Since long before COVID, I've been talking with PhD students about the doctoral degree as a giant risk-management exercise. The upside of landing a good academic job is very up indeed. But it's hard.

The answer was never "alt-ac," whatever that means. It's constant mitigation. https://twitter.com/d_kompare/status/1290671510282215434

That might sound incompatible with a life of the mind, or neoliberal if you must, but the alternative (no plan, no result) is worse.

It also means making every decision in relation to various hedges. Research topics. Minor fields. Where might the degree plan degrade acceptably?

It also means homing in on and culturing students' specific talents and interests. I have students who would prefer a teaching position, such as NTT lecturer (so long as they are not term-limited). There is no shame in such goals, and R1 researchers need to get over themselves.

In the humanities, scholars often have zero experience outside the academy, which is not helpful under present conditions. It means no conception of the labor market in any sector. That's the cauldron in which the "alt-ac" thing decocted.

There's also a pretty strong need for realism and working toward goals. Just to pick one example: If you look at @annehelen (who has a media studies PhD from Texas) and think, "That's what I want to become," then you gotta know it ain't easy either. It won't happen by magic.

Anyway, I don't think any of this has really changed due to COVID. As in many downturns, grad school might be a "safe" place to park for a few years—although it's a hellish lifestyle and we're at grave risk of losing even students who aren't already wealthy/supported anyway.

Humanist academics sometimes perceive themselves as conducting radical praxis when they scoff at capitalist industry as an end-point of any career on behalf of their students. This might not be super helpful! Also, those faculty are the tools of capital anyway, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

This is why I like the risk-management approach. It involves developing contingency plans and the triggers that would execute them. Not securing an R1 TT job becomes an expected and manageable outcome; not a failure resulting in a decade of desperation. https://twitter.com/medieninitiativ/status/1290714219092930561?s=20