Alternative Academics: Moving beyond the Academy

Every year hundreds of newly minted archaeology PhDs enter the job market worldwide in search of a post-doc or tenure-track job that will take them to the next level of their career. They scour the job boards, wikis, listservs, and their personal networks for any postings to which they can apply, hopeful that this year’s search yields a greater number of opportunities. But there is a growing problem in academia; as our institutions churn out an increasing number of scholars, they continue to reduce the number of tenured faculty hired. Tenure-track jobs, especially in archaeology, are becoming increasingly scarce and post-docs are few and far between. There are other considerations at stake, however, when contemplating pursuing an academic career. For some, a life in academia is no longer appealing, while others are limited in their ability to move across the country for work because of children, family, or dependent adults. In other cases, the structure of an academic lifestyle is no longer suitable or more financial stability is required, a problem facing many adjunct professors.¹

The decline in traditional academic careers for those with PhDs in archaeology, that is, careers in academia, museums, and research institutions, has led new graduates and established scholars alike to pursue so-called alternative academic (alt-ac) careers. The rise of alt-ac careers is part of a larger trend that reaches beyond the field of archaeology² as academia in general struggles to adjust to the changing social and economic climate; however, we will focus here in particular on the situation of recent PhD graduates in archaeology and related fields (e.g., classics, religious studies, Near Eastern studies) and the suitability of archaeology PhDs to alt-ac careers.

Framing the Discussion: Alt-Ac versus Post-Ac

Alternative academic careers or alt-ac is a neologism that denotes a broad range of humanities-oriented professions typically associated with academic institutions, which are not faculty positions but nonetheless often require advanced degrees (Nowviskie 2010: 7). The alt-ac movement, as we know it today, has its origins in Twitter and resulted from a conversation about the need to reframe the discussion of “non-academic” jobs (Nowviskie 2013). The resulting hashtag (originally #alt-ac, now #altac) sparked a movement in which academics working in non-tenured positions could bring visibility to careers outside of academia and share information with others working in or contemplating alternate career paths within academia. Moreover, the movement has disrupted the binary thinking in academia, creating a discourse in which alternative academic careers are no longer considered a “Plan B,” but rather a viable, rewarding, and meaningful alternative to traditional academic positions. These careers still afford scholars the opportunity to put their rich academic training to good use, while maintaining active research and publication profiles, which allows them to apply their methodological and theoretical training to issues within the humanities (Nowviskie 2010: 7–8). Such positions include, but are not limited to, digital humanities, curriculum development, libraries, university administration, and academic advising.

Since the scope of the movement is largely limited to careers in and around the Academy, a separate (but related) discourse arose to encompass the broader array of jobs available to academics, which are outside of academia. In order to differentiate themselves from their counterparts within academia, this movement adopted the term “post-academic” (or #postac).³ The “post-ac” community is one of active disenfranchisement with academia (Bell and Nervosa 2013). It is a discourse that actively encourages academics to leave the institution, citing the unsustainable nature of the current system churning out graduate students at an unprecedented rate, for whom the possibilities of an academic position are almost non-existent. “Post-ac” is a state of mind, encouraging those with advanced degrees to separate themselves from their academic identities, regardless of their vocation following graduation. It is in this manner that they differentiate themselves from the alt-ac movement, whereby, an individual working in an academic institution can thus still consider him- or herself a part of the post-ac community. The resulting effort is a dialogue that...