Post-Academia, Part 1: It's not you, it's me

I recently made a job and career shift that by many measures was unusual – from a tenured, Associate Professor to a Data Scientist at a health care tech startup. To some, especially those in academia, this kind of move seemed surprising to say the least. Tenure was the dream, right? After the dissertation itself, a tenured faculty position was academia’s main measure of success for someone with a Ph.D. It’s how academics are socialized, and it is hard to imagine someone with a Ph.D. who wouldn’t agree that this is the predominant message you’re given throughout your degree. So much so that anything other that this route is an “alt-ac” job: an alternate to the default of academia. On a more practical level, tenure meant a job for life. And I had been fortunate to have spent my career at a well-regarded and highly ranked institutions, no less, including where I received tenure and recently left. What gives?

This blog post is one piece of that answer – essentially explaining some of why I made this shift. I have two subsequent posts that focus more on how I made the shift, with some reflections about the process and lessons learned for others who may be interested.

There are many different ways to explain why I wanted to make this shift, all different parts of the same, simple truth: academia just wasn’t for me. In “soft money” environments where I was expected to bring in most of my salary through external grants, I struggled to get traction clarifying my research and fitting it into fundable grant proposals. I floundered, didn’t ask for nearly enough help or mentorship (and to some degree, know or accept it when offered), and fell between the cracks of a joint hire between departments. In “hard money” environments, I was teaching more than I ever thought I would or frankly felt prepared to do, and was again split between departments in ways that made things difficult. During the same time, I had opportunities to do more consulting work, which I found rewarding and impactful compared to much of the academic research I was otherwise doing. In contrast, the labored, intellectualized discussions; the administrative and organizational inefficiencies; the financial pressures endemic to higher education felt increasingly common, long-standing, and quite solid in place.

The “a-ha” moment came during a week of the Faculty Success Program where the theme for the week was “Do I really want to do this?” I gather that for many in the program, this prompt raised a more nuanced answer; there are certain parts of one’s job that they may want to do less or none of, and this thought exercise clarified those changes to implement at the margins. My response was more fundamental – I didn’t want to do this at all, and perhaps I never did.

When I applied to doctoral programs, I applied with the expressed purpose of doing program and policy evaluations, thinking that I would work in the public sector or government contractors doing applied research and public health evaluation studies. Over time, my interests shifted as did the priorities of the department; after the one remaining policy scholar in the department left, so did the social policy track of the curriculum. Where I could get mentorship and financial support was doing more classic social epidemiology research, which set me on a more academic than applied path. I had a tremendously supportive and engaged mentor at this point, and genuinely really enjoyed the work that I was doing, including my dissertation. I won a few competitive fellowships, and got papers published in good quality journals. The next step on that path was a postdoc fellowship.

In retrospect, this next step was more of a crossroads than I knew at the time. I got a (great) postdoc position that would facilitate me making my research more global in focus. Then quickly and selectively went on the job market to solve my “two-body ‘problem’”, landed a tenure track position in an area where we could both work. During the ensuing years when there was a discussion about or opportunity to move elsewhere, my default orientation was for academic positions. I had a tenure-track position – again, which was the goal, right? – and was I ready to give that up? Yet at that position, I wasn’t getting my work funded, wasn’t yet teaching, struggled to find my footing and focus across the many areas and even colleges where my research was spanning. And since I didn’t have a K award or an R01 (i.e., 75%+ of my salary) in hand to take to another soft-money environment, I felt stuck: not able to move, fixed on the idea that I should be able to do this job, be happy at it, and want to get tenure, yet unable and unwilling to see alternative professional paths.

Ultimately, we did make a move for a great opportunity for my husband. I landed a temporary teaching position which was great for a year or so to figure out what was next, during which time a supportive Provost helped craft a position that was initially split between two departments, with one being an ultimate tenure home. Since this position was teaching intensive and hard-money, I was free of the grey cloud over my head of getting grants, which was a huge relief. Yet, I found myself floundering for other reasons – in the deep-end of learning to teach at all, and how to teach this new material (and in R, which I had only started to learn 3-months before getting the temporary teaching position; and in social work rather than in public health). I worked on some cool projects that I was proud of that I couldn’t have done without being in that environment and I also overextended myself while trying to people-please, especially pre-tenure. I saw opportunities to lead in administrative work and I also met first hand how hard change can be in academia. I got better at teaching, got to teach students and material who felt more familiar in my new department, and my research from when I was in a soft-money and research oriented position at an R1 carried me forward and successfully over the tenure hurdle.

Figure 1: Teaching Multiple Regression Via Baked Goods

But did I really want to do this? For the next 30 years of my career? I had gravitated to and stayed in academia because the door into academia purportedly swung only one way – once you leave, you can’t ever get back in. So it had seemed pursuing academic roles and paths was always a good choice. At each juncture, academia was a safer bet the longer I had been in it – the devil you know, etc. – so much so that it was my default. So now with the hurdle of tenure behind me, I was there with the safe bet.

But did I really want to do this? When I wrote down my answer to that prompt and read it back, I saw this story of gradual drift toward academia and of floundering in a few different academic settings, for different reasons. What I had initially wanted to do with my career still rang in my head, and I had experienced rewarding pieces of it: working on applied research questions, driven by a customer or client with a real need, being able to work hard to solve important problems creatively, and have a feeling of impact and action based on my work. I saw that I wanted to stop trying to make fetch (my professional satisfaction in academia) happen. It wasn’t going to happen.

Figure 2: What I needed, per a grant writing seminar, and didn’t have.

Part of why it seems like a big move – to leave a tenured position in academia – is that it is. There is the practical job security, intellectual and professional autonomy, the rewards of mentoring students, the professional networks I enjoyed (I have had lots of conference FOMO this year), the fun of dreaming up and making new research studies happen because we saw a gap – the sandbox where you could make just about whatever you wanted so long as it was funded and publishable – and the opportunities to train the next generation of folks.

On the other hand, this story is unremarkable and typical – it really isn’t a big move or deal at all. I am not the first to leave academia, and I surely won’t be the last. When interviewing for new positions, I was often (actually, always) asked about leaving academia. After I answered and tried to show that I wasn’t so far gone into the ivory tower that I couldn’t be useful to them and their organization, the interviewer often responded with a bit of a shrug and a scoff. “Former academic? You and most of our staff. Big whoop. Join the club.”

I quit doing the academicals for money loudly and publicly mid-2020.

About *eighty* people wrote to me to get some perspective on their own position and to stickybeak on life outside the fence.

People I thought were happy. For a given value of happy.

— James Heathers @jamesheathers@techhub.social (@jamesheathers) December 26, 2020

I had many successes, lots of support, and even more privileges within academia as a cisgender, white man from an upper middle class background. On paper, and on social media, things looked great. I had hit many of the points on the academic’s bingo card, so much so that I’d won bingo (tenure) itself. And I would be remiss and naive not to think that this entire retelling is not simply a story of entitlement, some kind of stereotypical tale of an elder millennial and his everlasting need for meaning in work, or even just an immature and spoiled, privileged person who didn’t realize how good he had it. It may well be that those are all pieces of this story, though I’d like to – and have reason to – think they are not the main story. Instead, I realized that it wasn’t for me left a space for someone – hopefully not another cis, white man – who does want that path and role.

Figure 3: People Expressing Feelings about Higher Ed via Stickers.

I will leave the intellectualizing of The Future of Higher Education(™) to someone at the Chronicle or some lukewarm take in an op-ed. Suffice it to say that I had seen my fair share the inefficiencies, hypocrisies, dysfunctions, and harm in academia, and was encouraged by many to wait until X happened at which point it would get better. Tenure made the future seem stale and frozen, locked into a play with the same cast of characters, like Groundhog Day. I had seen colleagues, including many at other departments, schools, and institutions, have similar, and much worse, experiences. I had tried to accept the things I could not change and summoned the courage to change the things I could. Until what was left to change was to leave.

Figure 4: Has anyone used this in 15 years? Is it a metaphor?

That I left higher education to join tech and health care makes this reflection very dysfunctional-higher-ed pot calling the new-to-me-but-the-original-broken-industries kettle black, I know. And comparing experience in a start up to institutions that are a century old is apples and oranges. But like, after trying it with and without pulp, from concentrate and fresh squeezed, and having spent a lot time thinking about how to make it, I’d had enough orange juice. And an easy TL;DR here is: I drank the academic (orange) Kool-Aid, even if bit by bit without knowing it it, and only just realized that I wanted a different outcome or life.

I am really grateful for the chapter of my career I spent in academic research & faculty positions. I tried a thing, had some success, built some meaningful work and relationships. Ultimately, I couldn’t see myself being satisfied there over the decades left of my career, and wanted to try something new while it was still reasonably easy to make a move. While I wish I’d had the awareness or foresight to have been able to have known or really trusted myself to have followed this path earlier, better late than never. So far, I am really glad that I did.

In the next post, I’ll get more into how I figured out what I did want, followed by a third post with more specific resources and advice.