It wasn't really a surprise when alumni began ringing their alma maters looking for job help a few years ago. The recession hit nearly every industry and business, leaving recent college graduates without great prospects for their first jobs and older professionals without incomes for, in many cases, the first time in their lives. While some…

Discussion of nonfaculty careers for graduate students so easily disintegrates into dueling anecdotes. The author describes a story about someone who had to drop his Ph.D. from his resume in order to get a job at all. Stories cluster around both of those poles in the comments section whenever the author has written about nonprofessorial career…