Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia

Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia

4 ratings 4.7 out of 5 stars

May 5, 2020

Product Description What does it really take to succeed in academia? Do you want to go to graduate school? Then you're in good company: nearly 80,000 students will begin pursuing a PhD this year alone. But while almost all of new PhD students say they want to work in academia, most are destined for disappointment. The hard truth is that half will quit or fail to get their degree, and most graduates will never find a full-time academic job. In Good Work If You Can Get It, Jason Brennan combines personal experience with the latest higher education research to help you understand what graduate school and the academy are really like. This candid, pull-no-punches book answers questions big and small, including • Should I go to graduate school―and what will I do once I get there?• How much does a PhD cost―and should I pay for one?• What kinds of jobs are there after grad school, and who gets them? • What happens to the people who never get full-time professorships? • What does it take to be productive, to publish continually at a high level? • What does it take to teach many classes at once? • What does it take to succeed in graduate school? • How does "publish or perish" work? • How much do professors get paid?• What do search committees look for, and what turns them off? • How do I know which journals and book publishers matter? • How do I balance work and life? This realistic, data-driven look at university teaching and research will make your graduate and postgraduate experience a success. Good Work If You Can Get It is the guidebook anyone considering graduate school, already in grad school, starting as a new professor, or advising graduate students needs. Read it, and you will come away ready to hit the ground running. Review "Few advice books come closer to presenting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth... don't just read this book. Become it." (Bryan Caplan Econlib) "Economist and strategist Jason Brennan delivers a data-driven, punchily practical guide to succeeding in academia, aimed at PhD students." (Andrew Robinson Nature) "Don't let anyone you know apply to grad school without first encouraging them to read Good Work If You Can Get It." (George Leef James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal) "America has needed a book like this for a long time and bravo to Johns Hopkins University Press for publishing it." ( National Review) "Good Work if You Can Get It is a frank, realistic, and data-driven discussion of what it takes to succeed in academia. It's the kind of book every aspiring scholar should read." (Art Carden Forbes) "Jason Brennan's book is clear, effective, and captures the process of academic faculty employment exceptionally well. While the lessons Brennan provides aspiring academic faculty may seem stark and unfair, what he says about how this system works is accurate. That is the primary virtue of the book: it tells its readers the way things work without losing its way into a discussion of how they should work. Many of us give variations on this unwelcome advice to our graduate students and colleagues, and now we can just tell them to go read Brennan's book." (John V. Lombardi, President Emeritus, University of Florida, author of How Universities Work) "In Good Work If You Can Get It, Jason Brennan tells it like it is. You will get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This is the one book to read about trying to become a professor." (Tyler Cowen, George Mason University, author of Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals) "Each year, thousands of bright and ambitious students begin doctoral programs hoping they will earn PhDs and find rewarding positions at great colleges and universities. Good luck! Brennan offers the advice graduate students need but seldom receive." (Benjamin Ginsberg, Johns Hopkins University, author of The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters) Book Description What does it really take to succeed in academia? About the Author Jason Brennan is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University. He is the coauthor of Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education and the author of When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice and Against Democracy.

Just finished it last night. Really valuable insights not only for grad students, but also junior faculty trying reduce their hours prepping for classes and trying to maximize their odds of getting tenure. It's not that I hadn't heard a lot of the advice Brennan offered in the book while I was in grad school, but framing this advice in an economic context, thinking about outputs over inputs, diminishing marginal returns, opportunity costs, has been really helpful for me. I can imagine students not being receptive to the tone or stark messages in the book, especially when it challenges core beliefs they may have about why they chose to go to grad school, their identity as scholars, etc. I realized I also suffered from some of those romanticized notions of what it meant to be a scholar, and lacked good mentorship and guidance on what the job entailed. Knowing what you're up against, what to expect, and how to identify benchmarks for succeeding in the academic job market and getting tenure is invaluable. The sooner students know whether they're committed or not to succeeding in the environment, as it is today, the sooner they can get on with their lives and stop struggling.