While College seniors know that they will vacate their rooms the day after Commencement, graduate students have no such definitive end to their Harvard days.

Because of a competitive job market, graduate often end up lingering at Harvard for years after their degree requirements are complete.

Graduate students agree that the University makes it relatively easy for post-doctoral students to get teaching jobs here, but say it could provide better services and strategies to prepare them for the job market.

Opportunities to stay in short-term teaching jobs are variable. They are based on the department, demand, and amount of time the candidate has been writing.

Overall, graduate students say that the system has evolved so that they can prolong their dissertations and stay at Harvard until they have a job lined up elsewhere. But, they say, Harvard does not always make life for job-hunting graduate students easy.

The Scheme

Philosophy student Aaron J. James, who will be an assistant professor at the University of California at Irvine next year, says that job interviewers prefer applicants who finish their dissertations within a specific window.

"There will be informal pressure not to finish too early; people will think you're not ready," he says. "There's also informal pressure once you get up around eight years. It gets difficult if you've been on the job market that long unless you have work to show for it."