In my 30+ years of teaching at the university level, I was often approached by students that wanted to go on to graduate school and/or become an academic. In the last decade, I have given these students (many of which were BIPOC, first generation, and from families of limited means) 2 pieces of advice:
1. Only go to graduate school if you can come out debt free. In other words, save, apply for scholarships and grants, get your company or organization to pay for your graduate work. Don't take out loans because it will put you in a life long cycle that limits your options for the future.
2. Do not go to graduate school with idea that you will become an university academic with tenure. Even graduates of Ivy League schools where most faculty are drawn from, there are many that never achieve tenure because these positions are disappearing. This is not to say there are no jobs or positions for post-graduate work, just that they are not the tenured positions portrayed in the media.
And now, I would have one additional piece of advice: First read the novel Resilience: Bravery in the face of racism, corruption, and privilege in the halls of Academia by Marilyn Easter.
This novel tells the story of Emma, an African American girl who decides when she is five that she wants to be a teacher when she grows up. Each chapter pieces together Emma's struggle to become part of Academia despite covert (and even overt) racism, sexism, and disempowerment from the small group who holds power. In multiple chapters, Emma is excluded from the academic process and even academia because she looks and thinks differently.
Emma is discouraged by guidance counselors and admissions personnel from reaching too high. If it were not for mentors who saw the potential in Emma and Emma's own mother, it is doubtful she would have gone beyond high school. But Emma's mother (Delois) wanted Emma to have the opportunities Delois never had herself.
Eventually, through a life of struggle, legal, spiritual, and personal support from family, friends, and connections Emma makes throughout her life, Emma becomes a full professor and mentor to students and colleagues who stand outside of the traditional academic power structure.
The reason I would recommend this novel to any student who is first generation, of limited financial means, and/or part of groups that are marginalized in academia, excluded from the power structures at the top who actually make the decisions is that students need to have all the information about what it truly is like in Academia. This is not to say that it is impossible for those from underrepresented groups from succeeding in Academia. Emma achieves success when others had told her it wasn't possible. But had Emma not had this overwhelming drive to be a professor, she may have ended up with a broken dream and debt she may never have been able to overcome in her life.
Emma did not take the traditional route that other tenured professors take. She worked before going to graduate school. Her family always came first. She changed colleges after being in a tenure track job so she could teach rather than be an administrator. She published and did more research than others in department, even after she was granted tenure, on topics that she felt were important, not necessarily marketable. She asked to be included in the department processes when she could have kept quiet to maintain the status quo after achieving tenure. But this took its toll emotionally and physically on Emma. Were it not for the support from Emma's family, she most likely would have given up.
For most students, they will have the same struggles and they need to determine if joining academia will be worth the fight. And they need to know that there are other options outside of academia in achieving their goals. Students without a good support system, may need to learn how to build that support system BEFORE going to graduate school. They will need to learn that there is a reason to be distrustful of people in academia. Each time Emma was betrayed by a colleague (the mentor who was sabotaging her chance at tenure, the department head who claimed he was in her corner, the director of inclusion and diversity who never interviewed the witnesses to discriminatory acts towards her), she discovered another colleague who helped her in the next step of her career (the colleague outside of her department who gave her information about the tenure process in other departments, the lawyer from the union, and her colleagues that she did research with).
Resilience will not necessarily discourage students from going to graduate school, but rather will give a more realistic idea of what to expect in graduate school and academia.
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