Deprogramming From the Academic Cult | The Chronicle

Is Graduate School a Cult? | The Chronicle

Selling Out | The Unemployed Philosopher’s Blog

(my entry point into the above: What is to be done? | The Philosophers’ Cocoon)

I am someone who wants to do graduate philosophy but envisages not wanting to try to get work in higher education after finishing a doctorate since there is so little, and I’m not sure it’s worth the struggle. The articles linked to above argue that this plan can’t work because one risks getting indoctrinated into the academic cult to the extent that it’s impossible to leave at the end of a PhD without going through enormous suffering. The doctrines of the academic cult mean that wanting to leave is “giving up” and “selling out”.

The Academy has very many flaws and while studying within it is a good way to come to an understanding of the human condition, I am no longer convinced that it is the only way. So the feeling that if/when you leave you’re giving up on something special and magical that ordinary people can’t have is unjustified, because it’s just false that the modern Academy has any claim to any of this. I think that graduate school will be “safe” for me if I keep this in mind.