Steve's ABD Completion Update

It's important to have a driving purpose for doing it. If that's present, you'll plow through it and the barriers to it. If not, it might not be a thing to do.

 

It’s one thing to do a PhD in order to participate in the academic lottery game. It’s a standard ticket to higher ed teaching, albeit much less glamorous these days with highest chances of grabbing dead-end adjunct jobs. It’s quite another to do it, spend many years of one’s life in research and then have to hide the achievement from recruiters in non-academic contexts, which is an increasingly common phenomenon.

Article: Unemployment by degrees (Business Insider - Feb 24, 2025)

Link to full article: https://archive.is/OGIAz

New data shows that the more education you have, the longer you'll be out of work.

…over the past few years, the demand for super-educated professionals suddenly took a deep dive. A variety of factors have combined to alter the white-collar landscape

The prospects for educated elites are so bleak that some have taken to hiding the credentials they worked so hard to earn. Scott Catey, a policy director who has both a JD and a Ph.D., says he sometimes leaves out the doctorate in job applications, to avoid being viewed as overqualified. Michael Borsellino, who has a doctorate in urban studies, started listing his degree as being in "social sciences," to make it sound applicable to a wider range of jobs. The goal, he says, is "not to pigeonhole myself.

Borsellino, who eventually landed a role at LinkedIn after a nine-month search, doesn't think his Ph.D. proved to be an asset. "If it did help, I feel like I wouldn't have been unemployed for as long as I was," he says. "I don't know if it was a drain, but I don't think it was the end-all, be-all that I grew up believing it would be." If he were thinking about getting a doctorate today, he's not sure he'd do it. "I think we're at this point where experience is valued so much more that it's really, really difficult to justify doing the degree."

There have been plenty of times over the years when Ph.D. holders faced longer job searches than high school graduates. But whatever the ups and downs, education — particularly an advanced degree — has generally provided a good buffer against financial insecurity.

Lately, though, I've started to wonder if what we're seeing in the job market is a sign of something deeper. What if [the] protracted spell of joblessness is an early warning signal — an indication that the economy is undergoing a fundamental shift? What if, going forward, education no longer provides a path to economic security the way it once did?

For 40 years, we've been talking about how more education leads to better labor market outcomes," says Terrazas, the former chief economist for Glassdoor. "Suddenly, that feels like it's changing." And the shift, he warns, could herald a profound "moment of dislocation" for today's white-collar professionals, just as blue-collar workers faced a seismic reckoning in the wake of globalization.

“What the early 2000s were for manufacturing workers, I worry that the mid-2020s are going to be for knowledge workers," Terrazas says.

“But if I'm right, and this turns out to be the beginning of an enduring trend, it will force us to rethink our long-standing assumptions about education and employment.”

 

Anecdotes:

A friend used to recruit new engineering graduates for a major company. A few years ago, he told me that all the company needed to see was a bachelors in engineering from one of the schools on their internal "acceptable" list. The company would consider a master's holder if the degree met a specific need for expertise. In general, they wouldn't hire Ph.D.s. Too specialized and research oriented to be worth it.

Legal recruiters say all they need is a J.D. from one of a handful of "acceptable" schools with decent class standing. An LL.M., except for tax, is not considered an asset. Indeed, big firms might assume the reason the applicant got an LL.M. in Space Law (or whatever) is because he couldn't find a job or because he's trying to buff up his poorly ranked J.D. with a master's from a more prestigious school. Neither interpretation bodes well.

You can leave your LL.M. off your resume but if you did it in residence full time, you have to account for the time you were in school.

 

I've always held that if a potential employer thinks I'm "over qualified" (whatever that means), they're doing me a favor by not hiring me. But I've never actually heard anyone say they avoid hiring over-qualified people. Is it even a thing? Or is it a perception by the applicant based on not knowing why one wasn't selected for a particular job? (I'm sure it happens anecdotally, but is it a real thing?)

 

I'd probably have a similar attitude, if I were a recruiter. But we do have various automatic resume filtering mechanisms now and it's quite possible that a doctorate holder won't even get a chance to persuade a real person.

 

I wonder how long such lists of "acceptable" are, and what are their criteria for being acceptable. If the recruiters were just choosing from candidates educated in the USA, there are more than 5,000 colleges and universities. Add India and that's another 8,000.

 

Oh, in the law the list of law schools that Big Law firms consider "acceptable" is no secret. Just go to those firms' websites and see where the partners went. The vast majority attended one of perhaps a dozen schools and those are the schools they hire from. For engineering, I don't know. Interesting question.