Higher Education Careers Beyond the Professoriate

"Satisfying and impactful work for PhD holders can be found in a wide range of roles in today's colleges and universities—teaching and learning, diversity programs, academic affairs, faculty development, communications, institutional research, and career coaching, to name a few. This book provides inspiration for those exploring non-faculty careers within academia. The authors of these first-person essays candidly describe their own journeys—from discovering new possibilities, to refashioning a professional identity, to thriving in a previously unimagined job. If you are expanding your view of what is possible, read this book for pragmatic advice and encouragement." —Chris M. Golde, Career Coach for PhDs and Postdocs, Stanford Career Education

"This important book explores the 'constellation of possibilities' for PhDs within the higher education landscape, identifying not just the push away from faculty jobs, but also the pull toward work that can be joyful, flexible, and meaningful. Among its many powerful contributions, the collection reveals how these roles allow PhDs—who vary by academic discipline, race, gender, gender identity, class, and sexuality—to center values of equity and inclusion, creating communities of care in their workplaces. This is the rare book that offers hope as well as concrete approaches to creating a better life!" —Joya Misra, President, American Sociological Association

"Too many doctoral students think their career choices are limited to a tenure-track job or leaving higher education. Higher Education Careers Beyond the Professoriate makes clear that higher education depends on PhDs in myriad ways—in advising, in deans' offices, in libraries, in DEI offices, and in many other functions. More importantly, the book offers advice that focuses not simply on the practicalities of plotting career paths, but also on the financial, family, emotional, and identity issues with which we all must wrestle when making choices about how to move consciously through our careers and our lives. Graduate schools should purchase multiple copies!" —Paula Krebs, Executive Director, Modern Language Association

"This book goes well beyond simply outlining career options for PhDs in higher education, providing substantive engagement with what those jobs look and feel like in a changing higher education landscape. Blending personal narrative and critical insight, the essays offer not only useful windows into particular kinds of work, but also new perspectives on living one's values over the course of a nonlinear career." —Derek Attig, Assistant Dean for Career and Professional Development, Graduate College, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

"Nothing teaches better than a story, and Higher Education Careers Beyond the Professoriate is filled with good ones, and with good data, too. Career diversity lies at the center of this splendid book, and the many inventive storytellers in its pages show that 'pracademia' leads to lives both creative and satisfying. Academics of all stripes—inside and outside the academy—should read this book." —Leonard Cassuto, coauthor of The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education