to finish this year or not?

[quandry]

Folks, I am in need of some advice. I was on the market this year and didn't get a job. I am now in a situation where I can finish my PhD this summer, maybe not graduating but definitely defending, and leave without a job, or I could stay.

I don't want to go into details, but financially, it would end up coming out about the same for the year, so my concerns have only to do with the effect of my decision on getting a job for the following year.

-What would be better? To be on the market next fall having at the very least defended my disseration, if not having actually graduated yet, BUT possibly not have any employed position, unless I could find something teaching online or something similar OR
to stay in school, which would mean I'd probably be teaching but would be PhD in hand.
I would be able to continue doing research and cranking things out, but I wouldn't have a "current position" on my CV. But I would have a PhD.
So especially for those of you who have served on SCs, what do you think I should do?

[quandry]

sorry, I screwed that up a little bit. Should read, with edits underlined:
Folks, I am in need of some advice. I was on the market this year and didn't get a job. I am now in a situation where I can finish my PhD this summer, maybe not graduating but definitely defending, and leave without a job, or I could stay in grad school.

I don't want to go into details, but financially, it would end up coming out about the same for the year, so my concerns have only to do with the effect of my decision on getting a job for the following year.

-What would be better? To be on the market next fall having at the very least defended my disseration, if not having actually graduated yet, BUT possibly not have any employed position, unless I could find something teaching online or something similar OR
to stay in school, which would mean I'd probably be teaching but would NOT be PhD in hand.
I would be able to continue doing research and cranking things out, but I wouldn't have a "current position" on my CV. But I would have a PhD.
So especially for those of you who have served on SCs, what do you think I should do?

[goodluck]

I was in a similar situation last year. Some of the advice I got that helped my decision to stay in graduate school for another year:

1) Coming from a top-15 department, faculty said it would be important to be able to continue to use our letterhead when sending out letters in the coming year... being untethered seemed to make several of them uncomfortable...

2) Relatedly, they were worried about me entering the adjunct track (although I think with the economic outlook these past fews, people have become a bit more understanding) and having that mar my chances at a better job in the coming year...

3) For me, I was concerned that if I graduated:

I would lose access to my health insurance;
My loans would come out of deferment when I didn't have a "real" position;
I would lose access to some of the school's resources: libraries, healthcare through their center, working closely with student interns...

Overall, I am glad I stayed. I went on the market better prepared because all of my materials and letters were already written, I had done more work in areas that were more marketable this year, etc.

I wish you all the best. I hope someone else from a SC could offer help too!

[sharp]

I'd stay for another year. Not only do you have the benefits that goodluck pointed out, you also have another entire year to get your dissertation in shape for publication, and maybe additional articles sent out. Think ahead not just to getting a job, but to doing really well in it once you've got it. You want articles to be accepted and others to appear in print your first year on the job -- that "halo effect" stays with you for several years after.

[rerun]

I think it depends on what you would do next year if you were not in grad school. I got a lot more attention on the market once I had my PhD in hand. Although if your dissertation is actually finished and you can get that across in your apps, then perhaps it wouldn't matter.

[quandry]

thanks for the advice. Looks like my mind may be made up for me by a number of factors, and I'll probably be staying for another year, which I feel a bit better about given your responses. Sometimes all you hear is FINISH! Be PhD in hand! but if that means being unattached, which it would, though I'd still be able to get some stuff out, I can see how that would not be so good.
Thanks much. Good luck to all still waiting for some things to happen. It's awful at this late point, the waiting game.

[yep]

If you're sticking around, see if you can at least defend soon, so that you can at least say that in your applications.

[anonprof]

I was in the same situation a couple years back (could have finished a year early but didn't get a job that year) and got some excellent advice which I followed- stay in grad school BUT tell your chair to write in your recommendation letter that you are basically done with your dissertation (if that is true), include at least one very polished up chapter as a writing sample, and straight out say in your cover letters how much you have completed and when you plan to defend (a very early spring date is a good one).

Then finish your dissertation ASAP and plan to defend in January or February 2012- that way you can be enrolled in the spring semester but still phd-in-hand for some of the later interviews (and you can email jobs you've applied to updating your status to phd-in-hand if the apps were due earlier).

In my cover letters at the end of the paragraph that had a description of my dissertation I said something like "I have completed 3 out of 4 planned dissertation chapters and expect to defend my completed dissertation in March 2010." (Which was true when I wrote it, didn't end up defending till the last day of April, but close enough).

I haven't been on a search committee yet, but I have been at several faculty meetings where we discussed a search and who to bring in.The biggest thing we worry about when hiring someone who is ABD is that they won't finish their phd in time, which is why people with a Phd in hand might have a tiny advantage. But if you can show that you are on the cusp of finishing that is enough. And we appreciate specific time lines even if they are approximate- someone who plans to graduate in the spring is looked upon better than someone who is vague about when they will finish, and an early spring defense date is better from our perspective than a summer one (since summer is so much more last minute and therefore more things can go wrong).