How Much Would It Cost You to Take a Career Break?

re: How Much Would It Cost You to Take a Career Break?

newmomstudenttoo — Sat, 30 May 2009 13:12:44 GMT

Please tell that to all the "highly paid" recent philosophy PhDs I know that work in coffeehouses, bars, and bookshops... and for those with jobs as visiting assistant professors and instructors who make about $3K/class and have to teach an insane number of classes and take on extra jobs to make ends meet.

re: How Much Would It Cost You to Take a Career Break?

Sarah — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:40:52 GMT

<i> I'm surprised that the research didn't explore whether women and men experienced different financial penalties when they do take time. </i>

There probably aren't enough men who took time off for them to look at the data that way.

The people studied are graduates of Ivy League schools; hard to say how their experiences compare with others'. I'm not sure from the write-up whether these finding include the more recent (late 80's) grads studied or only the earlier ones- it would be interesting to know how things have changed.

Studentmom, I think she meant "highly paid" in comparison to those working for minimum wage. While Ph.D.s often do make peanuts if they choose to stay in academia, they have far more opportunities than a high school grad.

re: How Much Would It Cost You to Take a Career Break?

studentmom — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:44:29 GMT

Cute that you assume getting a PhD means that you're going to be highly paid. If you're in the hard sciences, maybe. If you end up as Senior faculty, again, maybe. For lots of other folks, not so much.

re: How Much Would It Cost You to Take a Career Break?

FrazzMama — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:26:23 GMT

In my field (engineering and design - buildings and construction), time taken off will stagnate your pay if you remain with the same employer, most employers in my metro region are too small to have FMLA apply to them so you'd have to hope you had a job to return to if you took beyond 6-8 weeks, and explaining the time-lapse/abscence of work would take some careful thought as there is no bigger rumor mill than the construction industry in my area.