This trend away from academia is quite a departure from the ideals of a decade ago.

Many current professors, who would have found the idea of a nonacademic job all but unthinkable when they received their degrees, are having difficulty coping with the new challenges that their advisees face.

Kenneth A. Shepsle, professor of government and chair of the Government Department, says this generation gap among scholars affects the advising that graduate students receive from professors.

"Most of us on the Faculty have known nothing but the academy as a place to work," Shepsle says. "So I don't think we go out of our way to encourage our students to look outside of the academy, and that may be a failing of ours."

One graduate student in the social sciences says she thinks those scholars already ensconced in tenured positions find it difficult to relate to the scarcity of such tracks for today's Ph.D.s.

"I think it's kind of taboo, especially at a place like Harvard," she says. "The training assumes that everyone wants to be an academic professor."

Newhouse also says that some professors have difficulty accepting the idea of counseling their advisees on nonacademic jobs.

"I think we still need to educate faculty a bit," Newhouse says. "It's important that faculty are open to the need in many cases to look outside the academy for jobs."

For students, though, non-academic alternatives are already becoming more and more acceptable.

Lida F. Junghans, an eighth-year graduate student in the Anthropology Department, says that while she hopes for an academic job, she is willing to consider other possibilities.

"If the academic picture isn't good when I start looking," Junghans says, "I'm prepared to make a lateral move in any one of many possible directions, so I'm not pesimistic."

"I'm going to try very hard to get an academic job," she continues, "but it's not like my life depends on it or my identity depends on it."

Another graduate student who also asked to remain anonymous says the perception of non-academic jobs is changing faster for the students than for the Faculty.

"I think that especially in my field, in the cohorts that I know the best, a lot of people are very ambivalent about an academic future; but they feel the training they get here will allow them to get more applied jobs," she says.

"I think that applied work is not very respected in the academy, but I think a lot of people I know would be very fulfilled by that," the graduate student says.