In 2018, I was unexpectedly let go from my PhD program. I was never entirely sold on the academic life, but I did appreciate the autonomy and the challenge that it afforded.
Fortunately, I’ve found that an ex-grad student can find the autonomy and the challenge outside the academy, without the many downsides, as an independent consultant.
In fact, I’d say that PhD dropouts (or rejects, or whoever got out of there) make the best consultants! Here’s why:
They are trained researchers
There are plenty of research jobs requiring a PhD. What these outfits apparently don’t understand is that it doesn’t take receiving the diploma itself to receive all the training that comes with a PhD.
Most PhD programs are set up so that classes come in the first two or three years, after which a qualifying exam is given. This exam is meant to prove that the student “has what it takes” to produce quality research. If the student gets the go-ahead, they then become a candidate and write the dissertation. Yes, the dissertation is meant as an applied exercise in research, but it’s also the opening dance in the academic debutante’s coming out to the academic job market and research mill.
That means that someone in a PhD program for the first two or three years essentially got the same training as someone who stuck it out to get the PhD. The jobs that are requiring the PhD, then, are looking for someone who’s been prepared to be not just a researcher, but an academic researcher.
PhD dropouts who stuck around a couple years are just as trained in coursework to conduct research — they just knew when to get out, before it got too focused on the academic job market.
You pay for results, not paperwork
Everybody knows the person who inexplicably lists their professional credentials on every email and social media post. Indeed, the PhD has cachet. But, would you rather pay for results, or for the privilege of working with someone who happened to stay in school longer than you?
PhD dropouts have extracted the good parts about academia — the intellectual rigor, the independent thinking, the commitment to excellence — and discarded the bad parts — the empty credentialing, the self-referential world of publishing, the nonexistent job market.
It’s like finding someone who’s spent just enough time with a tribe to learn from them, but not actually become one of them. Which is who you want to work with.
Because you don’t want to work with an academic.
They know how to deal with difficult clients
Not you, of course…. your difficult coworkers!
Academics are difficult to work with. You know all those rules of professional behavior, like returning an email within X hours and being generally available? Yeah, that’s not how academics do things. To be honest, much of the behavior I encountered in academia would be borderline illegal in the private sector.
It’s a toxic culture, so anyone who got through a significant portion of graduate school is savvy enough to navigate a toxic culture but smart enough to eventually leave it.
And yes, that means me.
I sometimes ruminate that my career path would have been easier if I’d have been able to stick around to complete the degree. There would be less “explaining to do” in terms of my career path, and I’d have access to the many cool jobs available for those with the magic credentials, “PhD.”
However, I’ve come to see my doctoral-level training as a secret weapon. I have a deep understanding of research methods and the philosophy of science. I can value (and evaluate) all kinds of science, not just “data science.” I can play on the increasingly needed middle ground between academia and the private sector.
I’m not one of those “burn it all down” critics of academia: there is a needed place for what it offers in today’s world, especially when it comes to conducting rigorous, ethical research. That said, both the job market as a whole, and especially the academic one, need to rethink the PhD’s purpose, if my hypothesis is true that the best dissertation is an unstarted disseration.
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