Placement

Graduates of our PhD program have been successful in finding a range of positions across academia, industry, government, and the not-for-profit sector. The largest segment of our graduates has followed an academic career trajectory.

Since 2010, 42% of our graduates are in tenure track or tenured faculty positions. Graduates have been successful in finding positions both in disciplinary departments (such as anthropology and psychology) and in interdisciplinary departments, programs, and schools (such as human development, education, global affairs, and others) at a wide range of iinstitutions (including Smith College, Ohio State University, Notre Dame, the University of Copenhagen, Cal State Long Beach and others). Often, students who follow this trajectory start with a postdoctoral fellowship immediately after graduation and go on to take academic jobs. For example, about fourteen percent of our graduates currently hold teaching fellowships or visiting professor positions; most of these students graduated in the past two years. About 31% of graduates currently hold researcher or consultant positions, many of them in applied education or health-related fields. Of these graduates, over a third work in academic settings and a quarter in industry, and the rest in government, policy research, not-for-profits, or as independent consultants. About 8% of our graduates hold administrative positions in academic and not-for-profit organizations, and another 5% are therapists/clinical psychologists. The department provides a variety of different kinds of professionalization and job seeking support activities in the form of quarterly professionalization workshops and individualized mentoring through the job search process. Students also have access to a range of resources developed by UChicagoGRAD, including practical opportunities to explore non-academic career paths.