Good Work If You Can Get It

Jason Brennan's blunt guide to academic careers — arguing that most people considering a PhD should not pursue one, and that academic work is not what outsiders imagine it to be.

Academic career realism: Brennan (a Georgetown professor) documents the actual academic job market — extremely low odds of tenure-track positions in humanities and social sciences, the nature of academic work (mostly bureaucracy and teaching, little research time), the opportunity costs relative to non-academic careers. The book's tone is unusually direct for academic self-criticism: most professors don't encourage graduate students to consider outside alternatives. Represents the genre of 'honest insider accounts' of high-status careers that outsiders idealize.