The Recovering Academics and the Alt-Ac Movement

After a global pandemic and subsequent Great Resignation, many faculty across academia have grappled with the question, is this still what I want to do with my life? It may seem counterintuitive that after what is required to achieve tenure –teaching, publishing, and presenting at conferences–an academic career could possibly end with resignation rather than retirement, yet some faculty have chosen just that.

The Recovering Academics

In March 2025, I met with three members of The Recovering Academics, a peer support group that boasts over 400 members. The members are all faculty members who have left academia or are graduates of PhD programs who have chosen a non-academic career path. One of the members, whom I’ll call Megan, is the mother of a developmentally disabled child. During the pandemic, Johnson found herself facing a family crisis: lacking childcare for her child. She had been working in an administrative appointment during the pandemic and was not sure she wanted to return to her faculty role. Megan left her tenured role, and opted for a role with an non-government organization that was funded by USAID. Due to the recent federal cuts, Megan was recently laid off. However, her outlook is positive, “I’m in a particularly bad situation—the sector I’m in has cratered… but the skills I have can be applied elsewhere.” 

The founder of the group, Gabrielle Filip-Crawford, came to similar conclusions. As a tenure-track faculty member, she became pregnant. When Gabrielle returned from maternity leave, her tenure clock was involuntarily pushed back by one year. She found herself frustrated, underpaid, and saw the administration making decisions that were not aligned with the mission of the university. That’s when she decided to move on. She wasn’t alone. Several faculty from the same institution resigned, and many of them began gathering. Eventually the group became what it is today– a place for former tenure-track, tenured faculty and PhD earners who gather to network, commiserate and seek support in their transition to roles in the corporate, nonprofit or government sectors. 

Jennifer Beech, who was a recent graduate of her PhD program when the group commenced, is a founding member. She realized as a student that a faculty path was not the route for her. Witnessing the burnout of the faculty around her played a part in her decision– she couldn’t imagine following in their shoes. “The faculty in my department, it seems like they were always exhausted,” Beech said. 

These women are not just a few sporadic examples. Research from 2023 indicates that women leave faculty roles at higher rates than men at every level (McMurray, 2023; Spoon et al., 2023). Women participants in their study left assistant professor level roles at 6% greater the rate than men and full-professor roles at 19% greater the rate than men. Researchers called the phenomenon a “gender retrogression” (McMurray, 2023; Spoon et al., 2023).

Faculty Burnout, Faculty Discontent

Kevin McClure, Joshua Dolezal and Rebecca Pope-Ruark all share something in common– they each experienced burnout in their faculty roles. In his book, The Caring University, McClure (2025) shares that the pandemic led him through a reckoning with burnout– and it wasn’t the first time. His experience led him to develop a framework for addressing the workplace climate problem within higher education, which he dubs The Caring University. Doležal (2022) interviewed several tenured faculty who opted to leave their positions for a piece called The Big Quit in 2022. Doležal also resigned from his tenured position, citing isolation from family as the primary reason. In her book, Unraveling Faculty Burnout, Rebecca Pope-Ruark (2022) shares her burnout journey. In an interview on the IngenioUs podcast, Melissa Morriss-Olson (2023) commended Pope-Ruark for her vulnerability in sharing her story and in working to normalize burnout. Pope-Ruark responded that while it was helpful to normalize burnout, it was imperative to “de-normalize the culture that causes it.” McClure and Fryar (2022) stated in their piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education that the term resignation did not adequately describe the workforce, as individuals quickly accepted new jobs. They instead described faculty members’ relationships to their work as disengagement, acknowledging that many faculty were languishing in their roles. 

Career Coaching and The Alt-Ac Movement

PhDs opting for an alternative to an academic career is often dubbed “alt-ac.” There are several career coaches who tout the alternatives to the academic lifestyle. Dr. Karen Kelsky’s (n.d.) The Professor is In is aimed at providing job search help for graduate students who are interested in careers both in and outside of academia. Kelsky’s The Professor is In Facebook group has 133,000 members. Kelsky has since created a private Facebook group The Professor is Out offering individuals considering leaving higher education the option of coaching, resume help, and consultation services for a fee, which currently touts 35,000 members.

LaMonaca Wisdom (2025) recommends institutions take a good look at the mentoring relationship, and whether they are truly effective. In the years since many current faculty gained tenure, hiring practices in our institutions have changed, impacting the job market. For this reason, faculty advisors need to be highly attuned to the needs of their advisees, and well-versed in career options outside of the academy. 

Jennifer Beech from The Recovering Academics shared with me that while wrapping up her PhD journey, neither her peers nor advisor had the resources to help her with a non-academic career search. “As a PhD student, you put your life off for so much,” she said, “I’m ready to be an adult, and go to work, and have a 401K… have health insurance, to start a life… have a family... It’s hard to continue to defer, when you’ve already deferred so much.” Beech’s concerns around starting a family were not in isolation. In a piece entitled What is Academe’s Problem With Pregnancy? Andrzejewski (2025) begs the question after learning of rolled back Title IX protections under the current administration at her alma mater. In it, she documents the microaggressions women in academia have faced when pregnant while working towards tenure. This led me to consider the very real motherhood penalty many women experience as faculty (Torres et al, 2024), along with the social rhetoric around motherhood and the assumed “choice” women have between working outside the home and staying home to take care of their children (Arnold, 2003). In Beech’s case, she is working as an instructional designer on a contract basis, which has allowed her to move on with her life.

Career consulting and coaching for those leaving the professoriate is a booming business. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford, who leads The Recovering Academics group, informed me that there are several consultants offering advice to former professors, herself included. In addition to Kelsky, she listed: Jen Polk of From PhD to Life, Ashley Ruba, Luna Muños of Luna Leadership, Yvette Martinez-Vu of Grad School Femtoring, Maren Wood of Beyond the Professoriate, and Matteo Tardelli of Beyond Academia. Each of these individuals have a significant online presence. For example, many universities subscribe to Beyond the Professoriate for their webinars geared towards graduate students.

When asked for their advice for others considering leaving academia, The Recovering Academics recommend networking– not just to find another job, but to have someone outside of academia review their résumé and cover letter. Networking can also lead to career opportunities. Filip-Crawford is in her second role outside of academia and is well out earning her academic salary. The overwhelming sentiment from the group was: if you’ve been thinking about leaving academia year after year, it’s probably time to go.

Is Leaving Tenure a Rite of the Privileged?

While the personal stories of Pope-Ruark, and in Doležal’s piece were compelling, many of those who left academia are White. I feel it is our duty to scrutinize where White privilege enters the picture. In 2022, seventy-two percent of faculty in U.S. higher education were white (National Center for Education Statistics, 2024). I posed the question to The Recovering Academics, whether they are seeing a racial divide in their group? Jennifer Beech is African American, so I knew immediately that the group is not exclusively White. “The group skews White, but the academy skews White,” Gabrielle Filip-Crawford said. She lamented that another colleague, who also left St. Catherine University, was the only African American man on the faculty roster. And Megan noted that at her large public institution, she could count the tenured Black women who worked there, "probably around 12.” Acknowledging the possibility of a racial divide in leaving academia, the group suggested there was a clear gender divide—exhibited by the numbers of women serving as coaches in the space—however, Gabrielle assured me, The Recovering Academics membership is balanced in terms of gender. 

Conclusion

It’s clear something has struck a chord within the professoriate. Some faculty have already taken flight, while others languish in discontent. In the years since the pandemic and Great Resignation, we do not yet have the data to know whether some groups are more likely to leave their posts than others. Disaggregated data will be necessary to tell the full story of turnover in higher education (Nemcova, n.d.). Time will tell whether colleges and universities will heed the calls of Pope-Ruark and McClure, who each call on institutions to take on large-scale culture change. I, for one, think it’s imperative they do.

 

References

Andrzejewski, A. (2025, April 30). What is academe’s problem with pregnancy? The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www-chronicle-com.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/article/whats-academes-problem-with-pregnancy 

Arnold, A. (2003, December). The Rhetoric of Motherhood. mothersmovement.org. http://www.mothersmovement.org/features/Copy/rhetoric-motherhood.pdf 

Doležal, J. (2022, May 27). The big quit: Even tenure-line faculty are leaving academe. Chronicle of Higher Ed. https://www-chronicle-com.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/article/the-big-quit?sra=true 

Kelsky, K. (n.d.). The professor is in. The Professor Is In. https://theprofessorisin.com/ 

LaMonaca Wisdom, M. (2025, March 7). Faculty mentoring needs a makeover. Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www-chronicle-com.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/article/faculty-mentoring-needs-a-makeover?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_12943645_nl_Academe-Today_date_20250319 

McClure, K. R. (2025). The caring university: Reimagining the higher education workplace after the great resignation. Johns Hopkins University Press.

McClure, K. R., & Fryar, A. H. (2022, January 19). The great faculty disengagement: Faculty 

members aren’t leaving in droves, but they are increasingly pulling away. The Chronicle 

of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-great-faculty-disengagement 

McMurray, C. (2023, October 23). Even with Tenure, Women are more likely to leave higher ed. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www-chronicle-com.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/article/even-with-tenure-women-are-more-likely-to-leave-higher-ed?sra=true 

Morriss-Olson, M. (2023, July 25). Unraveling faculty burnout: Pathways to reckoning and 

renewal with Dr. Rebecca Pope-Ruark [Video Podcast Episode]. In IngenioUs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Cev5hD2xg

National Center for Education Statistics. (2024). Characteristics of postsecondary faculty. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/csc

Nemcova, M. (n.d.). Employee turnover data analysis: 8 TIPS for Success. AIHR.https://www.aihr.com/blog/employee-turnover-data-analysis/ 

Pope-Ruark, R. (2022). Unraveling faculty burnout: Pathways to reckoning and renewal. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Spoon, K., LaBerge, N., Wapman, K. H., Zhang, S., Morgan, A. C., Galesic, M., Fosdick, B. K., Larremore, D. B., & Clauset, A. (2023). Gender and retention patterns among U.S. faculty. Science Advances, 9(42), eadi2205. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adi2205