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  • Ask the Administrator: Can the Prodigal Daughter Return?

    By Dean Dad May 7, 2008 10:31 pm

    A lucky correspondent writes:

    I'm doing a broad, interdisciplinary Social Science degree. While I've been in a cave researching and writing my dissertation the method that I use and the community that I work with have become The Next Big Thing. I've been approached by a private company who want me to do some consulting work for them (yes please!) and my contact there said that if she had her way they'd hire me to do this full time, and that I'm in great demand and can basically write my own ticket. All of this is news to me, and kind of a shock, but it is nice to know that once I finish I'll be employable somewhere.

    But here's the thing, academe is my dream job. I'd like a tt track job somewhere, I love teaching and researching, even service work, and I'm pretty good at them, too. But the market sucks right now and my research field and my teachable areas are a not a tight fit, so I look weird on paper. I'm no fool, when I graduate I'm taking a private sector job if one is on offer that beats an adjunct's pay (and what doesn't these days?), but will it screw my chances at getting a tt job later? I plan on applying for everything going while I work, and the private sector work would essentially be designing and doing research, but given the biases against some kinds of private sector work
    in the social sciences, could I be working myself out of the possibility of a tt job? Just to clarify,
    teaching experience is not an issue, I have about 10 years under my belt.
    Thanks for any advice anyone can offer,
    Suddenly Popular in the Private Sector

    This is the good kind of problem to have.

    I'm not sure which stratum of higher ed you're looking at, so I'll just speak to the sector I know and ask my wise and worldly readers to fill in the gaps for the research universities and SLAC's.

    Assuming a generally glutted market, you really have two possible ways to stand out. One is to come out of the tip-toppiest program with dual book contracts and references from God herself. I'll assume that if that described your situation, you wouldn't have written. The other is to make
    yourself different. Corporate experience can do that.

    In the cc world, as I've observed it, corporate experience is not a negative. If anything, it's a plus, in that it suggests that you know how to meet deadlines, how to work in teams, and how to advise students to succeed in the corporate world (having done it yourself). These are not small
    things. When a substantial number of students are first-generation college, the professor's job goes beyond just teaching the class. It also involves advising, which officially includes course selection but unofficially often goes well beyond that. The folks who've never worked outside the hothouse of academe don't have the same corporate experiences to call upon when helping
    students understand how certain kinds of workplaces operate.

    Corporate experience can also bring contacts, exposure to current industry trends, and a backdrop against which to appreciate the genuine freedoms of academia. It can also greatly improve your bargaining position, since you'd have the economic luxury of being able to turn down lousy offers. Folks who can ply their wares in multiple markets can command better deals than folks who can't.

    Other than a certain brittle, defensive snobbishness based on insecurity, I'm not sure what the principled objection would be. "How dare she make a living?" "How dare she soil herself by dealing with the real world? We social scientists ignore the real world!" Well, actually, they kinda do, but that's another post.

    Unless I'm missing something really huge, from my vantage point, putting the corporate arrow in your quiver can only help. Go for it!

    Good luck!

    Wise and worldly readers - especially those at other strata of higher ed - how does this look from your vantage point?

    Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.

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Comments on Ask the Administrator: Can the Prodigal Daughter Return?

  • Prodigal Daughter
  • Posted by Pamela Kelley , Assistant Professor at University of Alaska Anchorage on May 8, 2008 at 5:00am EDT

  • I have some experience in the good daughter's plight. It never occurred to me to stay in academe once the private sector beckoned after I earned my terminal degree. I spent the next fifteen years gathering acorns while doing work on the cutting edge. Then, medical circumstances indicated that the high risk/high reward lifestyle of the private sector was probably unsustainable. Barely forty, I returned to the academy -- first in seriatum term positions, and then to a direct appointment on the tenure track. This year I'll be tenured, right on schedule.

    I find that as one who infiltrated from the private sector, I have the maturity and perspective necessary to avoid getting wrapped up in the pettiness that pervades my social science department. I can grow impatient with the caterwauling and preening. I generally explain it away as insecurity. I'm not suitably cowed by rank or term in rank, but so long as my program continues to place >95% of its graduates annually no one seems to take too much offense. In the modern metrics of a state funded university, placement rates matter. This is a product of the instruction I provide, and the program I direct. The department and university trade on my contacts and professional reputation in exchange for a small salary and an immensely valuable benefits package.

    There's the well worn path to tenure. But it's not the only path.

  • Posted by Visiting prof on May 8, 2008 at 11:05am EDT

  • Well, that's all and good - and what my brother was told post PhD. He went to a high ranking very important govt job where he was asked to stay on. He was then told by faculty advisors, friends and colleagues that one to two years was acceptable, anything more was "selling out" - even though there were no academic jobs in his field at that time.
    The reality is that it may take a rather longer time to return to academia than you think.
    People say you come back with added experience and wisdom, new perspectives for your grad students etc. but the reality is that hiring committees are nervous and reluctant to admit that maybe not everything is learned in the ivory tower.
    I say go for it - but don't expect your future colleagues to welcome you with open arms. In my experience they are suspicious and occasionally resentful - particularly if you earned a living wage.

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