To: Professors; Re: Your Advisees
Mark Shaver for The Chronicle
Dear faculty members: I sell Ph.D. advising services on the open market. And your Ph.D. students are buying. Why? Because you’re not doing your job.
Lest you think that by advising, I mean editing research papers and dissertations, let me disabuse you. I offer those services, but rarely am I asked for them.
A former tenured professor at a major research university, I am now running an academic-career consulting business. That’s right: I am doing graduate advising for pay. I am teaching your Ph.D. students to do things like plan a publishing trajectory, tailor their dissertations for grant agencies, strategize recommendation letters, evaluate a journal’s status, judge the relative merits of postdoctoral options, interpret a rejection, follow up on an acceptance, and—above all—get jobs. And business is so good I’m booked ahead for months.
I see how this is just really good advertising on the part of the author, but it’s really an interesting issue. I can see the benefits of hiring someone like this from the very beginning of your Ph.D. program. Seriously, someone needs to be on you to publish early in your studies.
Of course, the other question is why don’t faculty do this. Overburdened? Organizational?