Legal scholar Patrick Schiltz once observed of his own field that the analogue of greed among professors is prestige. It is not counted in billable hours or bank balances, but in the number and "impact" of publications. This prestige becomes the currency of existence, and the loss of it is treated as a professional and personal death.
The Path to De-institutionalizing the Self
Addressing this issue requires more than just logistical advice on how to transition to a non-academic career. Standard "exit interviews" or career coaching often focus on where the doors are, without addressing why those doors feel "welded shut from the inside."
To resolve a dependency, one must rebuild a sense of worth that does not run through a single set of gatekeepers. This is an individual challenge, but it is also an institutional one. Claudio Cinà suggests that the profession must begin to make its exits honorable, treating the act of leaving as a passage rather than a "vanishing."
Departments could take concrete steps to change this culture by:
- Ending the romanticization of overwork and "burnout" as a badge of honor.
- Teaching graduate students that a scholarly identity resting entirely on publication is inherently unstable.
- Mentoring students to distinguish between the love of a question (an internal good) and the need to be seen asking it (an external good).
- Recognizing that inquiry is the primary goal, while citations are merely the "receipt" of that inquiry.
For those who have already left, the perspective from the "far side of the door" offers a mix of relief and ongoing reflection. Cinà, now 72 and working as an independent researcher, notes that while he is no longer answerable to a committee, the old habits of mind persist. He still feels the "small lift" when a stranger finds value in his work, raising the question of where the "ordinary wish to be understood" ends and the "residue of dependency" begins.
The distinction between a vocation and a dependency may be best illustrated by a thought experiment involving two scholars. One continues to ask a question in total isolation because the question itself is what matters. The other cannot begin a project without first calculating whether it will be noticed, indexed, and rewarded. From the outside, their work may look identical. Inside, however, one is free, and the other is a prisoner of the institution.
Ultimately, the goal for the individual academic is to reach a point where the "two sentences" of an institutional email no longer have the power to define their existence. Whether an email brings news of acceptance or rejection, the only question that remains is whether the scholar still requires that external voice to confirm that they are, in fact, still here.
