Your resume gets you the interview. But your interview will get you the job.

I’ve done four dedicated efforts to job seeking in the last three years, including my first post-PhD round when I landed my first job. The table below shows a summary of metrics for each round with number of applications, interviews (by organization, not absolute number), and number of offers. I also added some context as I have little experience in the big tech market where many PhDs explore (I’m staying the higher ed and non-profit space for the foreseeable future).

Job interviewing can be stressful and time consuming, so you want to make sure you’re doing the best job possible so that you can increase your success rate. Overtime, I’ve become more selective about where I apply and more successful when I do.

I’ve learned a lot about how to interview well from my own experience as an interviewee in 20+ interviews, but also as an interviewer at my last job. And I want to share what I’ve learned. So, here are my 10 tips for nailing your next job interview.

INTERVIEW PREP

Interviewing well depends on good prep work. You should not go into an interview planning to wing it or assume you don’t need to do your homework. It’s painfully obvious as an interviewer when the interviewee has jumped on a call having done little to no prep work. And I’ve never recommended such a person to be hired.

1- Outline Responses to Each Line on the Job Ad

The bulk of my prep work is creating a personal study guide to the job and my related experience. I take each bullet point from the job ad (usually the roles and responsibilities sections) and then write out a couple main points of experience that are directly related to the job responsibility – examples that demonstrate I know what I am doing and am qualified for the job.

The screenshot below is an example from my most recent interview study guide. The main bullet points are directly from the job ad, and the sub bullet points are my notes about my experience.

Two things to note here. First, I keep my bullet points short. I don’t recite these in the interview either. I do have this document open as a backup reference (as most interviews are video or phone), so the bullets need to be short in case you need to quickly scan for the information.

Second, look at the highlighted part. By doing this prep exercise, you can identify areas that you don’t have good experience in yet and, importantly, think through a good response if this topic is asked about. How do you plan to overcome this gap? Better to prep now than stumble later.

This document also contains an outline answer to the first question always asked: “Tell us about yourself.” And it contains information on the interviewers, company (see point 2), and questions to ask during the interview (see point 7).

I cannot emphasize how important this document is to my interview experience. By creating your own personal study guide on you and your experience, you will be less likely to freeze during an interview or fumble responses, and you will be able to clearly and confidently answer questions related to the job itself.

2- Do Your Research about the Company

The internet is full of information. If you can’t bother to spend 10 minutes combing the company website at least, why are you wasting everyone’s time? Before an interview you should know well what the company does, what questions about it you have, and be familiar with its advertised products, services, and offerings.

It’s obvious when a candidate hasn’t done basic research. Not doing the bare minimum not only makes you look bad as an interviewee but also puts you at a disadvantage when it’s your turn to ask questions since you have little of substance to draw on.

3- Do Your Research about the Interviewers and the Interview

Most interview invitations include who you will be talking to during the interview. And if it doesn’t, you should email the person of contact and ask (this is 100% okay to do!). You should then do your research (hello LinkedIn!). Who are they? What is their role? Would they be a peer or manager? Are they directly related to your role or more distal? You won’t find perfect information, but it will help you target your questions to them more precisely, and be more prepared.

You should also know what the format of the interview is and who you are talking to. My first round on the job market I entered a zoom call to a panel style interview. I was expecting one person. I got flustered and didn’t do well (and didn’t move on to the next round). Remember, you can email the person you’re in contact with about who will be in the interview and what kind of format it will be. This isn’t private information. You just need to ask!

4- Align Your Online Presence

If you have an online social media presence and/or website, make sure they present a cohesive professional picture before doing a job search push. Recruiters and managers will look you up, first on LinkedIn, then online more broadly. The goal is for your online presence to align with your application materials to bolster your candidacy, not confuse it.

You’ll want to ensure that your online presence consistently shows “who you are”. The best way to do this is to make your social media bios and headlines consistent. For LinkedIn, specifically, make sure your ‘about me’ section aligns with your ‘about’ summary on your resume. Make sure your job experience on LinkedIn aligns with your resume. If you have a website, make sure it’s updated with relevant content (every hiring manager I’ve been offered a job from has noted going to my website).

If you have personal social media (e.g., Instagram) that you don’t want people finding, make sure you make them private during the search, or permanently.

THE INTERVIEW

The main event. After your prep work, you need to execute well. Admittedly, practice makes improvement. My heart rate still accelerates in the minute before the zoom connects, and overtime nerves will tend to decrease. But these tips will help you execute better.

5- Have a Good Space 

Most interviews are video interviews or phone calls (be sure to know which one so you’re dressed properly!). The basics all apply here, such as finding as quiet a space as possible, good lighting, professional background, and good camera angle. It’s important that you’re comfortable and that your space looks professional.

6- Answer Clearly and Concisely in Structured Interviews

Most companies and organizations will put you through at least one structured interview. Usually this is the first or second interview whereby the interviewers (usually there is more than one) will ask the same set of questions to all candidates, then leave time at the end for you, the interviewee, to ask questions. Typically, these interviews are 30-45 minutes.

My biggest pro-tip here both from the perspective of the interviewee and the interviewer: Don’t drag on, and on, and on for minutes on end. You should instead have a clear and concise answer that’s tops two minutes long.

Think about a 30-minute interview. Most interviews start a minute or two late. There are a couple minutes of pleasantries and explaining the interview. We’re five minutes in. Then there will be about five questions (in my experience). Let’s say 3 minutes total for asking and answering. That’s another 15 minutes. As an interviewer you maybe 5-10 minutes to ask 2-3 questions at the end. If you blow over by droning on for every question asked to you, you now have no time for questions and have annoyed the interviewers because they didn’t get through the interview.

From your perspective as the interviewee, clear and concise answers are more memorable, they allow for easier follow up questions from the interviewers, and it leaves you ample time to ask questions (which is another opportunity to make you more memorable and stand out).

From the interviewer’s perspective, if you drag on in your answers, you run the risk of them being annoyed because they didn’t get through the process, and you run the risk of coming off as unorganized, unclear, unmemorable – or all three.

By dragging on, your impression will almost always be more negative than if you give clear and concise answers with ample time to ask amazing questions (see point 7).

Note: in later, unstructured interviews feel free to relax and have a real, unstructured conversation with the interviewer – your potential colleague. Structured interviews are designed to get an overall view of your fit to the role and give an equal opportunity for all candidates.

7- Ask Amazing Questions During Your Interview.

Don’t sleep on this! Amazing questions are what make you stand out from other candidates. 

Time for questions at the end of interviews aren’t there just to fill time. They are your opportunity to interview the interviewers and find out information that is important for you to determine if you want the job.

You should be asking questions about how your role interfaces with other roles and departments. Work-life balance. Working with your manager or direct reports. Process, collaboration, and tools, job expectations, necessary accommodations, and anything else that is important to you in a job.

Don’t know where to start? Steal some of my interview questions!

• What are the biggest challenges facing {organization/company}?

• What are the biggest challenges the incoming {role you’re applying for} will be facing in this role?

• What are the performance expectations for this role in the first 6 months?

• When you say {goal of role from job ad}, what do you envision that to look like in the next year or so?

• What is the primary business objective you’d like to meet in the next year? {goal you’ve deduced from your company research} seems like the main target but I’d love to hear more about why this target.

• Can you tell me more about how leadership collaborates on new initiatives and organizational development?

• Where do you envision {organization/company/team} being in the next five years?

• Can you give me some examples of recent projects that I would be leading in this role?

• Can you tell me more about {team} and how I would be working with them in this role?

• What other departments or stakeholders would I be interacting with? What kinds of requests are most common in this role?

• And my personal favorite: “Do you have any hesitations about my experience that I can address?”

I save this final question question for last (when there’s only a minute or two left), and for the hiring manager directly. This question has gone over extremely well in interviews where I’ve used it. It shows humility but most importantly allows you to shape the narrative of your limitations. Asking requires you to (1) be confident in your ability, (2) self-aware of your limitations, and (3) have a concise answer when they actually tell you their hesitations.

Most jobs have multiple interviews. Be sure to adjust questions based on where you are in the interview and who you are talking to. You can repeat questions to different people, or ask follow up questions based on a previous interview, for example, “In my conversation with Jon, he noted X and Y about the role. Can you expand on that or tell me more about how I will Z?”

8- Listen and Take Notes

In your interview prep document (see point 1), have a space for notes. Jot down people’s names and their roles, and any insights, questions, or thoughts you have immediately after the interview.

Careful listening and note taking can help you tailor questions in subsequent interviews, draw clear lines between your experience and the expressed needs of the hiring manager, and demonstrate familiarity by referring to people by name, or mentioning specific departments or teams.

Job ads are intentionally vague. Listening and taking notes throughout the process will ensure that you’re increasingly clear in your understanding of the job and in your articulation of your value add as a candidate as you move through the interview process.

9- Always Ask About Next Steps

During the winding down pleasantries be sure to ask about next steps explicitly: “It was great chatting with you today and learning more about the role. Can you tell me about the next steps for this interview process?”

Don’t think this is awkward – it’s incredibly common and they will have an answer. This can also help reduce your anxiety while you’re waiting to hear back from them. You don’t always have direct contact information for the hiring manager or the HR representative, so make sure you ask so you know what’s next.

MONEY TALKS

10- Salary Negotiation Tips

Salary is extraordinarily important, and negotiating well can set you up for success. Every role has a budget range even if it’s not in the job ad. Let me repeat: every role has a budget range. Your job is to figure out what it is if it’s not posted.

Salary negotiation can happen at a variety of points in the interview process, so you should know your target salary ask at the start, but be open to adjusting (up or down) based on new information learned throughout the process. You’ll want to do your homework online (e.g., through Indeed, LinkedIn, Fishbowl) and consider your education, experience, and unique value add to the role.

The general goal is to not be the first one to give a number. If they ask you “How much are you looking for?” turn the question around to them, “Can you tell me the range you have budgeted for this position?” And you can answer based on that.

Most roles are negotiable above the range, but some are not. Be prepared for both. Even if you want more than the range, tell them that. They will let you know if they can “see what they can do” (which is common — they are unlikely to give you a clear salary during the initial conversation) and come back with a counter, or will tell you it’s non-negotiable.

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Interviewing well is a skill developed overtime, but hopefully these learned tips will provide you will a good baseline to nail your next interview. Remember, though, that these tips are based on my own experiences, and may not perfectly apply to your unique job search context.

If you found this useful, check out my other blogs on career advice:

• Advice for PhDs on the Alt-Ac Job Market (2019)

• From Psychology PhD to EdTech Research Scientist (2020)

• Some Advice for Social Science PhDs in their “Real World” (Research) Career (2021)

• Five Differences Between Doing Research in Academia and Industry (2021)

• What To Do When You No Longer Want A Research Career (2022)

• So, You Want to Write About Science? (2022)

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It still sounds weird to think that I am no longer a researcher. After spending a decade in college to earn a research doctorate and working professionally as a research scientist for two years, I decided that I no longer wanted to continue that career path.

Several self-observations led me to my decision. First, I had tried and failed to learn coding, which is increasingly needed in tech-based research roles. I know I could learn it, but I literally hated it, so I chose to not do things I despised. Second, I love to write and communicate about research, rather than conducting the research. Third, I have great organizational skills that are highly valuable in professional settings.

I had the honest realization in mid-2021 when I burned out at work and found myself with zero motivation to do research tasks. I simply didn’t enjoy the day-to-day professional life of a research scientist. So, I started figuring out what to do next. It took several months of researching, interviewing, and rebranding to find myself on a new career path of content marketing and communications.

If you’re in a similar position, or are just curious about what a change might entail, here are some tips to make a career pivot out of research.

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1. Find Ways to Test-Drive New Career Experiences

To make a career pivot to a space in which you have no formal training or professional experience, as I did, you must find a way to demonstrate how you add value to organizations in the role you want with the experiences you have. And to do that you need some sort of relevant experiences. But they don’t need to be full time jobs with professional titles – they can be anything similar to the types of tasks you would do in your desired career.

These experiences are important to show a new company that you do know how to do what you’re applying for (at least partially), and for you to nail your interviews since leveraging concrete examples is necessary in interviews.

You can gain such experiences a few ways. In your current role you can work with your supervisor or manager to begin expanding your responsibilities to include some tasks that you’d like to eventually do full time in a career. I began taking initiative to produce more written content for my team that I could later leverage. You can also do things on the side, outside your normal working hours. I write a lot my blogs, and have done some voluntary communications work for HBES for many years.

The main goal is to have clear projects, examples, and experiences that you can leverage in your interviews. You don’t have to be doing your ideal job most the time, you just have to do it enough that you can leverage it effectively to land a full-time job doing it.

2. Get A Certification For Your LinkedIn Profile

The job markets are changing, and most employers are more interested in what you can do than what degree you have. Luckily certifications can provide you with an extra signal to employers that you can do this new job effectively.

Certifications are everywhere online and can be a cherry on top of your resume to show employers that you’re serious about moving into a new career space. They also help you to learn the lingo of a new career space, learn a few new things, and give you insight to what you didn’t know you didn’t know. It’s a win-win.

I spent a week doing a content marketing certification course and I applied many strategies and templates to my current workflow in my new role. It also helped me understand the performance expectations of this new career space as well. PhDs don’t need more degrees, they need more applicable skills – certifications are a great and quick way to get them.

3. Don’t Think Too Hard About Job Ad Requirements

In fall 2021 when I went on the job market I applied for all sorts of jobs in the content and communications space. Most of which required just a bachelor’s degree. But many required years of “full time professional experience”. Many more required proficiencies in programs that I didn’t know.

Never mind all that. I applied anyways and got several interviews and a couple offers.

Job ads are tricky in general, not just for career pivots. But they can seem extra intimidating when you feel like you’re probably the least qualified in the bunch. On the one hand, yes, they list out relevant skills, but much of the time such a person doesn’t actually exist, and if they did, they would be over qualified for the role.

If you hit half the requirements and you really like the job or company – apply! Especially you, ladies!

4. Become The Whole Package

If you’re serious about a career switch, your online presence and your application must reflect that. If you’re looking to do something else besides research, make sure that your related work is visible, and your personal branding doesn’t scream “I AM ONLY A RESEARCHER”.

This means several things. You need to redo your resume to emphasize the experiences you have that are relevant to the job you want. Your online presence – LinkedIn and personal website – need to have these experiences and work visible so that when interviewers look you up (which they will) they see evidence that you can do the job you’re saying you can do.

Because I was aiming for a content writing and communications role, my website was a saving grace. Every single interviewer mentioned they had been to my website and were impressed with my writing. I even got out of doing an interview assignment to assess my writing because my skills were clearly visible online.

To do all the above, you need to do your career research to 1) ensure you’re using the correct lingo for your career path, 2) highlight the right kinds of experiences, and 3) know what job titles you’re aiming for. I spent months doing research to figure out what career path I was looking for and aligning my materials and online presence accordingly.

Career pivots are hard, especially when you feel that there is a sunk cost of the long years spent training for a PhD (certainly most content marketers don’t have PhDs!). Ultimately though the time may come when you want to do something else. And the great thing about a career path outside the professoriate is that there are a multitude of options.

Throughout high school and undergraduate, I binged popular science content. The Science Channel, Discovery Channel, and Nat Geo were my favorite to watch, I read popular science magazines like Psychology Today, and read tons of non-fiction books. These are all considered “popular science” – science that is written and presented in ways that the general interested public can digest, understand, and learn from.

Today, I still regularly watch documentaries, read tons of books, read lots of blogs, and follow amazing scientists on twitter. Great science content is everywhere. But as professionally trained scientists, we’re often discouraged from writing for popular audiences because we need to instead focus on writing for other scientists in the form of journal articles.

Scientists can make the best public communicators because we know our fields deeply. But this deep knowledge can also, paradoxically, make it difficult to write content in a way that is accessible to non specialists, focused on the most important information to share (while maintaining accuracy), and presented it in a way that our reader’s eyes won’t glaze over halfway through the first paragraph.

Many new scientists, such a PhD students, are nervous of how to get into popular communication of their work or field. Should I get on twitter? Isn’t twitter a cesspool of trolls? How do I write for popular magazines? Where do I start?

It can be daunting. When I first joined twitter in 2017 and wrote my first popular article later that year, I had no idea that eventually I would have a full-time communications career (I recently began a new role where I write public research reports, blog, op-eds, and run company twitter accounts full time!), but slowly I gained enough part time experience to make a full time career pivot.

Last week at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference I presented at a professional development session at the Evolutionary Psychology Pre-Conference about getting into science communications (often abbreviated and hash-tagged as “SciComm”) along with Anthropologist Dorsa Amir (who you should be following on twitter for her amazing anthro threads!).

Here are the five things I shared to PhDs on how to get started in science communications.

1. Start a Blog

2. Get Social

3. Know Your Audience (and Outlet)

4. Learn How to Pitch

5. Communicate One Point

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Start a Blog

If you want to start writing for popular audiences and aren’t sure how to start, create a blog and start writing. There is no oversight to blog writing, you can just start! Blogs are helpful for those looking to get into popular writing for many reasons.

First, you can write about anything you want – it’s your blog. Second, you can practice and experiment with different writing styles (remember, popular writing is not formatted the same or takes the same approach as journal articles), topics, and titles, which allows you to get immediate feedback from readers (is the article getting views, are people sharing it on social, etc). Finally, it builds a good habit. Part of why I blog regularly on here and on my other books-only blog is to build a consistent habit and stay engaged with my readers.

Get Social

Having a social media presence isn’t necessary but it is hugely beneficial for science communications. Being where current conversations are allows you to get first hand knowledge of what is being talked about, and puts you in a better position to write about timely topics, or add your unique perspective on others’ work. Having a social account most importantly allows you to share out your own work which gets your ideas out to more people.

There is also something of a Mathew Effect that occurs as well – the more you’re on social sharing your work and perspectives, the more opportunities you will get to share your work and perspectives. The majority of my inbound requests for commentary, article pitches, and events have been the direct results of my twitter presence: “Hey Nicole, I saw your tweet on this topic. Would you be interested in writing a piece for us on it?” or “Hey Nicole, I see that you’re always giving advice on topic X. Would you like to come speak about it at this event?”

In short, social is a great way to get noticed.

Know Your Audience (and Outlet)

Your first thought when writing about a new idea should be, “who am I writing to?”. This concerns not only your audience (readers), but also the outlet that you’re writing for (which has its own audience). Just like when you’re writing a journal article and different journals have different expectations and formats, so too do different popular outlets.

Depending on what outlet I am writing for, my writing approach, structure, and content will differ. Writing for my blog is different than writing for Inside Higher Ed, which are both different than writing for Heterodox Academy. Formats differ, readers differ, and ideas differ.

Do your research on outlets and audiences if you’re aiming for a popular media outlet for your writing. What outlets are you reading? What do you notice about the content at each? What outlets are best aligned with your ideas?

Learn How to Pitch

If you’re “pitching” (emailing editors to ask them to publish your work) your writing to popular outlets, you need to learn how to do so effectively. Most outlets, like most journals, will get more submissions than they can publish, and “desk rejections” are common, so don’t take it personally. But, writing better pitches and ensuring your content is appropriate for the outlet (see above point) can help.

A pitch is usually an email or online form that you send to an editor or general submission inbox. Your pitch should get straight to the point – why should anyone care about what you’re writing? It starts with a good hook (I call it a problem frame – what makes your topic interesting? Something that will get readers to keep reading), followed by your clear, concise thesis or argument. Then perhaps a sentence or two expanding on your arguments. It’s a tight paragraph that an editor can quickly read and know if the article is worth pursuing. That’s it.

I usually attach a draft of my article to the email. But sometimes you may have just the idea and thesis, and will then draft the article after input from the editor (this is a bit more common for longer form online magazines).

A few notes on pitching. Pitching is a bit of trial and error to see what kinds of approaches get an editor’s attention. It’s important to build relationships with editors to increase your chances of getting published. Always submit to an editor directly over a general email or form if you have the editor’s direct email. If you haven’t heard back in two weeks, move on somewhere else.

Communicate One Point

We’re used to writing journal articles that are 10,000 words with hundreds of citations, and so many details that even we don’t want to read the damn thing once we’re done writing it.

Do the opposite for popular writing.

You want to make one clear point in simple language, and then provide additional context and examples to drive the point home. Unless you’re writing for long form magazines, most articles will be less than 1500 words (on the long end) and closer to 1000 on average. You only have space to make one point. If you find yourself making more points, the readers will be lost (because most won’t get far enough to read the second), and it will be hard to stay within word count.

Remember: You need to tell a story, not the whole story. Each article’s main point should be tweetable.

Hopefully this advice can help you get started with science communication and popular writing. Want to know more? Comment below on the topics you would like to see me write about.

I don’t do new year’s resolutions. I don’t make unreasonable goals that I’ll inevitably fail at by February.

Instead, I focus on something new each year. Something that I hope will contribute to my overall well-being in the long term. I began doing this regularly in 2019. To give you an idea, here’s what I focused on each year, and the outcomes that have resulted:

2019 – focus on being more disciplined – which led to a substantial increase in my reading and a new workout habit.

2020 – focus on getting out of my comfort zone – which led to being less rigid, and ditching stale routines that held me back from trying new things.

2021 – focus on taking better care of myself – which led to a great skin-care routine (hello 30!) and a more holistic approach to my health and well-being.

The benefit to approaching the new year like this, rather than with resolutions, is that these are flexible, broad aims that I can adjust throughout the year and apply to various domains of my life. By the end of each year, I have built new habits that I can carry over into the next year.

My focus this past year of taking better care of myself afforded me a renewed sense of focus on my holistic well-being and life status. What is most important? What is serving me well? What is not?

Shortly after the year began, I quickly realized that I had taken on too much work. Along with my full-time job, I have two part-time jobs that combined take up about 10 hours a week. I also write regularly on this Substack or my new one (subscribe for all things books!), make time for fun leisure activities on the weekends, and aim to read and work out each day. Add it up, and it’s a lot to fit in.

By February, I was already tired. By July, after being put on an impromptu virtual conference hosting committee for months, I was exhausted. By August I was completely burnt out.

Not even in grad school had I worked myself to this point. Unable to take a break from any of my commitments, I had to struggle through the burn out and limp my way through the next few months, until I was finally able to focus on a work task for more than 10 minutes at a time without feeling overwhelmed and wanting to rage quit life.

These experiences quickly led to me identifying what my 2022 focus would be: doing less.

But why had I taken on so much in the first place?

I have always liked to keep myself busy, and there’s something to the idea of having lots of interesting things to do that has made me feel like I was doing something important with my work. It wasn’t until I read Paul Bloom’s The Sweet Spot last month that I realized why I was addicted to the struggle of overworking and taking on too much: it gave me purpose, a sense of meaning, and generally contributed to my life satisfaction.

This revelation I had in my car while listening to this book got me reflecting on the culture of overworking, which is especially prevalent in academia. When I was a grad student, I regularly worked 50+ hour weeks, was in my office every Saturday and even on many holidays (cringe). And I know many academics who do these things because they “have to” in today’s ultra-competitive academic culture where you’re not worthy of success unless you’re constantly sacrificing for that $60k a year assistant professorship.

There is also the common idea in academia that your work is your identity, or most of it at least. It’s what gives you purpose. It’s what gives you your personality. And it provides you with a community of others who have and will continue to make all the sacrifices necessary to be a modern academic.

I’ve been “out” of academia – and the pursuit of the tenure-track – for two years now. The first year I spent reckoning with my own lost academic identity. If I am no longer an “academic,” what am I? (I think that’s why, in part, I retained an adjunct teaching position – in addition to my genuine love for being in the classroom – and remained on the executive board of my home academic society.) The second year – 2021 – has consisted of several existential crises about where my career is going (I now know – more on this soon!) given that being outside the tenure-track can make one feel as if they are stranded in the middle of the desert without a compass.

Most importantly, however, I’ve been forced to think carefully about what I am doing professionally and semi-professionally that will get me to where I want to be and contribute to the life I want to live. It’s taken me a while to get here, as I presume many PhDs have or will experience while trying to find their footing outside the professoriate (which is why I write often about my experiences).

Going into 2022, I know I want to have a job doing something I like and am good at, at a company that values me. But I also want to enjoy my life. No longer is “life” synonomous with “academic”. Instead, my life is now defined by reading what I want when I want, writing at my leisure, and going on adventures to see the coolest geological and rock formations I can find.

I feel like I have finally shed my academic identity. I no longer feel the need to work myself into the ground and take on all the things. (Remember: “No” is a full sentence.) I want to work my agreed upon 40 hours and spend the rest of my time doing what is good for me.

Probably the biggest benefit to leaving the tenure-track pursuit is that my personal self is no longer intertwined with my profession. And I imagine this is what many who have already left and rave about it feel to some extent, too. I’m not saying that this is impossible for those who remain in academia and the tenure-track, but it is certainly no secret that in academia overwork is rampant, mental health is suffering, and basic employment benefits (salary, etc) are generally crap for the average person compared to what they could get in almost any other career.

I no longer envy the academic track, mindset, or culture. I value my vacation time, work flexibility, and benefits in my current career. My focus to do less in 2022 will require me to let go of my part-time work commitments giving me back ample time spend on the hobbies that bring me joy and to which I am accountable to no one, only my own happiness.

What are you going to focus on in the new year?

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A hot new paper was just published this week in the journal Educational Researcher (it’s open access, download the paper here, and supplemental material here) covered by the big higher education outlets including The Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed, and Higher Ed Dive. The paper takes a stab at understanding whether lottery admissions to moderately and highly selective universities would increase diversity of the student bodies.

So, do lotteries increase racial diversity? Nope. Not even a little.

But do lotteries increase other kinds of diversity. Also, not really.

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A Rundown of the Racial Data

The paper details two main sets of analyses using national data sets to understand the impact of lottery admissions across key demographic groups of gender, race, and income. The first simply compares the observed data we already have from moderately and highly selective institutions to the total lottery-eligible pool of students. Lottery-eligible is defined as meeting either (1) a SAT/ACT percentile cutoff (Table 1), (2) a GPA cutoff (Table 2), or (3) a combined SAT/ACT and GPA cutoff (Table 3). The tables of these data are shown below.

A few notable observations. Under all cutoff criteria the lottery-eligible proportion of all racial minorities decrease, including Asian students (a point to note for later). This coincides with a massive increase in the proportion of white lottery-eligible students.

The simulation analyses the authors conducted basically pulled 1,000 random samples from the lottery-eligible students to calculate what the average student body could look like under a theoretical lottery admission model. The results for Black (Figure 1) and Latino/a (Figure 2) show significant decreases for both groups under a lottery system. The proportion of Black students at selective universities (figure shown below) would drop a couple percentage points, on average, with drops of 5-10 percentage points for Latino/a students at these universities, on average (figure not shown).

What is most odd about these data to me is with regard to Asian students. For anyone following higher education news, it’s well known that Asian students should theoretically be higher proportions of the student body if admissions were based solely on test scores and GPA, with numerous lawsuits in recent years of Asian student groups suing high-profile institutions for racial discrimination in admissions (with little luck).

This is why I find it odd that in Tables 1-3, the lottery-eligible proportion of Asian students decreases across the board, but the simulation models show a substantial increase in Asian students, as shown in Figure S3, below. I can find no mention of this in the article, nor can I think of why this is the case. Comment below if you have ideas – I really want to understand why the proportion of Asian students would increase “drastically” above observed levels in the simulation models (see Figure S3) given that the proportion of lottery-eligible Asian students decreases (see Tables 1-3). None of the other groups assessed in the paper follow this pattern.

There is also the notable increase of women and corresponding decrease of men in the lottery-eligible groups, which is concerning given the continued decrease of men in higher education.

A Rundown of the Income Data

On to income. As the authors note, as does each of the media outlet articles I linked to at the top, the eligible proportion of low-income students (defined here as <$35,000 USD), generally decreases. However, what none of the articles mention is the potential bump that middle class students could possibly get under a lottery system. For students with household incomes between $35,000 and $115,000, the lottery-eligible proportions increase far more than the low-income students decrease. What this also means is that the proportion of lottery-eligible affluent students (>$115,000) decreases by around 10 percentage points compared to observed levels.

My reading of this is that lottery admissions could possibly lead to a somewhat more equitable distribution of students across the income spectrum, with small decreases of low-income students, but proportionately large decreases of high-income students. However, it’s hard to know exactly what the implications are for the middle class and affluent students since the authors did not do the more informative simulation analyses on these groups; they only did simulations for low-income students, which shows about a 5–10-point decrease of low-income students at moderately and highly-selective universities, respectively (Figure S4).

The Take Home Message

The take home message is clear: If the goal is to increase racial diversity of student bodies at selective institutions, then lottery admissions isn’t going to help, and seems to substantially decrease racial diversity. A lottery system will further decrease the proportion of men in higher ed – a continuing diversity issue less often discussed.

What is less clear, however, is the impacts of lotteries on income diversity. The analyses here are limited to lowest income students, which show that lotteries will generally decrease their proportion, but it’s not clear whether fewer affluent and more middle-class students will be admitted.

Overall, however, lottery admissions aren’t going to solve any diversity problems in higher ed. On to the next proposal.

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You’ve heard professionals lament that what students are learning in the classroom has little connection to the knowledge they actually need on the job. You’ve heard college presidents promise to align their curricula and programs to “meet market demands”. But neither professionals nor presidents are in the classroom teaching students. Faculty are. How can we leverage the faculty to build bridges between the classroom and the workplace?

Now, hear me out.

Adjunct Professors.

This semester is my first in the classroom as a doctor and adjunct with a full-time research job outside the formal academy. My role as a research scientist at a university affiliated research and development hub focused on edtech gives me firsthand experience in applied research in the “real world” working with a dozen institutions, edtech executives, and professionals with varied expertise and education. Just a few weeks into the semester, I’ve realized that what I can offer to my students is different – in a positive way – than what I could offer when I was still in the academic bubble.

In my nearly two years in a non-tenure track professional role, I’ve learned a lot – most of which I did not learn as an academic siloed in a single academic department. And this is precisely my point: students who are taught and trained within the academy by tenure-track professors (or full-time lecturers) might be missing out on useful education by those who are outside the ivory tower – a place that the vast majority of the students in our classrooms will end up.

The academic professoriate is absurd in the sense that real world experience is viewed as a negative in tenure-track hiring. This is, in part, because (1) publications are the number one criterion on which tenure-track candidates are considered for positions, and (2) no other profession outside the academy has as their primary goal publications. Therefore, any time spent outside the typical academic environment means little, if any, publishing and decreased likelihood of being hired.

I, for example, have had a full-time research role for nearly two years and have published not a single journal article in that time, despite the extensive list of other diverse research outputs that I could show as demonstration of my skills and expertise in the education space. But, If I were to apply for a tenure-track research role now, my application is actually far less competitive than it was two years ago as a PhD student on the market simply because I haven’t been publishing in journals.

The academy is conservative in the sense that they are unlikely to change the publication counting and impact factor analyzing of their tenure-track candidate’s CV anytime soon. Instead, departments could effectively leverage their adjunct army budget to add significant value to the education of their students to help them be more prepared and have a clearer idea of what professionals in their field actually do for work.

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To do this effectively, the adjunct professor role must be re-conceptualized to comprise of full-time professionals working in diverse roles who are enthusiastic to teach one course per semester. (This type of adjunct is already more common in professional practice roles like health and business than in the sciences.) Whereas the tenure-track faculty would teach much of the core curriculum and specialty topic courses, professional adjunct professors could be employed to teach applied courses and facilitate events within departments for students to be exposed to professionals outside the academy. Adjunct faculty would no longer be comprised of PhDs “waiting out” the job market and would rather being intentionally hired to benefit students’ holistic education in their field.

This re-conceived role of the adjunct professor would help balance the constant battle of liberalization vs. professionalization of education as described by David Labaree in A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. As fields become more established, professional education becomes increasingly theoretical and more aligned with traditional liberal education perspectives on teaching and knowledge. An outcome of this is inevitable: the more theoretical education becomes, the less aligned with real world professions student’s education becomes.

Leveraging the part-time nature of adjunct professors can have a positive impact on students’ education and department curricula. Intentional hiring of adjuncts can ensure greater diversity of knowledge that students are exposed to in the classroom. Adjuncts can propose elective courses that are built around their expertise and add value to ensure a well-rounded, and applied education for students that is connected to local job markets. Finally, adjuncts can field important career development questions of students and diversify students’ professional networks outside the faculty.

Re-conceptualizing the role of adjunct faculty as professional allies of university departments could have other positive effects on the faculty system, too. In alignment with the progressive ethos of Arizona State University, adjuncts can help build a cooperative bridge with local companies that lead directly into the classroom. Moreover, the role of the adjunct professor becomes positively construed and plays an integral role in student education and curricula development, which will hopefully replace the negative perception of the “adjunct underclass” that has proliferated in recent decades.

Transforming the role of the adjunct professor from a career trap career for PhDs trying to “make it” on the tenure-track job market to a professional ally of university departments does not fix all the issues that still surround the modern faculty. Pay equity for teaching labor, clearly articulated by John Warner in Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Public Higher Education is still an independent issue to be resolved. My pay for the 3-credit hour course I teach, for example, should not be ~50% of the pay per class that tenure-track faculty at my institution make.

Second, the lack of funding for faculty lines at institutions that is causing hyper-competition among job applicants must also be addressed. This issue falls largely on graduate programs that groom trainees for non-existent tenure-track roles only and have little capacity to advise and prepare graduate students for other professional roles. A transformed adjunct role, however, could contribute to a solution by having active, professional role models in the department as a bridge to industry knowledge that current tenure-track faculty do not have. This may, hopefully, even serve to decrease the number of students who suffer on the tenure-track market for years – because they don’t have the knowledge or advisement to do otherwise – by showing the benefits and opportunities in other professional research roles. And those who enjoy teaching can still meaningfully participate in the classroom as an adjunct professor.

The ‘adjunctification’ of the academy in recent decades has been strong cause for concern, as most people, unless independently wealthy or with a high-enough earning spouse, cannot afford to adjunct or, in some cases, even teach full time as a non-tenure track lecturer. I have been vocal about the pitfalls of adjunctification, too, and still hold firm that adjuncts specifically, and teaching labor broadly, is underpaid and undervalued at our nation’s  universities.

However, entering the classroom as a post-PhD professional has given me perspective about the value I add to students’ education, including professional development, demonstrating how rigid concepts like The Scientific Method are actually applied in research not groomed for publication, and a more flexible and creative mentality to what constitutes knowledge learned in the classroom. Both liberal and professional education within students’ field of choice has significant value to student education – it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Let’s use the system we have to better deliver education to students and not limit their exposure to only professional academics.

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Anyone who is familiar with my work knows how passionately I believe in the impact of good teaching on student’s experiences in the classroom. Although learning can certainly happen in the absence of experienced others (as many Very Smart People like to relentlessly note), a good teacher can inspire us and forage new connections among our synapses.

I spend a lot of time reading about teaching and learning principles and incorporate varied approaches into my course designs from excellent books such as, The Missing Course, How We Learn, and Why They Can’t Write. Although I use my teaching skills that I’ve cultivated over the years primarily in the college classroom, I had an eye-opening experience recently about how good teaching principles can be practiced everywhere – even in fitness classes. I’m an active person and really enjoy endurance sports such as distance running, hiking, and swimming. But I find it difficult to push myself in the same way with biking despite finding it enjoyable when I do.

Enter: Spin classes.

Notorious for their cult-like following (specifically, SoulCycle), spin classes can be highly rewarding but equally intimidating.

I recently started attending some 30-minute HIIT (high intensity interval training) spin classes at my gym to incorporate some more rigorous cardio into my routine and every so often get me out of bed at 5:30 am. Whereas the classes have been serving their purpose of getting me a good workout, I wasn’t sure if I the levels of resistance I was using were actually “hard” or “moderate” as the instructor yelped over the microphone, whether I was pushing myself the “right” amount, or why I couldn’t get my spin bike to light up with all the colorful options my neighbors bikes had (absolutely I want fun light colors, please!). I also wasn’t highly engaged with the class despite the high-energy of the instructor and the much too loud music assaulting my ear drums.

This all changed, though, with one great instructor that was subbing in for the regular Tuesday evening slot, “Karl with a K”. Thirty minutes in his class taught me how the bike worked, gave me clear reference points to understand my effort and output on the bike, and kicked my ass harder than any other class I’ve taken. Equally important, I had more fun in that class than any other.

Why so? Because Karl was an excellent teacher. Throughout the class I was mentally noting all the different principles he exercised in his instruction and contrasting his methods with those of other instructors I’d taken classes with. And I realized that while students get something out of even the most mediocre teacher, a great teacher will get more from them and, importantly, make learning a fun and positive experience.

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Here are four things that classroom educators can note from Karl’s class.

1. Cultivate A Friendly Environment

I arrived in the spin classroom about one minute before the start to lots of friendly conversation between the instructor and attendees – far more conversation than I was used to. And it became readily clear that many of the attendees were regulars of his class. Clear signals that he ran a class people genuinely enjoyed.

But what made the environment friendly was that as soon as I arrived at my chosen bike, Karl came right up to me and asked for my name – something no other instructor has done – and introduced himself as “Karl with a K”. It’s amazing the impact that humanizing your students has on their experience.

This is a practice I have implemented explicitly in my classroom for years by having students make name-tags on day one of class so that myself and other students can learn each other’s name and refer to each other by name throughout discussions. Karl even remembered each riders name and specifically called out each of us for hitting the level goals ensuring that every rider was included at some point. By taking the first moments to form a personal connection, I was more invested in the class.

2. Explain Your Methods

Gym equipment isn’t always self-explanatory and figuring it out with an audience watching isn’t always a recipe for success. Spin bikes in particular have a lot of settings and several parts to adjust to ensure the right fit of the bike to your body. When adjusting my bike during the first spin class I took, the instructor looked at me and said over the microphone “You look like you need some help setting up”. While well-intentioned I’m sure, I felt like I had a spotlight on my incompetence rather than the confidence to learn how to use it properly.

At the beginning of his class, Karl instead decided to use the first few minutes of warm up to explain to everyone how the bike should be set up to get the most out of his class. He walked the class though the training mode settings on the bike, what they meant, and how they would be used in his class to help us push ourselves at different levels. What a game changer! I learned how the bike worked and why certain settings were used.

In my courses I spend ample time explaining my methods. No adult wants to do something “because you said so” (and it’s a poor strategy with children, too). The entire first day of my courses is an ‘introduction to the course day’ where I explain each assignment, its purpose, and how everything connects to the broader goals I want students to come away with. Students want to know what they are doing and why. It’s proved remarkably successful as an instructor and, as I’ve now experienced, as a student.

3. Use Our Psychology to Improve Outcomes

Humans are competitive by nature; but we are also highly cooperative. These innate tendencies can be easily leveraged to help us perform better. Because the spin bikes are tech-based and connected to the instructor’s control dash, each bike’s performance can be shown on the projector screen in the front of the room. Karl used this technology to split us into teams to cooperate with each other to outperform the other team – fun!

Importantly, the competition was friendly, not zero-sum. Each individual knew only their own bike number, so they knew where they were in relation to everyone else and what team they were on, but their individual performance was ultimately their own to know. The competitions were also only used a few times per class to increase engagement in a low-stakes manner, while using our own psychological tendencies to help us boost our performance.

Competition isn’t the enemy of inclusivity and learning; it just needs to be used in the right ways to boost performance. In courses, too, group activities, low-stakes competition, and other gamified learning can be great ways to boost both engagement and performance. A favorite game of mine to play is when I teach about personality disorders. I print out cards, half with the name of a disorder, half with the clinical description. Students have to get up and work together to find their match. But everyone wants to finish first, too! It’s a fun way to get students to learn the content.

4. Flexible Structure

Finally, the class included a flexible structure that was outlined at the beginning of the class (see point 2) so that students knew what to expect and could adapt the training to their fitness level. Having a general structure that allows learners to anticipate an expected cadence affording more time focused on the task rather than trying to figure out what it is that they’re supposed to be doing.

It also allows learners of different abilities to all participate together and all improve. By using the training mode on the bike, each student could indicate their fitness level and work through the five intensity zones in a way that was aligned with their abilities. Aiming to hit the “blue zone” may mean something different to each rider, yet we all were operating under the same structure to help us push our limits.

In my own courses, I find that a regular cadence of class discussions can really hit the mark here. All students participate and are engaged in the conversation, while the structure affords students opportunities for them to both learn and push their own intellectual limits through idea generation. Identifying a course design that allows improvement of students of all abilities is certainly a challenge, but one that can be experimented with and iterated upon through creative pedagogy.

Good teaching can be found everywhere. What experiences have inspired you lately?

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The fall semester is upon us. And with it comes great uncertainty, debate, and confusion. After more than a year online, many campuses are charging ahead with in person classes – mine included. I am now teaching at Utah Valley University, a teaching institution in Orem, Utah, and I’ll be honest with you: I am utterly thrilled to be back on campus.

Even saying that makes me nervous for backlash given the widespread debate online that I am seeing unfold as faculty are downright pissed at their institutions for moving forward with an on-campus return. I am sure many are appalled by my excitement to have myself and 27 students engaged in deep discussion about child development beginning this week.

Anger aside, the uncertainty of the upcoming semester has contributed to changes in my pedagogical approach to my course. I have focused on reducing the pressures and stress on students while constructing a learning environment designed to get them excited and curious about learning again.

Lectures, proctoring spy software, and formal exams have no place on my syllabus.

Should my course need to move online, we can engage in lively discussion synchronously online. Should a student be absent, assignment submissions can be done easily online with maximum deadline flexibility. The university classrooms are equipped with recording devices to easily capture the day’s discussion. Gone from my syllabus is the harsh language from my first years as a professor of which I now read and cringe.

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Coming back into the classroom after three semesters removed post-PhD has allowed me to take a fresh perspective on what I hope to accomplish in my new course on infancy and child development, and what I want my students to get from the course, too.

The goals for my course this semester include:

• Trying new assignment types

• Fostering curiosity in my students

• Bridging organic, personalized connections across students’ courses and experiences

• Make my class more than exams and grades

Many books have inspired the many changes to my course design and operations that I am practicing this semester. Two are specifically worth mentioning here: The Missing Course by David Gooblar, and Why They Can’t Write by John Warner. While both of these books are written by writing professors, it is easy to extract teaching principles to apply in your own course. Writing is arguably one of the hardest skills to teach (as can be gleaned by unrelenting complaints of professors that students can’t write) because it requires that students actively engage in writing to improve. In the social sciences and humanities, students, too, need to actively engage in the skills used in the professions: research, communication, and critical thinking.

My course applied the principles and ideas that I have gleaned from the aforementioned books, my own trial and error experiences of teaching, and fun ideas from other teachers I’ve observed online.

The syllabus for my new upper-level course on infancy and child development is online, and more documents will be added to the course OSF page as the semester progresses. Below are some of the new approaches I’m taking this year to engage students, foster curiosity, and make learning fun.

Download the Syllabus

How I’m Engaging Students

If I can avoid it, I don’t lecture. Aside from intro survey courses in psychology, I don’t think that lecturing is an effective method to get students to develop the research, communication, and critical thinking skills we intend for them to develop in our classroom. And when I do lecture, there is ample activity time, group work, and engagement built in.

Beyond survey courses, discussions are highly effective – if approached correctly.

Students today are highly accustomed to reading textbooks. They usually aren’t interesting, and students don’t really read them. I instead assign popular-style books (like I am in this course) and/or journal articles. Despite professors being well-versed in this type of reading, students, however, are not. To provoke high quality discussions, I provide reading guides for each chapter or article I assign. This gives students a high-level outline to help direct them to the major components you want to focus on, and then allows them to know where to dive in for discussion.

In my experience, the discussion questions students produce (which are required at the start of each class meeting) are high quality, and the discussion that ensues is more focused on the main points, which requires less interference from you, the professor.

When running a discussion course, the number one complaint I hear is that professors can’t get their students to talk. Why not? Probably because you’re talking too much. Don’t start your class meeting with a rambling monologue. Instead, have the students start the discussion. It sets the expectation that they are leading the discussion. You also must embrace the silence. Give students time to think and compose a thought rather than waiting three seconds before talking to fill the void.

My course this semester is 2.5 hours once a week. The time is broken up into three to four discussion chunks, with students starting each discussion day with a brief presentation on their weekly homework research (more on that below). I won’t even attempt to start talking or guiding until 15 minutes into class each day!

How I’m Fostering Curiosity and Honing Research Skills

Whereas I’ve developed great discussion strategies across previous courses, I’ve been struggling to develop ways to develop research skills in a more authentic way. Of course, intro psych students are required to participate in research as subjects “to get involved in the research process” (a lie we tell ourselves to get cheap data), but what are they really learning about research? How can we get students to develop interesting questions, conduct research to find an answer, then effectively communicate what they found?

I’m trying something new this year called “independent homework research”. How it works is that the last 15-20 minutes of class will be a space for students to break into smaller discussion groups and bounce around ideas and lingering questions they have about the day’s topics. Each student will identify a question that is interesting to them. Their assignment for next week is to go answer it! They need to find research articles and other sources that can help answer the question. Once they have a good answer, they must figure out a way to effectively communicate what their question was and what they found through their research to the class.

The first 40 minutes of the following class will be a presentation and discussion period in which a few students present and discuss their research with the class. The goal is for students to dive into aspects of the content that is interesting to them, develop real life research and scientific literacy skills, and effectively communicate findings. By beginning the course with some focused discussion on last week’s topics, the discussion also serves as a nice bridge to the current week’s discussion.

How I’m Fostering Creativity and Building Connections

Learning is most effective when students have some autonomy over their learning and when they are able to authentically form connections across topics. In my course this semester I am trying something radically new (for me at least) though Exam Projects aimed at giving students ample space for creativity and connecting the course content to their personal knowledge space.

In the week or two before the exam project is due, we will have dedicated discussion time devoted to collaboratively identifying the core themes and lessons from the book we finished reading. Then, students will pick one of those lessons and develop an output that effectively communicates what they learned. I have a vague idea of how these projects could maybe look – a Wikipedia article, an op-ed, a podcast, an infographic, a website, etc – but the goal is to work as a class to come up with ideas and co-develop the rubric for what an ‘A’ project will look like.

Students have lots of unique skills and knowledge areas from their personal and educational experiences – I want them to have a way to use them to creatively and effectively demonstrate what they have learned. A key lesson I took from Warner’s Why They Can’t Write is that we too often box-in creativity by forcing students to demonstrate knowledge by only one means. Instead, I want to see what they can do when given more space to be creative. I am also taking a note from Gooblar’s The Missing Course and getting students involved in developing parts of the class. What do they think a great project will look like? This I imagine will foster greater motivation to produce a great output, but also feel that they have input into how I am grading a highly flexible assignment.

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Teaching is a practice that should be developed over time. And I have come such a far way from my stern first semester of exam-only grades and ridged course policies. I am trying a lot of new pedagogical approaches this year, and I couldn’t be more excited to see how they work for students. Drop any feedback or suggestions in the comments!

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In my role as a research scientist for the College Innovation Network (CIN), I’ve come to learn how important the student voice is for both understanding and improving students’ learning experiences. I am a firm proponent of the value of classroom-based learning, but recognize the value of online and tech-based learning when used to enhance human-centered learning, rather than replace it entirely. This past year, however, was a grand experiment in near universal online learning, and I was curious to learn more from students.

In April 2021, I administered a survey to nearly 700 students at four CIN institutions to uncover (1) how EdTech self-efficacy impacted students’ learning experiences over the 2020-21 academic year, and (2) how students’ personal characteristics and characteristics of their college/university impacted their learning experiences with EdTech over the 2020-21 academic year.

The results of the published report, The New Digital Divide: How EdTech Self-Efficacy is Shaping the Online Student Learning Experience in Higher Ed, reveal several key insights into the student online learning experience with EdTech across the previous academic year:

1. Students’ EdTech self-efficacy is a robust predictor of students’ learning experience, and is associated with a more positive and impactful learning experience over the 2020-21 academic year.

2. Students at institutions with established online learning infrastructure reported significantly more positive and impactful learning experiences over the 2020-21 academic year.

3. Foundational EdTech hardware and software are driving the online learning transition in higher education; inequitable access to foundational EdTech can create tech dependencies for new products and exacerbate inequity.

4. The future is hybrid: Students are looking forward to returning to social activities on campus, but many still want online learning options next year.

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Drawing on these insights, I conclude the report with actionable recommendations on how administrators and faculty alike can work to improve the online student learning experience with EdTech moving forward.

I encourage you to download, read, and share the report with your colleagues, if you’d be so kind.

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The classroom, and the teaching and learning that occur within them, are supposed to be the heart of higher education, especially in the liberal arts tradition. Yet, teaching seems to get put on the back-burner across all levels of educational institutions. Doctoral candidates hardly receive teacher training and are actively encouraged to teach as little as possible during their schooling. Tenure track faculty rationally prioritize their research programs over their teaching because their sought-after tenure literally depends on their research output. Department heads and deans put money towards underpaid contingent faculty to keep their budgets in check. And, finally, the majority of consumers – I mean, students – demand everything from their university but better teaching.

There is little incentive to improve teaching in higher ed. And by incentive, I mean primarily money. Institutions are unwilling to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to improving the learning experiences of students in the classroom. Why so?

Good teaching requires people – live, thinking, socially interacting humans. I know, I know. “But, Nicole! Teachers don’t matter and tech can replace people.” I strongly disagree. Education matters. Teachers matter. And tech is a tool to be used by teachers, not a replacement for teachers.

That good teaching requires people means that good teaching is expensive because people cost more than technology. And people don’t scale efficiently in the same way that technology does. In theory and practice, as you produce more product, you can sell that product at a cheaper price – it becomes more efficient with scale. This does not readily apply to human teachers, however. If anything, wages rise overtime, and it can cost increasing amounts of money to retain teachers overtime, as tenured faculty cost more than entry-level or contingent faculty.

And this is why we don’t have good teaching. Higher ed is constantly looking for ways to cut costs and rein in their budget. So, if people cost more than tech, and better or more senior people cost more than entry-level or contingent people, what is the logical solution for a business to save money? Hire less people and hire more cheaper people when you do hire. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen in higher ed since the faculty boom of the post world-war two era.

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First, the rise of edtech and online learning. Just as the service industry is being automated by technology (have you been in a fast food restaurant lately?), so too, is higher education being increasingly outsourced to technology in an effort to decrease the required number of human staff needed to run courses. A great example of this is fully autonomous online courses whereby course materials are curated into a course that students can work through at their own pace. And, in these online environments, most learning assessments are designed to be graded by technology rather than people.

The result of this learning environment (note that I did not say teaching environment – more on this here) is that courses can be copy and pasted every semester with minor, if any, changes; assessments are graded automatically by software, and humans are needed only as professional emailers to handle tasks and questions from students that the computers haven’t been programed to answer. . . yet. In effect, learning environments can scale efficiently, but at the extreme end of the spectrum (e.g., Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs), teaching is completely eliminated. As eloquently articulated by Justin Reich in Failure to Disrupt, tech will not transform education – teachers will.

Second, the adjunctification of teaching in higher ed. Since mind-century, and accelerating in the 1980’s, the proportion of tenure-track faculty to contingent or contract faculty has nearly flipped. Rather than students being taught by full-time, modestly paid faculty, students are more likely to be taught by part-time, underpaid and overworked adjunct faculty, especially at the undergraduate level. Why? Because adjunct faculty are much cheaper, require no benefits or office space (at most institutions), and can be dismissed from courses and have contracts cut at a moments notice (an adjunct position I previously held reserved the right to cancel my course 48 hours before the start date).

In his newest book, Sustainable. Resilient. Free., John Warner breaks down just how much cheaper adjunct faculty are as compared to tenure-track faculty. A tenured professor is more than twice as expensive for teaching labor as compared to an adjunct professor. And that doesn’t include the fact that adjuncts don’t get benefits or infrastructure support like tenured professors do. From a business perspective, why not just hire an army of adjuncts to teach?

But, one might argue, those who teach full time are usually more passionate about teaching and dedicated to the practice than tenure-track faculty who care primarily about research. I would generally agree with you on that point. The problem, however, is that adjunct faculty are either (1) teaching part-time on the side because the profession is not enough to be a full time gig, or (2) teaching so many courses to make ends meet (have you seen their pay, above?!) that they are overworked. This does not create an environment for teaching practice to thrive and students to benefit. The best way to set up something to fail is to make it someone’s part-time job (a quip from Jeff Bezos quoted in Working Backwards) . . . or overwork them and underpay them.

As with most things in modern life, when something is not working you need to look at the incentives driving behavior and the money behind the behavior (two overlapping, but distinct drivers). When it comes to good teaching, we need more money paid to professors and a better incentive structure within our institutions that actually motivates and rewards excellence in teaching.

A reasonable first step to the money problem is to establish equal pay for teaching labor. John Warner breaks down what this means exactly in his excellent book referenced above, and addresses common questions to these data, such as “what about seniority”, “what about big-time names”, “what about research” – all of which he has great answers to. They all boil down to the baseline of pay per credit should be equal across ranks. For example, the big-time prof at the Ivy teaching one course will get paid the same rate as the adjunct, but then the fancy university can pay them as much as they think they deserve for the rest of their work on top of that base pay for their teaching. The point is equitable pay for teaching, per credit hour.

And, a reasonable step to the incentive structure problem is something that is already practiced to some degree at some institutions: separate teaching and research faculty, and a massive reduction in part-time and contingent faculty. I outline the full problem and proposed solution in a previous post here, but in short I argue that to fix the poor incentive structure at research-intensive universities is to equitably disaggregate research and teaching faculty roles: research-intensive universities should hire tenure-track research faculty to primarily research and hire tenure-track-teaching faculty to primarily teach. And, at teaching focused universities, average pay needs to increase to be competitive in the market, and teaching labor pay should be equitable to research universities.

The problem of good teaching is one I am strongly passionate about solving, but also one that causes me great disappointment in our higher education institutions who continually refuse to acknowledge the importance of teaching and then fail to make any change to faculty or classrooms. If institutions want to drive effective change to improve teaching and ultimately student outcomes, they need to put their money where their mouth is: hire more people to teach, pay them a competitive and equitable salary for teaching labor, and create an institutional structure that motivates and rewards excellence in teaching.

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You’re scrolling through twitter and happen upon a tweet describing interesting results from a new research study. You click the link. You hit a paywall. Now what?

If you’re savvy enough to know how to access pay-walled articles though backdoor means or are lucky enough to have access to a university library, your quest for knowledge may not be thwarted by the paywall. But for the general public – many of whom we are intending to inform with our research – accessing research articles can be a challenge. Even for academics, accessing articles can take many websites, logins, and work arounds to download a damn PDF.

Why is it so hard to access science? Because the modern academic publishing model is set up to be difficult and turn a (massive) profit for publishers. The goal is to make money, not disseminate knowledge.

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In short how it works is that scientists author a manuscript and submit it to an academic journal. The journal then sends the manuscript out for peer-review to other scientists working in that research area for comments. The reviewers then submit their recommendation to the journal (they are not paid for this work). If the journal editors decide to pursue the article, the original authors make revisions and then the article may be accepted for publication. The journal staff then copy edit and format the article and it’s published online and perhaps in print. University libraries pay to subscribe to journals and journal publishers.

The only way to access the article, then, is to be at an academic institution with access to that journal or pay a per-article download fee.

What about “open access” articles? In nearly all cases, authors must pay thousands of dollars to publish their own work in an open access journal. To make research freely open in our current system is a pay-to-play game – a game most researchers can’t afford.

In short, the system is a failure.

Most discussion on the failures of the academic publishing system center on the fact that most university research is federally funded and that because tax dollars support the research, the public shouldn’t have to pay to read the results. Also, the issue with the pay-to-play open access approach is that it excludes researchers without large grants or an affluent institutional affiliation, and is highly prohibitive to researchers outside the US and Europe from participating. Who the hell wants to spend US$11,000 to publish an article in Nature?

But our academic publishing system is a failure beyond these financial pitfalls. The academic publishing system actively limits the impact and dissemination of knowledge, and new research is quantifying these impacts.

Earlier this week, PsyPost covered a new research article (which costs US$39.95 to read) showing what they dubbed the “SciHub” effect on paper citations. Using data from a dozen leading journals in economics, consumer research, neuroscience, and multidisciplinary journals, the authors showed that papers that were downloaded on SciHub – a hacker website run by Alexandra Elbakyan that bypasses paywalls and provides users access to tens-of-millions of articles in one click – were cited 1.72x more than papers not downloaded. And, the number of downloads is positively correlated with future citations of that paper.

These data suggest that availability and access of research is a positive driver of that research being cited – an indication of the paper’s impact. These results coincide with results on the impact of Twitter on journal article citations, too. A 2011 study found a positive correlation between tweets about a paper and citations in the medical field, and showed that highly tweeted articles were 11x more likely to be cited than less tweeted articles. A 2020 study also confirmed the positive correlation between tweets and citation counts across six fields of research.

Knowledge that cannot be accessed cannot be used. And if knowledge is not used, it is not having an impact on our world.

Prior to the internet age, journals were the best mode by which scientists had to communicate their results to others. Yet, our publishing model is a mid-century relic that is now actively working against the mission of science. The internet has radically changed how we disseminate and consume information, especially research. Open-access pre-prints (i.e., articles that are uploaded to an online repository pre-publication) have grown beyond physics to be normative in most academic fields; social media is the primary medium by which scientists promote their work; and, universities and scientists are growing tired of the pay-to-play publishing model.

There is, however, a growing consensus that open access of research is where we need to be, and there are some high-profile instances of organizations cutting ties with the old models in favor of impact. The European Research Council that funds a large proportion of basic research in Europe, for example, now requires scientists to publish funded results only in open access journals. And, The University of California system cut off their subscription to Elsevier back in 2019 over open access disputes (though they now have a new deal with the publisher).

Slowly the incentives are shifting in favor of open access, but such tides are slow to turn. Although there are many ethical arguments against the current publishing models, the bottom line is that the current standard of academic publishing works against science having an impact on our world by prohibiting access to research for those outside the academy, and by prohibiting researchers at small institutions and those outside the scientific West from paying-to-play for open access. Creative solutions are being thought up and it will be interesting to observe which model(s) wins out to make science more accessible and impactful for all.

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When I was on the job market my final year of graduate school, I had a hard time conceptualizing what “the real world” might look like as a researcher. I had a vague idea that it would be different than the research I would do had I continued on as an Assistant Professor, but I didn’t really know what “different” meant; I just knew that it would be.

After landing my job as a Research Scientist working at the intersection of higher education, non-profit, and edtech, I learned a lot – and fast. I had to think differently about my role and myself as a professional, learn a new industry language, and work in completely new ways with a wide range of professionals (more on this in a previous newsletter of mine).

I’ve also learned that research is different in the industry space; at least, it’s much different than the niche, theory-heavy research that I was infatuated with as an academic, and what most academics view as the crowing pinnacle of a tenure-track post. Understanding how research is different outside the dated psychology labs of the ivory tower is important not only for those who are curious about alt-ac research roles, but also for those that are just starting in these new types of roles. Clinging to the academic research style of your PhD days isn’t going to make your job or your colleagues’ job easier, and will make your work a constant grind against the industry and tech machines of today.

Here are five key ways in which research is different in academia vs. industry.

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Your interest vs. company mission

This may be obvious and, in fact, is the main reason I didn’t want an industry research job when I was a graduate student, but unlike academic research – where I was able to write papers on properties of human semen, menarche timing, and the genetics of spanking – you don’t really get to pick what projects you do. You do have a lot of say on how to design and execute research studies that you’re leading (they did hire you because you’re a researcher after all) but you don’t pick the project outright.

This is also why it’s super important to work for a company that you actually like and work in an industry that you’re into, whether it be a mission-oriented non-profit or a revenue-hungry tech company. The company mission is what is going to drive the projects that are assigned to you; your niche interests are going to take a bit of a backseat. You can of course impart your domain expertise on projects where it’s appropriate (none of mine has been, sigh), but you’re hired predominantly for your skill set rather than the knowledge of your dissertation topic. Find a company you like so that you’ll enjoy the projects that you run.

Basic vs. applied

Another obvious difference is that industry research is primarily focused on applied research. The goal of your work is to produce findings that are helpful and help guide larger projects forward to create products, execute on contracts, or improve the experience of a specific population. This is not to say, of course, that academics don’t do applied research (and you could argue that academia is increasingly incentivizing applications of research), but a big benefit of academia is that professors can research obscure niche topics, much to the complaints of public tax payers. (Though as a scientist and someone who likes obscure research, I fully see the value of even the most seemingly ridiculous basic research).

Even at my company where we do a lot of grant funded research (the main area that I work in) and have a large amount of autonomy with how we execute on research, the work we do still needs to be directly tied to concrete outcomes: continued funding, sales and services, directly solving education problems, etc. There are a lot of random things that I would like to research within the online higher ed space purely out of curiosity, but unless I can procure funding for it an connect it to an outcome, I’m not going to be doing it.

Public dissemination vs. internal communications

The currency of academia is the peer-reviewed publication. There is literally nothing more highly valued within the academic marketplace than publications, with the exception of the cold, hard cash that you win which allows you to – you guessed it – publish more papers. The number of publications and the journals they are published in is a primary determinant of the job you get, awards you win, and tenure you secure. I’ve been in my professional research role for a year now and I have published exactly 0 publications in this job.

Publications are hardly important in industry. But don’t think that you won’t be writing (a lot) and communicating your research (a lot). In industry, however, your research communications take on a different purpose and more varied forms. The primary goal of your research is to inform other teams within your company (or company clients and partners) about your findings, their implications, and actionable recommendations for the next stage of the project. These communications can be slide deck presentations, short or long reports, 1-pagers, or even some public-facing content (for example, I write blogs for my company, produce research resource docs for our College Innovation Network partners, and attend education conferences). Ultimately this means that you’ll be communicating your research more often and in more varied formats – and to more diverse audiences.

Academic audience vs. diverse professional audience

You’ll be working with a host of characters and professionals in an industry environment, often time with them all in the same room. This means that your communications need to be understandable to senior leadership (who need the tl;dr version), business leaders (who want to know how to translate your work into money), other domain experts (who need to know how your work impacts them), and external partners (in my role I deal with a lot of higher education administrators). The most important part of your work is the “so what” part – what are the implications and recommendations.

This is a hard mindset to get into, because in academia – especially amid the reform movement in the social sciences where I come from – all people care about right now are the methods and the complex models you run in R. Although these details are important, they are a means to communicate your main insight from your research. The diverse professionals in the room are not going to be interested in every research and data detail – unless it directly relates to a very specific actionable outcome. This may make you feel that your work is diluted to the key takeaways, but it makes more sense when you see that your work is part of a larger whole (see next point).

The whole vs. a part

Academic research is very egocentric by nature. You are incentivized to develop a novel focus of research to stake your name on. You set up a university lab (often named after yourself) to research your niche topic. You jockey for prestigious authorship positions and high-impact journals. Your research becomes your personal brand. This isn’t a criticism – I too had these dreams – but a description of you as the center of your career; the research is the whole point.

Industry is a bit different, and it can be hard to get used to if you were an accomplished academic. Rather than research being the whole point, it is a part of the larger whole of the company mission (see first point, above). The research you do is largely a means for other things; a means to make a better product; a means to improve the user experience; a means to make sales; a means to benefit the company. I have no value judgement about this. But understanding that research is a means rather than the end is important to operate efficiently across teams.

I’ve written a lot about my alt-ac experience in the hopes of sharing my experience and insights with other PhD candidates and ECR academics to make the world outside the ivory tower seem less scary. Check them out below:

• Advice for PhDs on the Alt-Ac Job Market (2019)

• From Psychology PhD to EdTech Research Scientist (2020)

• Some Advice for Social Science PhDs in their “Real World” (Research) Career (2021)

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“Education is a waste of time.”

“Students don’t learn anything in college anymore.”

“Education doesn’t get enough government funding.”

“Education should be privatized.”

“Education should be a public good.”

“Colleges are coddling students.”

“It’s students’ fault they don’t succeed in college.”

“Institutions fail our students.”

“Liberals are ruining educations.”

“Conservatives are ruining education.”

Any of these statements sound familiar? Everywhere you read, you’ll find a problem with higher education. This isn’t new, either. As long as educational institutions have existed in our country, there have been endless things to complain about.

Since moving into the higher education space as a professional researcher, I have been trying to read about as many different perspectives on our education system as possible (recommendations are welcome in the comments!) from radical liberal perspectives advocating for free education as a public good, to radical conservative perspectives advocating for a privatized and al la carte system of education.

So, who’s right about what’s wrong with education?

After lots of reading, I’d say, well, everyone is right about what’s wrong with education.

I recently finished reading A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education by David Labaree which provided a rich and comprehensive history of higher education in the United States, from the founding of (now prestigious) colonial colleges like Harvard to modern powerhouse research universities like University of Michigan.

Labaree’s perspective is that the US higher education system is a mess of contradictions (where much of current debate arises from), but this mess has produced the largest and most successful higher education system in the world. American universities have a greater impact on society and humanity than any other higher education system – and none of it was planned (or at the beginning, even promising!).

This organic mashup of qualities allows for endless debate on what is wrong with higher education, and what education should be. As Labaree points out, our higher education system simultaneously affords access to the highest proportion of students anywhere in the world, while preserving social privilege and increasing inequality. Our education system is simultaneously populist by promising social mobility to all, and elitist by maintaining a clear hierarchical tier of selectivity and advantage. And, our education system is best viewed as a public good to society, while being best viewed as a private good to the individual. A mess of contradictions, indeed.

What I admire most about the popular education literature is the diversity of viewpoints in the arena. In a time where viewpoint diversity, especially within the academy, is under threat, I feel it reasonable to argue that we are not suffering from a viewpoint diversity crisis about higher education itself. Books are written from a variety of political perspectives providing reasonable and interesting discussions.

I was curious as to how diverse my own educational reading has been over the past couple of years, so I plotted where I saw each book I’ve read along a multidimensional access with one axis spanning liberal to conservative perspectives of the book’s thesis (from my own vantage point as best I could), and the other axis spanning prescriptive to descriptive book types (based on my own personal assessment). That plot is below, and a full list of books at the end of this post.

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It seems that every time I read a new book on higher education (and a couple on K12 as you can see), I come away realizing that there seems to be no single right way for education to be – every angle involves significant trade-offs. Though, I generally lean towards are more liberal public good type version of education, especially at the primary and secondary levels. But every conservative perspective I’ve read makes strong points that should also be considered and come with significant benefits.

In my opinion, A Perfect Mess articulated my constantly mixed feelings on education’s problems. Honestly, I quite like our current messy higher education system, which could reasonably be interpreted as defending the status quo. Though, I’m not saying that as someone who benefited from substantial advantage within the system: I came from a mediocre public school system, and was a first generation college student who enrolled at a regional college while working full time as a waitress, then went on to get a PhD at an newly minted R2 university (mostly because I couldn’t think of much else to do with myself!).

Higher education’s diversity is what generates so much debate, and why I find this space such an interesting place to be professionally. Labaree shows how debates over access and equity play out in our highly stratified system (which in part leads to the variety of institution types we have today), pros and cons of private versus public institutions, and the constant waxing and waning of liberal versus professional education philosophies across our highly stratified system.

I do believe actual education and learning should be the core of all of our educational institutions (and I fear about the impacts of the increasing focus on credentialing), but how that plays out in practice and how incentive structures are set up – what the institutional systems look like – can, and does, vary considerably. Just look at the diversity of institutional types in the higher education space today!

Below are the education books that I’ve read recently. Most are on higher education, but there are a couple on primary and secondary education, too. Pick one out that disagrees with your typical politics. And if you see something missing on here that you think I’d find interesting, comment below.

Education Reading List:

Sustainable. Resilient. Free. by John Warner who argues for a fully publicly-funded higher education system and the cancellation of student debt.

The Cult of Smart, by Fredrik deBoer who argues for socialism as a solution to the inherent inequity of our education system.

A Wolf at the School House Door, by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire who detail the threat of conservative policy on public K12 education.

Paying the Price, by Sarah Goldrick-Rab who argues that the cost of higher education is prohibitive to too many students and is perpetuating inequality.

The College Dropout Scandal, by David Kirp who details successful case studies of various institutions who have closed equity gaps and increased graduation rates.

The Years that Matter Most, (now published under a new title, The Inequality Machine) by Paul Tough who shows the flaws in the higher education system from the perspective of student stories.

Rewiring Education, by John Couch who argues that access to technology can transform education.

Failure to Disrupt, by Justin Reich who argues that access to technology cannot transform education.

The Missing Course by David Gooblar, who outlines the evidence and impact of active and engaged college teaching.

Grasp, by Sanjay Sarma and Luke Yoquinto who detail effective examples of innovative teaching approaches based in learning science principles.

A Perfect Mess, by David Labaree who argues that our messy, contradictory education system is the best in the world.

How We Learn, by Stanislas Dehaene who details the core universal pillars of learning.

The Amateur Hour, by Jonathan Zimmerman who details the history of college teaching approaches in America.

The Coddling of The American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt who argue that current cultural trends on college campuses are doing a disservice to students.

Real Education, by Charles Murray who argues against broad access higher education on the basis of individual differences in intelligence.

The Case Against Education, by Bryan Caplan who argues that higher education degrees act as signals to employers, but have little other function or value to society.

The Fifth Wave, by Michael Crow and William Dabars who argue that the future of higher education should look like Arizona State University.

Charter Schools and Their Enemies, by Thomas Sowell who advocates for the increase of privatized charter schools in the K12 system.

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This post contains affiliate links, allowing me to earn a small commission when you purchase books from the link provided. There is no cost to you, and this will allow me to keep this newsletter free and open to all. Happy reading!

I’ve been working in the education research field professionally for a bit now, and my day-to-day work focuses on evaluating the impact of new education tools and interventions on student experiences and academic outcomes. The dirty secret of education intervention research, however, is that most interventions don’t work, and those that do typically have small impacts (you can see my review of this body of work in a previous newsletter of mine and in other essays here.)

Why? How can billions of dollars per year invested in new initiatives, technologies, and labor result in tiny average effect sizes and limited impact? My thinking on the issue focuses on what I’m calling the “learning onion” (or half onion) shown in the figure below. Many, if not most, educational initiatives focus primarily on the outer layers of the onion, with much less focus on the educational and learning experiences at the core of higher education institutions.

Don’t believe me? Visit a teaching and learning center event on campus and notice how low the attendance is. Visit the center’s website and notice the under-resourced staff dedicated to helping the entire university or college teach better. Walk into your average campus classroom and notice rows upon rows of unengaged students while a professor lectures at them for two hours.

Even at elite universities with large teaching and learning centers, like University of Michigan or UCLA, the focus of the university is still not specifically on education and learning, but maximizing impact on society. And, the lack of pedagogical focus at our research institutions is glaringly obvious by the lack of professional equity teaching and teaching-focused faculty experience.

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Institutions of higher education have as a key interest (and incentive) to increase retention and graduation rates of their students. They have a key interest (and incentive) to create inclusive campus environments for their students. Yet, the mechanisms by which institutions work to achieve these outcomes are, in my opinion, misguided and yield minimal impact because the areas they focus on are not where the students are.

Recently I had the privilege to speak with Vincent Tinto who developed an influential model of student retention. The core of his framework is that for institutions to have maximum impact on students, institutions need to focus on where the students are and build up those communities. Where are the students? Where are ALL the students?

They aren’t in student clubs. They aren’t in the student union. They aren’t in their email.

They are in the classroom, with faculty.

If institutions want to have maximum impact on student outcomes, they need to focus efforts on where students ALL are – in the classroom. Put differently, the core educational experience is what is most likely to drive change for students. Change the educational experience at the institution, and the student experience and outcomes should also improve.

Why most educational interventions don’t work is because they focus on outer layers of the onion. All the emails from official offices sharing presidential perspectives on current events, campaigns about their mission and vision for the future, and communicating to students that they care. These are not bad things for the institution to do in an effort to create an inclusive and welcoming climate for their students, but the majority of students don’t notice these efforts (have you noticed how bad students are at checking email?), and therefore are unlikely to be impacted by them. Moving the needle at this outer level is hard.

Moving down a layer to “groups, clubs, and orgs” we find niche communities for students to participate and be involved with. These, like the above, are good things for a university, overall. Part of the delight of college is to be exposed to a variety of interest groups where students can find a niche with others like them. These are an important contribution to student belonging. But, as with the above, not all students engage in campus clubs or organizations – I never did! Again, the point here is impact – by focusing on increasing niche groups, we’re still missing out on large swaths of students that don’t participate because they don’t have the time, energy, or interest.

At the next layer, “specific classes and departments” we begin to see where a wider impact can be made. Dedicated teaching faculty reside here, and do departmental leaders who work to make the majors or programs within their departments feel like a broader learning community for their students. The limitation here, however, is that most students will go through their educational journey encountering just a handful of all-star faculty in the classroom. Maximum impact needs to go to the core.

The core educational experience is the powerhouse of a university, and where maximum impact can be noticed. Every student at a college or university engages with courses, so it’s imperative that every course provide an exceptional learning experience for students. Rather than small interventions (that have minimal impact, if any), change needs to be targeted at the core educational experience of the university as a whole. These won’t be interventions, but continued change to ensure that colleges and universities are dedicated to the educational experience above all else (which currently, they are not), robust, evidence-based pedagogy at all levels (we have a solid idea of what works), and proper systems in place for teaching to thrive (which is currently not the case, especially at research institutions).

Because the solution is not a simple intervention, making it happen isn’t going to be easy. There are some radical solutions that have been put forth, like those from John Warner who argues for a fully publicly-funded higher education system to re-focus institutions on education and learning (read my review and response). Others are striving to build mega-universities that show surface-level good metrics but whose teaching operations are still a black box. There may not be a single way in which higher ed can improve, but I firmly believe robust pedagogy and an unwavering focus on the learning experience is the best path forward. It remains to be seen, however, who will be able to achieve the quixotic outcomes that higher ed strives for.

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Anyone who follows me on social media knows that I love to read. I read non-fiction almost exclusively, and strive to read about diverse topics, from the hard sciences to the social sciences, education to current affairs, to history and memoirs. Most books are good, some great, and a handful are, honestly, pretty bad.

But, just because I don’t love a book, doesn’t mean it’s a bad book.

Recently, I left a written review of a book online, which read:

This is an excellent overview of human evolution. Reading it I find myself thinking it would be great for use in an undergrad human evolution course. The style of the book and writing, however, I didn’t find very enjoyable as a casual read. It’s a review book rather than a presentation of a clear original thesis. Cross between a textbook and popular book.

With it, I gave a 2-star rating.

I was a bit surprised, when a few days later, I got a seemingly not-so-happy response from the author defending their book, and ending with, “I guess it isn’t for everyone.” I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel bad. An enormous amount of work and dedication go into creating a final book, and hearing criticism of that work can be uncomfortable. But my review was honest and praised the book more than it criticized it. The negative piece of my review was that I didn’t find it enjoyable as a casual read.

This is a critical point of my review. The book delivered a certain type of experience for the reader; an experience that I wasn’t in the mood for, despite the book being “good” with regard to content and purpose.

I didn’t say the book was bad. I just didn’t enjoy it for a casual read.

This got me thinking how a five-star rating system doesn’t capture how I evaluate books very well. Books can be interesting, but not my favorite. Books can more academic, conveying high-quality research, or more casually enjoyable for a lay audience. Books can have an important thesis, yet fail to deliver on organization and prose.

A book is more than just “good” or “bad”. A book is a product, a collection of features that are delivered as a package to the reader. The content and writing are but two features of that final package.

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When I evaluate a book, I assess three general categories of information: (1) the physical book, (2) the content, and (3) the holistic product. Here’s what I look for.

The Physical Book

Evaluating the physical book is really an evaluation of the publisher given that they are the one primarily responsible for the physical book. When evaluating the book, I look at three specific aspects.

• Cover: Yes, I judge books by their cover. Not exclusively, of course. For books by authors that I am familiar with, covers play less of a role in my decision making, but when I am browsing a bookstore the cover plays a huge role in the (initial) evaluation of the book – and whether I pick it up at all! Discounting the role of a book’s cover is actually quite insulting to the artists, designers, and marketing professionals that work with publishers and authors. Covers definitely matter!

• Binding: Nearly all the books I read are recent releases and are therefore hardback books. The binding of the book is important, as I am not super delicate with my books. I backpack with them, travel with them; I read them. I want a good binding that will hold up and not break.

• Heft: The heft of the book directly impacts the reading experience, especially for large books (>400 pages). As the length of the book increases, the actual weight of the book becomes a concern. If a book is too large and the publisher doesn’t balance the weight with thinner, lighter pages, it can be uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time. On the other hand, a shorter book with thin pages and light material feels… cheap.

The Content

The content – the book’s actual words – are the meat of the book, and also the main point of writing a book. Evaluating the content is primarily a reflection of the author, but the editor plays a key role here too, as it is their job to help develop the contents of the book and support the authors. Here’s what I look for when evaluating content.

• Book Organization: How the book is organized is an important feature I assess when I first open a book. My eyes first go to the table of contents to evaluate how the book is set up. I first want to know how long the average chapter is. Why? Because it directly impacts my reading approach to the book. I’ve found that I prefer books with chapters that are about 20 pages long. Chapters that are shorter don’t impact my experience as much as chapters that are longer. Twenty-page chapters are easily digestible in one sitting and reduce the likelihood that I’ll have to break partway through a chapter, which I find annoying. When I open a book and see chapters that are 50+ pages, I find myself suspecting that the flow is mediocre and the chapters are unfocused.

• Thesis: This may be the whole point of an author writing a book: what’s your point? A whole book should deliver on a key point, a thesis, that can be stated in a tweet size statement. If there is a not a clear thesis, the book becomes essentially a lengthy review, which may be useful and appropriate in some contexts (e.g., history or memoirs), but usually not good when it comes to science books in particular (see my review above).

• Writing Style: There is a difference between academic writing and popular writing, and most non-fiction books I read fall somewhere on this continuum. And my preference typically errs on the side of popular writing because it’s more enjoyable as a casual read in the evening (when I do most of my reading), but becomes more essential as I read books increasingly outside my domain expertise area.

The Holistic Product

When I click the stars on Goodreads, I am making a quick calculation on how all above points balance out, and how I feel about the book in a more holistic manner, based on the points below. If I have more to say about a book, then I elaborate in the written review about some of these key features. When evaluating the whole book, I look at the following points.

• How it Delivers: How a book delivers is a culmination of the six domains above, asking myself to assess the quality of the book as a holistic product. I can certainly love and hate particular aspects of a book, such as a good thesis, a beautiful cover, or great writing, but books are sold as whole units, and my overall ‘delivery’ assessment treats it as such.

• My Expectations:  What do I want when I sit down to read a book? No longer a traditional academic, I read largely for pleasure and to learn about new perspectives on interesting topics. This means that dense academic-style books are less enjoyable to read on the couch in the evening than they were when I was still a graduate student. I prefer more casual writing, especially as I expand my reading horizons. Some books I expect to be dense, whereas others I expect to present a provocative thesis, and others I expect to be punchy short takes on a topic. My expectations are made by evaluating the superficial aspects of the book: the title, the jacket summary, and the author. The alignment of the book to my expectations matters. The greater the discrepancy, (usually) the lower the rating.

• Interest and Value Add: How interesting I find a book is one of the most heavily weighted aspects I use to form a rating – and one that is highly subjective! My interest in a book is somewhat related to my pre-existing knowledge on the subject. Because I spent years studying human evolution, my threshold for a human evolution book being deemed “very interesting” is higher than for topics I know relatively little about. This says little about the objective quality of a book though! I want to learn new things and be exposed to different perspectives when I read. The more interesting the book is, the more I want to recommend it and rate it. In fact, each year I share the most interesting books I read that year (see 2019 and 2020), indicative to how much this subjective assessment impacts my star ratings of books online.

There are so many ways to evaluate a book. There are objective aspects that all good books share – good writing, organization, and a well-produced product. But there are many reasons for why I might rate a book “poorly” – most of which are heavily influenced by subjective assessments. Hopefully this piece explains why my 2-star rating doesn’t mean your book is bad.

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Humans’ capacity for social learning is unmatched: we excel at imitating others from a young age, innovating from peers, and teaching others what we’ve learned. In essence, learning is a social process because humans evolved to be an intensely social species, driven by our extraordinary capacity for cooperation.

As online learning becomes increasingly normative, the ability to scale becomes the primary focus of educational institutions; and the best way to scale education is to utilize the proliferation of education technologies that are flooding the market. The logic is straightforward: if aspects of the teaching and learning process can be automated or facilitated with tech, then less expensive human labor is needed and education can more easily scale.

Near universal remote learning over the previous year, however, has revealed a fundamental limitation to online and remote learning: students are missing the social experience of education. Surveys of college students show that 58% of students report that feeling lonely or isolated has been challenging during the fall 2020 semester; 84% of students report that socializing with friends is what they missed most about college; and, 71% of students miss attending events on and off campus.

The importance of social experiences for students extends beyond quintessential campus events though: research continues to demonstrate the important role of the “human factor” in learning processes as well. Students generally learn better when instructors are present in online instructional content, and online learning content is more effective at boosting learning outcomes when it supplements human instruction, rather than replaces it.

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Teachers aren’t the only human factor in learning: peers matter for learning, too! Informal friendship networks, like those that are formed on traditional college campuses through social events, are productive means for academic achievement to spread. And even being randomly assigned to study cohorts with highly persistent peers boots student’s grades. In essence, a social campus is good for student learning.

Humans are built to learn, and specifically to learn socially. As edtech becomes increasingly integrated into our educational ecosystem, it is necessary to remember that student isolation from social networks, which are strongly tied to academic communities and college campuses, may be having a negative impact on the spread of complex behaviors related to educational achievement, such as studying.

A ripe new problem surfaced from pandemic-era education is: how can edtech enhance the social learning processes that are fundamental to our human experience? Some young edtech companies are tackling this pressing problem head on.

Nearpeer, a new social networking app for students, focuses on connecting students who share similar interests to facilitate forming authentic friendships and creating belonging within the campus community. Another edtech company, InScribe, is a flexible web-based community that meets the needs of students by organically creating customized content and promoting peer-learning and belonging.

These social-focused products hit at the heart of a growing edtech problem highlighted by Justin Reich in his timely book, Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education. In his book, Reich argues that edtech has inherent limits that inhibit its impact to disrupt education. Rather than relying on edtech to change the education ecosystem, we need to build communities that consistently push to move education in transformative directions.

At the core of learning is our social experience. And the fundamental nature of this social experience is not only limited to student learning but expands across our entire educational ecosystem. Students need peers, dedicated faculty, and support staff to excel. But faculty and staff also need to supportive communities dedicated to student success to thrive and drive change in higher education.

The continuing growth of the edtech sectors shows no signs of slowing down. As the sector continues to grow, and institutions continue to focus on scalable edtech solutions, we shouldn’t lose sight of what makes us human – our sociality. Keeping sociality at the forefront of edtech development will yield benefits not only for students, but for our educational communities more broadly.

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The past decade has been hard on the social sciences, with psychology predominantly in the spotlight for their replication crisis that became mainstream news in 2015. Although psychology has taken the brunt of public criticism – while also taking the lead on field-wide reforms with the open science movement – other social science disciplines are also beginning to take a hard look in the mirror to evaluate the state of their field.

The blame for the replication crisis in psychology and more broadly the social sciences has fallen largely on methodological practices (with some recent focus on theoretical problems too). Social science research can get messy because there are no hard rules for how to design studies, measure variables, or analyze data. Because there are no hard rules, there are a considerable number of decisions that can be made throughout the research process that can impact the results of the study, or what are sometimes referred to as “researcher degrees of freedom”.

In addition to the endless decision tree across the research process, there are systemic issues across the sciences and academia that incentivize the “wrong” things in science, such as publication quantity and positive results bias in publishing, that to some extent drive the use of methodological practices that fall into “gray areas” of social norms. These practices, now commonly referred to as “questionable research practices” (QRPs), include omitting non-significant variables form analyses or non-significant studies from papers, peeking at data during data collection, post-hoc hypothesizing of results. Using a combination of these types of practices can nearly guarantee a researcher a positive result that is more likely to be published in scholarly journals.

Since the impact of these methodological problems on the scientific knowledge base has become well-known, an open science movement has taken hold of the social sciences. Open science practices, such as preregistering hypotheses, sharing materials, incentivizing replication research, and posting pre-prints, have quickly become normative. It is the hope that such open and transparent practices (practices that fields like physics have used for decades) will increase the reliability and credibility of the social sciences.

The changes over the past decade have also resulted in an increase of research that is focused on research, referred to as “meta-science”. Meta-science focuses on researching the research and researchers to evaluate the state of the field and changes in social norms.

A new study in Educational Researcher has for the first time evaluated the prevalence of QRPs in the education research field. Education research, like psychology research, faces a number of problems including small effect sizes, low power and, as a new study shows, the use of QRPs.

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Makel and colleagues surveyed authors of articles in leading education research journals that were published in the last decade. After sending more than 14,000 emails to authors, a total of 1,488 researchers responded to the survey. The survey aimed to evaluate how often authors reported using QRPs themselves, their estimates of the prevalence of QRPs within their field, and whether each QRP was acceptable to ever use. The authors also evaluated the prevalence and use of new open science practices as a way to gauge how the methodological reform movement is progressing in education research.

The table below summarizes the main results. I have the “abbreviated” QRP label highlighted to make it easier to see (for those unfamiliar with specific QRPs check out the “Item Stem” column to the left for a description). The three columns of percentages beginning to the right of the highlighted QRP corresponds to survey respondents’ average estimate of how prevalent they believe these practices to be in their field, the percent of respondents that reported ever engaging in the practice at least once, and the percent of respondents that say the practice should never be used.

The results are a bit uninspiring, yet useful baseline data needed to advance change in the field. Overall, the estimated prevalence suggests that use of QRPs are pretty common in the education research field, especially practices such as omitting variables, analyses, and/or whole studies from publications (also referred to as “selective reporting”). Other QRPs were estimated to be lower in prevalence, such as filling in missing data without sharing the methods, data peeking, and data exclusion to achieve statistical significance.

(Un)interestingly, respondents on average reported engaging in most QRPs less often than they think their colleagues do. In other words, everyone is above average in research integrity! The notable exceptions to this are selective reporting of analyses, variables, and studies, which until recently were highly accepted and normative practices in science publishing; and “analysis gaming” whereby researchers change analyses to more favorably or accurately describe the data.

Finally, the results pertaining to the percentage of respondents that indicate such QRPs should never be used demonstrate why QRPs are called what they are – questionable – because there is no clear consensus on what practices are always bad! Social science, remember, doesn’t have hard rules for how to conduct research and analyze data so there are many situations where there are valid reasons to change an analysis plan, or omit variables, for instance.

The results of this survey do show promising results about open science practices. Open science practices are quite common, even if QRPs are, too! And importantly, only a small number of respondents think that open science practices should “never be used”. Why that is the case, I have no idea, but the authors note in their paper that they have another manuscript forthcoming in which they report respondents’ open-ended explanations as to why they think such practices should never be used.

It should be noted, however, that the sample here is self-selected from the education researcher population, so it’s not entirely clear if prevalence estimates truly reflect the state of the field, or may be over- or under-reporting what is truly happening.

This type of meta-research is important for fields to evaluate change in social norms and methodological practices over time. It also shows that education research is, in fact, a social science discipline with similar problems and practices as other fields, like psychology.

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Institutions of higher education have been evolving since Harvard College was founded in 1636. From small colonial colleges to elite private schools and large public research institutions, higher education is continually growing and becoming more complex to meet the variety of needs in our society.

But what does the future look like? Maybe it looks like Arizona State University (ASU): the self-proclaimed “New American University.” In The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education, ASU President Michael Crow and historian William Dabars document the rise of ASU within the context of four previous “waves” of higher education evolution. They argue that ASU is the “fifth wave” of institution types and serves as the prototype for the future.

Think of this fifth wave as a mash up of all the best features of other institution types: the academic excellence of the Ivy League, the innovation of UCLA, and the online scale of Western Governors University. But what does this look like in action?

Here are three key characteristics that, when combined, define ASU as the prototype of the next generation of American universities (information below sourced from The Fifth Wave).

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1. World Class Research and Innovation

Although ASU is one of the youngest research-extensive universities in the country, it has hundreds of millions of dollars a year in research expenditures and is the fastest-growing research enterprise in the United States. ASU also holds the title of most innovative university (ahead of MIT even!) from the US News University Rankings.

ASU does research differently than other major research universities in two ways. First, ASU focuses on transdisciplinary problem-solving as opposed to dated departments organized by field of study and focused on individual faculty research programs. ASU, rather, develops research centers, institutes, and schools that are focused on solving societal problems by combining faculty of all fields and expertise to drive innovation and collaboration at an accelerated pace.

Second, ASU takes what they call an “entrepreneurial” approach, forming extensive partnerships outside the university with different companies and businesses, such as a recently announced innovation center with Starbucks. These partnerships more closely connect the university with the needs of society to ensure student preparedness and drive innovation into needed areas.

2. Scale and Accessibility

ASU believes that a research grade education should be accessible to any qualified student. Where ASU differentiates itself from other leading research institutions like University of Michigan or UCLA is that it admits far more students and a far more heterogenous set of students. Research institutions are increasingly known for the exclusivity – how many students they reject. ASU, rather, aims to be known for inclusivity – how many students they accept.

American research institutions educate approximately the top 10% of college-eligible students, with those numbers becoming more and more constrained as admissions competition becomes increasingly intense. ASU aims to educate the top 25-35% of students, greatly increasing the availability of a research-grade education.

ASU also has an extensive and growing online educational arm to rival the major online university giants. Combining their campus and online programs, ASU aims to enroll over 125,000 students by 2025 putting ASU among the largest – and potentially the largest – university in the country.

3. Academic Excellence

Although excellence is typically associated with exclusivity, ASU believes that excellence is a correlate of diversity – and are proving it. Over the last 20 years, ASU has increased their racial and ethnic diversity among their undergraduates by over 300%, significantly increased the proportion of Pell eligible students by nearly 300%, and have tripled their first-generation enrollment. During this same period, ASU’s 6-year graduation rate for undergraduates increased to 70.7%.

Across the higher education sector, ‘excellence’ is thought to be a function of the highly selective admissions process, which is certainly true to an extent. Although ASU still has correlates of family income and high school grades that are associated with academic performance, ASU demonstrates that a research-grade education can be accessible and scalable, and produce graduation rates on par with top institutions like The Ohio State University.

The Fifth Wave demonstrates the unique mash-up of qualities that make up ASU. I’ve had my eye on ASU since graduate school because of their dominance at academic conferences, though I had no idea at the scale at which the university operates and the rate of innovation that is taking place.

But after reading, I still have one lingering question about ASU. Crow and Dabars write extensively about the “realms” of teaching delivery at ASU – from traditional classroom learning to fully online programming – yet they fail to explain how these modes look in practice, and how these modes have related to their increase in retention and graduation rates over time.

I’ve been working in the online learning space professionally for year and a half. Online learning has been around for decades with predictable and repeated limitations. Yet, The Fifth Wave failed to explain how their model, particularly their online model, differs from the inherent limitations the plague other scaled online delivery – and with results like theirs, I want to know how they do online learning differently.

The picture painted of ASU is optimistic, though it should be noted that the author is the president of ASU, so the picture is bound to be positive. It’s clear though that ASU is doing things differently, experimenting, and pushing through to the next stage of higher education’s evolution. The future may certainly look like ASU, and I’m interested to see the possible future where research, teaching, and accessibility aren’t trade-offs but a holistic package that makes education better.

What do you think?

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Most PhD students in the social sciences enter their program with the intention of doing research by way of landing a post-doc role and then an assistant professor role at a university. But, the academic job market is tanking and it’s unlikely to get better anytime soon.

So, you’re finishing your PhD (or have students that are). Now what?

Now, you must get a job. A job out in the “real world” where you have no direct experience. You’re going to begin a new and uncertain career path, learn a new job language, and work with a more diverse group of colleagues than you ever have before.

This is a major challenge for fresh PhDs to navigate. I landed my current job as a Research Scientist in December 2019. I’ve previously written about advice for PhDs and my experience as an EdTech researcher. Now that I’ve been post-PhD for almost a year and half, I want to share more about my experience. Whereas my first column focused on advice for navigating the job market, this list focuses on advice for PhDs once in their new career.

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1. Get things done

This may seem like an obvious piece of advice, but you really need to actually get things done. When we were in graduate school, we certainly finished research projects over the course of several years, but your new role is almost certainly going to comprise of more than just doing research projects. If you land in a research role, research projects still take as much time as they’re going to take (but you’ll be pushed for them to get done fast), but all the other stuff you’re responsible needs to get done, and in a much timelier fashion than you may be accustomed to in graduate school.

Meetings are a normal part of your workday, and at these meetings you’re expected to have progress to share, deliverables to. . . deliver, and action items to complete for the next time you meet. Email isn’t your main mode of communication anymore, and taking weeks to decide on an action or months to complete a document is unlikely to cut it in most roles. You need to focus on getting things done.

2. Make decisions

As a PhD student, you are used to having a person – your advisor – to run major decisions past. In your role, you will likely have a manager or director to look to for guidance, but they don’t need to check over every decision you make: you need to make decisions. Sometimes big decisions. Remember: you have a PhD. You’re not (or shouldn’t be) in an entry-level position, and this means there is a certain level of trust in you, and an expectation of you, to do the job you have been hired for. After your initial learning curve on the new job (first few months) you should feel confident and able to make decisions within the scope of your role. The best piece of advice I’ve received from my director: “default to action.” Do things. Make decisions. Push things forward.

3. Let others do their jobs

Remember the crushing weight of having to do everything yourself? When I was a student, I was responsible for all aspects of my research projects: conceptualization, design, IRB, analysis, writing, publication, presentation, etc. Our dissertations we do to earn our doctorate literally depend upon our ability to do everything ourselves. We are quite literally trained to do everything. This is a hard mode of work to shift out of, and is something I still work on.

A colleague of mine told me early on after I started my role, “you are accountable for things getting done, but that doesn’t mean that you’re responsible for doing everything.” This is spot on advice. You need to let your colleagues do their jobs. You are part of a bigger and more diverse team now, and you no longer responsible for every aspect of every project.

4. Trust others to do their jobs

Is this the same as number 3? No, not really. Now that you’re getting comfortable with letting others do their jobs and not feeling the need to take on all the responsibility yourself, you now need to trust your colleagues to do their job. Even if you’re in a research role, there are most likely many other types of professionals and teams you’re working with (i.e., “cross-functional teams”). This means that there are many other experts in their respective fields. This takes time to get used to because in our PhD, we’re surrounded by other scientists in our field nearly all the time. But now there are UX researchers, content creators, marketing professions, business professionals, engineers, policy experts, program managers that you may work with – and remember that you are not and expert in their field. This means they probably know how to do their job better than you know how to do their job. You may not understand their job and their knowledge base, but you should default to trust others to do their job.

5. Get organized

The main difference between doing research as a PhD and as a professional researcher isn’t the research itself, but rather the fact that there is just a bunch of other stuff happening around the research you’re doing. You have a lot more things to keep track of, including how your research fits within the broader organization’s mission and business goals.

Organization is a great strength of many PhDs as we’re used to juggling our own courses and training, research, teaching, lab management, and other lab needs. If you’re someone with strengths in organization – which translate well into project management – use these to your advantage. Great organization is a highly valued skill, though one that is hard to convey on a resume, so it’s something you can really shine on once you’ve started your role.

6. Keep writing

Writing, especially technical writing, is something that we develop and excel at during our PhD training through writing publications, term papers, presentations, etc. Most jobs require “excellent oral and written presentation skills” and this is a skill in which you should excel at. In my opinion, PhDs are extremely well positioned relative to others to begin their career doing well with written communications and oral presentations. Your role is likely to involve regular writing and frequent presentations, with the difference being that these communications are primarily internal rather than external facing.

A positive to moving out of formal academy research is that journal publications are not your primary outputs and currency for career advancement anymore, although they may certainly be a factor. The benefit, however, is that your writing can now be less. . . rigid, and therefore, more fun to do! So keep writing, and expand the types of writing you do. Since graduating I still write a lot, maybe even more than before, but the majority is not for formal publications.

7. Gain confidence in your strengths

Remember points 3 and 4? In the “real world” you work with diverse, cross-functional teams – you are not expected to know everything and excel at everything. Although as researchers we all share to some degree a broad set of skills – being an expert in a specific niche area, a great teacher, mentor, researcher, statistician, and more – we are not all equally excellent at all of these things, and that is okay! The great benefit of working with people of all sorts of professional backgrounds is that there are plenty of roles in which you can use your strengths to benefit your team and company.

Figure out what things you excel at and focus your career development to highlight those skills. Some of us are proficient coders and statisticians, some of us are proficient project managers, and others still are skilled and developing programmatic strategy, or content creation. There are places in the “real world” for all these types of researchers and scientists. And, even if you don’t want a lifelong research career, you can prioritize and flex your skillset in non-research roles as well! There are lots of things to do with your career. You just need to figure out what it is you want to do next (see next point).

8. Facing career uncertainty

The blessing of the tenure-track is that you know exactly what your career path looks like and what the next role is. The career track is intensely linear. Outside the academy: very, very not linear. Quite literally everyone’s career path can look wildly different. And, you may have no idea what your next step is or what the long-term future of your career holds for you. Everyone around you will tell you that it’s okay and totally normal, and that you’ll figure it out when the next opportunity presents itself. And this is all probably true.

But this can also be very hard. I, for example, am someone who likes to have a goal and understand how the work that I am doing helps me advance to the next step I have for myself. Not knowing what my career looks like long term can be hard, but it’s a result of there being so many possible paths to take – opportunity and variety that the tenure track doesn’t offer to the same degree. I’m still in my first role post-PhD, so I don’t have many answers here, but it’s definitely an aspect that others may struggle with, too, after launching their career.

9. Embrace your whole life

Academics are known for overworking, burnout, and so thoroughly blurring the lines between work and personal life that they become a singular identity. You can certainly do the same in your post-PhD career (I still maintain too many extra roles and responsibilities outside of my job!), but you definitely don’t have to – and you honestly shouldn’t! Weekends, vacation time, holidays where your colleagues aren’t in their office, company events, respect for work hours are all things that are normal. At first it almost feels as if you’re not working enough, but in time you’ll get used to normal work hours and find that you have time to live your life, try new hobbies, read books for fun, cook, or do anything else you want to do that isn’t work! Embrace it. Enjoy it. And Live.

It’s worth it.

10. Let go of academia (at least a little bit)

I’m still working on this one. After three years on the academic job market, it’s just unlikely to happen, especially since I love where I live and don’t think a professor job is worth moving to a random city (see point 9). But letting go is hard. After a decade in school to get a specific job in a tanking job market, it can be a challenge to switch gears and figure out a whole new plan (see point 8). To be fair, I still have a foot in academia: I adjunct on the side and I serve on the board of my favorite scientific society. But, I am slowly letting things about academia go. I no longer stress about publications and CV lines, I have asked for more extensions on R&Rs for my few last(?) publications than I ever did in graduate school, and my identity is no longer tightly tethered to my academic work. It’s simultaneously liberating and overwhelming. It’s okay if this takes time, and you can keep your foot in the ivory tower – but don’t be limited by it.

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BONUS: Give back

The problem that PhD students have when navigating career options outside the professoriate is that they are surrounded, advised, and mentored by. . . professors. Not all programs or universities have extensive career resources for PhD students, and many may not know where to start when inside their ivory tower bubble. So, if you successfully navigated this terrain, give back. Speak at events for graduate students, agree to 30-minute calls with students who want advice, write about your experience, send jobs to your friends, review resumes, etc. There are many PhDs that have careers helping other PhDs, such as Chris Cornthwaite and Jen Polk that I follow online – these are people that I found really helped me remain optimistic on the roller coaster ride that was (and sometimes still is) the transition from PhD student to professional.

The “altac” track for (social science) PhDs will increasingly become more normal, but PhD students will continue to be mentored by professors. If you’re a student, reach out to those that have jobs outside the professoriate and ask questions. If you’re a professor, seek out professionals to supplement your training of PhDs to prepare them for a variety of career options.

There is no single right way to have a career outside the professoriate.

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Psychology, the study of human cognition and behavior, is of at least some interest to nearly everyone, especially college students. Psychology is one of the most popular majors on college campuses today, making Introduction to Psychology one of the most popular courses college students take.

I’ve taught Introduction to Psychology at three different colleges and universities, but each class is nearly the same: each institution has required a standard publisher-issued textbook with the same set of chapters with the same information and standardized exams that constrain instructor creativity.

My courses have liberally deviated from the content contained in these books as much as possible, and at the end of lectures I like to recommend popular books to students that, unlike the standardized textbook provided, might actually get them interested in the study of psychology.

What could intro psychology look like in popular books? Check out my list below to learn a new introduction to psychology.

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Chapter 1: Introduction and History of Psychology

Learn about how the brain has been thought about across history, and the impact that has had on research and scholarship. Learn the characteristics of WEIRD people, why such changes occurred over time, and what impact WEIRD psychology has on our understanding of human psychology.

Required Reading:

The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience by Matthew Cobb

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich

Chapter 2: Psychological Science Methods

Learn about what contributes to the production of bad science, false positives, and replication failures, in addition to an introduction of how statistics and data can be used to warp your perception of research – and how to spot such tricks for yourself!

Required Reading:

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Richie

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West

Chapter 3: The Nervous System

Learn about what the cutting-edge of neuroscience and genetics can teach us about what makes us who we are, and understand how noise and randomness in our brain development contribute to individual differences, psychopathology, and more.

Required Reading:

Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are by Kevin Mitchell

Chapter 4: Sensation and Perception

Learn about neuroscience by taking a journey from the smallest neurotransmitter to our deep evolutionary past, and understand how our brains sense and perceive our environment to produce our behavior.

Required Reading:

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky

Chapter 5: Learning and Memory

Learn about the world’s most extraordinary learning machine: the human brain. This book will explain the four pillars of learning and their applications from classrooms to artificial intelligence.

Required Reading:

How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now by Stanislas Dehaene

Chapter 6: Cognition and Thinking

Learn about experience through the eyes of animals wildly different than you, and think about what intelligence means for different animals. Then learn about the specifics of evolutionary cognition and how such mental adaptations have evolved.

Required Reading:

The Shape of Thought: How Mental Adaptations Evolve by H. Clark Barrett

Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Chapter 7: Human Development

Learn about the resilience of child development and how parents can cultivate environments to promote the full potential of their children. Then, learn about middle adulthood development and, in particular, how our parenting and mating systems have impacted women’s evolution.

Required Reading:

The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children by Alison Gopnik

The Slow Moon Climbs: The Science, History, and Meaning of Menopause by Susan Mattern

Chapter 8: Personality

Learn about why children turn out the way they do, the role of peers and parents in personality development, and what behavior genetics research has to say about our individuality.

Required Reading:

No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality by Judith Rich Harris

Chapter 9: Emotions

Learn about emotions from a comparative perspective, with exciting research from a variety of animal species. It’s not only humans that have rich emotional lives – animals are more like us than you may realize.

Required Reading:

Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves by Frans de Waal

Chapter 10: Consciousness

Learn about the implications of our own awareness of our being, with an accessible overview of consciousness, working through what it means, various philosophies, and exciting hypotheses.

Required Reading:

Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Annaka Harris

Chapter 11: Social Psychology

Learn about how humans have evolved over time to be an ultra-cooperative and social species, and how these social foundations have resulted in the societies we know today, and may have led to the self-domestication of our species.

Required Reading:

Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society by Nicholas Christakis

The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution by Richard Wrangham

Chapter 12: Health Psychology

Learn about humans transition to bipedalism, what our bodies have evolved to physically do, why such activity and movement matter for our health, and the consequences of modernity and sedentary lives on our health and longevity.

Required Reading:

Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding by Daniel Liberman

Chapter 13: Human Sexuality

Learn about the fundamental nature of human sexual reproduction, why it’s important, and the downstream consequences for social behavior between men and women. Sex matters for more than just reproduction – find out why.

Required Reading:

Why Sex Matters: A Darwinian Look at Human Behavior by Bobbi Low

Chapter 14: Abnormal Psychology

Learn about the true frontier of psychopathology with a new evolutionary perspective on common mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. Ditching the categorical checklist model of psychopathology, evolutionary perspectives offer a new and more actionable framework for why we experience maladaptive mental states.

Required Reading:

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry by Randolph Nessee

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