It may sound like the opening greeting at an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting, and for someone with a PhD (in Social Psychology, if you’re interested), it may very well feel like it sometimes. The problem is, though, that people like me are no longer the minority in the academic realm. PhD employment reporting is far from an exact science, but a recent study found that only 15% of Biological Sciences PhDs were in tenure-track positions six years after graduating. And it’s not that different in the Social Sciences or Humanities, either (Click here to learn more about the Council of Graduate Schools’ current efforts to better track PhD career paths). These statistics have been attributed to a complex combination of increased PhD production, the rise of a postdoc culture, dwindling research funding, and decreased tenure-track faculty positions, among other factors. (more…)