Why I Didn’t Leave Academia?

At the prodding of Dan Drezner, a few people have written on the question “Why didn’t I quit academia?”, while others have written on the natural companion “Why did I quit academia?” For the sake of completeness, I think we probably need a “What did I do after academia quit me?” but we’ll save that for later.

For my own part, I wonder about the framing of the question.  While I know that some make clear, conscious, forthright decisions to abandon academia, whether at various points in the graduate student stage, after a frustrating effort at the job market, or during the first job, I suspect that most people who quit the academy drift away as consequence of a series of decisions that aren’t apparent at the time. I can recall two points that I would, in hindsight, identify as critical “Why didn’t I quite academia?” moments.  The first was when I decided not to move to Massachusetts to be with my longtime girlfriend; I certainly planned to continue with my dissertation, but I doubt now that I’d have had the wherewithal to complete it if I’d left Seattle.  The second, about a year later, was when I was offered a (paid) internship at a DC think thank the name of which I cannot recall.  Again, I planned to finish my dissertation either way, but if I’d moved on I doubt I would have put together the time and effort to make it happen.

And so for me, it’s not so much “Why didn’t I quit academia?” as “Why didn’t I follow through on decisions that probably would have killed my academic career?”  And the answer to that, as much as anything else, is simple inertia. But for many, I think that the better asked questions are “Which decisions caused me to drift away from the academy, and am I happy with how that worked out?”