Ph.D.'s are used to shelling out tens of thousands of dollars in the name of education. But earning the top graduate degree doesn’t mean their spending has come to an end.
An industry designed to help aspiring academics manage the job-application process and land tenure-track jobs is growing, and reaping the benefits of a tight market in many disciplines.
New Ph.D.'s have long had to set aside money to mail applications and travel to scholarly conferences. But now their job-hunting tabs also include the cost of new services, like digital storage for recommendation letters, research statements, and other documents. Graduates’ costs are growing, too, as they stay on the market longer.
Consider Kavita M. Finn, who on a cold, wet afternoon in December 2010 successfully defended her dissertation on representations of powerful British queens, securing her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Oxford. Her adviser took her to a fancy cafe for a toast, and she spent the evening drinking cocktails with friends.
“I was on an awesome high,” she remembers.
After five years of work, which included the publication of a book chapter and a contract for another before graduation, Ms. Finn’s sense of accomplishment was enormous. So was the $100,000 in student-loan debt she’d accrued along the way.
Once back home in the United States, she believed that having a Ph.D. from one of the world’s top universities would give her an edge. She didn’t expect to spend multiple years and thousands more dollars hunting for an academic job.
Ms. Finn first went on the market in 2009, a year before defending her dissertation, which she published as a book with Palgrave Macmillan last year. She has now been looking for a tenure-track job for four years. In that time she has applied for a total of 75 academic positions and spent more than $2,000. She has paid for postage, transcripts, several years of graduate-student membership in the Modern Language Association, and costs associated with attending the group’s conferences four times. Her tab also includes $39.90 to set up a three-year account with Interfolio, a popular online dossier-management service. To date, she has spent $365 for the service to transmit her application materials to scores of institutions.
There has been no payoff in terms of offers of a tenure-track job, visiting-professor position, or postdoctoral fellowship. Instead, Ms. Finn, who has taught as an adjunct at three universities, is unemployed, still on the job market, and trying to keep up with her research.
“I feel exhausted,” she says, “and as though I am throwing money into a gigantic hole.” She doesn’t regret graduate school, she adds, but “my wallet and credit score regret it.”
“Applying for academic jobs has always been expensive,” says Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association. “The difference today is that you might do it for three or four cycles instead of one.”
A $6 E-Mail
Old costs, like those for conferences, are compounding, while the costs of new products, services, and fees are adding up.
In the 2012 hiring season, applicants for faculty positions at some art programs, like Colorado State’s and Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, were charged fees of $10 to $15 to transmit digital files of their creative materials through SlideRoom, a virtual art portal that the institutions insisted candidates use.
The escalating number of job applications submitted by many Ph.D.'s is making it difficult for advisers to keep up with writing reference letters. Advisers and students are increasingly turning to private companies to help them manage the growing volume of documents.
Interfolio, which is now commonly used, charges $19 for a one-year plan, or up to $57 for five years, to upload and store application documents, like CVs, cover letters, teaching statements, and reference letters. Applicants then pay the company a fee to deliver each document they need. The costs vary, from as low as $6 per application for delivery by e-mail or domestic mail and up to $45 for delivery by international mail.
Andrew B. Stone, who earned a Ph.D. in Russian history from the University of Washington last year, has spent more than $2,100 to apply for jobs, including just over $100 for Interfolio to deliver documents. Mr. Stone says that some of his friends in American history regularly apply for as many as 50 academic positions each year. “It’s impossible for advisers to keep writing letters for all those jobs,” he says. “Interfolio is convenient, but when you’re getting charged $6 to send an e-mail you have to say, ‘Hmmm.’”
Karen L. Kelsky, a former tenured professor of anthropology who runs an online career-advice business called The Professor Is In, calls Interfolio a “racket.” The company, she says, is cashing in on many degree holders’ hopes for a faculty position, and on the limits of what graduate programs and advisers can or will do for their students. She says she is not surprised that a business like Interfolio has appeared. “I am surprised,” she says, “at how many graduate advisers and Ph.D.'s embrace and defend it to the death.”
Leonard Cassuto, a professor of English at Fordham University who writes frequently for The Chronicle, says he doesn’t blame Interfolio for stepping in, as many campuses look to outsource services like keeping dossiers on file.
“They’ve figured out a way to wedge themselves into the application process,” he says, “and are collecting tolls from grad students who are spending money because they don’t have a choice.”
More than 100,000 Ph.D.'s used Interfolio last year, says Steve Goldenberg, the company’s chief executive. He’s sensitive, he says, to how the costs affect academics who live on a shoestring budget.
“We totally recognize that if you apply to a huge number of jobs, the costs can add up,” Mr. Goldenberg says. “We know that people using Interfolio aren’t well-funded folks, so our vision is to eventually make the service free.”
He says he plans to develop new products that could be purchased by institutions, and to use revenues from those products to subsidize the cost of operating the dossier services.
There are some ways that job seekers can already use Interfolio at a discounted rate. Those who apply for positions from the MLA’s Job Information List can establish Interfolio dossier accounts at no cost. In January, the American Historical Association entered a similar agreement with Interfolio. Job candidates also incur no charges to transmit application letters and other documents to departments that subscribe to Interfolio’s ByCommittee tool, which helps search committees collect, review, and track candidate materials.
$2,000 and a Dream
Graduate students and new Ph.D.'s are also paying money for job-seeking advice like Ms. Kelsky’s and for personally tailored feedback beyond what they get as part of their graduate programs or from their advisers.
Annalee E. Edmondson, who earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia in December, bought two self-help books that are regularly recommended by graduate programs: Kathryn Hume’s Surviving Your Academic Job Hunt: Advice for Humanities Ph.D.'s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Gregory Colón Semenza’s Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). The books were part of a total tab of $800 that Ms. Edmondson has paid so far in the year she has been on the job market, during which she has applied for 16 jobs. The books have offered practical tips, she says, but she has yet to receive any job offers.
Ms. Hume, an English professor at Pennsylvania State University who has sold almost 4,000 copies of her book, says she wrote it to try to make the job-search process as transparent as possible and to help people be effective. This hiring season alone, Ms. Hume says, she has received some 2,500 e-mails from job seekers who want her advice.
If self-help books aren’t enough, an academic on the market can hire a career coach and get help on specific tasks. Ms. Kelsky, whose advice blog is visited by about 4,000 people a day, also runs a consulting service. The bulk of her work is document help, for which she charges $100 an hour. Numerous drafts will cost more. She’ll examine a CV for weaknesses and recommend improvements for $100. Her 50-minute “interview boot camps” cost $200. For people who are offered jobs, she provides negotiating assistance. For career consulting by e-mail, Ms. Kelsky charges $200 for five e-mail exchanges.
So far, Ms. Kelsky has provided document help to about 2,000 people, and her clients typically apply for 30 to 40 jobs each year. Her business is as big as it is, she acknowledges, because job seekers are desperate, and because many Ph.D.'s just entering the market are not getting the help they need from their advisers.
Mr. Semenza, who has sold more than 7,000 copies of his book, says that departments and scholarly associations should stop being “flippant” about how much graduate students and new Ph.D.'s are spending to find jobs. “We need to be more conscious about what’s happening with costs,” he says. “That’s the only ethical way in this market.”
Some scholarly groups have sought to streamline the job search and to provide aid to help ease the costs. The MLA, for example, subsidizes travel for some graduate students, adjuncts, and unemployed members. Last year, Ms. Feal says, the association provided $300 travel grants to just over 300 of these members.
But more changes, even small ones, would help, Mr. Semenza says. Scholarly associations should encourage departments to announce their first-round picks for conference interviews much earlier, so that people don’t get stuck with cancellation fees for hotels and flights. And campus interviews could be cut down to one day instead of two or three. People should also not have to join scholarly associations to get interviews, Mr. Cassuto, of Fordham, says, and employers should stop requiring applicants to submit undergraduate transcripts.
Ph.D.'s should also do a better job of educating themselves about the realities of the market, Ms. Kelsky says. And graduate programs should be more honest about the costs of applying for academic jobs. “You’re being asked to spend this money,” she says, “and it’s not necessarily going to pay off.”
