Is leaving really irrevocable?

This is one of the biggest fears – and biggest stumbling blocks – I hear from people who are considering leaving. Once they make the decision to go, they say, there’s no going back.

And to a large extent, they’re right. Especially in a market like this one, where there are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of applicants for any given open position, hiring committees aren’t likely to look closely at someone who has left and returned when they’ve got application after application from bright young things just out of graduate school, bearing the latest theory and impressive credentials.

But that doesn’t mean the situation is quite as clear-cut as all that.

There are exceptions to every rule

This you-can’t-go-home-again bias is more true in the humanities than in the social sciences, business, or the hard sciences. Not only are the humanities the hardest hit in the undersupply of jobs and oversupply of PhDs, but the humanities encompass the fields that put the least value on practical, hands-on experience.

Many other fields have a long tradition of people moving from industry to higher ed and back. How likely it is in the case of any given academic depends on things as varied as specialty, grant funding, trends in the industry, and the phase of the moon.

The converse is not necessarily true

But often, when I’m talking with people who are afraid that if they walk away, a door closes forever, I’m wondering just how open that door actually is right now.

Given the trends in academia – towards contingent labor, towards less and less public funding, towards increased service obligations, towards fewer viable university presses and journals, towards an ever-more imbalance between the number of PhDs and the number of jobs available – I’m not sure that the door is open for any but a very few, very lucky people who happened to be in the right place at the right time with just exactly the right combination of scholarship and experience and personality.

In other words, the writing may be on the wall even if you aren’t deciding to walk away.

The realities of the job market are not about you

None of this is to say that you aren’t qualified or aren’t deserving or aren’t absolutely brilliant. You are. You are all of those things. You absolutely deserve a real job doing what you love.

Unfortunately, deserve has very little to do with what actually happens. And what is actually happening right now is that many – and I would say most — of the qualified, deserving, brilliant graduates aren’t getting those tenure-track jobs, because they don’t exist. And that’s not because anyone is out to get you, and it’s not because administrators don’t value tenure-track faculty. It’s because we happen to be around during a particular historical moment when the economic circumstances of higher ed are changing in ways that may never reverse.

So when people worry that walking away is irrevocable, what I always want to ask is how likely it is that staying will produce a different outcome. In every case I can think of, it’s not that the door was absolutely closed, but it wasn’t open very far. That’s because when people are honestly considering leaving, it’s because things, for one reason or another, haven’t worked out as planned or hoped.

Some people are going to want to take their chances on that crack, and that’s reasonable. But there will be a point at which that crack disappears and the door is effectively closed. Maybe it’s because you’re too many years out of school and you’re competing with people who are newly graduated. Maybe it’s because your field is being systematically trimmed from various institutions. Maybe it’s because tenure-lines in your field are rapidly disappearing and the only things that are really available are contingent positions.

When that door closes, the question of whether leaving is irrevocable isn’t really relevant anymore.

I hate being the voice of doom

But I hate watching people throw themselves against impossibilities even more. I hate watching bright, amazing people, people who have so much to offer, doubt their own self-worth because the numbers just weren’t in their favor. I hate watching people compromise their own futures by accepting section work that doesn’t pay the bills. I hate watching people get bitter and angry because things haven’t worked out.

This is a particularly horrible time in academia. Maybe it will shift for the better sometime. I really hope it does, because I believe in the importance of higher education and I believe particularly in the value of the humanities. I know too many amazing academics, people who are working hard with increasingly fewer resources, to write it all off.

But I also know too many amazing people who didn’t get the brass ring to believe that this situation is benign. It isn’t.

Walking away may be irrevocable. And if that door is still open a crack and you want to take your chances, power to you. I want every person who wants an academic job to get a good one, because we need that brilliance and dedication. We need it desperately.

But if that door is closed, I hope that you are able to mourn and walk away. Because the rest of the world needs your brilliance and dedication just as desperately.

If you’re walking away but don’t know what else you could do, join Jo VanEvery and me in a six-week class designed to help you figure out what your options are. We start June 12. Click here to find out more.