Labouring under a delusion? The post-PhD job market

I would love to be a philosophy professor at a university – but then, it seems, so would every other philosophy PhD student! Many areas of academia – physics, social policy, musical composition, psychology, archaeology – have corresponding industries which one could enter upon completion of a PhD. I would imagine that this attrition clears significant space in universities for those who wish to pursue careers as professors, but it occurs to me that, given the lack of philosophical industry, we philosophy postgraduates are forced through a bottleneck whereby a career in academia is perhaps the only career choice in which we’d be able to continue to practice our subject. This is in stark contrast to someone who has a PhD in, say, chemistry or psychiatry; I can only assume that this is at least part of the reason that the nature of the job market for philosophy professorships is so horrendously competitive.

Just add another 300-600 androgynous
plasticine figures, and that'd be about right. 

How many of us undertake a philosophy PhD hoping and believing that we will be able to secure academic careers afterwards? Quite a few, I suspect. From what I have gathered from talking to a few people in the know (um, I mean “networking”), it is not uncommon for a university to receive 300-600 applications for one job opening. All things being equal, that means each person will have to apply for 300-600 jobs before being offered a position. I don’t know how many years it would take to apply for that many jobs, but I think it would take a fair few.

“Don’t be choosy” and “Take any job you can get” are direct quotations from professors at UoN when they were talking about the job market to a group of us grad students hoping for academic careers. It’s all too easy to see these successful professors and think to ourselves “They’ve all managed to secure academic careers, so it’s obviously doable” but this would be like attending a party for people who’ve won Lotto, looking around and thinking “They’ve managed to win the lottery, so it’s obviously doable”. Looking around the department, we are looking at the winning tickets; the success stories. The people with PhDs and a less than illustrious non-philosophical careers tell a different story. We must do whatever we can to tip the scales in our favour, but it would be naïve and ignorant to be immune to the statistical likelihood of not securing the job we would like. Like I say, I would love to be a university professor, but the statistics are not in my favour – nor indeed in anyone’s favour. So am I labouring under a delusion in undertaking a philosophy PhD?

My friends and I never did this at our undergrad graduation and I
feel suitably cheated. When I complete the MA and PhD, I'll
be throwing my cap into the air at the drop of a... hmm...well... hat.

Well, no. I really enjoyed my undergrad degree; I’m really, really enjoying my MA, and no doubt I will really, really, really enjoy my PhD (how could I not – getting to spend 3 years writing about something I love; for me that’s heaven!), and so whether or not an illustrious career awaits me upon completion is in some sense irrelevant. I have always felt that education is an end in itself, and whilst I would hope that it is also a means to an end for me, that is not a necessity in order for me to be able to look back on my years as a philosophy student and feel they have been worthwhile.