ABD For 30 Years "Won't finished Dissertation"

Hello everyone,

Here is an article I recently read about an doctorate student who was ABD status in her doctoral program and left academe without finishing her dissertation, and discusses her career propects within labor workforce.


BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER
A.B.D. for 30 Years and Counting
Will not finishing your dissertation harm your career prospects in the
nonacademic world?

By SUSAN BASALLA MAY

Of all the questions that torment graduate students as they contemplate
leaving academe, the most emotionally fraught is, "Should I finish my
dissertation?" Many graduate students would like nothing more than to
be free of it forever but are reluctant to abandon a project in which
they have already invested so much of themselves. And looming overhead
is the fear that leaving academe as an A.B.D. ("all but dissertation")
will forever mark you as a quitter or a failure in the eyes of
potential employers.

The truth is, employers outside academe do not care if you finish your
dissertation. They don't care because, however vital it feels to you,
your dissertation in most cases is irrelevant to them.

I've written about the "to finish or not to finish" conundrum at
greater length in previous columns and in my book, So What Are You
Going to Do With That?: Finding Careers Outside Academia. Rather than
retread those arguments here, I would like to share the story of one of
the many A.B.D.'s who have had successful and varied careers in the
nonacademic world.

Kathryn Taylor left her graduate program in English literature in the
mid-1970s. Despite being A.B.D., she found that she was employable
outside academe, and the analytical skills she l
earned in graduate
school helped her earn an unusually rapid promotion in her first job.
Her subsequent path through banking, secondary-school teaching, and
university administration is an important reminder that the first job
you take after graduate school is not your destiny.

Question: Why did you decide to go to graduate school?

I loved my time as an English major at Princeton University. Spending a
life devoted to books, reading, writing, talking about reading and
writing — especially in a setting like Princeton — just seemed to me
the perfect goal.

Question: Why did you decide to leave academe? How did you make your
decision?

There were several factors that combined over my three years in the
English graduate program at University of Pennsylvania, although they
could all be chalked up to unrealistic expectations or even naïveté on
my part. First, graduate-student life was nothing like undergraduate
life at Princeton. Second, I had the disheartening realization that I
may not have had what it takes in terms of discipline to become a
top-notch scholar.

And absolutely related to that, I watched friends and colleagues a year
or so ahead of me in Penn's program get nowhere when it came time to
hit the job market. One of the most talented and industrious of my
fellow medievalists contacted more that 50 departments and did not get
a single interview at MLA. Also, I had come to
love living in the
Philadelphia area, and I began to realize that an academic career would
mean having no control over where I would live.

So at the end of my third year, when I had finished course work but had
not yet taken my field exams, I decided to try my hand at banking.
Friends who had been English majors as undergraduates had gone into
credit-training programs at big banks and assured me that I could
handle the work.

My first job was as a credit-analyst trainee at what was then known as
Girard Bank, with the assumption that after two years I would become a
junior commercial-lending officer.

Question: How did you handle the transition from academe to banking?

I had joked at my interviews that if I could read and analyze medieval
manuscripts, I could certainly learn how to read and analyze financial
statements. That turned out to be correct. The discipline I gained in
graduate school was invaluable: taking care with small details,
thinking through how pieces made up a whole, recognizing where lacunae
existed and then figuring out how to fill the gaps. Those elements of
analysis are absolutely transferable.

The difficulty was in the culture shift. Banking was a very different
world. Not only did my English degrees mean nothing to many colleagues
and business associates — they were actually considered a liability.
Not easy for the ego. It took about a year for me to get reoriente
d,
and for my colleagues to discover that I did bring value to the table.

But after a year, some of the senior executives had noticed that not
only had I learned to analyze financial statements, I could also write
literate and coherent credit reports, so they moved me pretty quickly
to the "head of the class." Instead of spending two years in the
credit-training program, after the first year I was promoted to manager
of the program.

Question: What was your next career move?

I was in banking for 10 years. By 1987 I had been a vice president for
several years and headed up a regional lending group at Girard. But by
that time I had also started a family. My husband and I were a
two-career couple, and juggling work and family just became too
difficult. So I headed to a known thing: teaching. (I had taught
freshman and sophomore English courses at Penn as part of the terms of
my fellowship.) I applied to my alma mater, the Baldwin School, in Bryn
Mawr, Pa.

Question: How have you balanced work and family since leaving banking?

I taught at Baldwin for 12 years after leaving banking.
Secondary-school teaching had an ideal schedule for a mother of young
children. (I had my second child in 1990 after joining Baldwin's
faculty.) And, of course, the job allowed me to talk about books and
teach writing, both of which I loved.

In 1999 I changed careers again to take a position as20director of
Princeton's Alumni Council. I stayed in that job for three years but,
ultimately, the full-time commitment and the commute were too hard on
me and my family — I still had children in school. In early 2002, I
stepped down from heading up the office and became director of special
projects for the Alumni Council, working part time ever since. That
seems to be the right balance for me now.

Question: When you look back, do you see any common threads running
through your career? Could you see those threads at the time?

Frankly, the common threads that I see now, and that I did see then,
are the institutions. I loved Baldwin and Princeton as a student at
both, and it was to those beloved institutions that I have returned. In
fact, even though I have not taught at Baldwin for nine years, I am as
engaged as ever. I have been an active volunteer there, and I am about
to be the chair of Baldwin's Board of Trustees.

The banking career was a bit of an aberration — though a lucky one, as
it was at Girard Bank that I met my husband.

Question: Do you ever miss academe?

It may sound paradoxical to say that I do miss academe, even though I
work at Princeton. But, again, my work is so distant from the academic
side of the university that I could be almost anywhere.

What I miss most is talking about literature, whether it is current
literature or Hamlet.
I still can get quite a head of steam going when
talking about Ian McEwan or Shakespeare. I have been blessed with
having a daughter who is also a lover of literature, and she and I have
spent many lovely hours talking together about her various high-school
reading assignments. (Lucky for me, Macbeth is her favorite Shakespeare
play as well, although she is a bigger fan of Atonement than I am.) I
am dreading her departure for college in the fall.

Question: Do you ever regret your decision to leave your Ph.D. program?

I would make the same decision over again. The one thing I don't miss
is the narrower focus of academic life. I also confess that what I like
in "life outside" is the variety. My schedule varies; one year can be
greatly different from the next. New projects are always on the
horizon. I can't just pull out lesson plans or lectures that I have
used before. (I am aware that some people might consider that a
drawback.)

Question: Have you ever regretted not finishing your dissertation? Has
being A.B.D. ever mattered to an employer?

From what I have been able to tell, not a single employer has cared one
whit that I am A.B.D. Nevertheless, at times I do feel some regret that
I did not finish. Even now, more than 30 years later, I think about
trying to finish — although after teaching at Baldwin, my interests
have changed. I don't think I would want to finish up as
a medievalist.
Perhaps when I retire I could talk Penn into taking me back into the
program, though it would be a quixotic pursuit.

Question: What advice would you give graduate students who do not want
to finish their dissertations but are worried that being A.B.D. will
make them unemployable outside higher education?

In some fields, such as the sciences, finishing might matter more, but
for many fields, I wouldn't even put it in the calculation for the
decision.

 

This isn't really about whether or not to finish the dissertation. It's about whether or not to pursue an academic career.

True, most employers don't care about your doctoral status. But many do. In my shop, four of 7 senior managers hold doctoral degrees. Their degrees matter--a lot. When I was a consultant full-time (whether on my own or working for a company), my Ph.D. mattered a lot.

There is no shame in not finishing the doctorate. And I can see where, for some, not finishing can be a good idea. But not starting would have been a good idea, too. Finishing what one starts is a virtue, and not finishing a doctorate can be painful. (Believe me, I know.)

Finishing my Ph.D. changed my life in so many ways. Financial rewards, sure. But also opportunities to do things I could never have done before as well. It's great.

 

Sounds as if you were wrestling with that decision as an ABD. I know I am.

 

What is the whole doctorate is dissertation-based? No courses at all... Can one claim ABD upon admission?

 

Forgive my ignorance on how the PhD thing all works- but if you are ABD does that mean that you graduated or that you didn't graduate? Are you still a PhD?

 

An ABD is not a Ph.D. and not graduated as one.
If an ABD is lucky, then graduating with a masters degree might be possible.
Of course any course units obtained can count towards the 18 or so required to teach in a CC.

 

At one time there was a movement to award 'Candidate of Philosophy' degrees to ABDs who advanced to candidacy but failed to produce their dissertations in a satisfactory manner. I guess that it never really caught on, but a small number of universities offer the degree.

For example, a handful of departments at the University of California at Berkeley offer them. (According to my old 2002 Peterson's 'Graduate Schools in the US' they are Dramatic Art, History, Mathematics and Near Eastern Studies.) I guess that the C.Phil. is received as something akin to the Specialist degree that we sometimes see education departments awarding, or maybe a British-style M.Phil. Something in-between an M.A. and a Ph.D.

Berkeley certainly doesn't emphasize it and it apparently only receives one paragraph in the catalog, hidden in the general university-wide doctoral requirements:

http://catalog.berkeley.edu/grad/requirements.html

 

I did not finish my Doctorate with Charles Sturt University due to a major illness. I was doing my Doctorate by way of publication which meant that I had to have a number of articles published, and complete a linking document. Effectively, the articles and the linking document constitute the thesis.

I had completed the articles, but not the linking document. I was awarded a Masters (Honours). I believe that I may have been the first to receive that award.

I am toying with continuing with a Doctorate now that my health is improving. I am not sure that I will revisit my old program. Perhaps a fresh start with new vistas could be regenerative.

 

If you are ABD, you haven't graduated, you have completed "All But Dissertation." Well, maybe you've graduated, because some universities will give you an MPhil or an MA on your way out.

 

At Capella University (where I am enrolled), you are not ABD until your dissertation proposal has been approved by your committee and the IRB.

PS - I am very close to that!

Shawn

 

When I went to Northcentral University, it was pretty much the same (but the process was revamped recently). When I went there, it was in this order:

• 3 credits: Comps
• 12 credits: Research courses (four of them)
  Officially awarded ABD status with a letter to that effect.
• 9 credits: Dissertation courses (three of them)
  24 credits: Total for the dissertation process

 

What is an IRB?

 

IRB = institutional review board

Before executing any research, a dissertation-student must present his survey-methodology to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) to get their approval. The IRB ensures that the survey is ethical and will not bring physical, mental or moral harm to anyone. Every dissertation-granting university has an IRB.

 

IRB: my wife's alma mater - Seattle University - requires an IRB for master's-level theses and projects.

 

Any experimentation on humans is governed by an institution's IRB. It's required by law for the safety of humans.