I remember exactly what I thought would happen after I finished my PhD.
I thought doors would open. I thought the letters after my name would function like a master key: unlock the executive suite, unlock the board table, unlock the rooms where decisions about the future of aging services actually get made. I had put in the years of work in the field. I had done the research, defended the dissertation, earned a credential I was told that mattered.
And then I went looking for the doors.
I really should not have been surprised by the lack of interest or new opportunities that came to me because of this degree. I went through something similar when I was finishing up my Master of Science in Gerontology over a decade ago.
People working at the nonprofit life plan community I was at had no idea what Gerontology even was despite working in the field. I wasn’t a social worker, nurse, or administrator so they just assumed I wasn’t qualified for any position because I couldn’t be put into one of their boxes.
When I was considering getting a PhD, I had numerous conversations with colleagues and friends who asked me what I wanted to do with a PhD. I really had no idea, but I thought it would be helpful. They told me what I wanted to do with my career (advance through the ranks at a CCRC) didn’t require a PhD. I knew that, but thought it would make me better at doing my job no matter where I ended up.
I started my PhD in Fall 2018 and it wasn’t embraced by the C-suite at my organization at all. Rather it was often met with condescending comments that were passed on to me by others who were in the room when I wasn’t. I switched jobs in the spring of 2022 in the midst of working on my dissertation. I reported to a board of directors at that time and when I defended my dissertation in June of 2023. I thought maybe I would finally get a raise since I had been there over a year and now had this amazing credential. I don’t think I even received a card of congratulations let alone a raise. Things went on as if nothing had changed.
When I decided to seriously start looking for other opportunities, it was difficult. At times I feel as if the credential made me harder to place rather than easier. Too academic for some rooms. Not enough operational scar tissue for others. Overqualified for the jobs I could get, underexperienced (by someone else’s arbitrary math) for the jobs I actually wanted.
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard that my downfall is not having an NHA (nursing home administrators license).
If you’ve felt this too, I want you to know it’s not a personal failing, and it’s not just you.
What nobody tells you about credentials
Here’s the quiet truth the aging services field doesn’t say out loud often enough: a credential is evidence that you can learn something rigorously. It is not evidence that an organization knows what to do with you once you have it.
Most of these senior living and aging services organizations were not built with a clear pipeline for PhDs, or for people carrying deep expertise that doesn’t map neatly onto a single operational title. I will say I do see some organizations who have done an excellent job in this, like creating applied research departments etc. We have well-worn paths for clinical licensure. We have well-worn paths for administrator certifications. We have a real shortage of paths for people whose value is strategic, cross-functional, and hard to box into a single job description which, not coincidentally, is exactly the kind of value this industry needs more of as it tries to reinvent itself around aging in place, home and community-based services, and entirely new business models like Continuing Care at Home.
So the doors didn’t open because I was missing something. They didn’t open because the industry hasn’t finished building the hallway.
What actually moved the needle
Looking back, the credential didn’t do the work I expected it to. What did:
- Showing up, working hard, getting involved in committees, and volunteering for projects. People will remember this and know that you can be a reliable person to get the job done.
- Translating complexity into something a board or an ops team could act on. Rigor matters. Rigor that no one can use doesn’t.
- Building relationships with people who didn’t need my title to trust my judgment. Trust, it turns out, is a currency the degree can’t buy on its own.
- Being willing to build my own door when one didn’t exist which is, not coincidentally, how a consulting practice gets started.
None of that required a PhD. All of it was easier because of one. But easier is not the same as automatic. Not that I think a degree should be a golden ticket to your dream job, but in a world where there will be more older adults than ever before I thought a PhD in Gerontology would hold way more value than it does.
The bigger question the industry needs to sit with
This isn’t really an essay about me. It’s an invitation to the field.
If we want to attract the kind of talent that can build the next generation of aging services like people willing to spend years earning deep expertise, we have to be honest about how we evaluate that expertise once it arrives. Right now, too many organizations default to credentials as a checkbox rather than a signal, while the actual predictors of whether someone can lead through ambiguity. We need to value systems thinking, judgment under uncertainty, the ability to hold both the actuarial spreadsheet and the resident’s lived experience in the same conversation because right now it goes largely unmeasured and unrewarded.
We say we want innovation. Then we build hiring committees and compensation bands that were designed for a much more static version of this industry, and we wonder why the people with the deepest expertise keep leaving to build things on their own.
I don’t think the answer is fewer credentials, or pretending mine didn’t matter. It clearly shaped how I think, and I’m proud of it. The answer is an industry willing to ask a harder question than “what does your resume say you have” and instead start asking “what have you actually built, solved, or moved forward, and with what.”
That’s a much better door to walk through. It’s also one this field is going to have to build for a lot more people like me, or it will keep losing us to the doors we build ourselves.