the reader from time to time that the tough stance he takes is research driven and not simply an attitude about the importance or love of teaching as a profession). It is short and filled with data in its four chapters, and an introduction and conclusion:

INTRODUCTION: Unpleasant Truths about the World’s Best Job

• Do You Really Want an Academic Job?

• Success in Graduate School Means Working to Get a Job

• How to Be Productive and Happy

• The Academic Market and Tenure

CONCLUSION: Exit Options

Let me close with an interesting observation from Benjamin Ginsberg, author of The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why it matters:

Each year, thousands of bright and ambitious students begin doctoral programs hoping they will earn PhDs and find rewarding positions at great colleges and universities. Good luck! Brennan offers the advice graduate students need but seldom receive.

A book filled with good advice.

 

Bob Lane is a Philosophy Professor Emeritus at Vancouver Island University on Vancouver Island.

Categories: General

Keywords: academic life, success