Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide

An indispensable guide for grad students and academics who want to find fulfilling careers outside higher education

An estimated ninety-three percent of graduate students in the humanities and social sciences won’t get a tenure-track job, yet many still assume that a tenured professorship is the only successful outcome for a PhD. With the academic job market in such crisis, Leaving Academia helps grad students and academics in any scholarly field find satisfying careers beyond higher education. Short and pragmatic, the book offers invaluable advice to visiting and adjunct instructors ready to seek new opportunities, to scholars caught in “tenure-trap” jobs, to grad students interested in nonacademic work, and to committed academics who want to support their students and contingent colleagues more effectively.

After earning a PhD in classics from the University of Virginia and teaching at Tulane, Christopher Caterine left academia for a job at a corporate consulting firm. During his career transition, he went on more than 150 informational interviews and later interviewed twelve other professionals who had left higher education for diverse fields. Drawing on everything he learned, Caterine helps readers chart their own course to a rewarding new career. He addresses dozens of key issues, including overcoming psychological difficulties, translating academic experience for nonacademics, and meeting the challenges of a first job in a new field.

Providing clear, concrete ways to move forward at each stage of your career change, even when the going gets tough, Leaving Academia is both realistic and filled with hope.