He is now underemployed at a desk job
outside academe, but continues to look for
meaningful academic work. He received
no guidance at all about the job market
from his university, he says. He asked to
remain anonymous because he does not
want to stigmatize his alma mater and because he is still seeking a job.
“We invested six or seven years of our
life getting a Ph.D., and there’s nothing
for us out there,” he says. “If there’s so
much competition for every job, they can
cherry-pick for every position, and they’re
probably going to choose someone who
thinks just like they do. What happens to
the people who push boundaries?”
A national group will soon begin
to study many issues associated with
graduate education: In June, the Educational Testing Service and the Council of Graduate Schools announced a
Commission on the Future of Graduate
Education in the United States. The 19-
member panel, made up of university
presidents, deans, provosts, research scientists, and others, will study the projected needs and enrollments for the future, among many other issues. It is expected to report its findings next year.
The institutions themselves are aware
of the problems of oversupply, and some
are trying to do something about it.
Some are cutting back on the number of
doctoral students they will enroll in the
fall. At Chicago, Ms. Sevener says she
stresses thinking outside of the confines
of academe, or at least outside of tenure-track teaching. “Yes, I believe there is a
misalignment between the number of
academic jobs out there and the number of Ph.D.’s awarded,” she says. “We
certainly hear more about the issue in
certain areas of the humanities and the
social sciences. Those are the students
who are most often preparing their Plan
B, which is something we strongly recommend that they develop. In many
cases, those Plan B jobs are academic-administration jobs that the students
would be excited to stay in long-term,
because it provides an opportunity to
maintain their connection with the academic environment.”
Rather than push graduate students
away from academe, Ms. Steele, of
UCLA’s Career Center, tries to help
them understand what they really want
to do. “There may be alternate ways to
reach their goals,” she says. “If they seek
prestige, recognition, intellectual stimulation, we try to help them to position
themselves toward finding that, whether
it’s in academia or in the public sector.”
For people like Mr. Wolfson, getting a
tenure-track position is something to be
thankful for, but he worries about those
left behind.
“The individuals who assisted me at
Penn were amazing,” he says, “but I’m
afraid that the equation that institutions
have set up is incorrect.”
Hot Academic Jobs of the Future: Try These Fields
BY LEE ROBERTS
AT A TIME when the academic job market is look- ing bleak, we asked career experts and economic forecasters to predict where faculty job growth could come in the next decade. Many agreed
that job prospects will be dim because of budget cuts and
diminishing faculty pension funds that have made professors less likely to retire. In addition, the growing use of
graduate students and adjuncts to teach classes means fewer
jobs are available that are secure or financially rewarding.
If the past is any indication, it is difficult to make predictions about the faculty job market. Predictions in the
late 1980s of a huge faculty shortage caused by retirements
failed to come true. Still, the data suggest that large numbers of academic teaching jobs will open up in the future.
Some are expected to be created by enrollment growth;
others by the need to replace faculty members hired in the
late 1960s and 70s to teach baby boomers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that
662,000 faculty jobs will become available from 2006 to
2016—382,000 new slots, and 280,000 current jobs expected to open up. Community colleges and other institutions
that offer career and technical education are expected to
offer many of the new job opportunities.
The following list is not a bible, and it’s certainly not scientific. But here are some of the academic fields our experts
believe will be “hot” over the coming decade:
Tieni Wu won a design contest held by the U. of California at D
KATHREEN FONTECHA, CALIFORNIA LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY CENTER
avis’s California Lighting
Technology Center, where researchers work to design and promote energy-efficient lighting.
Green chemistry
Green chemistry focuses on eliminating the use of toxic chemicals in chemistry without stifling scientific progress.
Paul T. Anastas, a Yale University chemist, founded the field in 1991. As it grows
in importance, more institutions are
expected to offer master’s degrees and
doctorates. Among the universities with
green-chemistry programs are Carnegie
Mellon and Yale Universities and the
Universities of Oregon, Scranton, and
Massachusetts at Lowell.
Terry Collins, a chemistry professor at Carnegie Mellon who heads the
university’s Institute for Green Science,
thinks the intellectual rationale for the
field is strong. “It hasn’t gotten a lot of
federal support, but I think that’s going
to change,” he says. One reason: Mr. Anastas has been nominated by President
Obama to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and
Development.
Energy
Threats to human society by the
consumption of limited resources have
sparked a race to find alternative energy
sources that are sustainable, efficient,
and safe for the environment. Among
the leaders in this research mission is
the Energy and Resources Group at the
University of California at Berkeley. The
interdisciplinary group has been devising technical and policy alternatives to
unsustainable energy and resource use
for the past 30 years.
University of California at Davis iden-tifies promising energy-efficient technologies and develops viable business
ventures around them. Established in
2006 with a challenge grant from the
state, the center focuses on transferring
technology from academe to the marketplace.
Boston University’s Center for Energy
and Environmental Studies, meanwhile,
specializes in the fields of energy and environmental analysis.
