A client of mine asked me the other day if he was doing the right thing by leaving academia in favour of working in industry. A majority of his reason came down to economics: the cost of staying in academia through his master’s was just cost prohibitive for what he felt he was getting out of it.

Now, anyone who reads this blog knows that I am a champion of the underdog and believe in skill development over costly education that wastes your time. And, even as the economy makes a slight recovery, funding in academia remains elusive, the debate on whether or not to get a university degree continues.

Ultimately, this is a personal decision with many factors.

There are many reasons to finish a degree once you’ve started it: Connections, prestige, training, and experience. I’d like to expound on two of these reasons to work in a university by noting two skills I couldn’t have gotten working in industry alone, yet I apply to running a successful R&D firm every day.

The Grant Writing Process

In the industries I’ve worked in, money was obtained through sales, loans, and the occasional grant. However, while I was in the university, I wrote numerous grants. I didn’t win each one of them, but thankfully I won more than I lost. The grant writing process taught me a lot about budgeting, research plans, planning in general, and more than a little about writing a business plan. It taught me to analyse my writing and work critically, but not to take it overly personal. There is a cut-throat process that your grant proposal goes through before finally being accepted, and often this goes through the gamut of requirements and political games. There are lots of tips of what to do and what not to do. You have to be prepared to write well, defend your line of thinking, and even be denied if those that review your application don’t agree with your vision and deny it on principle of their own beliefs.

In my first years I found it takes a lot to write a successful grant. They must be finely tuned, well researched, and well backed up before your ideas get funded and you can see how well they succeed. You have to learn to listen critically and with an open mind to what the reviewers have to say, then act on their advice as necessary. There really isn’t any room for ego in academic grant writing in the beginning. Since going through the gauntlet of grant writing, I have learned to write better business plans, balance a tight budgets, and foresee future needs. These are details that every business can benefit from, and they will appreciate these skills when you bring them to the table.

Collaboration

Academia and industry both use collaboration extensively, just in different ways with different limitations. Both, though, are for the same reasons. It doesn’t matter if you are in business or in academia, there is fierce competition. This competition leads to collaboration in both areas, and thus development of interpersonal skills, leadership abilities, and many other skills needed for putting together a project.

There are a few differences, though. 

In academia, teams of researchers pool together for both knowledge and resources. The payout is a paper in which all the names are referenced, prestige is accorded, and celebrations are had. There is a little more to it when the work is big, especially if there are big egos in the mix. Even with the inevitable exception to the rule, for the most part it’s pretty tame. Seriously, do a quick internet search, and you’ll be hard pressed to find something that isn’t just academic dishonesty.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was something I took for granted in academia. I naïvely thought that industry would be like academia with collaboration, but it’s not. While, yes, I have seen collaboration in the industry, it’s usually under such tight legal stipulations that not much happens for a while and there are often restrictions surrounding the collaboration. More open collaboration between industry areas is something industries could use a little more of.

All of your collaborative projects, papers, and research through university life from undergraduate on will allow you to cut through the little things and get straight onto progress once you are given the go-ahead. This skill is invaluable to many industry folks for the mentality and skills make the real work happen in a smooth, timely way.

Beyond networking and knowledge, these are just two of the skills that everyone that goes through a master’s degree inadvertently picks up and that have made me a more successful person over all in industry. University, both while in school and if you are employed in academia, is a time to learn, have fun, challenge yourself and learn new skills that you can apply anywhere else in your life. If you focus on that while you make your decision, you’ll gain a lot of benefits whether you complete the degree or not.

Over to you:

For those of you that are through academia and on the other side of the fence now, what advice would you give? What skills did you learn in academia that you used elsewhere? What do you wish people would learn better while they are in academia?

Those that are still there, what nuggets of wisdom can you share?

Those that have no intention of going to the ivory tower, how do you think you can pick up these invaluable skills?