An open letter to current and potential future graduate students:
The bottom has now completely fallen out of the academic labor market in the USA. Over the last several years, I’ve written about the deteriorating financial situation of many U.S. colleges and universities. At the micro scale, two for four institutions profiled in that post have closed. At the macro scale, there is this 2013 overview of pending structural change in higher education by a former provost. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has simply accelerated the process.
I have also discussed what this means for people planning on a career in academia. The outlook has gone from very bad to worse. The University of Pennsylvania has reacted responsibly by suspending admission to its graduate programs in arts and sciences. More universities should do the same. But they probably won’t, because graduate tuition and labor are part of the university business model. My advice? Don’t enter a graduate program with expectations of becoming a professor unless you are granted full funding for the length of the program.
What should current graduate students do? Become proficient in skills that have been and will continue to be in demand outside of academia — statistics, data visualization, coding, and writing for policymakers and the public rather than the dozen people who might read your journal article. Also, a master’s degree in instructional design is a very useful credential. Note that political science graduate programs often don’t provide students with formal, effective training in any of these skills. That’s because they are preparing people for a career that, statistically-speaking, no longer exists.