# 130: Beyond “Alt-Ac” and “Post-Ac”?

Higgins, Sabrina C., and Megan Daniels (2015). “Alternative Academics: Moving beyond the Academy.” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies 3:3: 238–246, 239.

Story behind the Passage

In a conversation with a colleague today I learned a new word: “alternative academics.” As always, I love learning new concepts, especially if they describe things that I know well but never knew there was a word for them. Words are labels and labels make things more comprehensible — to onself and to others. This is what you learn in business and today I learned that such labels also make academic career issues more graspable. The reason why I am saying I knew the thing before learning about the concept is because it means what you read above. The passage is from an article I just googled after our conversation. It focuses on archaeologists but also addresses issues that apply to most smaller subjects in academia. As you can imagine, I am quite pleased to see that there seems to be a discussion about academic careers, even though the article was published five years ago already. What might surprise you, however, is that I am not entirely happy about the ‘alternative turn.’

Yes, it is nice to pay attention to the fact that people leave the university, even though they would have liked to stay. But the process itself, i.e., taking on a job that is not a professorship, is anything but new. Millions of graduates do it every year. The only thing that differentiates post-docs from the ‘normal’ graduate is that the former spent more time in the university and got another degree. So, what I am saying: The tendency to turn this into an entire movement, give it “post-” and “alternative-” prefixes and write papers about it is actually a very academic thing to do. In other words, it replicates the rules of the institution these “movements” seek to counter. Again, I appreciate the fact that people are talking about it and I am aware that you need to publish it somewhere — if you want to. Still, whenever you find labels for something to turn it into some kind of movement, it is a political move. As always in politics, it involves the manifestation of factions and an “us-versus-them” discourse of some kind. Let me explain this in more detail.

My Learnings

“It is in this manner that they differentiate themselves from the alt-ac movement, whereby, an individual working in an academic institution can thus still consider him- or herself a part of the post-ac community.” This is a sentence in the paper that I am really struggling with. The first thing that I do not like about it is exactly this aspect of “differentiation” which seems to connect alt- and post-acs. Why? People who graduate naturally move on to something new and hardly anybody in the academic community asks these ‘normal’ graduates if they actually landed the job they always dreamed of in the end. The university was simply an episode in their life. If they did not hate it — why would they want to “differentiate” themselves? To the contrary, good universities around the world have always succeeded in keeping life-long relationships with their alumni — because they actually create life-long career value (I just finished writing an article about this today — on how the sustainable value of universities is in the networks and communities they create). Thus, what I am saying is: this rebellious ‘goodbye’ to the university is not even necessary. Yes, it can be a psychological move to emancipate yourself but this collective alternative and post- movement does not make much sense to me. And the same holds true for another aspect which the article completely overlooks: time.

There is one trap that the authors fall into that, from my perspective, is also quite typical of (old) academic thinking: You think in life-long careers. Either you are in or you are out. I myself thought like this for a long time and whenever I talk to professors and university staff these days, they still think that way. But from outside the Ivory Tower, we know that the world has changed already. People have multiple careers in the course of their life time. As your life changes and the world around you changes, your interests change and you acquire different skills that open up different doors. The digital transformation even creates completely new occupations while some old ones ‘die’ because of automatization. I myself would never have thought that my path would take me to tech and now even back to the public sector in some projects. And the topic of project-based work is also something that reflects the immanent logic of the digital and fast-paced work world that offers a lot more cross-disciplinary movement and flexibility.

What I am saying is that “post-” and “alt-” are not mutually exclusive and they can be temporary. I know that right now, a turning away from the university might mean a lifelong goodbye to the academic job market. Look at the situation in five or ten years from now. It will look very different. Actually, I expect it to change even more rapidly. We are already seeing the opening of the borders between university and business and with the increasing advancement of network technology, all social spheres will be blending more and this will automatically also mean that the expertise needed for certain job profiles inside and outside the university will require skills from people with academic and practical experience.

Now, talking about practical experience. There is another passage that really worries me. Here it is:

“A good example of such an initiative stems from The Pennsylvania State University, at which the College of Liberal Arts has implemented a Graduate Student Internship Program (GRIP).7 This initiative gives PhD students the opportunity to pursue work experience within a university context. During the course of their paid internship, graduate students are placed within a non-teaching, non-research university office and are released from all teaching and research requirements for the duration of their internship. In the process, students acquire marketable experience and increased job opportunities after graduation.” (Higgins and Daniels 240)

You are asking yourself now why on earth this worries me? Is it not such a helpful thing? You know what, honestly, I have been telling people for years to do internships on the side while working in the academy. I also wrote about how internships and work outside the academy should actually be a requirement for tenure. So, it is not the solution itself that I have a problem with. But reading now about structured programs that help GRADUATES (!) find internships is just such a poor thing! It is actually very sad. It ruins all the trust someone would have in the skills and intellectual abilities of a graduate, even post-doc. For Pete’s Sake, people, getting an internship is the same for everybody. Yes, it is o.k. to help 10th graders get their first one or even B.A. students. But should people with advanced degrees not really be able to take care of this themselves? Are you kidding me?

The sad truth is, I know that people need help with this stuff. There is a need for this. But please, organize this help yourself and get it from practitioners! You can ask the people around you — in your family, friends from school, whoever is in your network. They can look at your CV and your motivation letter. Geeee! Yes, I know that some of us do not have people that we can ask. This has traditionally been a problem in non-academic families. But when it comes to outside-university jobs, the sad part is rather that academics very often live in a bubble in which there are only academic peers without any practical experience. See, this is why I am preaching: Connect! Get in touch with people outside your bubble. Applicants outside academia have been doing this forever. Everyone — no matter if he/she comes from academia or wherever — benefits from feedback when applying. But, please, do not spend university resources for setting up structured internship programs! You can actually use that money for sponsoring an academic position that would turn some of these post- and alt-acs into ‘present-acs’ — if you know what I mean…

This also culminates in the final passage I want to quote:

“Furthermore, students might be encouraged to direct coursework term papers toward a broader audience and to develop a robust set of hard skills that have relevance beyond the Ivory Tower. Arguably, this is already happening — but it must be more systematically integrated into post-graduate career planning.” (Higgins and Daniels 244–45)

This, once more, signals a vicious cycle of turning universities into pre-school programs. I am fine with the content stated here. But, again, the measure of “systematically integrating” these suggestions into post-graduate career planning programs is just what we do not need! Please, take care of this yourself, you are grown-ups and part of the reason why you cannot stay in the university is because the institution is highly inefficient and the reason for this is because everything is bureaucratic and “systemically integrated”! For sure, I usually promote systemic thinking and integration but in this case with this effect. So, the solution is very simple: Just move on, get a job that you love and do not worry if it is alt- or post-. Just do it and enjoy it and if there comes a moment when you want to return to research, there will be other ways to do this as well. The days of either/or thinking are coming to an end in the networked age of the 21st century. Remember, the world is changing dramatically and your career will look very different from the one of your professors — at least, if you take it into your own hands.

Reflection Questions

1) No matter in which field you work — do you have the impression that more and more services are being provided that indicate more instead of less individual responsibility? What is an example?

2) What is the longest time you spent in one job/position?

3) What are the biggest strengths of academics from your perspective?

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