By REBECCA TUHUS-DUBROW
The New York Times - November 1, 2013
ON a recent Sunday afternoon, a monthly meeting convened around a long table in a Whole Foods cafeteria on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As people settled in, the organizer plopped down a bag of potato chips and tackled housekeeping matters, like soliciting contributions. But she did not insist. “I know that some of you are in fragile situations,” she said.
One attendee recalled scraping by on $9,000 a year. “I was exhausted by
years of living in poverty,” she said. Her neighbor chimed in: “Amen,
sister.”
An eavesdropper might have been surprised to learn what the group had in
common: formidable academic credentials. Sitting at the table were a
historian, a sociologist, a linguist and a dozen other scholars. Most
held doctorates; a few were either close to completion or had left
before finishing. All had toiled for years in graduate school but, by
choice or circumstance, almost none had arrived at the promised
destination of tenure-track professorships (the one who had was thinking
of leaving). Now they found themselves at a gathering of a group called
Versatile Ph.D. to support their pursuit of nontraditional careers.
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