Exploring Career Options in Academia

There are many benefits to pursuing an academic career. Ultimately, the decision to do a PhD, and to work in academia, is a personal one. It should reflect your personality type, work preferences, and goals.

Getting into academia requires you to complete masters after graduation. There are various avenues where you can opt for LL.M. like:

Beginning with, you can appear for CLAT PG Exam and get into National Law Universities (NLUs) in India. There are a lot of private colleges accepting your CLAT LLM Scores.

You can pursue LL.M. from abroad. There are a lot of universities like Harvard University, Oxford University, University of Cambridge, Queensmary University, University of Edinburgh, etc.

Almost all Indian universities offering LL.B. programs offer LL.M. programmes too. So, you can prefer LL.M. from any college in India, be it government or private.

Some colleges/universities recruit faculties based on their LL.M., however, when you clear UGC NET Exam (in India), you can get into top notch colleges/universities of the country.

After clearing the UGC NET Exam, you need to complete PhD and can work at Academia.

Before heading to career options in Academia, you should explore few aspects such as:

Responsibilities

Academic careers will vary, depending on the size of an institution, but in an academic research career, most professionals have some version of the following broad responsibilities:

• Applying for grants
• Conducting self-directed research
• Publishing papers
• Teaching courses
• Mentoring students
• Performing departmental service

Flexibility

The usual college timings are between 9AM to 5 PM but, academia gives you the freedom to dictate your own schedule, choosing when to teach, and what to teach.

Mentoring Students

Mentoring students is another part of academic life that many professors find immensely rewarding. They take pride in helping their students succeed in their careers and professional development.

Autonomy

Compared to corporate or industry jobs, academic positions have significantly less oversight. As an academic, you only have a boss in administrative terms. In your daily life you don’t report to anyone. You are your own manager.

Collaboration

The university environment promotes cross-disciplinary thinking and research and makes it easy to approach and collaborate with experts on just about any topic. 

Stability

Tenured academics enjoy the kind of job security that rarely exists in the corporate world. Tenure offers academics financial security, as well as the freedom to take risks in pursuing new research lines or projects that can take several years to see results.

High social standing

Academic careers have a high social standing.

Your answer to the typical “What do you do?” question at dinner parties is usually met with admiration and respect. Despite a 99.5% chance that the one who asked the question will never understand what you really do.