The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that many scholars are choosing (or being forced to choose) alternate career paths.

"In the wake of an academic job market that has been weak throughout the '90s, more and more graduates across the disciplines are seeking jobs outside higher education... Interviews with more than two dozen PhDs who have landed jobs outside universities turned up a mathematician who works on Wall Street, an English PhD who writes user manuals for a computer software company, and an art historian who is helping the J. Paul Getty Museum put its collection on line.  There is a cell biologist who works as a patent agent for a pharmaceutical company, and a biochemist who has produced a popular calendar called 'Studmuffins of Science'."