ON a recent Sunday afternoon, a monthly meeting convened around a long table in a Whole Foods cafeteria on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As people settled in, the organizer plopped down a bag of potato chips and tackled housekeeping matters, like soliciting contributions. But she did not insist. "I know that some of you are in fragile situations," she said.
最近一个星期天下午，在曼哈顿上西城一家全食餐厅(Whole Foods)的长桌旁，一场月度会议如期举行。待所有人坐定后，组织者拿出一袋薯片放在桌子上，随即开始处理内部事务，比如募集捐款，但她并没有执意要求。“我知道你们有些人的处境不太好，”她说。
One attendee recalled scraping by on $9,000 a year. "I was exhausted by years of living in poverty," she said. Her neighbor chimed in: "Amen, sister."
一位与会者回忆说，有一年她的年收入只有9000美元，日子过得很苦。“多年的贫困生活让我精疲力竭，”她说。她的邻座插话说：“阿门，我的姊妹。”
An eavesdropper might have been surprised to learn what the group had in common: formidable academic credentials. Sitting at the table were a historian, a sociologist, a linguist and a dozen other scholars. Most held doctorates; a few were either close to completion or had left before finishing. All had toiled for years in graduate school but, by choice or circumstance, almost none had arrived at the promised destination of tenure-track professorships (the one who had was thinking of leaving). Now they found themselves at a gathering of a group called Versatile Ph.D. to support their pursuit of nontraditional careers.
如果碰巧偷听到他们的谈话，或许你会惊讶万分地获悉这群人有一个共同点：令人敬畏的学术造诣。围坐在桌子四周的，是一位历史学家、一位社会学家、一位语言学家和十几位其他领域的学者。大多数人拥有博士学位，还有几位或即将完成，或中途放弃。所有人都在研究生院苦读多年，但要么是出于个人选择，要么是因为客观环境，几乎所有人都未获得他们孜孜以求的终身教授席位，一位获得教职的幸运儿也萌生退意。现在，一个名叫“多面手博士”(Versatile Ph.D.)，旨在支持博士生寻求非传统职业的团体让这些博士生齐聚一堂。
After a round of introductions, the participants broke into clusters to swap stories and tips. A 32-year-old man who had studied ancient religion at Princeton wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of his employer, a finance website; he talked up his job to a physicist who was finalizing her thesis. The historian, a teacher at an elite private school, advised a recent American studies Ph.D. on where to find job postings and how to package himself. That young Ph.D., Adam Capitanio, who completed his degree in 2012, had looked for an academic position for three years, focusing his search on the Northeast and applying for at least 60 jobs. He hadn't received a single interview. Now he was working as an editorial associate at an academic publisher, trying to devise a long-term plan. "Things were kind of desperate before I had that job," he said. "This gives me some flexibility to figure out what I actually want to do."
一轮自我介绍结束后，与会者三三两两地聚拢在一起，互相交流求职故事和技巧。一位曾在普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)研究古代宗教的32岁男士，身穿一件印有其雇主（一家财经网站）名称的T恤衫；他向一位即将完成论文的女物理学家宣扬这份工作的种种好处。目前在一家私立名校任教的历史学家，给一位最近获得美国研究学位的博士提供在哪里寻找招聘广告、如何包装自己的建议。这位毕业于2012年的年轻博士名叫亚当·卡皮塔尼奥(Adam Capitanio)，近三年来一直在美国东北部寻找学术性工作，他至少已经申请了60份工作，但连一个面试机会都没有争取到。卡皮塔尼奥目前在一家学术性出版机构当助理编辑，正尝试着制定一项长期计划。“在获得这份工作前，我几乎快绝望了，”他说，“这份工作具有一定的灵活性，让我有时间弄清楚自己真正想做什么事情。”
Dr. Capitanio's experience is far from unusual. According to a 2011 National Science Foundation survey, 35 percent of doctorate recipients — and 43 percent of those in the humanities — had no commitment for employment at the time of completion. Fewer than half of Ph.D.'s are expected to land tenure-track jobs. And many voluntarily choose another path because they want higher pay or more direct engagement with the world than monographs and tenure committees seem to allow.
卡皮塔尼奥博士的经历绝非特例。根据美国国家科学基金会(National Science Foundation)2011年的一项调查，35%的博士学位获得者——43%的人文学科博士——在完成学业时没有签下就业意向书。有望走上追求终身教职这条路的博士预期不到一半。许多人自愿选择另一条路径，因为他们希望获得更高的薪水，更直接地接触世界，而这些东西似乎是撰写专著和终身教职委员会所不能给予的。

Though graduates have faced similar conditions for decades, the past few years have seen a surge in efforts to connect Ph.D.'s with gratifying employment outside academia and even to rethink the purpose of doctoral education. "The issue itself is not a new issue," said Debra Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. "The response, I would say, is definitely new."
尽管博士毕业生数十年来一直面临类似的就业形势，但在过去几年，越来越多的人尝试着把博士学位和令人满意的非学术性工作挂起钩来，甚至开始反思博士生教育的目的。“这个问题本身不那么新鲜，”研究生院理事会(Council of Graduate Schools)会长黛布拉·斯图尔特(Debra Stewart)说。“但我想说，出现现在这种反应肯定是前所未有的。”
In addition to New York, Versatile Ph.D. groups have formed in at least seven other cities, including Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles. Abundant online resources help Ph.D.'s turn curricula vitae into résumés and market their skills to nonacademic employers. And former academics can find kindred souls at blogs like "Chronicles of a Recovering Academic" and "Dr. Outta Here" (obscenity alert).
除纽约以外，包括费城、芝加哥和洛杉矶在内的其他7个城市也组建了多面手博士小组。丰富的在线资源帮助博士们把他们的学术资历转化为个人履历，然后向非学术类雇主推销自己的技能。这些曾经的学者可以在《学术复苏编年史》(Chronicles of a Recovering Academic)和《前博士汇聚地》（Dr. Outta Here，需警惕淫秽内容）等博客上找到同道中人。
The spirit of change has even begun to take root inside the ivory tower. The University of California, Berkeley, held a "Beyond Academia" conference last spring, hosting Ph.D. speakers who have succeeded in other domains, from consulting to biotech. Similar events are planned at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, which established its new Office of Career Planning and Professional Development in February.
变革的精神甚至已经开始在象牙塔内部扎根。加州大学伯克利分校(The University of California, Berkeley)去年春天举办了一个名为“超越学术界”的会议，邀请从咨询到生物技术等各类领域获得成功的博士发表主题演讲。纽约市立大学(City University of New York)研究生中心也计划举办类似活动，该中心于今年2月份成立了一个职业规划和专业发展办公室。
The problem is especially urgent in the humanities. For Ph.D.'s in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), industry has long been a viable option. But students who study, say, Russian literature or medieval history have few obvious alternative careers in their fields. They confront questions about their relevance even inside the academy, let alone outside it.
在人文学科，这一问题尤为迫切。对于STEM学科（科学、技术、工程和数学）的博士生来说，产业界早已是一个可行的就业选择。但研究俄罗斯文学或中世纪历史的学生在其专业领域并没有多少显见的职业选项。甚至在大学校园内部，他们也经常面对各种质疑其专业意义的问题，更遑论校园以外了。
In August, the Scholarly Communication Institute released a report titled "Humanities Unbound: Supporting Careers and Scholarship Beyond the Tenure Track." In it, Katina Rogers, the lead researcher, discusses the nascent concept of alternative academic, or alt-ac, professions. The term has gained widespread currency (and its own Twitter hashtag) and can refer to jobs within universities but outside the professoriate, like administrator or librarian, as well as nonacademic roles like government-employed historian and museum curator.
8月份，学术交流研究所(Scholarly Communication Institute)发布了一份题为《脱离束缚的人文学科：支持终身教职之外的职业生涯和学术研究》的报告。首席研究员卡蒂娜·罗杰斯(Katina Rogers)在这份报告中探讨了一个方兴未艾的概念——学术替代性职业(alt-ac)。这一术语及其Twitter话题标签已经获得广泛传播，除了受聘于政府机构的历史学家和博物馆馆长等非学术性工作之外，它还可以指代非教学岗位的校内工作，比如行政人员和图书管理员。
Dr. Rogers suggests that alt-ac is less a matter of where you work than how — "with the same intellectual curiosity that fueled the desire to go to graduate school in the first place, and applying the same kinds of skills, such as close reading, historical inquiry or written argumentation, to the tasks at hand." In an interview, she credited the neologism with infusing "positive energy" into the often gloomy conversations about alternative careers. The alt-ac ethos holds that nonacademic work is not a fallback plan for failures but a win-win: Ph.D.'s can bring their deep expertise and advanced skills to a whole gamut of challenges, rather than remaining cocooned in the ivory tower.
罗杰斯博士认为，学术替代性职业与其说是一个在哪里工作的问题，倒不如说是一个如何工作的问题——“如何凭借最初让你产生读研冲动的那股求知欲，运用诸如研读文本、探究历史和书面论证这类与从事学术研究相同的技能，完成手头的任务。”在接受记者采访时，她称赞这个新词为通常悲观的替代性职业讨论注入了一股“正能量”。学术替代性职业风潮认为，非学术性工作并非万不得已的备用计划，而是双赢选择：博士生能够依凭其深厚的专业知识和高超的技能应对一切挑战，而不是继续蛰居在象牙塔之中。
Karen Shanton explored unconscious cognitive processes for her philosophy Ph.D. from Rutgers but works at the National Conference of State Legislatures, which provides legislators with nonpartisan analysis. She won the two-year fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Its Public Fellows program, created in 2011, places Ph.D.'s from the humanities and social sciences in nonprofit and government organizations.
卡伦·尚顿(Karen Shanton)曾在罗格斯大学(Rutgers Univesity)探索无意识的认知过程，并获得了哲学博士学位，但她目前就职于为议员提供超党派分析的全美州议会联合会(National Conference of State Legislatures)。美国学术团体协会(American Council of Learned Societies)给予她一份为期两年的研究员职位。该协会在2011年创建了一个公共研究员计划，以帮助人文和社会科学博士生进入非营利性和政府机构工作。
Dr. Shanton said her education "absolutely" informs her work, which focuses in part on voter ID laws, as she draws on her writing and thinking skills as well as her knowledge of how the mind works. "It's actually kind of great because it has a lot of the benefits of academia," she said. But "with politics, you can have a sort of more immediate impact."
尚顿博士表示，博士教育经历“绝对”有益于她的工作，因为除了熟稔大脑运行机理知识之外，她还可以发挥自身的写作和思维技能。“这的确是一份非常棒的工作，因为它具有学术性工作的许多好处，”她说。但“政治类工作可以产生立竿见影的影响。”她目前的工作重点包括拟定选民身份法律。
While the alt-ac perspective is relatively rosy, some disenchanted academic refugees embrace what they call the "post-ac" identity. The website "How to Leave Academia" recently published a post-ac manifesto, defining the orientation as "a belief that the current system is flawed, cruel, unsustainable and therefore impossible to directly engage with." In this view, Ph.D. programs, with their false promises, lure students to serve as cheap labor, first as teaching assistants, then as poorly paid adjuncts when tenure-track jobs elude them.
虽然学术替代性职业的前景相对乐观，但一些心灰意冷的学术界难民欣然接受了他们所称的“后学术职业”身份。一家名为“如何离开学术界”(How to Leave Academia)的网站最近发布了一份《后学术职业生涯宣言》，其基本取向是，“坚信目前的体制是有缺陷的、残忍的、不可持续的，因此不可能直接参与其中。”这种观点认为，博士项目使用虚假的承诺，引诱学生充当廉价劳动力，最初是助教，然后是收入微薄的副教授，而所谓的终身教职只不过是镜中月，水中花。
"Post-ac discourages people from pursuing graduate work," write the authors, Lauren Whitehead and Kathleen Miller, under the pseudonyms Lauren Nervosa and Currer Bell. Dr. Miller also penned the blog post "I Hate My Post-Ac Job: What Happens When You Don't Land the Perfect Postacademic Career." In it she writes: "Graduating, leaving academia, moving to a new city, starting a new job, and then hating it? Sheesh. Let me tell you — it's hard to feel like a success story." Unable to secure academic employment after completing her doctorate in English literature in 2012, Dr. Miller is now preparing to start her own life-coaching business.
“后学术职业生涯前景劝阻人们不要攻读研究生课程，”这份宣言的作者劳伦·怀特海德(Lauren Whitehead)和凯瑟琳·米勒(Kathleen Miller)如是写道。此外，米勒博士还以笔名“神经衰弱的劳伦”(Lauren Nervosa)和柯勒·贝尔（Currer Bell，这是英国著名女作家夏洛蒂·勃朗特曾使用过的笔名——译注）撰写了一篇博文《我憎恨我的后学术职业：当你无法获得完美的后学术职业时会发生什么事情？》。她在文章中写道：“毕业，离开学术界，搬到一个新城市，开始一份新工作，然后憎恨它？嘘！让我告诉你——这很难让人觉得是一个成功故事。”2012年完成英国文学博士学位后，米勒博士无法获得一份学术性工作，她目前正准备创业，开展生涯培训事业。
A HANDFUL of professors at Stanford, sensitive to the exploitative potential of graduate school but convinced of its value, are trying to instigate meaningful change. Last year, six of them wrote "The Future of the Humanities Ph.D. at Stanford," a much-discussed white paper promoting the redesign of curriculums to prepare humanities Ph.D.'s for "a diverse array of meaningful, socially productive and personally rewarding careers within and outside the academy," as well as reducing time to degree, which often takes close to a decade.
在斯坦福大学，一些教授敏锐地意识到研究生院的开发潜力，但坚信它的价值。他们目前正尝试着鼓动有意义的变革。去年，该校六位教授撰写了一份引发热议的白皮书《斯坦福大学人文学科博士的未来》，建议重新设计课程，从而让人文学科博士为“学院内外各种有意义的，对于社会生产和个人都有益的职业生涯”做好准备，同时建议减少攻读学位的时间——目前获取博士学位往往需要近十年光阴。
Russell A. Berman, a German professor and an author of the paper, feels a responsibility to recognize these practical exigencies. "Graduate education is primarily an intellectual undertaking," he said. "But most of the participants are at an age where they also have to be making career choices." He added, "The academic job market is so weak that it just can't be business as usual for department faculty."
在这份白皮书的作者之一、德语教授拉塞尔·A·伯尔曼(Russell A. Berman)看来，承认这些切合实际的迫切需要是一种责任。“研究生教育主要是一种智力事业，”他说，“但大多数参与者都处在一个他们也不得不做出职业选择的年龄。”他补充说，“学术性就业市场非常羸弱，以至于各个院系的教职员工根本就不可能一切如常地开展教学工作。”
And yet he does not buy into the popular notion that there are just too many Ph.D.'s. "I think that doctoral education is good for individuals who are passionate about the topic," Dr. Berman said. "I think it's good for society. They contribute in lots of different ways."
但他并不认同目前非常流行的观点，认为博士生太多了。“我认为，对于那些热衷于钻研某个主题的人来说，接受博士教育是有益的，”伯尔曼博士说，“我认为它也有益于社会。博士生能够以多种方式为社会做贡献。”
The professors called on Stanford to offer supplementary funds to departments that devised plans for alternative career preparations and shortening time to degree. The School of Humanities and Sciences requested proposals, but few departments responded. At the same time, new programs have been set up to help link humanities Ph.D. students with jobs in Silicon Valley and in high schools.
这些教授呼吁斯坦福大学资助各院系设计替代性职业准备计划，并缩短攻读学位的时间。人文与科学学院征集相关建议，但予以响应的院系寥寥无几。与此同时，一些新建立的项目开始帮助人文学科博士在硅谷和高中寻找工作。
Initiatives are afoot at other schools as well. Collectively, they could begin to alter expectations.
其他院校也在酝酿一些举措。整体来说，这些举措或许会逐渐改变博士生的预期。
While not grappling with the same existential questions as humanities programs, the Polytechnic Institute of New York University is trying to expand career options for its Ph.D. candidates. It has opened two incubators over the last few years, with a third to open soon, offering space, legal services and marketing advice to facilitate entrepreneurship. The draw, according to Kurt H. Becker, associate provost for research and technology, is "a career path that would allow them to be much more in control than if you're a postdoc or an assistant professor, where your career path is pretty much mapped out."
虽然纽约大学理工学院(Polytechnic Institute of New York University)无需应对与人文学科博士项目同样惨烈的存亡问题，但他们也开始尝试拓宽其博士候选人的职业选择。在过去几年里，这所学院已启动了两个孵化器项目，第三个项目也即将开启。这些项目为博士生提供场地、法律服务和营销咨询以促进创业。负责研究和技术事务的副教务长库尔特·贝克尔(Kurt H. Becker)表示，“相较于职业生涯基本上已经明确的博士后或助理教授工作，”这是“一条让博士生拥有更多掌控权的职业路径。”
The Praxis Network consists of "digital humanities" initiatives at eight universities, focusing primarily on graduate education. They aim to prepare students for roles outside the professoriate, stressing skills like collaboration, technology and project management. Students in the Digital Fellows Program at the City University of New York Graduate Center, in its second year, commit 15 hours a week to a selected project and related activities. One historian completed a project called "Data Mining Diplomacy: A Computational Analysis of the State Department's Foreign Policy Files." Fellows also design Web sites and organize a workshop series for other students, all of which is far removed from the traditional humanities experience of sitting alone in a room with a stack of books.
实践网络项目(Praxis Network)由八所大学的“数字人文”倡议行动组成，主要侧重于研究生教育。该项目注重培养博士生的合作、技术和项目管理技能，以帮助他们做好担当教授职位以外角色的准备。纽约市立大学研究生中心数字研究员计划(Digital Fellows Program)的学生在第二学年，每星期需要花费15个小时参加一个选定的项目和相关活动。一位历史学家完成了一个名为“数据挖掘外交：对国务院外交政策文件的计算分析”的项目。研究员还设计网站，并面向其他学生组织系列研讨会，所有这一切都与传统的人文专业学习体验——独自一人在书籍成堆的房间里埋头苦学——大相径庭。
"We are really thinking about it as a kind of laboratory for reshaping doctoral education and rethinking the kind of skills that we give our students," said Matthew K. Gold, an English professor who runs the program.
“我们的确打算通过这些实验重塑博士生教育，反思我们传授给学生的技能，”该项目负责人，英语教授马修·戈尔德(Matthew K. Gold)这样说。
Ethan Watrall, a professor of anthropology at Michigan State University, runs the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative as part of Praxis. "I try to destigmatize this idea of not going on to a tenure-track job," he said. "It doesn't matter — who cares? If you're happy and that's what you want to do, that's awesome."
密歇根州立大学(Michigan State University)人类学教授伊桑·瓦特拉尔(Ethan Watrall)负责运营隶属于实践网络项目的文化遗产信息计划(Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative)。“我尝试着消除博士生因无法获取终身教职而背负的污名，”他说，“这并不重要——谁在乎呢？开开心心地做自己想做的事情，才是真正了不起的。”
He believes the culture has begun to change, "mostly because of the sort of desperate need for it to change."
他认为，研究生院的文化已经开始改变：“主要是因为对于改变，大家有着迫切的需求。”
Still, he said, a transformation is only beginning. "The academy is a big ship and it takes a long time to turn it."
不过，变革才刚刚开始。“学院是一艘大船，往往需要很长时间才能调转方向，”他说。