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Tips for transitioning into administration?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I wonder if anyone has general tips for those who want to transition from the academic job market to the university administrator market. Since universities are hiring fewer permanent faculty and more administrators, one plausible alt-ac route is to simply market oneself as an administrator.

One specific tip I'm looking for: which sort of experience should I be looking to get as someone currently in a temporary position at an R1?

I'm not sure, but my sense is that universities can do internal appointments for leadership and lower-level administrative positions (e.g., Assistant Deans, Faculty Senate Presidents, etc.) that may provide some good experience here. Also, I suspect maybe chairing one's own department may be good experience. But I'm not sure how available these routes may be for someone in the OP's position (a temporary position at an R1).

Do any readers have any helpful tips or other insights?

 

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7 responses to “Tips for transitioning into administration?”

  1. sahpa

    I would think OP is talking about moving into the bread and butter career lines that don’t typically hire academics — admissions, registrar, research admin, that sort of thing.
    I recently transitioned into university admin at one of my alma maters, and via a connection with one of the folks on the team I joined. My personal connection both a) to that specific team, and b) to that university seemed to help. I would say that a ‘service orientation’ is primarily what they’re looking for, since the vast majority of administrators are offering services to students or faculty. This means something like having a client-centered mentality and being approachable and professional. You may need to countermand the impression that you are like faculty, who (in my experience) are generally viewed as somewhat flaky/unpredictable, not very approachable, and not adaptable to new systems (many of my colleagues often use the ‘herding cats’ cliche when talking amongst themselves about dealing with faculty; I don’t do this — honestly). Do as much as you can to convey that you are a ‘nerd’ about procedure and systems — schedules, spreadsheets, etc. — and emphasize the service you’ve done so far and how much you enjoyed making a positive impact that way.
    Also, remember that an R1 university is basically a small city. The administrators you deal with may actually be very ignorant of academia as you’ve experienced it so far. (Conversely, they may assume you understand a lot more about university administration than you do.) For example, many of my colleagues use the phrase ‘research’ to denote externally funded research projects (which means: philosophy departments “don’t do research”!); and many of them think that most of the faculty (those who “don’t do research”) just screw off all summer. So be prepared for ignorance and handle it gracefully; but also be humble about your own ignorance, since if you’re a typical researcher, you will have only experienced a slice of university life. This humility, by the way, may help ameliorate their feeling like you are overqualified/otherwise feeling intimidated by you.

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  2. sahpa

    (Terribly sorry for the double post.)
    But, and I know you didn’t ask for this, I would like to be real with you for a moment. A bread-and-butter admin job at a university is more or less what it looks like from the outside. It is heavily driven by procedure and very much just a 9-to-5 office job, rather than a career or vocation. The plus side is that it is hard to be so incompetent that you get fired (well, is this a plus side? I’m actually not sure*), and they usually have pretty good benefits if slightly depressed salaries. This stability — and these are generally very stable jobs — and predictability is appealing, believe me, but do not go into this hoping for intellectual stimulation or variety. The vast majority of philosophy PhDs will find that challenging to adapt to, because we’ve spent our whole lives chasing intellectual stimulation.
    * Let me be even more real with you: I have very few colleagues whom I respect. (That is: count-on-one-hand few.) The vast majority seem to be largely incurious and unambitious timecard-punchers, which are not the kind of people I generally want to be surrounded by.

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  3. UK Based

    Perhaps an obvious point, but I think my main advice would be the same for people looking alt-ac careers more generally. It is about finding a way to show what you have done links to that other domain.
    For example, my university has a very good ‘Research Support’ team. Basically they are there to help find the right funding source to send your project to, help budget, comment on drafts etc. Most people in that team have PhDs, and some even had some funding success when they were in academic roles. This is incredibly helpful for their jobs and I could see how if you’ve got some funding success in the past, you could leverage that in applying for that sort of position.

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  4. anon

    (a) I think that it makes sense to pursue this career path if you interpret the word “administrator” like sahpa does, but I will add…
    (b) The OP writes “Since universities are hiring fewer permanent faculty and more administrators, one plausible alt-ac route is to simply market oneself as an administrator”.
    My sense is that when people talk about universities hiring more and more admin, they are complaining about universities hiring too many Vice-Associate-Assistant-Understudy Deans to help work on the next version of the university’s re-branding, but not complaining about universities hiring too many of the positions that a new PhD might actually be aiming for (research officer, academic advisor, educational developer, registrar’s office, graduate administrator, etc.).
    Where I have worked, we reserve “staff” to refer to this latter kind of work (rather than “admin”), and staff hiring has recently seen freezes and cutbacks, much like faculty hiring. It’s better than TT hiring, because most things are, but it’s still a place where you can find plenty of short term contracts, etc. Again, not saying you shouldn’t go for it, just wanting to point out that the opportunities here are not as abundant as someone might think.
    As for the OP’s query: it depends on the job since staff do all sorts of things. As above, someone mentions getting a grant could help you with research office jobs. Doing something like TA training, or a SoTL presentation/paper could help build your credibility for educational developer positions

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  5. addclarity

    Echoing Anon, there is even a more severe staff hiring freeze than faculty hiring freeze where I am at. sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

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  6. UK Based

    To add, for context, but also sadly adding, echoing anon, here in the UK the same is true. Many of the cuts that almost all universities are currently undertaking is on admin staff (or as their are often called ‘Professional Service’ roles). Many universities have recently made multi-million pound savings through redundancies to these ‘admin’ roles as well as hiring freezes, etc. Moving into that sort of role right now is not impossible, but is not as easy to do as it once was simply as there are less positions being hired into.

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  7. Bill V.

    My university in California is also avoiding faculty furloughs via laying off and not filing many staff roles. Once budgets get more normalish, I can recommend two routes into entry level academic staff roles. The first is through the Teaching and Learning Center (or whatever the pedagogy development office is called on your campus). That could be in a role facilitating workshops, doing advertising, helping with new faculty orientation, or various other things. Depending on the size of the office, those jobs might all be one person. If you have especially strong tech skills, a related role would be instructional designer. The second is the Honors College or Program. Again, depending on the size of the program they might have several different roles available, and an academic background is typically preferred there. These kinds of jobs (in TLC or HC) tend to have “capped” career paths, though: In most cases you don’t advance much beyond the first level or two and they don’t obviously lead to, for example, management roles. (Honors deans and directors are typically tenured faculty, so there is no path from the entry-level positions to leadership roles.)
    The nice thing about these two routes into academic admin, however, is that they are faculty-adjacent, and would in most cases give you relevant experience that would be useful either moving up into other admin roles (assistant dean, staff in a provost’s office, etc.) or perhaps transitioning into a full time faculty role after a few years. YMMV
    Academic administration roles in research offices are typically for mid- to late- career tenured academics who have some admin experience (chair, associate dean, or similar). Staff roles in research offices are mostly about grant administration in the sense of having technical knowledge about working with funders, budgets, purchasing, payroll, benefits, and other financial/HR things. The things philosophers know as philosophers are in this sense less relevant to those jobs. One exception here is “grant writing,” i.e., writing grant proposals as a full time job (either helping faculty or for grants on behalf of the institution). Grant writers typically have PhDs. Caveat: I hear that many of them now are self-employed consultants, which is both good (you can get work from many institutions to increase income) and bad (hustle required, no benefits, precarious).
    Graduate School staff roles are sometimes held by people with PhDs (e.g., in grad school admissions), though most are like the research office case and there is likewise no obvious career path from entry level to leadership positions.
    Student Affairs involves a specific set of skills that is largely foreign to PhDs in academic subjects, though if you were an RA or other student assistant for student affairs, affiliate centers, or similar, that could be a foot in the door. Typically they want people with degrees and experience directly in student affairs.
    Academic advising is an interesting cross-over case. Only pursue this one if you really like helping students in one-on-one settings. Again, advancement opportunities will be limited, but some people find the role very fulfilling. And you can help the overall philosophy hiring crisis by pushing every student you meet to major in philosophy. 😉

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