博士畢業後,找不到工作怎麼辦?

ON a recent Sunday afternoon, a monthly meeting convened around a long table in a Whole Foods cafeteria on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As people settled in, the organizer plopped down a bag of potato chips and tackled housekeeping matters, like soliciting contributions. But she did not insist. "I know that some of you are in fragile situations," she said.

最近一個星期天下午，在曼哈頓上西城一家全食餐廳(Whole Foods)的長桌旁，一場月度會議如期舉行。待所有人坐定後，組織者拿出一袋薯片放在桌子上，隨即開始處理內部事務，比如募集捐款，但她並沒有執意要求。“我知道你們有些人的處境不太好，”她說。

One attendee recalled scraping by on $9,000 a year. "I was exhausted by years of living in poverty," she said. Her neighbor chimed in: "Amen, sister."

一位與會者回憶說，有一年她的年收入只有9000美元，日子過得很苦。“多年的貧困生活讓我精疲力竭，”她說。她的鄰座插話說：“阿門，我的姊妹。”

An eavesdropper might have been surprised to learn what the group had in common: formidable academic credentials. Sitting at the table were a historian, a sociologist, a linguist and a dozen other scholars. Most held doctorates; a few were either close to completion or had left before finishing. All had toiled for years in graduate school but, by choice or circumstance, almost none had arrived at the promised destination of tenure-track professorships (the one who had was thinking of leaving). Now they found themselves at a gathering of a group called Versatile Ph.D. to support their pursuit of nontraditional careers.

如果碰巧偷聽到他們的談話，或許你會驚訝萬分地獲悉這羣人有一個共同點：令人敬畏的學術造詣。圍坐在桌子四周的，是一位歷史學家、一位社會學家、一位語言學家和十幾位其他領域的學者。大多數人擁有博士學位，還有幾位或即將完成，或中途放棄。所有人都在研究生院苦讀多年，但要麼是出於個人選擇，要麼是因爲客觀環境，幾乎所有人都未獲得他們孜孜以求的終身教授席位，一位獲得教職的幸運兒也萌生退意。現在，一個名叫“多面手博士”(Versatile Ph.D.)，旨在支持博士生尋求非傳統職業的團體讓這些博士生齊聚一堂。

After a round of introductions, the participants broke into clusters to swap stories and tips. A 32-year-old man who had studied ancient religion at Princeton wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of his employer, a finance website; he talked up his job to a physicist who was finalizing her thesis. The historian, a teacher at an elite private school, advised a recent American studies Ph.D. on where to find job postings and how to package himself. That young Ph.D., Adam Capitanio, who completed his degree in 2012, had looked for an academic position for three years, focusing his search on the Northeast and applying for at least 60 jobs. He hadn't received a single interview. Now he was working as an editorial associate at an academic publisher, trying to devise a long-term plan. "Things were kind of desperate before I had that job," he said. "This gives me some flexibility to figure out what I actually want to do."

一輪自我介紹結束後，與會者三三兩兩地聚攏在一起，互相交流求職故事和技巧。一位曾在普林斯頓大學(Princeton University)研究古代宗教的32歲男士，身穿一件印有其僱主（一家財經網站）名稱的T恤衫；他向一位即將完成論文的女物理學家宣揚這份工作的種種好處。目前在一傢俬立名校任教的歷史學家，給一位最近獲得美國研究學位的博士提供在哪裏尋找招聘廣告、如何包裝自己的建議。這位畢業於2012年的年輕博士名叫亞當·卡皮塔尼奧(Adam Capitanio)，近三年來一直在美國東北部尋找學術性工作，他至少已經申請了60份工作，但連一個面試機會都沒有爭取到。卡皮塔尼奧目前在一家學術性出版機構當助理編輯，正嘗試着制定一項長期計劃。“在獲得這份工作前，我幾乎快絕望了，”他說，“這份工作具有一定的靈活性，讓我有時間弄清楚自己真正想做什麼事情。”

Dr. Capitanio's experience is far from unusual. According to a 2011 National Science Foundation survey, 35 percent of doctorate recipients — and 43 percent of those in the humanities — had no commitment for employment at the time of completion. Fewer than half of Ph.D.'s are expected to land tenure-track jobs. And many voluntarily choose another path because they want higher pay or more direct engagement with the world than monographs and tenure committees seem to allow.

卡皮塔尼奧博士的經歷絕非特例。根據美國國家科學基金會(National Science Foundation)2011年的一項調查，35%的博士學位獲得者——43%的人文學科博士——在完成學業時沒有簽下就業意向書。有望走上追求終身教職這條路的博士預期不到一半。許多人自願選擇另一條路徑，因爲他們希望獲得更高的薪水，更直接地接觸世界，而這些東西似乎是撰寫專著和終身教職委員會所不能給予的。

Though graduates have faced similar conditions for decades, the past few years have seen a surge in efforts to connect Ph.D.'s with gratifying employment outside academia and even to rethink the purpose of doctoral education. "The issue itself is not a new issue," said Debra Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. "The response, I would say, is definitely new."

儘管博士畢業生數十年來一直面臨類似的就業形勢，但在過去幾年，越來越多的人嘗試着把博士學位和令人滿意的非學術性工作掛起鉤來，甚至開始反思博士生教育的目的。“這個問題本身不那麼新鮮，”研究生院理事會(Council of Graduate Schools)會長黛布拉·斯圖爾特(Debra Stewart)說。“但我想說，出現現在這種反應肯定是前所未有的。”

In addition to New York, Versatile Ph.D. groups have formed in at least seven other cities, including Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles. Abundant online resources help Ph.D.'s turn curricula vitae into résumés and market their skills to nonacademic employers. And former academics can find kindred souls at blogs like "Chronicles of a Recovering Academic" and "Dr. Outta Here" (obscenity alert).

除紐約以外，包括費城、芝加哥和洛杉磯在內的其他7個城市也組建了多面手博士小組。豐富的在線資源幫助博士們把他們的學術資歷轉化爲個人履歷，然後向非學術類僱主推銷自己的技能。這些曾經的學者可以在《學術復甦編年史》(Chronicles of a Recovering Academic)和《前博士匯聚地》（Dr. Outta Here，需警惕淫穢內容）等博客上找到同道中人。

The spirit of change has even begun to take root inside the ivory tower. The University of California, Berkeley, held a "Beyond Academia" conference last spring, hosting Ph.D. speakers who have succeeded in other domains, from consulting to biotech. Similar events are planned at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, which established its new Office of Career Planning and Professional Development in February.

變革的精神甚至已經開始在象牙塔內部紮根。加州大學伯克利分校(The University of California, Berkeley)去年春天舉辦了一個名爲“超越學術界”的會議，邀請從諮詢到生物技術等各類領域獲得成功的博士發表主題演講。紐約市立大學(City University of New York)研究生中心也計劃舉辦類似活動，該中心於今年2月份成立了一個職業規劃和專業發展辦公室。

The problem is especially urgent in the humanities. For Ph.D.'s in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), industry has long been a viable option. But students who study, say, Russian literature or medieval history have few obvious alternative careers in their fields. They confront questions about their relevance even inside the academy, let alone outside it.

在人文學科，這一問題尤爲迫切。對於STEM學科（科學、技術、工程和數學）的博士生來說，產業界早已是一個可行的就業選擇。但研究俄羅斯文學或中世紀曆史的學生在其專業領域並沒有多少顯見的職業選項。甚至在大學校園內部，他們也經常面對各種質疑其專業意義的問題，更遑論校園以外了。

In August, the Scholarly Communication Institute released a report titled "Humanities Unbound: Supporting Careers and Scholarship Beyond the Tenure Track." In it, Katina Rogers, the lead researcher, discusses the nascent concept of alternative academic, or alt-ac, professions. The term has gained widespread currency (and its own Twitter hashtag) and can refer to jobs within universities but outside the professoriate, like administrator or librarian, as well as nonacademic roles like government-employed historian and museum curator.

8月份，學術交流研究所(Scholarly Communication Institute)發佈了一份題爲《脫離束縛的人文學科：支持終身教職之外的職業生涯和學術研究》的報告。首席研究員卡蒂娜·羅傑斯(Katina Rogers)在這份報告中探討了一個方興未艾的概念——學術替代性職業(alt-ac)。這一術語及其Twitter話題標籤已經獲得廣泛傳播，除了受聘於政府機構的歷史學家和博物館館長等非學術性工作之外，它還可以指代非教學崗位的校內工作，比如行政人員和圖書管理員。

Dr. Rogers suggests that alt-ac is less a matter of where you work than how — "with the same intellectual curiosity that fueled the desire to go to graduate school in the first place, and applying the same kinds of skills, such as close reading, historical inquiry or written argumentation, to the tasks at hand." In an interview, she credited the neologism with infusing "positive energy" into the often gloomy conversations about alternative careers. The alt-ac ethos holds that nonacademic work is not a fallback plan for failures but a win-win: Ph.D.'s can bring their deep expertise and advanced skills to a whole gamut of challenges, rather than remaining cocooned in the ivory tower.

羅傑斯博士認爲，學術替代性職業與其說是一個在哪裏工作的問題，倒不如說是一個如何工作的問題——“如何憑藉最初讓你產生讀研衝動的那股求知慾，運用諸如研讀文本、探究歷史和書面論證這類與從事學術研究相同的技能，完成手頭的任務。”在接受記者採訪時，她稱讚這個新詞爲通常悲觀的替代性職業討論注入了一股“正能量”。學術替代性職業風潮認爲，非學術性工作並非萬不得已的備用計劃，而是雙贏選擇：博士生能夠依憑其深厚的專業知識和高超的技能應對一切挑戰，而不是繼續蟄居在象牙塔之中。

Karen Shanton explored unconscious cognitive processes for her philosophy Ph.D. from Rutgers but works at the National Conference of State Legislatures, which provides legislators with nonpartisan analysis. She won the two-year fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Its Public Fellows program, created in 2011, places Ph.D.'s from the humanities and social sciences in nonprofit and government organizations.

卡倫·尚頓(Karen Shanton)曾在羅格斯大學(Rutgers Univesity)探索無意識的認知過程，並獲得了哲學博士學位，但她目前就職於爲議員提供超黨派分析的全美州議會聯合會(National Conference of State Legislatures)。美國學術團體協會(American Council of Learned Societies)給予她一份爲期兩年的研究員職位。該協會在2011年創建了一個公共研究員計劃，以幫助人文和社會科學博士生進入非營利性和政府機構工作。

Dr. Shanton said her education "absolutely" informs her work, which focuses in part on voter ID laws, as she draws on her writing and thinking skills as well as her knowledge of how the mind works. "It's actually kind of great because it has a lot of the benefits of academia," she said. But "with politics, you can have a sort of more immediate impact."

尚頓博士表示，博士教育經歷“絕對”有益於她的工作，因爲除了熟稔大腦運行機理知識之外，她還可以發揮自身的寫作和思維技能。“這的確是一份非常棒的工作，因爲它具有學術性工作的許多好處，”她說。但“政治類工作可以產生立竿見影的影響。”她目前的工作重點包括擬定選民身份法律。

While the alt-ac perspective is relatively rosy, some disenchanted academic refugees embrace what they call the "post-ac" identity. The website "How to Leave Academia" recently published a post-ac manifesto, defining the orientation as "a belief that the current system is flawed, cruel, unsustainable and therefore impossible to directly engage with." In this view, Ph.D. programs, with their false promises, lure students to serve as cheap labor, first as teaching assistants, then as poorly paid adjuncts when tenure-track jobs elude them.

雖然學術替代性職業的前景相對樂觀，但一些心灰意冷的學術界難民欣然接受了他們所稱的“後學術職業”身份。一家名爲“如何離開學術界”(How to Leave Academia)的網站最近發佈了一份《後學術職業生涯宣言》，其基本取向是，“堅信目前的體制是有缺陷的、殘忍的、不可持續的，因此不可能直接參與其中。”這種觀點認爲，博士項目使用虛假的承諾，引誘學生充當廉價勞動力，最初是助教，然後是收入微薄的副教授，而所謂的終身教職只不過是鏡中月，水中花。

"Post-ac discourages people from pursuing graduate work," write the authors, Lauren Whitehead and Kathleen Miller, under the pseudonyms Lauren Nervosa and Currer Bell. Dr. Miller also penned the blog post "I Hate My Post-Ac Job: What Happens When You Don't Land the Perfect Postacademic Career." In it she writes: "Graduating, leaving academia, moving to a new city, starting a new job, and then hating it? Sheesh. Let me tell you — it's hard to feel like a success story." Unable to secure academic employment after completing her doctorate in English literature in 2012, Dr. Miller is now preparing to start her own life-coaching business.

“後學術職業生涯前景勸阻人們不要攻讀研究生課程，”這份宣言的作者勞倫·懷特海德(Lauren Whitehead)和凱瑟琳·米勒(Kathleen Miller)如是寫道。此外，米勒博士還以筆名“神經衰弱的勞倫”(Lauren Nervosa)和柯勒·貝爾（Currer Bell，這是英國著名女作家夏洛蒂·勃朗特曾使用過的筆名——譯註）撰寫了一篇博文《我憎恨我的後學術職業：當你無法獲得完美的後學術職業時會發生什麼事情？》。她在文章中寫道：“畢業，離開學術界，搬到一個新城市，開始一份新工作，然後憎恨它？噓！讓我告訴你——這很難讓人覺得是一個成功故事。”2012年完成英國文學博士學位後，米勒博士無法獲得一份學術性工作，她目前正準備創業，開展生涯培訓事業。

A HANDFUL of professors at Stanford, sensitive to the exploitative potential of graduate school but convinced of its value, are trying to instigate meaningful change. Last year, six of them wrote "The Future of the Humanities Ph.D. at Stanford," a much-discussed white paper promoting the redesign of curriculums to prepare humanities Ph.D.'s for "a diverse array of meaningful, socially productive and personally rewarding careers within and outside the academy," as well as reducing time to degree, which often takes close to a decade.

在斯坦福大學，一些教授敏銳地意識到研究生院的開發潛力，但堅信它的價值。他們目前正嘗試着鼓動有意義的變革。去年，該校六位教授撰寫了一份引發熱議的白皮書《斯坦福大學人文學科博士的未來》，建議重新設計課程，從而讓人文學科博士爲“學院內外各種有意義的，對於社會生產和個人都有益的職業生涯”做好準備，同時建議減少攻讀學位的時間——目前獲取博士學位往往需要近十年光陰。

Russell A. Berman, a German professor and an author of the paper, feels a responsibility to recognize these practical exigencies. "Graduate education is primarily an intellectual undertaking," he said. "But most of the participants are at an age where they also have to be making career choices." He added, "The academic job market is so weak that it just can't be business as usual for department faculty."

在這份白皮書的作者之一、德語教授拉塞爾·A·伯爾曼(Russell A. Berman)看來，承認這些切合實際的迫切需要是一種責任。“研究生教育主要是一種智力事業，”他說，“但大多數參與者都處在一個他們也不得不做出職業選擇的年齡。”他補充說，“學術性就業市場非常羸弱，以至於各個院系的教職員工根本就不可能一切如常地開展教學工作。”

And yet he does not buy into the popular notion that there are just too many Ph.D.'s. "I think that doctoral education is good for individuals who are passionate about the topic," Dr. Berman said. "I think it's good for society. They contribute in lots of different ways."

但他並不認同目前非常流行的觀點，認爲博士生太多了。“我認爲，對於那些熱衷於鑽研某個主題的人來說，接受博士教育是有益的，”伯爾曼博士說，“我認爲它也有益於社會。博士生能夠以多種方式爲社會做貢獻。”

The professors called on Stanford to offer supplementary funds to departments that devised plans for alternative career preparations and shortening time to degree. The School of Humanities and Sciences requested proposals, but few departments responded. At the same time, new programs have been set up to help link humanities Ph.D. students with jobs in Silicon Valley and in high schools.

這些教授呼籲斯坦福大學資助各院系設計替代性職業準備計劃，並縮短攻讀學位的時間。人文與科學學院徵集相關建議，但予以響應的院系寥寥無幾。與此同時，一些新建立的項目開始幫助人文學科博士在硅谷和高中尋找工作。

Initiatives are afoot at other schools as well. Collectively, they could begin to alter expectations.

其他院校也在醞釀一些舉措。整體來說，這些舉措或許會逐漸改變博士生的預期。

While not grappling with the same existential questions as humanities programs, the Polytechnic Institute of New York University is trying to expand career options for its Ph.D. candidates. It has opened two incubators over the last few years, with a third to open soon, offering space, legal services and marketing advice to facilitate entrepreneurship. The draw, according to Kurt H. Becker, associate provost for research and technology, is "a career path that would allow them to be much more in control than if you're a postdoc or an assistant professor, where your career path is pretty much mapped out."

雖然紐約大學理工學院(Polytechnic Institute of New York University)無需應對與人文學科博士項目同樣慘烈的存亡問題，但他們也開始嘗試拓寬其博士候選人的職業選擇。在過去幾年裏，這所學院已啓動了兩個孵化器項目，第三個項目也即將開啓。這些項目爲博士生提供場地、法律服務和營銷諮詢以促進創業。負責研究和技術事務的副教務長庫爾特·貝克爾(Kurt H. Becker)表示，“相較於職業生涯基本上已經明確的博士後或助理教授工作，”這是“一條讓博士生擁有更多掌控權的職業路徑。”

The Praxis Network consists of "digital humanities" initiatives at eight universities, focusing primarily on graduate education. They aim to prepare students for roles outside the professoriate, stressing skills like collaboration, technology and project management. Students in the Digital Fellows Program at the City University of New York Graduate Center, in its second year, commit 15 hours a week to a selected project and related activities. One historian completed a project called "Data Mining Diplomacy: A Computational Analysis of the State Department's Foreign Policy Files." Fellows also design Web sites and organize a workshop series for other students, all of which is far removed from the traditional humanities experience of sitting alone in a room with a stack of books.

實踐網絡項目(Praxis Network)由八所大學的“數字人文”倡議行動組成，主要側重於研究生教育。該項目注重培養博士生的合作、技術和項目管理技能，以幫助他們做好擔當教授職位以外角色的準備。紐約市立大學研究生中心數字研究員計劃(Digital Fellows Program)的學生在第二學年，每星期需要花費15個小時參加一個選定的項目和相關活動。一位歷史學家完成了一個名爲“數據挖掘外交：對國務院外交政策文件的計算分析”的項目。研究員還設計網站，並面向其他學生組織系列研討會，所有這一切都與傳統的人文專業學習體驗——獨自一人在書籍成堆的房間裏埋頭苦學——大相徑庭。

"We are really thinking about it as a kind of laboratory for reshaping doctoral education and rethinking the kind of skills that we give our students," said Matthew K. Gold, an English professor who runs the program.

“我們的確打算通過這些實驗重塑博士生教育，反思我們傳授給學生的技能，”該項目負責人，英語教授馬修·戈爾德(Matthew K. Gold)這樣說。

Ethan Watrall, a professor of anthropology at Michigan State University, runs the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative as part of Praxis. "I try to destigmatize this idea of not going on to a tenure-track job," he said. "It doesn't matter — who cares? If you're happy and that's what you want to do, that's awesome."

密歇根州立大學(Michigan State University)人類學教授伊桑·瓦特拉爾(Ethan Watrall)負責運營隸屬於實踐網絡項目的文化遺產信息計劃(Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative)。“我嘗試着消除博士生因無法獲取終身教職而揹負的污名，”他說，“這並不重要——誰在乎呢？開開心心地做自己想做的事情，纔是真正了不起的。”

He believes the culture has begun to change, "mostly because of the sort of desperate need for it to change."

他認爲，研究生院的文化已經開始改變：“主要是因爲對於改變，大家有着迫切的需求。”

Still, he said, a transformation is only beginning. "The academy is a big ship and it takes a long time to turn it."

不過，變革纔剛剛開始。“學院是一艘大船，往往需要很長時間才能調轉方向，”他說。