Alternative Academics: Moving beyond the Academy

Every year hundreds of newly minted archaeology PhDs enter the job market worldwide in search of a post-doc or tenure-track job that will take them to the next level of their career. They scour the job boards, wikis, listservs, and their personal networks for any postings to which they can apply, hopeful that this year's search yields a greater number of opportunities. But there is a growing problem in academia; as our institutions churn out an increasing number of scholars, they continue to reduce the number of tenured faculty hired. Tenure-track jobs, especially in archaeology, are becoming increasingly scarce and post-docs are few and far between. There are other considerations at stake, however, when contemplating pursuing an academic career. For some, a life in academia is no longer appealing, while others are limited in their ability to move across the country for work because of children, family, or dependent adults. In other cases, the structure of an academic lifestyle is no longer suitable or more financial stability is required, a problem facing many adjunct professors.1The decline in traditional academic careers for those with PhDs in archaeology, that is, careers in academia, museums, and research institutions, has led new graduates and established scholars alike to pursue so-called alternative academic (alt-ac) careers. The rise of alt-ac careers is part of a larger trend that reaches beyond the field of archaeology2 as academia in general struggles to adjust to the changing social and economic climate; however, we will focus here in particular on the situation of recent PhD graduates in archaeology and related fields (e.g., classics, religious studies, Near Eastern studies) and the suitability of archaeology PhDs to alt-ac careers.Alternative academic careers or alt-ac is a neologism that denotes a broad range of humanities-oriented professions typically associated with academic institutions, which are not faculty positions but nonetheless often require advanced degrees (Nowviskie 2010: 7). The alt-ac movement, as we know it today, has its origins in Twitter and resulted from a conversation about the need to reframe the discussion of “non-academic” jobs (Nowviskie 2013). The resulting hashtag (originally #alt-ac, now #altac) sparked a movement in which academics working in non-tenured positions could bring visibility to careers outside of academia and share information with others working in or contemplating alternate career paths within academia. Moreover, the movement has disrupted the binary thinking in academia, creating a discourse in which alternative academic careers are no longer considered a “Plan B,” but rather a viable, rewarding, and meaningful alternative to traditional academic positions. These careers still afford scholars the opportunity to put their rich academic training to good use, while maintaining active research and publication profiles, which allows them to apply their methodological and theoretical training to issues within the humanities (Nowviskie 2010: 7–8). Such positions include, but are not limited to, digital humanities, curriculum development, libraries, university administration, and academic advising.Since the scope of the movement is largely limited to careers in and around the Academy, a separate (but related) discourse arose to encompass the broader array of jobs available to academics, which are outside of academia. In order to differentiate themselves from their counterparts within academia, this movement adopted the term “post-academic” (or #postac).3 The “post-ac” community is one of active disenfranchisement with academia (Bell and Nervosa 2013). It is a discourse that actively encourages academics to leave the institution, citing the unsustainable nature of the current system churning out graduate students at an unprecedented rate, for whom the possibilities of an academic position are almost non-existent. “Post-ac” is a state of mind, encouraging those with advanced degrees to separate themselves from their academic identities, regardless of their vocation following graduation. It is in this manner that they differentiate themselves from the alt-ac movement, whereby, an individual working in an academic institution can thus still consider him- or herself a part of the post-ac community. The resulting effort is a dialogue that further challenges academics to look beyond the institution for profitable employment, highlighting the wealth of opportunities that exist within government agencies, not-for-profits, international organizations, and the private sector.While the two communities may appear fundamentally different in regards to their perspective on careers outside of academia, they are actually sending a similar message—that is, fulfilling jobs exist outside of traditional academia—and these movements encourage scholars to abandon the stigma associated with them, while also encouraging individuals to contemplate different career trajectories, especially given the decline in traditional academic positions. While recognizing the inherent differences implied in the meanings of both terms, for reasons of consistency and brevity this essay adopts the term “alt-ac,” including discussions of careers that may be wholly outside of academia.Lisa Spiro, a digital librarian with a PhD in English Literature, argues, along with many others, that doctoral training provides vital and relevant skills and knowledge for alt-ac careers: “You learn valuable skills through doctoral training, including how to find, evaluate, organize and analyze information, write scholarly arguments, lead discussions, put together a lecture, comment on papers, and operate in academic culture. Most of all, you develop and evince discipline and persistence as you labor through the long slog of a PhD” (Spiro 2010: 60). Certainly those who conduct research into the problem of academic employment for humanities graduates or, more broadly, the “crisis in the humanities,” have long lauded the many transferrable skills gained through completing a humanities PhD. More broadly even, Katina Rogers, a senior research specialist at the Scholarly Communication Institute, argues that those in alt-ac careers approach their work in similar ways to more traditional academics: “They engage in work with the same intellectual curiosity that fueled their desire to go to graduate school in the first place, and applying the same kind of skills—such as close reading, historical inquiry, or written argumentation—to the tasks at hand” (Rogers 2015: 10). Indeed, the various skills that we acquire as scholars (i.e., research, presentation and writing skills, critical analysis, etc.) have real-world applications, which are particularly suited to careers in academic publishing, libraries, digital humanities, funding agencies, and heritage conservation. The problem, as many have noted recently,4 lies largely in how graduate students understand, develop, utilize, and market the myriad of skills they develop along the way to the PhD, and how prepared they are to navigate a variety of job markets.As archaeologists, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on the world of alt-ac careers. The interdisciplinary nature of our programs requires a diverse understanding of various fields, including geology, geography, anthropology, statistics, computer systems, analytics, and history, among others. Such a multifaceted focus makes us distinctly qualified to engage more broadly with the wider challenges of the twenty-first century, which call for forward-thinking interdisciplinary solutions and cross-cultural engagement.5 Furthermore, our knowledge of ancient history, culture, and language is essential for bringing long-term perspectives to modern events and issues, while furnishing the requisite skills of intercultural awareness and sensitivity.More concretely, archaeology and related fields can offer inroads to specific types of careers. Museum curatorship, cultural resource management, publishing, and teaching Latin at the high school level perhaps have long been the obvious alternative paths. At the most recent Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in New Orleans on January 11, 2015, however, the authors, along with a third colleague, organized a panel on alt-ac careers for PhDs in archaeology and related fields. One of the most interesting crossovers highlighted during the panel discussions was the world of study abroad education, brought to light by one of our panelists, Scott Pentzer, the associate dean for Global Education at Tulane University. Archaeology PhDs, who frequently engage in extensive work and study experience in far-flung parts of the world for excavations and research, often taking on supervisory positions in the process, have inevitably developed administrative, problem-solving, linguistic, and cross-cultural skills that would be of benefit to any university study abroad program. In a different vein, Hugh Cayless, a PhD in Classics turned software developer, argues for classicists' suitability, with their command of ancient languages, to the digital humanities and computer science worlds. His comments could certainly be extended beyond the realm of ancient languages to modern ones as well, or even to the ways in which archaeologists catalog and store information (Cayless 2010: 125). The digital humanities are indeed a potent growth area for alt-ac, as many have argued,6 and have enormous potential for jobs beyond academia as well.Despite the plethora of opportunities that exist beyond the confines of a traditional academic career, the current climate at many institutions limits the degree to which graduate students are exposed to alternative academic careers. Graduate students can spend several years in academia without amassing work experience, which is often stipulated in the conditions of graduate scholarships in North America (Schuman 2014). Thus, throughout the course of their graduate degrees, students are often limited to teaching and research assistantships as the source from which they build up their marketable skills.Given the state of the job market in archaeology and classics (and the humanities in general), the Academy is doing a disservice to its graduate students by imposing restrictions on the number of hours that a student can work per week. While these regulations are meant to reduce distractions and encourage students to complete their degrees in a timely manner, they also limit the opportunities for scholars to acquire practical skills and work experience, which would help them to more easily navigate the job market, both in academia and otherwise, after the completion of their degree. Several institutions, however, have recognized the inherent issues in academia and the paucity of jobs available, and have taken steps to better prepare their students for possible alternative academic careers.A good example of such an initiative stems from The Pennsylvania State University, at which the College of Liberal Arts has implemented a Graduate Student Internship Program (GRIP).7 This initiative gives PhD students the opportunity to pursue work experience within a university context. During the course of their paid internship, graduate students are placed within a non-teaching, non-research university office and are released from all teaching and research requirements for the duration of their internship. In the process, students acquire marketable experience and increased job opportunities after graduation. The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH) at the University of Illinois, on the other hand, has initiated a project entitled “Humanities without Walls,” which helps prepare doctoral students for careers both inside and outside of academia through a three-week summer workshop.8More broadly, while universities like Penn State and the University of Illinois have implemented programs to allow graduate students to amass non-academic work experience, many individual humanities departments still cater their messages to twentieth-century models that assume that a humanities PhD has a tenured faculty position as its sole outcome. In reality, numerous students, upon completing their PhD, go on to work outside of academia, as studies by the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Historical Association (AHA) show.9 Spiro, however, outlines how the department where she completed her PhD “inventories every university where a recent graduate landed an assistant professorship, but there is no word about those who finished their PhDs and have gone onto successful careers outside the faculty track, such as the managing editor of a major editorial project, the director of a university Women's Center, and the director of a digital scholarship center, just to name a few” (Spiro 2010: 75). Indeed, only in the last few years have associations such as the MLA and AHA started to seriously track where humanities PhDs end up following graduation. Graduate programs should start using these data and their own tracking of alumni to actively convey the many career paths open to humanities PhDs.Beyond just tracking and communicating post-graduation career trajectories, though, individual graduate programs—along with graduate students themselves—should be thinking creatively about how the work completed en route to a PhD and the skills attained can be applied in all sorts of positions. Rogers suggests that graduate programs, rather than reducing admissions due to the scarcity of tenure-track jobs, should on the contrary be made more robust, providing opportunities for broader sets of transferrable skills to be attained and applied through academic training and research (Rogers 2015: 6). Numerous suggestions to this end have been put forth in the #Alt-Academy's ebook, #Alt-Academy: 01: Alternative Academic Careers for Humanities Scholars. To name just a few: make interdisciplinary work more central, expose students to technology (Spiro 2010: 59–60), make it both possible and rewarding for graduate students to hold jobs, devote resources to meaningful job and internship opportunities in areas such as digital humanities and scholarly publications (Flanders 2010: 36), launch certificates and programs in the digital humanities, and support alternatives to the traditional dissertation monograph (Spiro 2010: 78–79).Like many scholars who came before me, I took a direct path to my PhD—completing a BA in Classics, an MA in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, and a PhD in Religious Studies all in immediate succession. I was consumed by a passion for the ancient world, research, and the opportunities for travel that were afforded to me by my chosen field. For me, there had always been but one goal—to procure a tenure-track position at an academic institution—and, as countless of my peers had done, I did everything in my power to become a competitive candidate for the 2015/2016 job market: I had amassed a substantial teaching portfolio, an active research profile, and held an international fellowship.I defended my PhD at the University of Ottawa in November 2014, and through a combination of my own volition and the academic climate at my institution, I had largely focused my efforts on securing an academic position. While I was certainly aware of the possibilities for gainful employment beyond academia, I was encouraged, as most graduate students are, to stay the course of scholarship, a path on which I was eager to continue, as I had developed a passion for research, but more especially teaching. There was scarcely anything more in the world to which I hoped to devote my energies.Throughout the course of my PhD, however, I also began to develop an interest in museums. In 2012, I was offered the position of assistant curator at the Museum of Classical Antiquities at the University of Ottawa—a position that was funded through my scholarship package from the university. As our funding dictates the amount and type of work that a student can undertake (typically research and teaching assistantships, working no more than ten hours per week), we are limited in our opportunities to gain real-world experience over the course of our graduate degrees. Thus, the occasion to work in an academic museum gave me a glimpse into a life outside of traditional academia, one that is rarely afforded to my peers and which I have come to find equally rewarding and exciting. The position provided me with the opportunity to research and teach—albeit in a different capacity—but it gave me something not easily earned throughout the course of graduate school: marketable experience. For this opportunity, I am forever indebted to the Department of Classics and Religious Studies.While I continued to hope that I would a tenure-track or academic position on this year's job market, my sole came not from an academic but an academic for a position as the community I was by the of the job market, but that I had amassed experience in field that I came to throughout the course of my graduate degree. a the job was to but it gave me a one that my to the of a career beyond academia; a which no longer me with but rather with that there are opportunities for scholars that could me with the same level of that I from academia. 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