Ivy League lore assures us that Yale is the mother of professors, Princeton of businesspeople. Like many traditional stories about the Ivies, this one is false. When the American Historical Association examined all Ph.D.s in history awarded between 1989 and 2001, it turned out that 7 percent of Princeton’s history ABs went on to earn doctorates, compared to 9 percent of Yale’s. More Bulldogs than Tigers do indeed become professors, in other words, but the difference isn’t enormous.
Admit it: Some of you are pondering the road that leads, if not to the GC, at least to similar places in Cambridge, New Haven and Berkeley. If you’re one of them and your interests lie in the humanities or the softer social sciences, here are a few things to bear in mind.
A few years ago, an epicure posted advice on eating dinner in Princeton: “Step 1: Very slowly and carefully, leave Princeton. Step 2: If leaving Princeton is impossible, proceed as directed below. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
You should approach graduate school in exactly the same way. Don’t do it unless you’re absolutely sure that you have to. In that case, go for it, but first learn what awaits you.
In recent years, competition for talented graduate students — including talented students who have completed a strong Princeton senior thesis — has become increasingly fierce. Stipends have risen steeply. Standard offers include further funds for language training and research travel, for organizing workshops and holding graduate conferences, in quantities my contemporaries and I couldn’t have imagined. Scholar doesn’t rhyme with dollar, and grad school doesn’t mean prosperity.
But if a department with real strengths admits you, it should give you enough money that you can get through without piling up too much more debt. The first rule, then, is simple: Go only if a good department will pay your way.
But you need to know much more about what to expect once you’re admitted. Even if you enter a top program, you can’t assume that you’ll end up finding a job at a place like the one where you did your doctorate — or like Princeton. Attrition can be high, so you may not finish at all. Many of those who do finish will teach at public or private four-year colleges or regional universities with M.A. programs. These jobs can be very rewarding. But they don’t offer you great libraries to explore, one or two courses a term to teach, and swarms of capable, rewarding PhD students to train. If you don’t want any career that might take you outside the elite (or the Northeast, or the Bay Area), then think again.
Be ready, finally, to take a long time preparing to be a professor. In the ’60s, as universities expanded around the country and the world, job offers strewed the desks of bright Ph.D. candidates like autumn leaves in Vallombrosa. One friend of mine opened an envelope that had been buried under detritus on his desk and discovered that he’d been offered a job two years before and never even answered. Nowadays, jobs — especially long-term jobs — come hard. Demographic changes and economic uncertainties abound. To deal with them, deans have discovered, flexibility helps. So they hire a lot of people — close to half of all academics — on short-term contracts.
Some of these flexible jobs are fur-lined three-year gigs at the Harvard or Princeton Society of Fellows, some of them are adjunct positions which pay a few thousand dollars per course. But all of them have one basic thing in common: they’re temporary, and when they end, their holders must pack up their books and coffee mug and leave. Many of the brightest and most accomplished Ph.D.s spend three or four years moving around from one temp job of this kind to another. In my field, history, those who actually find tenure-track jobs are, on average, well up in their 30s; those who gain tenure are usually around 40. Many other careers give you real responsibility — and a real income — much earlier. Choose this one only if you don’t mind making haste slowly.
The academy offers unique rewards. In a society obsessed with maximum profit for me personally right now, professors are paid to help others. In an economy that seems fixated on next week, professors work in the long term. And in a world of supervisors and teams and collaborative reports, professors design their own courses and choose their own projects.
Even if you don’t finish, or finish and don’t wind up as a professor, the skills you learn in grad school can be of value in a range of other venues. Some of my most successful former students work as scholars, teachers or writers outside the academy. But as you might expect, few follow this path without some bitterness. And no wonder. A fair number of professors treat students who leave the academy, even after experiencing terrible difficulties, as renegades and wash their hands of them. Be prepared.
If you love editing friends’ chapters and arguing about their ideas, if you find that being immured in a carrel for long days and nights with several hundred books is oddly exciting, then you have good reason to think about making another, longer dive into the scholarly deep. But don’t jump before you find out exactly what lies below.
Anthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor of History. He can be reached at grafton@princeton.edu.
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