Open events

While many graduate students seek careers in the professoriate, research has found that only about 19 percent of PhD holders in Canada hold tenured or tenure-track positions (Canadian Council of Academies, 2021). The sociology community’s recognition of the scarcity of positions in academia has prompted calls for more information to be communicated to postgraduates about careers outside academia. School-to-work studies of sociology students and sociology departments’ stories about their alumni provide evidence that the list of fulfilling, well-paying, and challenging jobs held by people with a sociology graduate degree is long and diverse. Despite this, many graduate students are not shown different pathways to employment outside the academy and fewer still are taught how to prepare to seek out jobs outside the professoriate. This session will bring together a group of panelists who will discuss their experiences and knowledge of working outside of the professoriate and propose practices that can be used by sociology graduate students to facilitate their transition from school to non-academic positions.