Credential Regret: It’s a Thing

When you work in an academic line of work, at some point, you may find yourself facing credential regret.

Credential regret is the career form of opportunity cost (an economic concept in which making one choice prevents the gain you could have gotten from selecting another alternative). Credential regret is that sinking feeling that your time spent pursuing a Ph.D. or J.D. would have been gotten you farther along in your current career by simply working instead, putting in time on the job. You would be farther along – professionally, and even financially – had you used that time to simply climb the ranks in your current job family from the get go.

I would love to be able to tell you that your conclusion is probably incorrect, but the reality is that most employers – even higher ed employers – usually place greater value on the length and nature of work experience than on advanced degrees. Here are 2 points to help you understand credential regret.

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A Job that Works Can Stop Working

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Sometimes things just drift.

When my museum career came to a screeching halt a few years back during the recession (and my first pregnancy), I made a very calculated and deliberate decision to come back to higher ed as my workplace of choice. A decision that came after a lot of processing of my feelings about my career and my work, and a lot of soul searching and reflection. If I had been able to be honest with myself (instead of clouded mind after having been laid off), I would have been able to say, “You know what? We’re just not suitable for each other anymore. It’s time to move on” to the museum profession.

I wish I had known this a long time ago, but just in case you don’t, a piece of advice.

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Reflections on women in (my) workplace

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Women Rule!

International Women’s Day is coming up and #metoo has been inescapable this year, with good reason, I might add. While I’m not going to comment on that specifically, I will use this moment to reflect on women in my workplace.

One of the reasons I’ve been so content in my work since landing (back) in academia has been that I have been fortunate to land in a field where I am mentored by, work for, and work alongside amazingly talented, skilled, intelligent, and compassionate women. In fact, since joining my current university department more than 7 years ago, I have consistently heard that the field I work in – which I’m not going to identify due to privacy concerns – is more than 75% women. Industry-wide, not just in my corner of the work world at my university. That turns out to be true. In fact, I guess the most recent data now show that the workforce is actually closer to 85% women. And so perhaps my own experience of working amongst a team of inspiring women leaders may not be unique, no matter where I go next.

That is great news to me! And yet, we still have miles to go. Let’s talk about three problems that brings to bear.

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Why I needed a backup plan

When you got your degree, did you get it knowing what kind of work you would do?

This is how a lot of people end up with a graduate or professional degree. To be a teacher, you’ll need your ed degree; if you want to be a doctor, you’ll need med school; and to be a college professor, you’ll need a terminal degree in your field.

Lots of people get an advanced degree for other reasons. Maybe you needed to learn all that you could about a particular subject. Or maybe you were getting nowhere with your job hunt because you had only a Bachelor’s – and so you decided to tack on another degree, deciding to figure out the career stuff later. (That would be me, if you’re wondering).

No matter how you ended up with an advanced degree, or what you envisioned doing with it, you need a backup plan.

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Your backup plan may take a couple of tries, too.

I know, because I found that out the hard way.

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Book Review: The Professor Is In

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If you aren’t already familiar with The Professor Is In, you should be. It’s a fantastically informative and brutally honest faculty job market blog run by Karen Kelsky. But now you can get her job market insights in book form as well.

I got a chance to read Kelsky’s book, The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning your Ph.D. Into a Job over the past week. After briefly setting the context for why the job market is so very competitive, the rest of the book provides no-nonsense guidance on how to navigate the market more successfully.

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