On alternative careers for PhDs

Felicia B. LeClere is a principal research scientist in the Public Health Department of NORC at the University of Chicago, where she works as research coordinator on multiple projects. She has 20 years of experience in survey design and practice, with particular interest in data dissemination and the support of scientific research through the development of scientific infrastructure.

Stepping off the traditional Ph.D. career path can make one hypersensitive. A recent dialogue in The University of Chicago Magazine about modifying graduate curriculum in Ph.D. departments in history to accommodate a nonacademic trajectory (or Plan B) led me think about how Ph.D.s  are actually trained, and how that training is used to build new knowledge. This dialogue was a reaction to a statement in the fall by the president of American Historical Association about removing the stigma of "Plan B" from a nonacademic career path....

It would be easy to escape into a series of exceptionalist anecdotes about all of the scientific contributions made by researchers in the government, private industry or nonprofits, but Albert Einstein’s time as a patent clerk can only be trotted out so many times. The argument that the well of true knowledge only flows behind the protective walls of universities, though, rests on a medieval view of both the professoriate and knowledge. In my highly stylized view of academic history, universities protected the Enlightenment from the Inquisition and other atrocities. Scientific thought needed some pretty stout defense in a world explained fully by a powerful God. Many would argue that the barbarians remain at the gates, but frankly I think we have won the war. The various assaults including McCarthyism, Creationism, and the attacks from politicians who hang onto a medieval view of the world play on the historical anxieties of scientists but really don’t pose the same sustained threat. And even if the barbarians are real and not imagined, the walls of universities have been repeatedly breached and no longer offer the protection they once did....