Search the Community

I am always heartened by all of the optimism and excitement that so many on this forum show every year around this time. I was in your shoes 6 years ago, trying to suss out how management (STR/OB) academia actually worked. I relied on posts on Urch, even though I was highly intertwined with management academia prior to my PhD. Looking back, I had both good and bad times in my program. Upon graduation, I'll start as a data scientist at a financial institution. Here's my retrospective take for folks considering this path (starting with a healthy dose of tough love). This career path is much more challenging and less appealing than most prospective students realize. First, the norm for program length has decidedly gone from 5 to 6 years at high-ranked R1s over my time in the program, and I imagine that 6 years of PhD + postdoc may become the norm by the time you graduate. Nowadays, when going into this profession, you have to be willing to move across the country, delay having a family (if you want one), and delay solid financial stability for 7-8 years. Moreover, you must be *uncommonly certain* that these preferences won't change as you grow older. For most people, they will. When I began, I thought that I'd be happy as a professor at any institution and any location as long as I was doing research work that engaged my mind and was useful in some way. Through the six years of my PhD, I got married, had a kid, and watched from afar as my partner's parents began to develop health issues. In short, my preferences changed pretty dramatically. If you do well on the academic job market, you'll get a handful of flyouts, one or two offers from schools from anywhere across the US/world. It's rare that the schools that give you offers will jive super well with your preferences. For example, many top schools (e.g., Berkeley) are located in HCOL areas with wildly expensive property values, so many new Haas faculty live in subsidized apartments for a good chunk of time pre-tenure. While our field is doing better than most PhD fields on many dimensions, you're still doing a PhD and that comes with challenges. There will be constant, low-level stress that you're not doing enough to hit the moving target of getting a job, huge cultural pressure from professors to stay in academia at all costs, and (at least at my school) you will quickly lose contact with students who drop out and professors who don't get tenure. Unlike most private sector jobs, it's very hard to "turn off" at the end of the day or over the weekend. This combination of factors generally leads to mental health challenges. I'd estimate about 50%+ of the folks in my highly visible R1 program periodically experienced mental health issues due to these pressures (including myself). There's a good chance that you would face similar issues too. Usually, these issues manifest in moderate to severe depressive episodes that span 2-6 months, often crop up around the start of the 3rd year, and reappear every so often thereafter. The PhDs in my group were uncommonly open about these issues, and I'm very thankful that I had a supportive network when I struggled. In general, this is a big issue among PhDs that research is just beginning to address (New study says graduate students' mental health is a "crisis"). On a systemic level, remember that advice and opinions from professors reflect survivorship bias (i.e., you don't hear from the folks that aren't in academia anymore). There's not much (if any) positive growth in b-school enrollments any more, especially compared to the growth period 1980-2010. Tenure lines in STR/OB, while still relatively commonplace compared to other PhD fields, are slowly shrinking at many schools as older professors retire and are replaced by cheaper adjuncts. I've gotten the sense that year-over-year demand for rookie PhDs in management academia has marginally but noticeably slowed over my time in the program, while tenure requirements are also getting marginally but noticeably tougher. I'd guess that around 25% of graduating PhDs in STR/OB don't stay on the academic track (at least at highly visible R1 schools, which is my reference set). Some of these "leavers" can't get an academic job they like, and some realize that they don't want to continue to make sacrifices that the academic arena requires. To add a silver lining, however, I'm happy I did a PhD. I recognize that I was privileged enough to not worry too much about providing financially for a family, parents, etc. I was also well-connected and "culturally ingratiated" in academia prior to starting my PhD; there are huge barriers to entry in this field for those without cultural or financial capital. I learned a lot about myself, managing my time, how to do good research, and the ability and necessity to set my own course in work and life. Unlike some horror stories online, I loved the other folks in my cohort and program, and our culture was quite cordial. If I had to do it again, I probably would, but I would have tried to graduate ASAP, learned as many practical stats/metrics/coding tools as possible, and spent less time worrying about management theory (which oftentimes isn't geared towards actual managers and sometimes, in my opinion, verges on fluffy and poorly-developed philosophical rambling). If you're in any way put off by this message, you should consider similar jobs that require brainpower and research skills (data science, statisticians, UX, etc.). These jobs will give you a good salary, are less competitive, are more location-flexible, allow you to gain marketable skills more rapidly, and don't require a long, low-paid training period. If you want to teach, an alternative is to get a masters and adjunct on the side so that you can align incentives with university administration, who generally want to minimize expensive tenure lines subject to constraints from accreditation bodies (AACSB). The PhD journey is wickedly tough. Experiences and outcomes differ (wildly and often randomly) from person to person. For the vast majority of folks that think they'd be interested in this path, they should take a hard look at their preferences, desires, and life goals. If you're not at least 90% sold on this path, you should consider something like what I prescribe above. However, if you are part of that 10% that could only see yourself as a full-time business school researcher, then you should go for it. Good luck!

I've finished the first term in my program. I worked hard and made the grades that I aimed for in my courses and started what I think are some interesting research projects. My whole academic life I have lived by this mantra: get good grades because you never know when your GPA will help open a door for you. This is the way that my mind is wired. However, now that I am in a terminal degree program, I'm told by many that grades do not matter. That is, when new PhDs hit the job market, no senior faculty will observe your GPA as an indicator of your potential as a new junior faculty member; they may not even view your GPA. Even though this new philosophy is antithetical to what I've told myself my whole life, I'm tempted to let my coursework slack in order to push harder on research. Before I make that decision to let up in class, I'm interested to hear some opinions from the Urchins. What do you think, is a B as good as an A in a PhD program? Or less specifically, do grades matter when seeking a junior faculty position?

Can anyone compare job opportunities for UIUC graduted and Penn state?I am interested in political economy and development and I think ,although penn state is a better school,UIUC is better in those field,could any one help me?