Adam Levy 00:04
Hello. I’m Adam Levy, and this is Off Limits: Academia’s Taboos, a podcast from Nature Careers.
In this episode: leaving academia.
It’s no secret, making it in academia can be incredibly challenging. The opportunities for job security have shrunk hugely over the years and decades.
And many researchers complain about intense pressure to publish, and an inability to balance one’s work and one’s life. Or even separate them at all.
And so, of course, many make the decision to transition away from academia.
Despite this decision being commonplace, the possibility can be overlooked from within research and discussing it can be, well, it can be taboo.
Today, I’m talking with two researchers about their decisions to leave.
The first is Josh Balsters, neuroscience director at NielsenIQ in the United Kingdom.
His goal is helping the company understand how their products impact consumers.
Josh Balsters 01:10
What I try to do is help use what we’ve learned from decades of psychology and neuroscience to dig a little bit deeper.
Adam Levy 01:18
And that’s Josh’s academic background: neuroscience.
And we started out by discussing his early academic career.
I asked, “Was your goal back then, to build an academic career, to be permanently in academia?”
Josh Balsters 01:32
Yeah, it definitely was. After my PhD had finished, I knew that I wanted to change direction a little bit. Actually, I knew at that point I wanted to do something that was maybe more applied than the work I’d done.
I loved my PhD, and I loved the work that I had done for my PhD.
So my first postdoctoral fellowship was in combination with GlaxoSmithKline.
So I started to tap into some of that, that pharma world, and some of that.
But it was still very academically rooted, what I was doing there,
Adam Levy 02:02
And as your career progressed, did that feeling of, you know, “I want to build an academic career, but with a practical angle?”
Did that evolve?
Josh Balsters 02:12
It did. It wasn’t really until towards the end that I actually thought about leaving academia altogether.
But for a long time it was just, I guess, trying new ideas and bouncing in different directions.
And I saw it as fine-tuning.
But I always saw myself as an academic. I always thought I was going to have an academic career.
I think, I didn’t really see any other option, to be honest. Until it wasn’t really, until towards the end, where I started to see some of my friends leaving academia, and I thought, oh, that was a bit of an awakening to me, where I thought, “Oh, I didn’t know you could do that.”
And I think as well, the industry had changed a little bit over the years as well, from when I started to when I left.
Adam Levy 02:55
Over those years, did you feel like your career was building, that you were getting more stability within academia?
Josh Balsters 03:03
I think so. I felt stable in terms of my career. And I felt like I understood the system. There were parts of it I didn’t like. And I think every academic will say the same things.
I think at some point for me, I just kind of realized that all these different little things that I didn’t like and wasn’t enjoying, they added up into something much bigger.
Adam Levy 03:25
Could you give a sense of at least some of those little things that you felt like you were having to put up with?
Josh Balsters 03:32
I don’t want to be kind of naive and think that a job has to be perfect.
I think all jobs, even the one I’m in right now, I think everybody has good days and bad days.
But just more of these little things started adding up, like to do with, yeah, funding, to do with, I guess, the kind of publication system.
I think sometimes it helps when you break outside the academic bubble.
Because I remember explaining once to my in-laws (who aren’t in academia) about publishing, and explaining to them that well, you write something, and then you send it off to a journal.
And then other people, your friends, will review it for free.
And then once you’ve had it accepted, you pay money to get it published. And then you then basically pay money to get it back again.
Just trying to explain that to my in-laws, they just said, “I don’t understand. If you’re writing it and you’re doing all the editing, why are you paying to get it out there, and paying to get it back?”
And I think there were little things like that that sometimes you get an outside perspective and you go, “Ah, that’s, I guess it’s a point.”
Adam Levy 04:37
So I guess those little things start to accumulate. But was there, I suppose, a moment that you felt able to come to that decision?
Josh Balsters 04:47
I think there was. I guess, probably the biggest moment for me as well, for a lot of academics. We stay in academia because we love the work.
I think that’s the big thing that keeps us there despite, you know, the kind of teaching, and administration and marking.
You kind of put up with it because you like the research. You like the freedom you have with research. I guess for me, one of my big moments was when I was working with autistic individuals and talking to them about the work I was doing.
And it became very apparent that actually what I was doing was not of interest to them.
They had a very different priority list to what I was working on.
And I think when you add that on top, you say, “Well, I can’t fit everything I need to do inside a Monday to Friday, nine to five. And to be, I know, to be a successful academic, I need to spend time on the evenings and weekends doing this research.“
And, you know, writing the grants to make them successful, to get the funding, but then at the end of it, I’m doing this, and I’m going to say, “Here’s what I found.“
And the community who I’m interacting with and working with will look at the end outcome and say, “But this isn’t what I wanted.”
And I think that was a real moment for me of saying, “Why am I using up my free time that I could spend with my friends and with my family to do this work when it doesn’t feel like it’s real. It’s not what these individuals want.”
And I think that was kind of a big moment for me saying, “Well, hang on, if I don’t have the research, then, why am I putting up with all these other little things that are also aggravating?”
Adam Levy 06:26
Once you had this kind of perspective, both on your experience as an academic and the impact of your academic work, did you feel any conflict, any guilt, any shame around that decision to step away from academia?
Josh Balster 06:44
I did.
Yeah, there’s a little bit of a feeling of letting people down.
Not that he ever did. I’m still friends with my PhD supervisor. I saw him a month ago, in fact, for a coffee.
But there’s a feeling of, you know, have you let them down by leaving academia?
There’s a feeling as well around you’ve taken up a space.
That I’ve taken that opportunity away from somebody else that would have wanted it more.
Adam Levy 07:07
You described the feeling of fearing that you’re letting people down. Did that affect how you spoke about your decision to leave? Did you discuss it with your peers?
Josh Balsters 07:17
I didn’t actually discuss it with my peers who are still in academia.
I actually did discuss it, though, with the ones who had left. And they were the ones who I talked to, to try…and it was kind of a sanity check really.
Just to say, “Is the grass really greener?”
Typically, what I heard actually is that they managed to get better work life balances, which is something I’ve definitely managed to get as well, actually leaving academia.
I feel like I have a much healthier work life balance.
Adam Levy 07:44
I can definitely understand wanting to solicit those friends’ opinions.
But was there a reason you didn’t discuss it with your peers who were still in academia?
Josh Balsters 07:55
I think probably I didn’t really discuss it with them because I didn’t know what they would say.
I didn’t know if they would say anything different to what I already knew. We had a great community, I have to say.
That was the one thing I loved about my job. We did have a great community. On Fridays, we would go to the pub and have a good chat and a debrief.
Everything we talked about were kind of known problems. And I think they were global problems.
That was the other thing that really struck me, I didn’t feel like it wasn’t anything down to one institution or to one country.
I felt like it was the same things that every academic I knew was discussing around the world. I think we were already talking about it.
So I didn’t feel like, or if I turned around and said to them, “I’m seriously thinking of leaving for all the reasons that we talk about on a Friday and have a laugh about over a beer.”
Yeah, I just didn’t. Maybe I was a bit afraid to do that. Afraid what they might say. I felt much more comfortable talking to people who had done it, who had already left. And talking to them about it, rather than people who were still in academia.
Adam Levy 08:56
Were you also afraid of the transition itself, or just those kinds of conversations?
Josh Balsters 09:02
I think a bit of both. I think I was probably more afraid of the conversations, actually.
I was kind of afraid what people would say if you said, “I’m leaving.”
The transition. I think I’m a bit I’m quite a novelty seeking individual anyway, which is another reason that I was quite, you know, I was quite keen to leave academia, because one of the things I love about my current work in industry is that the life cycle is very quick.
After about six weeks I finish a project to move on to the next one.
Versus academia, where obviously it’s grant cycles and everything is years and years of work.
So when it came time to leave and transition, the novelty of moving on to something new was a factor of me feeling very excited.
So I was less scared about transitioning. I think I was more scared, actually, just about having those conversations with my colleagues.
Adam Levy 09:51
That change in timeframe is definitely something I can relate to.
I went pretty much overnight from my PhD to my first job at Nature co-hosting the Nature podcast.
And to go from a three-and-a-half-year deadline of a PhD to a weekly deadline was a big culture shock.
But for my personality, also something I was grateful for.
Josh Balsters 10:11
No, it definitely appealed to me. I think that’s one of them.
I think the big thing for me, before I seriously made the decision about leaving, I did do a career audit.
And I tried to just say to myself, “If I was making my dream job, what bits of academia would I keep and what bits of academia would I get rid of?”
And, you know. And the idea is, well, I love talking about experiments and building experiments. I love that part of it.
I hate marking.
And that kind of audit of figuring out what I liked and what I didn’t like was then really important for the next part of me saying, “Okay, realistically, is there a job outside of academia that plays into the things that I really like, and get rid of the stuff that I don’t like?”
And I was fortunate that there was
Adam Levy 10:58
You’ve described your experience, and some of the, I suppose, challenges talking about your decision. Is there a way that we could make it easier, do you think for academics to make that decision and to discuss that decision around potentially stepping away from academia?
Josh Balsters 11:16
What I recommend whenever I talk to people about it, I think the most important thing is communication, and I think forums to chat about these things.
There’s probably a few things that could help.
One would be, I guess, more hybrid positions where there’s better linkage between industry and academia.
I think, as well, speaking out at conferences and I think normalizing it, I think academics still have a very old-school view of what it means to be corporate. And I think some more communication at conferences and places to be able to say “this is the reality.”
There’s a lot of, I think there’s still certain amount of negativity and certain amount of like, “Oh, you’re selling out if you go into corporate.”
Because I personally don’t believe you’re selling out going into kind of industry any more than I think we do sometimes in academia.
I think it’s really I think, like most things, it’s about communication. I think working with PhD students, I’ve always thought, is a great place, because there are a lot of great internship opportunities for PhD students.
And I think getting them early on to start experiencing both sides is really important.
Adam Levy 12:19
I think that’s everything, Josh, that I was hoping we’d discuss.
But I just want to check, is there anything you were hoping we would discuss that I haven’t given you a chance to?
Josh Balsters 12:27
I think it’s very difficult. And I think it’s, it’s, it is a sensitive subject.
So I think even as we were talking now, I could feel, you know, that, especially the question you just have at the end there around, you know, did you talk to the people you work with as having to really think about that for the first time.
And I didn’t really.
And I think I was, that’s probably where I had the most shame.
You know, talking to, because they were my friends, and saying to them, “Actually, I’m going to be leaving academia in pursuit of something else.”
Think….it was hard. I don’t regret it. I love what I do now. I’m really happy in my job.
It is, it’s hard, but I know for me, it was definitely the right choice, and I think it will be the right choice for a lot of people.
The only thing I can definitely say is, if you’re thinking about doing it, think about doing it sooner rather than later.
Just because obviously, the longer you leave it the harder it gets.
It’s harder to take a risk if you’ve got a family and as well, I think the longer you stay in academia, the more it looks like you’re entrenched in academia.
Reach out, talk to people. I think it’s easiest to talk to people who’ve left, first of all, to get a feeling about whether it’s right for you.
And I think even though I’ve just started talking about the kind of some of the shame I did feel when I was leaving.
I hope you don’t feel that shame.
It certainly was the right choice for me, and I think it might be the right choice for a lot of people as well.
Josh Balsters 13:48
That was Josh Balsters.
Josh shared his reluctance to speak about his decision at the time, and many find it hard to discuss such a massive career change openly.
But our next interviewee took the perhaps unusual step of publicly sharing their move out of academia.
This is Ashley Ruba, a UX researcher at Meta in the United States. I called Ashley up to ask how their career had led them to this point.
Ashley Ruba 14:14
So I started my PhD program in developmental psychology in 2014 and finished in 2019, did a NIH postdoc, after that,
It was T32 fellowship, and the whole time wanted to be a faculty member.
Was kind of told that that’s what you did if you got a PhD, and that I was really good at research. I won a lot of awards, published a lot of papers, and didn’t really consider any other career paths until about like four years ago, actually, when I decided that I wanted to do something else.
Adam Levy 14:44
Well, that seems like quite a big shift, so let’s talk about that a little bit.
How did that begin to change from this idea of having a lifelong career in academia to leaving it?
Ashley Ruba 14:55
Yeah, it was slow at first.
So I initially started having doubts about my career trajectory when I was still in my PhD program.
I sat on a faculty search committee, so I saw the process from the other side, and saw how we whittled down the over 100 people who had applied for this one spot, and people were getting cut who had CVs that were a lot better than mine.
And I just thought, “There’s no way I can be in this career path.”
Then when I ended up getting this NIH fellowship, which was very prestigious, and they only had one spot, I was told that I would definitely get a faculty job.
And I started my postdoc at the end of 2019.
So COVID followed shortly thereafter.
And like many people during COVID, started reflecting on what I really wanted out of my life and my career and saw, I think, a lot of the toxicity in academia was, like, really apparent during my postdoc.
And so after three years of that, I just didn’t want to do it anymore and wanted to do something else.
Adam Levy 15:54
Now I know shifting or changing one’s dreams can come with quite a lot of mental turmoil as well.
Did this kind of transition to what you wanted to do with your life?
Did that affect you emotionally as well?
Ashley Ruba 16:10
Oh, of course.
I guess like yes and no, It was actually on Christmas morning. I woke up and I just thought, you know, “I’m done.”
So that was easy enough. Finding a job. I found one pretty quickly outside of academia, doubled my postdoc salary after about three months.
And then it was after that where things got really challenging for me for a variety of reasons.
I think the biggest one is that I found out later that I had ADHD, which had been undiagnosed for my entire life.
And that became really apparent once I left the structure of academia.
And then was all of a sudden in this back in, like, entry level, associate level positions where, I guess, like, the cognitive challenge wasn’t sufficient enough for me to really stay engaged at work.
So I bounced around from job to job for a while.
And then finally, at my current role, I found something that really works for me.
And I think also trying to help other people make that transition, and seeing how much trouble like, other people are having and how hard it was for them, that was vicariously, like, very hard for me to just see that with other people.
Adam Levy 17:13
And you actually worked on that for a little while, and I’d love to come back to that in just a second.
But when you left academia, I understand you shared your decision publicly. What prompted you to do this?
Ashley Ruba 17:27
When I was in grad school, I had talked to some people who had already left, and it was usually a lot of postdocs who had been on the job market for multiple years.
Nothing had panned out. And they kind of accepted at that point that they would have to change careers.
And there was some sadness there, I think, some thoughts about how they had failed.
I don’t know. I wanted to paint a different story about, like, it’s not that I failed to get a faculty job. Like I could have gotten a faculty job.
I just didn’t want to anymore. I was just over it.
I just wanted to show people that didn’t mean you’re a failure, it didn’t have to be this sad thing that you were doing.
I just didn’t want to disappear quietly, because I think that’s pretty easy to do. And I wish I would have been able to talk to someone like me when I was a PhD student.
Adam Levy 18:10
Now, you posted about this online, on social media.
What kind of response did you get?
Ashley Ruba 18:16
This was when Twitter was still Twitter.
It went viral, which was, like, kind of surprising to me.
I think at that point, not a lot of people had really been talking about this, at least not very directly, and so there was a lot of solidarity.
And then also, I think just surprise, because I talked to other people in my cohort later, and they’re like, “Well, we thought if anyone was going to make it, so to speak, it would be you.”
So I think it surprised a lot of people that someone who kind of had everything going for them in academia as a postdoc, like could have gotten a job, would just quit.
Adam Levy 18:50
And you mentioned that lots of people, I suppose, quietly quit.
Did you feel any of those same feelings that they might feel, I suppose, wanting to keep a low profile and maybe even some shame or some sense of taboo around the decision.
Ashley Ruba 19:07
Yeah, after I posted that, then I feel like my like, RIP, my inbox. I’ve just, I’ve gotten probably thousands of messages at this point from people who it doesn’t even seem like they have anyone to talk to about how they’re feeling in academia.
I’ve heard, like, the worst of the worst stories from PhD students, postdocs, faculty, like everybody.
And yeah, it just it seems like there’s a lot of shame, a lot of fear, a lot of like, “I don’t really know what to do.”
I don’t know how to find a job people who I think want to leave, and we’re looking for me to give them permission and just say, like, you know “it’s okay, you can do this thing.”
And that was really unexpected as well, because I didn’t really set out to do any kind of career coaching or help in that regard.
But just so many people kept asking me for help because they felt really lost and didn’t have anyone to turn to.
Adam Levy 19:58
Did you receive, I suppose, more negative messages as well any people pushing back on your decision to leave academia and also to discuss it so publicly?
Ashley Ruba 20:08
Maybe not my decision to leave publicly
But I think after that, when I just was more stating outright the problems inherent in like academia and leaving and like why people were struggling, I think just stating these problems, I think that’s what was seen as very hard for people.
And I know, like, there’s some incentive for faculty members to want to keep their PhD students postdocs in academia, because that ultimately looks good on their academic legacy.
You know, the entire system of higher education will kind of fall apart if there aren’t underpaid graduate students, postdocs, faculty who are there, teaching courses and doing research.
So yeah, the pushback was surprising.
Adam Levy 20:49
Can you explain a little bit what that pushback actually looked like, though?
Ashley Ruba 20:53
I don’t know if it was necessarily like leaving academia itself, but also just talking about the fact that, like industry pays more than academia, I think, is something that got a lot of pushback, especially when I shared, at the time I was working as a contractor at Meta and was making three times as much as I made as a postdoc.
That caused a lot of stir, I think, because salary is another taboo thing that we don’t talk about.
And then there’s, there are a lot of comments about how, “Well, if you’re in academia, it’s not for the money.”
And it’s like, sure, I like understand all that. Understand that, like, $50,000 you know, is more than my parents made, who didn’t go to college.
But at the same time, to go from three years post-PhD to then just switching over and tripling my salary, it was like, very jarring to know that academia would underpay you that much compared to what you could be making in another field.
Adam Levy 21:45
Now I understand you shared these experiences, not just on social media, but actually you kind of worked to share your expertise, leaving academia for a little while,
Ashley Ruba 21:56
I did, like a lot of work for free for a while, and met with anybody who asked, reviewed anyone’s resumes who’d asked, and then started posting on LinkedIn.
And then the response on LinkedIn was even bigger than what I had received on Twitter, than X.
If I were just to respond to everyone’s messages and review everyone and help everyone for free, I, like, literally wouldn’t do anything else ever again.
Like, that’s how much help people were asking for.
So I thought, you know, maybe people would pay me for help. And then they did.
So I did that on the side for a while, did that full time for a while, and then earlier this year, where I decided that I was kind of wanted to break from the entrepreneurial life.
And so now I went back to a 9-5.
Yeah, I was always really surprised with like, how many people needed help and would be willing to pay for help. And I think that also just shows that universities are not doing enough in professional development to help people who have PhDs.
Adam Levy 22:53
Yeah, from that experience, how would you like academia to change so that the academics who do decide to leave feel better supported from within academia?
Ashley Ruba 23:04
Oh, man, so many things I would change.
I think the biggest one is it’s not something that’s easy to change. It’s like a mindset shift.
So understanding that a college degree is not a guarantee of, like, any kind of job inside or outside of academia.
And that especially with PhDs, like if you are getting a PhD in a field, you need to accept that mathematically, you’re probably not going to stay in academia. And so PhD programs should be aware of that, should be aware that they are not training future faculty members. They’re training researchers, and to think about how those skills might translate to other fields.
That requires, like, a really big mindset shift. I think a lot of faculty members and people in academia think that academia is the best job, and, like, a morally-superior job, an intellectually-superior job, and it’s just a very elitist mindset to have at the end of the day.
And I don’t know how we fix that.
Yeah, I think higher education in general is just going through a really hard period right now.
So it’s hard to tell people to stay in school for a decade or to take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, at least in the United States, for a degree that doesn’t really prepare you for the real world, quote, unquote.
Adam Levy 24:18
Do you think shifting that elitist attitude as you describe it, would also shift the sense of shame and taboo around leaving academia that you’ve described that’s how many academics feel
Ashley Ruba 24:30
Oh, for sure, I had a lot of friends who were in a chemical engineering PhD program.
None of them wanted to be in academia, and they did not go through the same kind of process that I went through as someone in the social sciences.
Because it was just expected, it was just expected that most of them would go on to be senior engineers at a company. And that was fine.
So it is interesting to see the differences between fields. Some of the skills that you learn in academia are, like, really good for academia.
But they don’t necessarily translate well to. Other careers outside of academia.
Adam Levy 25:02
And do you have any advice for the people who are struggling themselves to make that decision about whether to stay or to go?
Ashley Ruba 25:10
I mean, I guess I usually just end with.
If anyone is listening and kind of weighing these things yourself, it’s ultimately your life that you have to live and your career, and in the same way that you wouldn’t necessarily like ask someone else “who should I marry?”
Like you should think about what do you want out of your life, and if academia and staying in this job is not aligned with what you want out of your life, then that’s ultimately your choice, and only you can live your life.
And I just wouldn’t make decisions based off of what other people think is best for you.
Because only you know what’s best for you.
Ashley Ruba 25:46
Ashley Ruba there. In this series, we’ve examined a wide range of topics, from substance dependency to grief to disability.
But what each of these topics shares is the taboo surrounding it. How difficult researchers have found it to speak about their experiences, and the impact this silence has had.
Speaker 4 26:08
I often feel like I need to lead this double life.
Speaker 5 26:10
I was advised by senior academics I did tell not to tell me when I was in recovery.
Speaker 6 26:15
This was the loneliest time in my whole life. I’ve never ever felt so alone.
Adam Levy 26:21
But there’s been another side to the conversations of this series, the lessons learned, the ways forward and the visions of a different kind of academic world.
Speaker 7 26:31
I think we’re here to try to make a better world for everyone.
Speaker 8 26:34
A little bit of vulnerability, a little bit of honesty, and then a whole lot of trying to show up and being a good scientist, but also a compassionate human, makes a big difference.
Speaker 9 26:47
We’re scientists, right? It’s not hard for us to measure the effects of things, or see whether something is working or not, and come up with a potential different solution.
Adam Levy 26:58
And with those reflections, that’s it for this series of Working Scientist.
Make sure you stay subscribed, though, as coming right up is a six part series featuring authors of career focused books providing expert perspectives on a wide range of topics.
Then more to come later in the year, with a series on harnessing creativity as a scientist, and another examining failure in science and how to learn from it.
A huge thank you to all the researchers who’ve taken the time and energy to share their experiences and insights with us.
This has been Off Limits: Academia’s Taboos a podcast from Nature Careers.
I’m Adam Levy. Thanks for listening.
