Doctoral students¡¯ prodigious intelligence consigns them to a life of ¡°purgatory¡± as they pursue largely unattainable dream jobs and reject more realistic careers as failure, a study suggests.

An analysis of ¡°quit lit¡± ¨C a genre in which people announce their departure from academia ¨C has found that many early career academics are victims of their own ¡°above the data¡± brains.

Their self-belief fuels dogged quests for ongoing academic employment. ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter how many times you tell someone in this situation that there are no jobs,¡± said lead author Evie Kendal, a bioethicist at Deakin University.

¡°They always think that eventually they will succeed, because they have always succeeded before.¡±

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The research,?published?in the journal?, scoured about 80 quit lit articles for common words and phrases that indicated trends in the authors¡¯ experience.

Dr Kendal said the term ¡°above the data¡± ¨C a quote from one of the articles ¨C represented people who consistently exceeded academic expectations.

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¡°They¡¯ve been told: ¡®You can¡¯t always be top of the class. If you got 90 per cent in high school, you¡¯ll get 60 per cent at uni.¡¯ These are the students that are still getting 90 per cent at uni. They end up with PhD scholarships ¨C and then [in] contingent academic employment, in many cases,¡± she said.

One author likened early academia to a First World War scenario where a captain informs soldiers that they face a 99 per cent probability of death and ¡°each assumes that they will be the one to survive¡±.

The 114,902-word sample of articles included 16 references to ¡°hell¡±, 31 mentions of ¡°mourning or grief¡± and 138 variants on ¡°loss¡±, ¡°pain¡± or ¡°hurt¡±.

The analysis also included eight ¡°staypieces¡±, in which people justified their decision to remain in academia and often implored quit-litters to do likewise.

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Some said academic work was ¡°better than most jobs¡± and characterised quit lit authors as ¡°complainers¡± who ¡°want others to fix their problems¡± ¨C even using quit lit to reduce competition by shepherding others away from academia.

The analysis also identified 113 uses of the word ¡°industry¡± and 119 variations on ¡°alt-ac¡± ¨C alternatives to academic employment ¨C with quit-lit authors lauding the impact and ¡°real-world value¡± of such work and decrying academia as ¡°irrelevant¡± and lacking originality.

But those who switched into alt-ac careers had to overcome a constantly reinforced prejudice that non-academic work was ¡°inferior¡± and a waste of their qualifications. ¡°I have been indoctrinated to think ¡®academy or flippin [sic] burgers¡¯,¡± one wrote.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com