Good Work If You Can Get It

Book excerpt: What does it really take to get a job in academia? Do you want to go to graduate school? Then you're in good company: nearly 80,000 students will begin pursuing a PhD this year alone. But while almost all new PhD students say they want to work in academia, most are destined for something else. The hard truth is that half will quit or fail to get their degree, and most graduates will never find a full-time academic job. In Good Work If You Can Get It, Jason Brennan combines personal experience with the latest higher education research to help you understand what graduate school and the academy are really like. This candid, pull-no-punches book answers questions big and small, including • Should I go to graduate school—and what will I do once I get there? • How much does a PhD cost—and should I pay for one? • What does it take to succeed in graduate school? • What kinds of jobs are there after grad school—and who gets them? • What happens to the people who never get full-time professorships? • What does it take to be productive, to publish continually at a high level? • What does it take to teach many classes at once? • How does "publish or perish" work? • How much do professors get paid? • What do search committees look for, and what turns them off? • How do I know which journals and book publishers matter? • How do I balance work and life? This realistic, data-driven look at university teaching and research will help make your graduate and postgraduate experience a success. Good Work If You Can Get It is the guidebook that anyone considering graduate school, already in grad school, starting as a new professor, or advising graduate students needs. Read it, and you will come away ready to hit the ground running.