The myth of institutional stability in higher education has collapsed, revealing a sector in existential flux. In Vlog 267: Rescue Yourself, Tara Brabazon critiques the deteriorating conditions of doctoral education, calling on scholars to reclaim agency amid chaos. She describes universities as unstable ecosystems plagued by restructures and precarity, where supervisors themselves struggle to survive, let alone mentor. The nostalgia for linear academic trajectories—once nurtured from undergraduate to PhD—no longer reflects today’s fractured reality. “If you're waiting for somebody to rescue you, you're going to be waiting forever,” Brabazon warns, urging doctoral candidates to confront their circumstances with resilience and strategic self-direction. Her challenge is not one of blind optimism but of critical realism: acknowledging systemic volatility while identifying the narrow zones of personal control. She critiques the seductive narratives of the “believe-and-achieve” culture, exposing its erasure of context and privilege. Instead, she advocates for micro-achievements, consistent small choices rooted in self-knowledge and reflective adaptability. Doctoral researchers, she insists, must reject the passive fantasy of rescue and instead construct a framework of accountability, realistic expectations, and deliberate progress. This is not a call to individualism but a recognition of collective precarity demanding reflexive autonomy (Brabazon, 2023).
