Disenchanted Ph.D. Recipients, Take Solace: It Gets Better, New Research Suggests

Graduate students in the humanities face many challenges. The academic job market keeps getting tighter, student debt loads bigger. A doctorate these days isn’t worth it, critics have argued. But the results of a new survey, released on Thursday by the Council of Graduate Schools, push back a bit against that gloomy narrative.

Doctoral recipients in the humanities say their Ph.D. programs prepared them well for their current jobs, whether academic or not, the research shows. And their perceptions seem to get rosier over time.

Fifteen years after earning a Ph.D., for example, seven in 10 respondents in nonacademic careers said their programs had prepared them “extremely well” or “very well” for their current job. More than eight in 10 holding academic jobs said the same.

The results are based on 882 responses from humanities Ph.D. holders across 35 universities in cohorts three, eight, and 15 years after graduation. Response rates to the survey, which was distributed by the universities, averaged about 30 percent.

The research is part of a larger data-collection effort by the council, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation, to better understand the careers of Ph.D. recipients, an area with gaping holes. Universities and doctoral programs have historically been poor at collecting and using data about where their Ph.D. students land.

Here are three key takeaways from the survey results:

Time Increases the Perceived Value of Ph.D. Training

Three years out of their Ph.D. program, 77 percent of those with academic jobs said their training had prepared them very or extremely well for their current job. For those in nonacademic jobs, the figure was only 52 percent.

But the gap between those in and out of academe shrinks as time passes. Fifteen years out, 83 percent of those in academic jobs said their training had prepared them well for their current job, while 69 percent of those in nonacademic jobs said the same.

The value of doctoral training “may be less obvious to people three years out,” said Suzanne Ortega, the council’s president. “It sometimes takes a while to realize all the different ways that you use those skills. Those skills have long-term value, and that’s really important to remember.”

People Tend Not to Regret Their Pursuit of a Ph.D.

It’s common to find current and former doctoral students who feel taken advantage of for cheap labor, misled about their prospects for a tenure-track job, and frustrated about their overall graduate-school experience. It’s unusual, however, for such students to take the next step and say they would have chosen a different path.

The council’s data indicate that doctorate recipients, both in and out of academe, mostly don’t regret their Ph.D., and they increasingly feel that way with the passage of time.

Three years out of their doctoral program, 75 percent of those in academic jobs would pursue a Ph.D. in the same field if they could start over again. Meanwhile, 52 percent of those in nonacademic jobs say the same. But in the 15-years-out cohort, 83 percent of those in academic jobs and 81 percent in nonacademic jobs say the same.

To Steven W. Matson, dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s graduate school, the data help push back against the narrative that graduate education in the humanities is in crisis. “Data from alumni,” he said, “that says, ‘I feel well prepared, and I would do it all over again,’ is going to be so important in informing the conversation.”

Academic and Nonacademic Workers Seek the Same Skills

The skills Ph.D. recipients feel are important to perform their jobs — leadership and analytical thinking, for example — are the same for academic and nonacademic workers, the survey indicated.

Some graduate deans said the data show that universities should infuse existing doctoral programs with useful skills and curricula regardless of the career track chosen by the student.

At the University of Notre Dame, for example, doctoral students are encouraged to join writing-accountability groups. The groups help keep students on track to complete their dissertations, but also develop skills, such as teamwork and speaking with nonspecialists, that are valuable to employers, said Laura A. Carlson, dean of the university’s graduate school.

“We’ve put a lot of programming in place around skills we know employers are looking for from our humanities students,” Carlson said. “We need to be encouraging all of our humanities students to embrace that their Ph.D. will also mean they’ll become experts in these kinds of skills.”

Vimal Patel covers graduate education. Follow him on Twitter @vimalpatel232, or write to him at vimal.patel@chronicle.com.