As we approach the summer, hundreds of anthropology college students are starting to seriously think about their job prospects. Students who will return to campus at the end of the summer are thinking about conducting research or landing a summer job related to their major. If you’re an archaeologist and have been reading this blog or listening to the CRM Archaeology Podcast, you probably heard us talk about upcoming archaeology job opportunities for the 2018 summer. Those archaeologists finishing their anthropology undergraduate degree will be looking to start working full-time. They hope this summer job will transform into a career that will help them pay the bills.
The situation is very different for anthropology graduate students; especially those finishing their Master’s or PhD. Archaeology Master’s students are looking for a career job; something that will prove to the world that you can feed yourself doing archaeology. This time of year, the majority of archaeology PhD graduates are learning a harsh reality—that they didn’t get a tenure track job this year. They will probably hit the “job market” again in the fall in hopes that something happens.
As a career archaeology student, I never gave much thought into what happened to my sociocultural or physical anthropology peers. Archaeologists can do cultural resource management, work for the government, or a non-profit organization. Archaeology PhDs can turn to these venues if they don’t land a tenure track position or get tired of adjucting. Now that I’m an assistant professor, I’m paying a lot more attention to the post-graduation workplace for sociocultural and physical anthro students and it looks as tough as it is for archaeologists.
Recent articles in Cultural Anthropology and American Antiquity have changed the way I view the workplace for Americans with an anthropology degree. I used to try and coach archaeology students into archaeology jobs. I am new to interacting with anthropology PhD students but figured I would try and help them get jobs in their field too. After all, getting people jobs is something I’ve been blogging, podcasting, and talking about for over 5 years now.
After reading this article I’ve realized the fallacy of this approach. It has changed the way I plan on advising students in the future. Rather than only trying to figure out how to get anthropology students jobs in the industry, I will start trying to figure out how they can get jobs with a livable wage in any ethical industry that can provide them the quality of life they deserve.*
(*NOTE: By ethical, I mean industries not based on destroying the environment, exploiting people, fueling discrimination, or taking lives [Except working for the government. The ethics of working for the government are constantly a grey area.]).
For some students, I will do what I can to get them tenure track jobs even though I know the odds are never in our favor. I will help others get careers in CRM or the government. However, I am also going to start figuring out how I can get my students jobs in other creative class industries like sustainability, tech, and engineering since I’ve realized there’s no way CRM or the government can absorb all these anthropology degree holders.
There’s no shame in doing something else if you can’t find an archaeology or anthropology job with your PhD.
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I am now a tenure-track assistant professor at an R1 school. My job is to teach archaeology and anthropology and conduct archaeological research. Before that, it was to do cultural resource management. My job has always been to advise young professionals and students in how they can improve their careers. Whereas career advising used to be obligatory, it is now a major part of what I do. I now feel like I must do more than make a good faith effort to help as many of my students find work after graduation as possible. College is about education, but it is also about earning the degree that will provide social proof of your knowledge, skills, and abilities. This is why students borrow in the high five-figures for a college degree. This is why I believe helping them pay back those loans is no longer an obligation but a core part of my job.)
I’m supposed to tell you that you need to use your anthropology or archaeology degree to get a job in your field of study but that’s not in the cards for most anthro degree-holders. Most college graduates never work in the field they studied in university. Anthropology is no different.
Despite what your parents may have said when you told them your college major, an anthropology degree prepares you to work in a wide range of industries. There is one industry that is particularly hungry for anthropology degree-holders: The tech industry.
American corporations want anthropologists to help them understand people. Apparently, they realized Neoliberal economics isn’t real. People are not “rational” but, rather, live in a world dictated by bounded rationality. Anthropologists can help businesses better understand the sociocultural boundaries of that rationality so they can sell us more stuff (http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-companies-aredesperateto-hireanthropologists-2014-3). Perhaps nobody needs anthropologists’ understanding of the human mind more than companies in industries that make intangible products like software or services. Making up “products” and finding ways to convince us of their utility and necessity is pretty much what everyone in Silicon Valley and the other Silicon Arroyos around the world do all day. Anthropologist Charles Pearson suggests all software development teams need an anthropologist so they can figure out how to sell to human beings (https://medium.com/@Mediauras/why-every-software-team-needs-an-anthropologist-812e66e0ecb6). While they might be able to help sales, anthropologists in the tech industry don’t have to be salespeople. They can also help design software and tech that actually addresses human problems. Here’s a great interview with Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist at Intel that helps with product design (https://www.contriber.com/genevieve-bell-guides-technology-innovation-at-intel/).
Finally, anthropologists can help mindful companies fulfill their social contracts. They can help ethical companies become community assets that help improve the world. In addition to selling products, informed corporations can guide their efforts into activities that give back to communities, help address climate change, and ameliorate the widening chasm between the rich and poor. Anthropologists are scholars with an understanding of social problems and are capable of guiding corporate efforts into activities that address the massive problems we are all facing.
Preparing today’s anthropology students for tomorrow
Anthropology has long known that the majority of its graduates are unlikely to work in anthropology or archaeology. But, it has been slow to acknowledge that most of its PhDs aren’t going to do anthropology after graduation.
In “Choosing a Path to the Ancient World in a Modern Market: The Reality of Faculty Jobs in Archaeology,” Speakman et al. (2017) do their best to quantify the chances of an anthropology PhD landing a tenure track job. The odds of getting a job in anthropology in any given year are sparse. Each year, there are only enough jobs for about 8% of Americans with anthro degrees—including undergraduates (Speakman et al. 2017:2). The odds are also bad for PhDs hoping for a tenure track job. The authors conclude:
- The number of anthro PhDs has increased over the last 30 years but the number of tenure track jobs has not increased proportionately.
- Twenty elite universities (Tier I and II programs) account for more than 56% of tenure track placements since 1994.
- Hires at Tier II through V schools are dominated by graduates from Tier I programs.
- PhDs from Tier V schools are most likely to find a job at an MA institution and almost never get hired at Tier I or II schools.
- American PhD programs are cranking out way more graduates than the tenure track market could ever handle.
The authors use a hypothetical scenario to explain this point:
“…if there are 100 doctoral archaeologists who graduate every year for 10 years who are intent on getting a faculty position and there only 20 jobs available per year, then by the end of 10 years, there are literally as many as 800 archaeologists (assuming that none have left the job market) potentially applying for 20 faculty positions” (Speakman et al. 2017:8—9).
We can argue about how Speakman et al. came to their estimates, but nobody can argue with the reality that there are not enough jobs in anthropology to absorb all the anthropology degree-holders in the United States. The authors have some recommendations on what university departments can do to address this reality based on what they are doing at the University of Georgia:
“We likewise promote open dialogue about alternative academic tracks early in the graduate training process while at the same time focusing on how to best be successful in an academic sense. Some departments acknowledge the fact that academic positions are hard to obtain and focus on training students who will be successful elsewhere (i.e., CRM, government, museums)” (Speakman et al. 2017:10).
This is a commendable first step but I think we should be doing even more than that because there are not enough CRM or government jobs to absorb all these graduates either. Applied programs are only valuable if there are places where one can apply those skills. This is why our students need to be prepared to look outside CRM or the government.
There’s also another unstated reality of being a PhD student: Recognizing that you don’t like anthropology anymore and that you’ve made a terrible mistake in pursuing a doctorate. Part of this is related to the burnout that all PhD students experience but I think some people are pushed into a PhD before they realize the full implications of what they’re doing. I don’t know how many anthro PhDs realize they actually don’t want to do this anymore. Many only figure this out when they’re almost done with their degree. So, rather than drop out of their PhD program when they’re so close to finishing, they finish the degree and enter the “real world” half-heartedly seeking a tenure track job. These students do not tell their advisors they’re done with anthropology because they do not want to disappoint anybody and they really don’t know what else to do because there is tremendous pressure to go after tenure track über alles. They don’t want to teach but they don’t know where else to look for a job. As a result, their heart isn’t really behind following the tenure track. Departments bestow platitudes upon their PhD graduates who go on to TT positions. They don’t do this for graduates working at Adobe. To not even try for TT is considered insane. This extreme pressure for a single goal is something most anthro departments are not really ready to recognize. I think anthropology departments need to start networking and making connections with the companies that are hiring our PhDs. In the Bay Area, this means the tech companies.
What happens to all the anthro graduates who don’t end up working in anthropology?
They find a job someplace else. However, some anthropology faculty feel like there is something wrong with this.
In their recent article “Academic Precarity in American Anthropology” in Cultural Anthropology (February 12, 2018), David Platzner and Anne Allison discuss the unconventional path that took Platzner, a recent anthropology PhD, to a fulfilling career at Adobe (https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1310-academic-precarity-in-american-anthropology).
It took me a few days to read this candid article that was based on interviews with anthropology graduates in the United States, but Platzner and Allison’s work revealed several realities about U.S. anthropology departments:
Many faculty are in denial about what really happens to our PhD graduates. The authors described the fact that an anthropology PhD working at Adobe was considered; “Hardly a perfect scenario…but a satisfying one;” suggesting the only “perfect career” for an anthro PhD is in academia. The article describes how many faculty are unaware of the reality of the current market forces in the United States; “…that more anthropology PhDs are entering the labor market as the market itself contracts—is a brute fact that most of those with whom we spoke [anthro faculty] were unfamiliar.” These realities are why we need to help PhDs find fulfilling work outside academia.
The denial is slowly fading. Departments continue training PhDs for academic careers even as they become increasingly aware of the reality of the job world. The economy is full of PhDs with few academic jobs for them to fill. The question is: What do we do?
Platzner and Allison discussed how the reality of overproducing underprepared anthropology graduates is starting to permeate even elite programs, but most faculty are at a loss as to what they should do to address it:
“Yet even in such elite programs, faculty recognized that their graduate students perceived the situation to be precarious, perhaps even a crisis. In fact, many faculty described both an awareness of the pressures graduate students face and a sense of paralysis around how they could or should respond. Several faculty members noted that they simply hadn’t been trained to be job counselors, at least for work outside of the academy. “I am going to be honest. We don’t know what the fu*k we are doing,” a recently tenured professor at a prestigious institution said. “Many of our best students aren’t getting jobs and we don’t know how to help them.” (Expletive edit not in the original) (Platzner and Allison 2018).
I am among the faculty that need advice on how to prepare my students for work outside academia and cultural resource management. Looks like I’m not alone.
Some have a disdain for doing what it takes to find a job in such a competitive market. This blog has emphasized marketing one’s self to future employers. I’ve long suggested aspiring archaeologists need to brand themselves and make their work and abilities more accessible and visible to potential employers. I’ve also written extensively about how archaeologists can use social media, the internet, and networking to talk their way into a job.
Guess what? I just found out that some of my colleagues frown upon this behavior.
“One faculty member lamented that many ambitious graduate students fashion themselves early in their training as fully-fledged scholarly brands. They do so with customized websites, regularly updated Twitter feeds, and so on, making themselves into entrepreneurs defined by a specific niche instead of initiates into a field of intellectual and relational engagement” (Platzner and Allison 2018).
Even though this strategy gets people jobs, it does make students and early careerists look presumptuous. It is unethical to project the persona of an expert before a scholar has done the work; however, advertising what work that has been done is one of the only ways we scholars can become aware of each other’s work. Paywalls block edited volumes and articles. Creating search engine optimized (SEO) websites and producing SEO social media posts is a proven means of driving traffic to your work and letting employers know who you are.
An article published in a peer-reviewed journal is only likely to be read by about 200 people a decade; more than 200 people will read this blog post the first day it is published. It’s likely 1,000 people will read it in the next 30 days because this is the kind of material that is designed for the internet.
There will always be a place for thoughtful, carefully crafted, peer-reviewed research. Peer-reviewed works are the foundation upon which archaeological investigation rests. There is also room for self-produced work on the internet. Blog posts and podcasts are replacing white papers as the forum for discussing archaeology and anthropology. Cultural Anthropology is an open-access journal with a high impact factor, but its impact is undoubtedly increased because its content is made available online to a larger number of researchers for free. Eliminating the paywall makes this work accessible, the same way a scholar’s blog does. As long as the author has integrity and is a scholar, peer review, search engine optimization, and syntax are the main differences between open access journals and high impact anthropology blogs.
If you want to be heard, you’re going to have to use the internet. If you want to get a job, you’re going to have to market yourself. This is the reality of being a scholar and finding work in the 21st century, but it does mean young scholars need to be honest and ethical if they don’t want to misrepresent themselves.
The authors’ solutions…..
Platzner and Allison propose eight remedies for the conundrum facing anthropology faculty and departments:
1) Be more creative in undergraduate training. The authors urge anthro faculty to be more creative when it comes to teaching, illustrate the utility of anthropology in modern society, and create more partnerships with other units at the university.
2) Interrogate/investigate the university and ourselves. Do some soul-searching within anthropology departments. They say we need to ask ourselves: How can we address the commodification of the college degree and how are faculty contributing to this situation?
3) Acknowledge adjuncts are professors too and stop taking advantage of free grad student labor. I’ve frequently mentioned how adjuncts are powering most universities, but these instructors are not considered “real professors” by some faculty. I agree that we need to reach out to adjuncts and lecturers in order to keep them in the field and help them contribute. I’ve also long been aware of the way graduate student labor is used to fill in the gap between adjuncts/lecturers and TT faculty. This has got to change. Graduate students deserve to be paid for their efforts with money, college credits, or publications. No more #freearchaeology.
4) Think critically about market trends. Before publishing this post, I skimmed the most recent edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “The Trends Report, 2018.” It corroborates some of what Platzner and Allison discussed in their article but the Trends Report highlights other major trends including the demand for data scientists, wavering of the impact of peer review, and the fact that students have increasing influence on American campuses. Because of degree inflation and the fact that employers are asking for a college degree for jobs that do not really need one, a huge proportion of students simply want the degree so they can have the social proof required to get a middle class, white collar job. This is true for PhD students as much as undergrads. It’s something anthropology departments need to seriously take into account when planning for the future.
5) Teach methods courses. Methods courses are what made me who I am. These are the classes where I was able to leverage class projects to get into graduate school or demonstrate my knowledge, skills, and abilities. These are the course where I learned by far the most about archaeology and anthropology. Teaching more methods courses provides faculty a chance to demonstrate the applicability of anthropology. They are also more engaging and provide an opportunity for students to display their talents. I am all for methods courses.
6) Improved career services. Building the kind of career services that will help PhDs find work in non-academic fields is probably the best thing any university can do. I am not familiar with using the career services provided by any of my former universities, but I think it might also be helpful to hire recruiters to help students network and talk their way into positions. My wife used to be a recruiter. They are not all evil bloodsuckers. And, recruiters know a lot about job markets and how to guide applicants through the hiring process outside academia. Who better to help PhDs land jobs in the wider economy?
7) Collect placement data. This would also be helpful; although, I can see the depression many departments would have if they knew their placement rate. This dataset could also be used to build a network for PhD graduates looking for work or adjuncting. We cannot manage what is not measured, so why not start measuring.
8) Remediate the academic/applied split. I’m not sure this can be remedied throughout anthropology. If archaeology can be used as an example, the chasm between CRM and academia has been lessened but still persists. Unfortunately, this blog post and articles like the one published by Platzner and Allison and Speakman et al. may actually keep the divide alive because it forces academicians into making an emotional response. This will take generations to go away. It is up to the graduate students of today to lessen the divide. #Neverforget what happened in your program, how you were treated, and how your advisers talked about non-academic anthropologists.
Yes, I am Naïve
I’m also a product of this new reality in academia.
I am still a new assistant professor, so you can take my position with a grain of salt because I don’t have much experience in academia. Maybe we can’t make these changes. Maybe anthro departments in the United States are doomed. Maybe departments shouldn’t be taking on new students. I don’t think acquiescence and submission is what most anthropology professors are about. So, I think anthro departments are going to have to undergo a lot of internal soul searching. We need to think about what we’re contributing to the world and how we can best prepare our graduates for jobs outside academia. This means acknowledging that most anthropology degree-holders, even PhDs, will never do anthropology or archaeology for a living. We need to look ourselves in the mirror and say aloud, “there aren’t jobs for all of our graduates.” Then, we need to start doing something different to prepare them for reality.
I came up through the higher education system wrought by the 21st century American “gig economy.” Trying to forge a career in CRM is hard. Landing a tenure track job is even more difficult. I readily acknowledge my privilege to be where I am today. But, I know the workplace outside academia is ruled by those who know how to network and broadcast a specific message to a targeted audience of potential employers. Projects are the new resume. Using the internet to showcase your projects is how you connect with the companies willing to hire you. This is what it takes to Navigate the Hidden Job Market. All college students need to be prepared for this reality.
Preparing PhD students for the academic job market is just one part of the solution. As Speakman et al. recommend, students at Tier III and lower PhD-granting institutions are going to have to compensate for the way others perceive their institutions by publishing in higher impact journals and giving more presentations. If this happens, you’d better expect students from Tier I and II schools to respond similarly. The result is going to be a tidal wave of preliminary research published by graduate students in our journals. It will come alongside all the publishing professors are required to do. If we follow this advice, we’re going to witness an even bigger flood of articles, books, and edited volumes that will go into the existing academic publishing Black Hole. All of this research getting jammed into an overcrowded echo chamber. All the while, paywalls will strengthen and less of our research will see the light of day.
The alternative is we can develop ways for anthropology graduates to find employment all throughout the economy, bringing with them deeper insights into human behavior, evolution, and pasts. We can help them use the internet and new media to spread the word about our work and connect with potential employers. This could be used for evil (for example, to better use Facebook to influence elections) or it could be used to make companies and government agencies more human. We will never know anthropology graduates become commonplace in the 21st century job market.
Let’s keep this conversation going. Please, write a comment below or send me an email.
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