Funny how an oft repeated sentiment from the job seekers who post here is that they're so much better than the "dinosaurs/geezers." I mean, not like that arrogance ever shows up in the interview/hiring process, right?
Which means (if true) that we have to pay two years worth of dues in order to get even 4 months of use out of the placement service. Suddenly this move to "no fee for members" seems a lot less selfless...
Up until this year, registration for the placement service carried you through the placement year (July-June). What's more, it was (and as far as I know, still is) the case that you could attend SCS if you paid dues in the preceding year. But, as we were reminded last week, job candidates must have access to our calendars throughout the conference. Which means that, unlike everyone else, job seekers attending SCS must have paid not only last years dues but this years as well.
So no, I don't want special treatment. Less shitty treatment than the privileged elite receives would be nice, though.
Though of course, that would also require an institution that paid my membership fees as well, but never mind...
No. You are a whiner. Try a real job in the business world that expects hourly office work and fires you at will for not being productive. Seriously. Whatever money you get is given to you so you can read Homer and maybe help teach other people about Homer. Some of the people who post here really do think it's all unfair and unreasonable. You're clueless as to how the majority of the labor force works.
I was under the impression that I was posting to a board read by classicists, archaeologists, and ancient historians with vested interests in job searching, a constituency who would be interested in how to log on to their placement accounts (see Anon. 11:50 above), or who might have the knowledge to explain or the power to change this new fee structure. Are we only allowed to raise issues toward which "most of America" would feel sympathy? I must have missed reading that somewhere...
Well, for 'real jobs' in the business world, one does not normally need to pay a fee simply in order to be able to set up interviews. Most of America would in fact be pissed off if told that they had to pay three figures simply in order to attend interviews. So I agree that someone here is clueless about how the majority of the labor force works, but it isn't the people complaining about this membership fee business.
The conference is a professional expense. Many schools cover it, especially if you have an interview. If yours doesn't, maybe you picked the wrong school.
Picked the wrong school? Because job seekers so often have a choice as to where they are employed.
Also, in my experience at least, most schools will only pay conference expenses if you are giving a paper, not if you "only" have an interview. Why should they pay for you to interview for another job?
And anyway, we've been talking about membership fees, which schools (again in my experience) are not interested in paying for their non-TT faculty.
So here we have not only ignorance about how the majority of the labor force works, but ignorance about how it works in our field.
I was talking about grad students. As for people already employed at another school, you have a salary, and pretty much every job has work related expenses that are paid at least in part out of pocket.
Right--grad students whose departments do not pay for SCS travel "picked the wrong school."
When I first started grad school, my department actually supported travel to the SCS for job-seekers. Nowadays, not so much--not because the faculty don't want to, but because the university has placed draconian restrictions on funding owing to the omnipresent budget cuts.
So I, and the other job-seekers in my department who have interviews, are paying well over $1000 for travel and lodging (and sleeping four to a room to mitigate the damage). In my own case, since my fellowship is renewed at the beginning of the semester, I am trying to pay for this on the dregs of last semester's stipend.
The bottom line is that it's pretty harsh that job-seekers have to impoverish themselves in order to attend interviews. The avoiding-overdraft juggling act is an annual problem--and we do it because we love the field, we love teaching, and frankly we don't have much choice. But it's pretty low to shame grad students for "picking the wrong school" or otherwise imply that they are at fault for the shrinking of funding and shifting of administrative priorities that (as we're all aware) is a decades-long process and is affecting the entire academy--not just the "wrong" schools.
To everyone concerned about the online placement service:
The placement committee is aware and the Powers That Be are working on it. This is a bug in the new software. They've been working on it and they hope to have it fixed by tomorrow. It is not now nor ever was the plan to have candidates pay two years' dues for one job season.
Thanks to the placement committee for taking the problem seriously, and for not being evil.
And thanks to Anon @6:57 for the thanks. I let going back and forth with the troll get me down in a pretty serious way, and your expression of humanity was a wonderful counterweight to all that nonsense...
@our lovely local expert on "the majority of the labor force" and "most of America": you must be joking. My spouse recently changed jobs, and non of her prospective employers required her to fly across the country on her own dime for an interview. Two out-of-state jobs offered Skype interviews in the early stages and both assured my wife that if she were offered an in-person visit, her travel would be comped. That is just normal practice in the corporate world, which also does crazy things such as paying people for their time.
8:55: I like to think there is more compassion than resentment here, even if the resentment is loudest. Good luck to everyone who has interviews, let's hope for a better market next year, and in the meantime let's try to think of one another (even those of a different generation, beloved Baby Boomer!) as fellow human beings who might be struggling, perhaps with very difficult things. Like, for example, looming unemployment and lack of health insurance because we were over-, not under-, committed to this field and willing to sacrifice for it.
^ That's just stupid. And if you complain about it, then you were NOT "willing to sacrifice" for it. By definition, you dolt. The moment you start whingeing, you've given up any claim to "sacrifice". I really should stop expecting you to understand even the words you yourself use. Man, what an inadequacy!
I used to feel like I was lucky to get a job. I believed the talk about the overproduction of qualified PhDs. Not any more. There's just an overproduction of third-rate whiners sticking around due to some misplaced sentiment of "sacrifice."
SCS insider here. We're working on the login problem. We intended to keep the placement service open to current candidates through the end of the placement season, but a glitch in our single sign-on routine has kicked people out temporarily. The company responsible for website development should have the problem fixed in the morning. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The login problem on classicalstudies.org appears to be fixed. If anyone encounters problems logging in, please send a message to info@classicalstudies.org and describe the issue. We'll try to resolve it as quickly as possible. And just to repeat what was said in an earlier post, it was never the plan to require placement service subscribers to pay their membership dues to retain access to the placement service. We hope that the work we did over the last 24 hours will restore access for everyone, regardless of their membership status.
What a bunch of dumbass whiners. You sound exactly those D students who are convinced they're really A/B students, 'cause they worked sooooo hard! Why can't you just give me what I waaaaaant! You're so meeeaaaaaan! I'd have an A if you didn't haaaaaate meeee!.
As far as I can tell, we're just sharing the hotel with Midwestern tourists. But who are we kidding: we'll never do better than the bikers! Or the year that hell froze over in Chicago.... we've had a series of memorable conferences!
Chicago was crazy. I forgot to bring a jacket and dragging a suitcase through a few blocks of knee-deep snow to the train station. It was like something by Jack London.
The morning I left Chicago, the trains weren't running because the switches were broken. The windows of my cab were frozen over on the inside, and the driver had to keep wiping down the windshield with his hand while sliding all over the icy road. The culmination came when he lost control, and slid sideways across three lanes of traffic to gently bump us to a stop at the curb in front of O'Hare. The only reason my plane even left Chicago that day is because the flight originated in the Caribbean. Watching the passengers faces when they disembarked in shorts and flip flops while seeing their breath inside the airport was priceless. Still, the bare ass in chaps on Wacker Drive might take grand prize.
Is it time to start freaking out if your interviews for tomorrow morning still are just located in "own suite," or do we think this is going to be dealt with soon?
No need to freak out. If the interview is happening in "own suite", the Placement Service is not involved but the chair of the search committee should be getting in touch with you. The problem is that the hotel refuses to give out the room number via phone/email, and will only divulge it in person, so I suspect you'll hear today as people start checking in this afternoon/evening. You could also try to find out yourself at the check-in desk for a general idea of where the "own suite" rooms are located, but they may refuse to do that, too.
any tips on maintaining an internet connection here? I joined HHonors yesterday morning to get free internet but service now seems to be timing out today.
Could you people please use nicknames, as was the tradition around here back in the day? That would make it easier to follow the different threads of conversation. Thank you.
Yeah I don't get what is up with that person. Do we even believe s/he is older, or is it a younger person trying to make some kind of weird joke? If not, troll, we aren't worried about netflix, we were very explicitly told that we *must* maintain internet connection in order to access our placement accounts. I, for example, had an interview location for this morning change last night.
What interests me is the recurrent use of the phrase "special snowflake," particularly in contexts (as above) where it seems out of place. It's almost like a sphragis, though maybe it's a mark not so much of authorship as genre membership...
"Sphragis". Ha. So you learned a new word recently but haven't quite learned how to use it yet. Man, your interpretive powers are lame. Why do I say this? Because you have conflated at least two different posters. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I would hope for your sake that your work doesn't come anywhere near identifying anonymous or pseudonymous texts -- if I actually hoped for positive things for you. I do not.
I wonder that too, but about the questions that show up on this board and the silly posturing by inexperienced candidates. From where I'm sitting, it looks like immaturity, not self-assurance.
Agreed: nothing on the wiki likely still means nothing. Not everyone is in session yet, and even those who are might not have met or made a final decision yet. A public schools in particular, a campus invite is not a decision that a department can make on its own. It will have to go up the chain of command to the dean level or beyond, and every link adds time.
And a quick perusal of last year's wiki reveals that a considerable portion of last year's TT jobs didn't extend invitations for on-campus interviews until two or three weeks after SCS.
"If you have not heard by now, all you will get are rejection letters, via email or regular mail. Unfortunately, this is how it works. January 15, 2016 at 7:31 PM"
No, that is simply not true. A lot of places don't start their spring semester until after MLK Day. I'm at one such. We're not hiring this year, but I've been on several SCs, for classics and other depts., in the last few years. We are NEVER able to convene the committee to discuss a short list until a day or two before the semester begins; this year, that would be this weekend. Then we have to send our list of 6 possible candidates to the Dean, who has to certify it and get back to us with permission to contact the top three. Then, and only then, can we send out campus invitations. Usually this means that we don't contact our top three until about January 25 at the very earliest. If one of them says "I've already been offered a position" (as has happened to us a couple of times), we move down the list and contact nos. 4, 5, and 6 as necessary. In that case, they don't hear from us until early February.
Our SC has a short list, but it has three steps up the administration to make before we can extend any invites. We're submitting our requests right after MLK with fingers crossed, and we're hoping to get the OK to plan the campus visits ASAP, but we really have no control over the timing.
Shame on you for being a cliche: a department in a third-rate university, in an undesirable city, composed entirely of Harvard, Princeton and UC Berkeley grads hired fresh from grad. school with seriously substandard CVs that have done nothing to justify their "potential". Shame.
@2:06: Such vitriol! (And ignorance.) Upset that you didn't get the job? And by the way, getting a job is necessary to help justify one's potential. I'm glad that the people hired have that opportunity.
@2:33 pm There are no games without players. Every player is culpable for the role s/he plays.
And nice job reading numbers correctly. Well, those that you did read correctly, time-stamp notwithstanding. You read the time-stamp from the first page of comments not realizing that when you hit "post a comment" you also have to click "newest" to see the newest. That's the kind of shoddy work I expect from someone who publicizes unreflective comments of the sort you have.
@4:27 Vitriol is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. You obviously haven't been keeping up with the job market if you think that a job (by which you must mean full time and TT if you're being intellectually consistent, since we're talking about UM here) is a necessary precursor to proving potential. But then, you obviously haven't been keeping up at all. Check out the CVs on their page. Then justify hiring TT someone with *no* publications.
UM is a disgrace. Apologize all you want. Then go advocate for WUSTL and vote for Trump. Or, you know, try to be a better person. Your call.
1:30 AM/2:06 PM has a real point. University of Miami is stuck in another era, aka the "bad old days." As a discipline we need to be willing to shame bad actors publicly. Kudos to you, Homeric quotation guy.
This other guy shouting about snowflakes needs to go back on his meds.
I'm guessing that the person calling everyone "snowflakes" earned their PhD so long ago that they still refer to black people as "colored" and Asians as "Orientals" and they've decided to add some newfangle lingo to their vocabulary.
Anonymous said... Some of you have really bad cases of jealousy and resentment of those who managed to land jobs when you didn't.
January 21, 2016 at 4:28 AM
Some may indeed. You also have to be willing to acknowledge that job =|= merit and that an obvious preference for pedigree over merit is a problem.
The field has dozens of scholars with years of experience teaching, multiple publications in quality outlets (including books), and these people don't get jobs. "Too old." "Too long on the market." "Not from a 'good' school." Other nonsense. Instead, places like UM hire fresh PhDs from Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley. Then look at their CVs after 2-3 years. (There's one on the website you can look at!) A couple of publications, but nothing interesting, and certainly not as many as most applicants already have. Instead, dozens of "talks", all of which mean zip. Talks are what we do when we want to look productive without actually engaging the field. Laaaazy. Hire someone worthwhile, not someone whose pedigree makes your nether regions feel tingly. And yes, I have a TT job already. No, I wouldn't go to UM. Regardless of what the individual persons are like, their systemic practices are disgusting.
Some of us believe that problems in the field should be exposed so that they may either be corrected or the departments involved may receive an appropriate hit to their reputation.
I think 1:10 was probably parodying snowflake-guy. Here's hoping the true Mr. Snowflake has gotten back on the meds.
I don't think we should "name and shame," but yea, the seeming preference for pedigree over publications and teaching experience that seems to be shared by many, and the way that it reflects class bias, is appalling.
I'm personally tired of hearing how allegedly good all these long suffering teachers are who can't find permanent positions. How do you know they're so much better than the well pedigreed people who are getting bashed right now? Publications are a different story and more easily quantifiable and rated, but what about all the whining of the adjuncts whose excuse for not publishing much is that they're too busy teaching all the time? Bottom line: anytime somebody whines about how these allegedly good teachers are getting shafted, or how they lost out because someone preferred Harvard of Berkeley to Iowa or Florida, it really sounds like sour grapes from people who just didn't succeed in securing a t-t job and are supremely bitter.
^ So you're part of the problem, and part of the problem is your inability to read.
I'm talking about people who are BOTH experienced teachers AND better published losing out to people who are neither experienced nor published but are pedigreed. Of course it's difficult to tell who is a better teacher, but that cuts both ways, so better to look at experience, peer-evaluations, and student evaluations. This presumes that we should hire TT people who have those things as well as the publication record to show that they are engaged with the field.
How do I know they exist? Because I've seen their job applications and I can read CVs. There's no need to strawman my argument by pretending like I'm talking about whiners or unpublished adjuncts (not necessarily the same category!). There's no need if you're intellectually honest, at any rate.
6:24 AM is precisely right about the appalling class bias but wrong about naming and shaming. We should be Classicists, not Classists.
Just because someone has spent years in non-t-t positions does not make them a better candidate for a permanent position than someone fresh out of graduate school.
Of course having spent years in a non-tenure track position doesn't *automatically* make someone a better candidate than some ABD from Harvard/Princeton/Berkeley--I don't think anyone made such an assertion.
The point others here are making is that people from those schools with little teaching experience who are thin on publications tend to regularly get hired over individuals who are demonstrably more qualified.
Pick a Classics department at random and look at their faculty list. Invariably you will find a combination of PhDs from Harvard, Berkeley, and Princeton as well as places like UChicago, Stanford, etc. are well-represented, especially among newer faculty.
Why should you be surprised? Harvard is objectively a better place than Iowa. No one forced anyone to go to a sub par school. Why the surprise when there's a handicap on the market?
These harangues about the supposed classicism of hiring graduates from top-tier schools are so tiresome at this point. I could name dozens of top-tier grads who are without permanent employment, despite the good name of the school and their own publication and teaching records. These grads are experiencing the joys of perpetual VAP posts, giving up and taking jobs at boarding schools, taking adjunct posts, etc. The job market is poor for everyone.
It's also really tiresome to hear about these allegedly amazing teachers who have all this experience and just can't get a fair shake. The market really is bad for everyone, and if in that bad situation you choose a sub par school...can you really blame anyone but yourself for your failures?
@9:10 and 9:19 Is your grasp of logic really that bad? I mean, is it really? Really? I find that mind-boggling, but I'm also ready to accept it. Perhaps your perpetual tiredness has affected your cognition.
The existence of more Ivy (vel sim.) grads than positions does not in any way negate any of the above charges of classism. Note, too, that the charges are of classism and not classicism. Quite different things.
If you're so tired--and you keep using that word, so let's take you at your word--, you should take a nap. Better yet, retire. That would solve several problems at once.
"Harvard is objectively a better place than Iowa."
When someone believes this so much that they are willing to favor someone from this background over a non-harvard degree with good pubs and teaching, that's what we call "classicism."
If this generation of classicists consists almost entirely of people from only five-ish schools, that is not healthy for the field. And it doesn't bode well for the future of classics in a diversifying world.
This is the crowd that slammed WUSL for starting a new PhD program. You can't have it both ways. There are not enough jobs for the glut of PhDs produced in the field. The existence of more than the top 5-10 programs is unnecessary. The ranking of programs is well known information, allowing for variation depending on one's specialty. The existence of the wiki means anyone can see who is getting jobs and which programs they attended. If one is not admitted to a top program, perhaps this is not the career for him/her. Knowing you didn't get into a top program and still spending 6-8 years pursuing a PhD is your choice, but you probably shouldn't then complain about the hiring practices that were transparent from the beginning.
That's not to say classism is not worth discussing, and I hope that the top programs do more to attract, retain, and graduate more diverse students. It's no secret that the field remains very white, very male, and very rich. The only way to counter that is to train students who fall outside of those parameters and set them up for success.
^ Once again, you assume, quite wrongly, that admittance to one of "5-10 programs" is the sole determiner of merit and should also determine later outcomes, publications and teaching be damned. What's wrong with you?
You are a seriously poor arguer. The claim that there are already too many programs and so there should not be more is VERY DIFFERENT from the claim that objectively good people are graduated from places other than Harvard, Princeton, and Berkeley and that those people have shown through publication, teaching, awards, etc. that they are in fact objectively better than the Ivy grads with nothing.
Even if one accepted your proposition that there should only be 5-10 programs (dubious) and accepted your second proposition that those 5-10 programs should be the ones you identify as "the top" (more doubtful), that would not serve as an argument for sidelining all the people who have previously graduated from any program that is not one of those 5-10. Rather, these people should be judged on what they produce in the three relevant areas: research, teaching, and service, with research and teaching weighted according to the school doing the hiring.
With the market so bad that most applicants have held multiple positions, there is no longer any need to use PhD institution as a measure of quality and promise. Instead, we can look at actual output. Do away with promise. Measure product. The only people who oppose this are those who know they themselves would not measure up. It's fear, embarrassment, and false pride that perpetuates this system.
What we have is closer to the dystopia you suggest: one where people are hired based on those same 5-10 schools (whichever ones they are) with little to no interest in actual, demonstrated quality. Some schools do better. Those that don't should be shamed publicly.
The fact that success in the field is at this point restricted to so few people that deliberately adding to the glut is unethical does not mean that we should just accept the fact that only those coming from a very narrow background are able to get into and attend the "right" undergrad program that will open doors to the "right" graduate program that will open doors to a TT job....
@10:37 - Oh, I actually 100% agree with everything you've written (10:24 here). Of course admittance to a top program is not the sole determination of merit in a field where so much is who you know and much of the rest is random. I am not blaming those who don't get in to a top program or saying they are unworthy of this career. I'm just working within the system we have and hate to watch people waste their time if all the odds are stacked against them.
I also happen to agree fervently that it's a damn shame to pass up people who are clearly more qualified but happen to be coming from "lesser" programs. I am always happy when I see one who does get a job over a Harvard or a Berkeley or a Princeton. I wish SCs would review applications without CVs and letters of recommendation first, selecting those with promising research and good teaching evaluations to review further. I'm just not holding my breath while I wait for that to happen, and in the meantime, if someone wants a (slightly better) chance at a job, I'd say familiarizing oneself with the programs that have high placement rates is a smart decision.
Teaching evaluations are oftentimes one of the more dubious parts of an application package. Definitely not worth more than pedigree, frankly. Publications are another story, I'd say...but this frequent claim about allegedly better teachers doesn't hold water.
^ Written like the poor reader you are. Seriously, who are you people? Are you drunk?
No one in this conversation has yet claimed that good teaching evaluations = good teaching. The claim was "better to look at experience, peer-evaluations, and student evaluations". That's three things together that each give context and support to the others.
Don't you know? If you're some fabulous teacher with a few articles from a second or even a third rate school, you can trash anyone you want from your position of superior moral authority?
The young faculty on U Miami's page are impressive, and hiding behind your computer screen while calling them out for being undeserving is cowardly. Moreover, notice that at least two of them have proficiency in ancient languages that are not Greek and Latin. Maybe this is something that is attractive to Miami?
Credentialism is a problem in Classics, but if you can't express that notion without insulting individuals, I'd advise that you work on that. It will be better for you and for the field.
^ Someone's feeling a little thin skinned.... Conversation hit too close to home? Having a little publication envy? Poor baby. Go look at your diploma and cry yourself into a little nappy time. An Ivy failure is a double failure.
Those feelings you're having, the ones you think are anger and righteous indignation? That's actually shame. It's welling up within you and you don't want to face it, so you're acting out. You should feel shame, though. You're sitting in a position you don't deserve, the product of classism. Your presence contributes to the decline of classics as a discipline. You are a tumor.
Here's hoping you move on or that UM further defunds humanities. Karma's a bitch.
It's pretty obvious that there is one obsessive and vitriolic person who keeps talking about "shame," and references previous comments with "^", and at least two others who pushing back against him/her.
Not as ugly as those faculty who endorse classist privilege and those anonymous "not" UM faculty like 12:14 who support them.
The problem is, there will always be apologists for privilege, especially so in Classics since it is an inherently conservative discipline. The only way to effect change is to be loud, to expose abuse, and to do so despite the discomfort of the 12:14s of the world who would rather shout down any notion that challenges their comfortable self-congratulation.
^^ I'll take vitriolic as a compliment. There's nothing inherently negative about it, and the continued use of the word reveals that I'm hitting home. You wouldn't feel it if you weren't guilty.
Oh yeah, I forgot. "Privilege" is the newest trendy issue. Hurry...let's get an SCS panel to discuss it! Give me a break. As a previous poster indicated, we don't need all the Ph.D. programs we have. Just because you made the free choice to go to a lousy program doesn't mean you're some victim of class warfare or class whatever. It means you made a bad decision and now think you're a victim of those mean people who want to hire colleagues from top programs in a buyer's market.
Let's take a serious moment here to discuss/unpack some of 12:37's comment.
Just because you made the free choice to go to a lousy program doesn't mean you're some victim of class warfare or class whatever. It means you made a bad decision and now think you're a victim of those mean people who want to hire colleagues from top programs in a buyer's market.
12:37 makes a number of assumptions that do in fact reflect an unhealthy classism and a deleterious view of privilege.
"you made the free choice to go to a lousy program" assumes (1) total free choice, ignoring undergraduate institution plays in graduate admissions and the role wealth and other privileges play in undergraduate admission and (2) that programs not in 12:37's prejudicial views as "the best" are automatically "lousy". Of course, those "lousy" programs are staffed almost entirely by the same ivy PhDs as the "best" programs....
I'll pass over "buyer's market". The idea that candidates are chattel is readily apparent and obviously unhealthy.
Note again that 12:37 makes no reference to objective criteria of evaluation.
An SCS panel to discuss the role of privilege in graduate admissions and in faculty hiring would be a good start. Any SCS bigwigs reading this? You should think seriously about hosting just such a panel. The ideas espoused here are truly harmful to the field's intellectual diversity, among other things.
This is weird... Where did anybody say that someone couldn't criticize UMiami, or credentialism? It appears that even 12:14 was objecting to the criticism of the junior faculty at UMiami, not the search committee. What are newly minted PhDs from the Ivies and Berkeley supposed to do, not apply to jobs to make way for students from underrepresented PhD programs? I think most relatively humanistic people are for diversifying the field (especially along lines of race, gender, class, and sexuality), but jeez.
What kind of donkey thinks that publications are "objective"? If somebody's 25 pg dissertation excerpt is better than your 25 pg journal article that you've attached for a writing sample, maybe you got smoked fair + square. But please, keep mansplaining classics into the future.
If you're two or three years out of graduate school with a number of highly-placed journal articles, that should be as close to an unbiased indication of scholarly promise as you can get.
Oooh, I love me a good Trump-style self-righteous defamation!
But here I am struggling to understand the timeliness of the OP's rant against the TT faculty at UM: they were hired years ago, and the current post is for a VAP. Pent up anger?
Look, I am the last person you'd find defending the idea that Ivy PhDs are objectively better than everyone else, denying that "prestige" plays an unreasonably large role in who gets hired, or insisting that admission to the "best" graduate programs is entirely meritocratic. But I find this repeated notion that the only people getting T-T jobs in this field come from Ivies or a few other very prestigious programs to be a little odd. First of all, I come from a program that is hardly prestigious, and yet I know many fellow graduates who have landed T-T jobs since 2008. Second, I have taught at some "prestigious" places alongside people with Ivy PhDs who now live in their parents' basements. But I thought anecdotes might be unreliable, so I looked at last year's wiki. Here's what I found:
1) Three TT hires of PhDs from Ohio State University. 2) 1 TT hire each from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas, Illinois, UCLA, UCSB, and Missouri. 3) 2 TT hires each from UNC and Duke 4) 4 TT hires from Cincinnati. 5) 2 TT hires from Toronto 6) 5 hires from Michigan
Of course, we still see a whole lot of hires from Penn, Harvard, Berkeley, etc. And you might be thinking "yeah, but Michigan is really great at some things" or "isn't Cincinnati really great for archaeology?" or "c'mon, UNC is pretty good," and so on. I don't dispute any of these things. What I dispute is the notion that only people from Ivies and a few other prestigious, "elite" programs are getting T-T jobs. Is the situation better for you if you come from one of those schools? Yes. Is it probably unfairly better for you? Yes, at least to some extent. Are you just doomed if you don't come from one of those schools? Hardly.
"If we're generalizing, can we blame the obnoxious, elitist baby boomers who believe retirement starts with death and just move on?"
Speaking as a baby boomer who's now aged 58, let me say that I would LOVE to retire right now, especially since I have several chronic health conditions that are exacerbated by stress and fatigue. I teach in a tiny department with constant overloads -- last semester, I was in the classroom FOURTEEN hours per week -- and there is no doubt at all that this is shortening my life. My doctors tell me so. However, until I see the results of this year's election, I do not dare to retire, precisely because I have several chronic health conditions. I can't sign up for Medicare for seven more years, and I cannot risk being without health insurance. I know that I am too ill and too exhausted to be as effective at my job as I was 10 years ago. I know there are many younger people baying for my blood. But I am ill, and tired, and frightened, and I cannot retire. It may be too much to ask that those of you are are 28 or 30 years old feel any compassion at all for those of us on the other end of our professional lives; but not all baby boomers are "obnoxious" or "elitist" for working to age 65.
Right? It just like how people keep crying about racism when I can go to Google and find a list of black CEOs *and* POTUS is black!
I mean, I've heard some talk about some place called Ferguson or something, but don't they know they can find a list on the internet? Jeez, people! As a society we've moved on!
[I don't believe any of this, but people who are uninterested in intellectual honesty or are so limited they can't even see the problems in their own argumentation need to be mocked in a way that they might comprehend. It'll get their backs up, but they were probably lost causes to begin with. I'm more interested in showing the flaws of their arguments to the bystanders.]
You have my sympathies for your situation. I know colleagues in similar situations and it's awful. I also am well able to imagine a scenario where I too might be in your situation in a couple decades or less.
For what it's worth, I don't think what you describe is what people are railing at. It's not you. The anger toward Boomers comes from other sources. What I see is anger toward people who are 65+ or 70+ not retiring, whether because they just don't want to or because their finances tanked in 2008. When it's the latter, the anger is really at the whole situation and misdirected at individuals.
But there's also anger at the situation Classics is in as a whole. There are dissertations worth of material on what that is, but the state of Humanities generally and the state of its flagship, Classics, is kind of like Global Warming/Climate Change: bad things are happening, we've seen it coming, and those who could have done something about it -- Boomers in this case -- didn't because change is hard and they weren't going to live to see the results. Add to that the number of people who feel they were lured into Classics under false pretenses by these selfsame Boomers and then blamed by those Boomers for not seeing the lies they were peddled.... Well, you get the picture. Of course not every individual is culpable. But of course there's a lot of anger at the class.
If you're not adding to the excess of grad. students, then try not to take the anger personally.
The discussion above has been interesting for the light it shines on current views concerning elite vs. non-elite programs and the success of graduates in getting positions. One aspect that has not been addressed fully is the extent to which advisors and faculty in general can influence those decisions.
I have a Ph.D from a second-tier program and, fortunately, am currently in a T-T position. It has become a regular occurrence at the SCS when talking with faculty from my former department to hear them complain about the failure of their Ph.D’s to get jobs. What is frustrating is that colleagues on search committees also regularly tell me that the letters of reference these profs tend to provide range from apathetic to downright horrible. The candidate applications from the department tend to go into the ‘No’ pile pretty quickly. I haven’t asked any of them about this directly, but I wonder why they complain if they put little effort into promoting people. They also make no effort to ‘talk-up’ candidates while at the meetings. I realize that this part of the Classics culture is a negative with respect to the job market, but I’ve seen numerous professors from elite programs go out of their way at receptions or at the bar to find members of search committees and talk about a particular candidate. This also happens from other programs (not my Ph.D. institution, though) and must have some impact on job searches.
I understand that complaining about the lack of glad-handing is ridiculous, obscene, and probably a little offensive, but I think that this sits at the root of the problem. Either we need a completely new system that relies largely on blind review of applicants to eliminate biases like pedigree or second-tier programs need to step up their game and fight tooth-and-nail to help their grads get jobs. Right now it is a game and certain programs know how to play it much better than others.
That is something that I have also seen and heard about, although I wouldn't have processed the observation without your post. Is it perhaps some kind of unconscious feeling among low-first or even second-tier faculty that their own students, almost certainly attending a less impressive university than they themselves did, are not worth fighting for?
"Add to that the number of people who feel they were lured into Classics under false pretenses by these selfsame Boomers and then blamed by those Boomers for not seeing the lies they were peddled...."
Indeed, though here I guess Boomers stands for "people who were in advising positions in the last decade or two" (many of whom are too young to be actual Boomers).
In my experience, the two groups (the lurers and the blamers) each tend to pretend the other does not exist. In some cases this entails pretending one's past self did not exist.
@1:13AM: If you're interested in flaws in arguments, how about avoiding misrepresenting the views you're criticizing? I think this is covered in introductory critical reasoning courses.
Your comparison of the situation faced by candidates from less prestigious PhD programs in Classics and the situations faced by black people in America is pretty embarrassing. I hope you don't really think that your plight is comparable to Michael Brown's or even to the far larger number of people who are lucky enough not to be shot by the police, but simply harassed and assaulted for nothing more than being black. But perhaps you just chose a really bad analogy, and don't really think that you're a victim of that kind and degree of injustice. I hope so.
But in any case, even in terms of your bad analogy, your "argument" against 9:58PM fails. It fails for the obvious reason that you attack 9:58 for saying things that she or he not only did not say, but explicitly denied. I hope you didn't argue this badly in your dissertation.
"Wow. I've had first-years show greater metacognitive reflection. Just wow. I hope your arguments won't be this unreflective in your dissertation."
"Yeah, 4:13 is an ass, but a correct ass. If you didn't get 1:13's point--and it's clear you didn't, then you're part of the problem."
Aren't responses like these the intellectual equivalent of that kid in grade school who always boasted about his ability to do awesome things, but when asked to do them, simply said, "I could do it if I wanted, but I don't want to"? If you want to know why Classics is dying, don't look to Boomers, just look at the utter inability of people on this board to make an argument that wouldn't show up in an introductory logic textbook to illustrate informal fallacies.
You really do sound like a freshman who's just come home for Winter Break. "I learned in my Logic 101 class that you're not doing it right!" You don't have a full grasp of logic and you don't seem to understand issues of context, medium, or audience. That is, you're confusing your elementary familiarity with logic with best practices in rhetoric. Add to that that you're wrong about the logic, too, and the above-mentioned likeness to the freshman on break is complete.
Posts like yours make me feel sweet-bitter. Bitter for the state of academe that produced you and for the fate of the field that you augur, sweet for myself.
"The faculty job market plays a fundamental role in shaping research priorities, educational outcomes, and career trajectories among scientists and institutions. However, a quantitative understanding of faculty hiring as a system is lacking. Using a simple technique to extract the institutional prestige ranking that best explains an observed faculty hiring network—who hires whose graduates as faculty—we present and analyze comprehensive placement data on nearly 19,000 regular faculty in three disparate disciplines. Across disciplines, we find that faculty hiring follows a common and steeply hierarchical structure that reflects profound social inequality."
Interesting. I wonder if there would be a way to measure the accuracy of doctoral prestige as a tool for predicting not just placement but productivity. Do Ivy League and elite PhDs publish more, teach better, etc. compared with graduates from less prestigious programs? Maybe comparing the productivity of scholars with different PhDs but working at similar types of institutions?
I think much of it has to do with the increased pressures on faculty along with a unhealthy dose of apathy/resignation. After over 50 APA interviews, a dozen flyouts, and three searches (one recently as chair immediately after tenure), I can see how searches are compromised all too often. The pressure to "get it right" is intense while we're rarely in great shape to actually do it right with the beatdowns we now regularly receive in academia. It's like a gut punch, or worse, every week once you join committees and take on administrative duties.
In addition to reckoning pedigree in somewhat lazy fashion, I see an over reliance on quick and dirty networking of dubious worth when the opposite should be happening in these uncertain times. Instead of performing due diligence, we allow colleagues we believe we can trust to hold too much sway. I've seen it happen frequently in subtle and not so subtle ways and my feeling after entering my mid career years is that we are worse off for it.
Responding to 1:36: I wouldn't be surprised if they do, but mostly because of resources and socialization early on. Someone has studied the process from the other end, graduate admissions. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/06/new-book-reveals-how-elite-phd-admissions-committees-review-candidates
Choice quote from a graduate admissions committee member: And they were also unabashed elitists. “This is an elite university and a lot of the people at the university are elitists,” one professor said with a laugh. “So they make a lot of inferences about the quality of someone's work and their ability based on where they come from.”
It's intriguing that January 22, 2016 at 11:00 AM and January 25, 2016 at 2:38 AM make very similar points about networking and 'glad-handing' as influential in the job search process. How is that still a part of the Classics job market? Shouldn't that have gone out of style in the 1970s? I know/hope that at least some search committees use objective, separated perspectives when judging candidates, but I think this is a major issue. If references, cover letters, publications, teaching dossiers, etc. are cancelled out because someone bought someone a beer and talked up a candidate, what is the point?
I know people here have railed against it, but I still don't understand how SCs can so severely undervalue and down right ignore postdoctoral experience. I'm not talking about cushy postdocs lined up by a connected advisor, but positions that actually emulate your own institutional situation.
How does it happen, 12:14? We have Bushes and Clintons in charge of classics - two sides of the same coin. Masters of the universe who are so pleased with themselves that they can't foresee calamity and overestimate their abilities when it does happen. They are exponentially less likely to forgive others as they are to excuse themselves. Now their equally entitled disciples are taking over the field, which explains how inescapable our predicament actually is. I'll be watching from the sidelines as the most wasteful generation gives way to the most entitled generation they're helping to prop up and fail in epic fashion with hubris serving as their common elixir.
Re ""networking and glad-handing," etc.--The last three times I've been on a SC, we have had the distressing experience of receiving almost identical letters for several different candidates from the same recommenders. In one instance, a professor wrote, concerning FOUR different candidates, "X is the best graduate student I have ever taught in my 30-year career." In short, this professor had a template, saying "best student ever," that s/he used for every recommendation letter, and simply didn't notice that four of those identical letters were going to the same search committee. Other letters weren't actually identical but were so similar that again it seemed clear that the writers were just using a template and changing names. They were not bothering to write actual evaluations of individual candidates. Thus, these letters were completely useless for our evaluation of candidates.
Now contrast that with carefully written, individualized letters by colleagues whom I know and respect, in which the writer describes the work the candidate has done and how it will match our needs at this particular college. Imagine further that I run into those colleagues at the SCS and that they volunteer more information about a candidate's strengths. If the dossiers are otherwise of about equivalent impressiveness (as so many of them are), am I more likely to vote to interview someone whose abilities have been described in detail by someone whose opinion I trust, or to interview a candidate whose letters of recommendation were clearly boilerplates the writer uses for every letter? The answer seems clear to me.
I realize how unfair this is, especially since -- horrifyingly -- a candidate cannot know whether his/her recommenders are actually writing recommendation letters or just using templates. But horrifying and unfair though this is, it is an important side of "networking." I cannot imagine that "someone buying somebody a beer" would ever cancel out cover letters, publications, teaching dossiers, etc. But when those things are more or less equal across several applications, and one applicant has a genuine evaluative letter from someone I trust while the others have letters that are basically useless, then networking does play a role.
Yeah, so all things equal (quite common if you've made it as far as a PhD), those that ingratiate themselves with the most connected advisors get overwhelmingly placed. This is all good and fine, but we've seen too many people fail to the point that it's likely more than the result of a crapshoot's unpredictability with so few positions at stake. So basically kiss your advisor's ass and sleep with them if at all possible as it can break things in your favor. Look how far it got certain people at a certain Ivy department in CT and a host of other elite schools that can easily hide this skewing factor behind the facade of merit.
I think the take away is that the placement is basically random, but it becomes exponentially more random the less prestigious your degree is, and prestige is a very sharp curve. And you also have to factor in the laziness and connectedness of your adviser, which, by the time you have the PhD, pretty much qualifies as an act of God, since there's no way to change it.
Since networking is the name of the job-getting game outside of academia (and in administrative positions within academia), don't expect that aspect of the T-T job search to go away in the next decade.
"That is something that I have also seen and heard about, although I wouldn't have processed the observation without your post. Is it perhaps some kind of unconscious feeling among low-first or even second-tier faculty that their own students, almost certainly attending a less impressive university than they themselves did, are not worth fighting for?"
I went to a low-first-tier university (if it matters, I had good reasons for opting to attend this school over ones with better pedigrees). This was exactly the attitude displayed by certain junior professors. It was even openly articulated in a passive-aggressive or underhanded way. Students picked up on it and started saying we shouldn't even try to recruit students from top undergraduate programs.
It's sad to remember that time. I felt betrayed; I'm sure others felt worse, especially if they didn't have close ties to senior professors in that department.
I could imagine that, given hiring patterns, faculty at the tippy top places identify more with their graduate students than faculty at lower-ranked places, which would compound the prestige challenge already facing those attending a lower-first or second-tier university. That would help explain observations a number of people have made about effort put into letters (people still write letters tailored to specific schools?? Not in my universe!!), glad-handing (for good or for bad), and adviser-student relationships.
@10:50 AM: "People still write letters tailored to specific schools?? Not in my universe!!"
Well, yes, they do, judging by the past three SC's I've been on. (I'm the same person who mentioned the individualized letters a few posts back).
Interesting that people here have assumed that the tailored letters came from a "tippy-toppy" program. In fact, no; the colleagues I'm thinking about -- and yes, there were several of them -- who wrote tailored letters were all at solid second-tier universities. Recommendations from the "top" places tended not to be individualized for specific ads. The person who wrote the infamous four letters calling four different candidates "the best I've ever taught" was at a lower-tier school. My sample size is admittedly very small.
Tailored letters are an enormous outlay of time, and by no means everyone can do them. But in a market where (as we heard at the SCS panel on "contingent" faculty) only 20 percent of PhDs ever get a t-t job, tailored letters can and do make a difference.
I encountered 5 people interviewed by Brandeis. Two have tenure, three do not. Of the three untenured, one was ABD and two others had at least 5 years on the contingent course. This seems like a strange mix.
1:56 again: I would be a sixth person, with several years of non-TT experience, but less than 5. Sounds like they were keeping their options open, interviewing a range.
With no wiki news, maybe they've decided to extend campus invites to tenured candidates only. There was at least one open rank search last year that interviewed ABDs on up to full professors at SCS, but only invited junior candidates to campus. Perhaps Brandeis has decided to do the opposite.
Or, maybe they're just still digging out from the snowstorm, and news will be coming in a few days.
Anyone else get a rather vague email from Gettysburg asking if they were "still interested in the position"? I assume this is their way of asking if we're committed to somewhere else without actually committing to anyone, but my campus visits are happening in February and so are everyone else's that I know of, so I imagine no one is committed yet and everyone will still be interested, at least in theory.
Snowflakes! Boomers! Generation Xers! I accuse you all of belonging to some sort of generation, like the dastardly humans you are! Learn to be born outside of time or go home.
Inside Higher Ed reports that there were over 1100 new PhDs in History last year (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/05/report-finds-poor-job-market-history-phds)
Feb 5, when the APA still had a print newsletter, information was published once and sometimes twice a year about dissertations finished (person, title of dissertation, advisor, school), and often information was provided about dissertations started (including name of point person who provided the information for a given school).
That information was sent to the APA by the departments, though I don't think that every PHD-granting school reported. I haven't seen that information in several years, now, like maybe 5 or 8. Is the APA keeping those stats? Did they stop when they became the SCS? Did they stop when the print newsletter quit?
it's that season when the process has petered out and, once again, no tenure-track offer. so, you ask yourself what's next? more of this bull? no thanks.
practical question from a newbie: what is the interview process like for VAPs at SLACs? Is there a Skype interview followed by an on-campus job talk and/or teaching demo? how common is on-campus stuff/teaching demos?
Some SLACs have a campus visit stage for VAP jobs, and some just make the offer based on the Skype interview. (I have no idea on the prevalence of campus visits for VAP jobs, but they seem pretty common.) If there is a campus visit, there will most likely be a teaching demo as well as a job talk. The teaching demo will probably be to have you guest-teach an intro language course.
For the 3 post-SCS VAPs I've interviewed for, here's the rundown: one was Skype interview only; two were Skype interview + campus visit. Of the two campus visits, one required a job talk, but no teaching demo. The other wanted a teaching demo (intermediate Latin) + a short job talk (like a conference paper).
Any idea why San Diego State has apparently already requested a Skype interview for their postdoc, given that they changed the application deadline to March 1?
@4:24 For some Search Committees, there's no HR regulation against looking at files before the application deadline and no regulation against making decisions about files before the application deadline. For them deadline just means that no new files will be considered after that date. So if a committee knows they want to interview someone, there's no benefit (to the committee) to wait to let that person know--especially at this stage when someone might take an inferior job (rather than stalling) if they don't know they've got a much better interview coming up.
This means that, ceteris paribus, earlier applications get better consideration. Again IF the cetera really ARE paria, then the early applicant gets the worm. I personally don't think this is something that we can call fair or unfair. It's just part of the process.
Not necessarily. I got a campus invite almost a month ago, but the visit is still a week away. I might be the last candidate coming to campus, but maybe not.
1,319 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 600 of 1319 Newer› Newest»I'll be in jeans and a t-shirt enjoying my life. Career change ftw!
Washout!
Funny how an oft repeated sentiment from the job seekers who post here is that they're so much better than the "dinosaurs/geezers." I mean, not like that arrogance ever shows up in the interview/hiring process, right?
Has anyone else had trouble logging onto the placement service these last few days?
I was just going to ask the same question. I suspected we'll have to pay 2016 dues before they let us in...
Confirmed: as soon as I paid my new year's dues, they let me in.
Which means (if true) that we have to pay two years worth of dues in order to get even 4 months of use out of the placement service. Suddenly this move to "no fee for members" seems a lot less selfless...
Boo hoo hoo, look at me I'm a millennial snowflake that deserves special treatment.
Excuse me?
Up until this year, registration for the placement service carried you through the placement year (July-June). What's more, it was (and as far as I know, still is) the case that you could attend SCS if you paid dues in the preceding year. But, as we were reminded last week, job candidates must have access to our calendars throughout the conference. Which means that, unlike everyone else, job seekers attending SCS must have paid not only last years dues but this years as well.
So no, I don't want special treatment. Less shitty treatment than the privileged elite receives would be nice, though.
Though of course, that would also require an institution that paid my membership fees as well, but never mind...
No. You are a whiner. Try a real job in the business world that expects hourly office work and fires you at will for not being productive. Seriously. Whatever money you get is given to you so you can read Homer and maybe help teach other people about Homer. Some of the people who post here really do think it's all unfair and unreasonable. You're clueless as to how the majority of the labor force works.
What exactly does "how the majority of the labor force works" have to do with the fee structure of the SCS and its placement service?
In other words, go tell your sob story to most of America. See how much sympathy you get.
I was under the impression that I was posting to a board read by classicists, archaeologists, and ancient historians with vested interests in job searching, a constituency who would be interested in how to log on to their placement accounts (see Anon. 11:50 above), or who might have the knowledge to explain or the power to change this new fee structure. Are we only allowed to raise issues toward which "most of America" would feel sympathy? I must have missed reading that somewhere...
Well, for 'real jobs' in the business world, one does not normally need to pay a fee simply in order to be able to set up interviews. Most of America would in fact be pissed off if told that they had to pay three figures simply in order to attend interviews. So I agree that someone here is clueless about how the majority of the labor force works, but it isn't the people complaining about this membership fee business.
The conference is a professional expense. Many schools cover it, especially if you have an interview. If yours doesn't, maybe you picked the wrong school.
Picked the wrong school? Because job seekers so often have a choice as to where they are employed.
Also, in my experience at least, most schools will only pay conference expenses if you are giving a paper, not if you "only" have an interview. Why should they pay for you to interview for another job?
And anyway, we've been talking about membership fees, which schools (again in my experience) are not interested in paying for their non-TT faculty.
So here we have not only ignorance about how the majority of the labor force works, but ignorance about how it works in our field.
I was talking about grad students. As for people already employed at another school, you have a salary, and pretty much every job has work related expenses that are paid at least in part out of pocket.
Yeah, if you're paying for netflix, you can afford the SCS!
Thank you, Anon. at 11:55!! I was panicking because I couldn't see my calendar, and had not thought of the dues! Someone should have warned us.
Also, thank you presumed-Baby Boomer with tenure for explaining to us how rough it is out there in the real world...
Right--grad students whose departments do not pay for SCS travel "picked the wrong school."
When I first started grad school, my department actually supported travel to the SCS for job-seekers. Nowadays, not so much--not because the faculty don't want to, but because the university has placed draconian restrictions on funding owing to the omnipresent budget cuts.
So I, and the other job-seekers in my department who have interviews, are paying well over $1000 for travel and lodging (and sleeping four to a room to mitigate the damage). In my own case, since my fellowship is renewed at the beginning of the semester, I am trying to pay for this on the dregs of last semester's stipend.
The bottom line is that it's pretty harsh that job-seekers have to impoverish themselves in order to attend interviews. The avoiding-overdraft juggling act is an annual problem--and we do it because we love the field, we love teaching, and frankly we don't have much choice. But it's pretty low to shame grad students for "picking the wrong school" or otherwise imply that they are at fault for the shrinking of funding and shifting of administrative priorities that (as we're all aware) is a decades-long process and is affecting the entire academy--not just the "wrong" schools.
To everyone concerned about the online placement service:
The placement committee is aware and the Powers That Be are working on it. This is a bug in the new software. They've been working on it and they hope to have it fixed by tomorrow. It is not now nor ever was the plan to have candidates pay two years' dues for one job season.
^^too late
Anon. @11:55 here-
Thanks to the placement committee for taking the problem seriously, and for not being evil.
And thanks to Anon @6:57 for the thanks. I let going back and forth with the troll get me down in a pretty serious way, and your expression of humanity was a wonderful counterweight to all that nonsense...
@our lovely local expert on "the majority of the labor force" and "most of America": you must be joking. My spouse recently changed jobs, and non of her prospective employers required her to fly across the country on her own dime for an interview. Two out-of-state jobs offered Skype interviews in the early stages and both assured my wife that if she were offered an in-person visit, her travel would be comped. That is just normal practice in the corporate world, which also does crazy things such as paying people for their time.
@ 8:55
If you still don't get that that wasn't a troll, you really shouldn't bother with the conference. Just stay down, dude. Stay down.
8:55: I like to think there is more compassion than resentment here, even if the resentment is loudest. Good luck to everyone who has interviews, let's hope for a better market next year, and in the meantime let's try to think of one another (even those of a different generation, beloved Baby Boomer!) as fellow human beings who might be struggling, perhaps with very difficult things. Like, for example, looming unemployment and lack of health insurance because we were over-, not under-, committed to this field and willing to sacrifice for it.
^ That's just stupid. And if you complain about it, then you were NOT "willing to sacrifice" for it. By definition, you dolt. The moment you start whingeing, you've given up any claim to "sacrifice". I really should stop expecting you to understand even the words you yourself use. Man, what an inadequacy!
I used to feel like I was lucky to get a job. I believed the talk about the overproduction of qualified PhDs. Not any more. There's just an overproduction of third-rate whiners sticking around due to some misplaced sentiment of "sacrifice."
SCS insider here. We're working on the login problem. We intended to keep the placement service open to current candidates through the end of the placement season, but a glitch in our single sign-on routine has kicked people out temporarily. The company responsible for website development should have the problem fixed in the morning. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The login problem on classicalstudies.org appears to be fixed. If anyone encounters problems logging in, please send a message to info@classicalstudies.org and describe the issue. We'll try to resolve it as quickly as possible. And just to repeat what was said in an earlier post, it was never the plan to require placement service subscribers to pay their membership dues to retain access to the placement service. We hope that the work we did over the last 24 hours will restore access for everyone, regardless of their membership status.
Thanks SCS!
I heard it is now -15 degrees in San Fransisco, as the SCS just demonstrated competence and compassion in less than 12 hours.
Nah, it's in the 50s here just like every other day of the year
What a bunch of dumbass whiners. You sound exactly those D students who are convinced they're really A/B students, 'cause they worked sooooo hard! Why can't you just give me what I waaaaaant! You're so meeeaaaaaan! I'd have an A if you didn't haaaaaate meeee!.
Are we sharing the hotels with anyone interesting this year? Those bikers are going to be hard to top.
As far as I can tell, we're just sharing the hotel with Midwestern tourists. But who are we kidding: we'll never do better than the bikers! Or the year that hell froze over in Chicago.... we've had a series of memorable conferences!
Chicago was crazy. I forgot to bring a jacket and dragging a suitcase through a few blocks of knee-deep snow to the train station. It was like something by Jack London.
The morning I left Chicago, the trains weren't running because the switches were broken. The windows of my cab were frozen over on the inside, and the driver had to keep wiping down the windshield with his hand while sliding all over the icy road. The culmination came when he lost control, and slid sideways across three lanes of traffic to gently bump us to a stop at the curb in front of O'Hare. The only reason my plane even left Chicago that day is because the flight originated in the Caribbean. Watching the passengers faces when they disembarked in shorts and flip flops while seeing their breath inside the airport was priceless.
Still, the bare ass in chaps on Wacker Drive might take grand prize.
Ha!!
Is it time to start freaking out if your interviews for tomorrow morning still are just located in "own suite," or do we think this is going to be dealt with soon?
No need to freak out. If the interview is happening in "own suite", the Placement Service is not involved but the chair of the search committee should be getting in touch with you. The problem is that the hotel refuses to give out the room number via phone/email, and will only divulge it in person, so I suspect you'll hear today as people start checking in this afternoon/evening. You could also try to find out yourself at the check-in desk for a general idea of where the "own suite" rooms are located, but they may refuse to do that, too.
any tips on maintaining an internet connection here? I joined HHonors yesterday morning to get free internet but service now seems to be timing out today.
Thanks, 3:54.
Could you people please use nicknames, as was the tradition around here back in the day? That would make it easier to follow the different threads of conversation. Thank you.
And now, back to lurking.
Or you could, you know, be intelligent and use something akin to the interpretive powers you're supposed to have learned and practice in grad. school.
^ That one's our new troll. Sorry (s)he's not as good as the trolls of yesteryear, but maybe a bit more finesse will come with time.
"any tips on maintaining an internet connection here?"
Try to convince your special snowflake brethren to survive without Netflix for a couple days?
Yeah I don't get what is up with that person. Do we even believe s/he is older, or is it a younger person trying to make some kind of weird joke? If not, troll, we aren't worried about netflix, we were very explicitly told that we *must* maintain internet connection in order to access our placement accounts. I, for example, had an interview location for this morning change last night.
What interests me is the recurrent use of the phrase "special snowflake," particularly in contexts (as above) where it seems out of place. It's almost like a sphragis, though maybe it's a mark not so much of authorship as genre membership...
If that person is real, they must have such a wonderful relationship with students....
why are the session rooms so cold?
@January 7, 2016 at 11:06 AM
"Sphragis". Ha. So you learned a new word recently but haven't quite learned how to use it yet. Man, your interpretive powers are lame. Why do I say this? Because you have conflated at least two different posters. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I would hope for your sake that your work doesn't come anywhere near identifying anonymous or pseudonymous texts -- if I actually hoped for positive things for you. I do not.
Well this is getting boring.
For those who don't know, there's a bar on the top floor of Tower 1. Dibs on the view!
I am trying to decide if the ineptitude of the trolling is part of the act somehow.
I wonder that too, but about the questions that show up on this board and the silly posturing by inexperienced candidates. From where I'm sitting, it looks like immaturity, not self-assurance.
Safe travels, everyone!
Only a snowflake would wish everyone safe travels. Grow up already!
^ Don't be boring. Boring is one of the worst sins a human can commit. And we can smell it a mile away. Smells like wet newspaper.
WET newspaper?! Wetness is caused by water...water when frozen and combined with grit forms snowflakes! More snowflake talk!
Not to be a whiny snowflake, but oh dear lord how the wait is killing me.
Right there with you! I somehow always forget how awful the post SCS weeks are...
Glad I'm not alone, thank you!!
Are you melting away?
Like the soggy snowball that I am: down to one now.
Still waiting to hear
At this point it's over, right? Regardless of what the wiki doesn't say?
Maybe not quite over, but the fat lady is warming up.
Agreed: nothing on the wiki likely still means nothing. Not everyone is in session yet, and even those who are might not have met or made a final decision yet. A public schools in particular, a campus invite is not a decision that a department can make on its own. It will have to go up the chain of command to the dean level or beyond, and every link adds time.
If you have not heard by now, all you will get are rejection letters, via email or regular mail. Unfortunately, this is how it works.
Except that several schools explicitly said they would be on a later timeline, sending campus interview requests at the end of January.
And a quick perusal of last year's wiki reveals that a considerable portion of last year's TT jobs didn't extend invitations for on-campus interviews until two or three weeks after SCS.
"If you have not heard by now, all you will get are rejection letters, via email or regular mail. Unfortunately, this is how it works.
January 15, 2016 at 7:31 PM"
No, that is simply not true. A lot of places don't start their spring semester until after MLK Day. I'm at one such. We're not hiring this year, but I've been on several SCs, for classics and other depts., in the last few years. We are NEVER able to convene the committee to discuss a short list until a day or two before the semester begins; this year, that would be this weekend. Then we have to send our list of 6 possible candidates to the Dean, who has to certify it and get back to us with permission to contact the top three. Then, and only then, can we send out campus invitations. Usually this means that we don't contact our top three until about January 25 at the very earliest. If one of them says "I've already been offered a position" (as has happened to us a couple of times), we move down the list and contact nos. 4, 5, and 6 as necessary. In that case, they don't hear from us until early February.
It is nowhere NEAR over yet, folks.
Our SC has a short list, but it has three steps up the administration to make before we can extend any invites. We're submitting our requests right after MLK with fingers crossed, and we're hoping to get the OK to plan the campus visits ASAP, but we really have no control over the timing.
Dear University of Miami,
Shame on you for being a cliche: a department in a third-rate university, in an undesirable city, composed entirely of Harvard, Princeton and UC Berkeley grads hired fresh from grad. school with seriously substandard CVs that have done nothing to justify their "potential". Shame.
τὸν δ᾽ Ἕκτωρ νείκεσσεν ἰδὼν αἰσχροῖς ἐπέεσσιν:
Δύσπαρι εἶδος ἄριστε γυναιμανὲς ἠπεροπευτὰ
40αἴθ᾽ ὄφελες ἄγονός τ᾽ ἔμεναι ἄγαμός τ᾽ ἀπολέσθαι.
@1:03 PM:
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
And nice job leaving the line number in the Greek you copied and pasted.
@2:06:
Such vitriol! (And ignorance.) Upset that you didn't get the job?
And by the way, getting a job is necessary to help justify one's potential. I'm glad that the people hired have that opportunity.
@2:33 pm
There are no games without players. Every player is culpable for the role s/he plays.
And nice job reading numbers correctly. Well, those that you did read correctly, time-stamp notwithstanding. You read the time-stamp from the first page of comments not realizing that when you hit "post a comment" you also have to click "newest" to see the newest. That's the kind of shoddy work I expect from someone who publicizes unreflective comments of the sort you have.
@4:27
Vitriol is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. You obviously haven't been keeping up with the job market if you think that a job (by which you must mean full time and TT if you're being intellectually consistent, since we're talking about UM here) is a necessary precursor to proving potential. But then, you obviously haven't been keeping up at all. Check out the CVs on their page. Then justify hiring TT someone with *no* publications.
UM is a disgrace. Apologize all you want. Then go advocate for WUSTL and vote for Trump. Or, you know, try to be a better person. Your call.
Snowflakes! You're all snowflakes! Go vote for Trump in Miami!
1:30 AM/2:06 PM has a real point. University of Miami is stuck in another era, aka the "bad old days." As a discipline we need to be willing to shame bad actors publicly. Kudos to you, Homeric quotation guy.
This other guy shouting about snowflakes needs to go back on his meds.
Some of you have really bad cases of jealousy and resentment of those who managed to land jobs when you didn't.
I'm guessing that the person calling everyone "snowflakes" earned their PhD so long ago that they still refer to black people as "colored" and Asians as "Orientals" and they've decided to add some newfangle lingo to their vocabulary.
Anonymous said...
Some of you have really bad cases of jealousy and resentment of those who managed to land jobs when you didn't.
January 21, 2016 at 4:28 AM
Some may indeed. You also have to be willing to acknowledge that job =|= merit and that an obvious preference for pedigree over merit is a problem.
The field has dozens of scholars with years of experience teaching, multiple publications in quality outlets (including books), and these people don't get jobs. "Too old." "Too long on the market." "Not from a 'good' school." Other nonsense. Instead, places like UM hire fresh PhDs from Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley. Then look at their CVs after 2-3 years. (There's one on the website you can look at!) A couple of publications, but nothing interesting, and certainly not as many as most applicants already have. Instead, dozens of "talks", all of which mean zip. Talks are what we do when we want to look productive without actually engaging the field. Laaaazy. Hire someone worthwhile, not someone whose pedigree makes your nether regions feel tingly. And yes, I have a TT job already. No, I wouldn't go to UM. Regardless of what the individual persons are like, their systemic practices are disgusting.
Some of us believe that problems in the field should be exposed so that they may either be corrected or the departments involved may receive an appropriate hit to their reputation.
I think 1:10 was probably parodying snowflake-guy. Here's hoping the true Mr. Snowflake has gotten back on the meds.
I don't think we should "name and shame," but yea, the seeming preference for pedigree over publications and teaching experience that seems to be shared by many, and the way that it reflects class bias, is appalling.
I'm personally tired of hearing how allegedly good all these long suffering teachers are who can't find permanent positions. How do you know they're so much better than the well pedigreed people who are getting bashed right now? Publications are a different story and more easily quantifiable and rated, but what about all the whining of the adjuncts whose excuse for not publishing much is that they're too busy teaching all the time? Bottom line: anytime somebody whines about how these allegedly good teachers are getting shafted, or how they lost out because someone preferred Harvard of Berkeley to Iowa or Florida, it really sounds like sour grapes from people who just didn't succeed in securing a t-t job and are supremely bitter.
^ So you're part of the problem, and part of the problem is your inability to read.
I'm talking about people who are BOTH experienced teachers AND better published losing out to people who are neither experienced nor published but are pedigreed. Of course it's difficult to tell who is a better teacher, but that cuts both ways, so better to look at experience, peer-evaluations, and student evaluations. This presumes that we should hire TT people who have those things as well as the publication record to show that they are engaged with the field.
How do I know they exist? Because I've seen their job applications and I can read CVs. There's no need to strawman my argument by pretending like I'm talking about whiners or unpublished adjuncts (not necessarily the same category!). There's no need if you're intellectually honest, at any rate.
6:24 AM is precisely right about the appalling class bias but wrong about naming and shaming. We should be Classicists, not Classists.
Just because someone has spent years in non-t-t positions does not make them a better candidate for a permanent position than someone fresh out of graduate school.
@7:43--
Of course having spent years in a non-tenure track position doesn't *automatically* make someone a better candidate than some ABD from Harvard/Princeton/Berkeley--I don't think anyone made such an assertion.
The point others here are making is that people from those schools with little teaching experience who are thin on publications tend to regularly get hired over individuals who are demonstrably more qualified.
Pick a Classics department at random and look at their faculty list. Invariably you will find a combination of PhDs from Harvard, Berkeley, and Princeton as well as places like UChicago, Stanford, etc. are well-represented, especially among newer faculty.
Why should you be surprised? Harvard is objectively a better place than Iowa. No one forced anyone to go to a sub par school. Why the surprise when there's a handicap on the market?
The editor of TAPA is at Iowa. Bias fail. Argument fail. Personhood fail.
These harangues about the supposed classicism of hiring graduates from top-tier schools are so tiresome at this point. I could name dozens of top-tier grads who are without permanent employment, despite the good name of the school and their own publication and teaching records. These grads are experiencing the joys of perpetual VAP posts, giving up and taking jobs at boarding schools, taking adjunct posts, etc. The job market is poor for everyone.
It's also really tiresome to hear about these allegedly amazing teachers who have all this experience and just can't get a fair shake. The market really is bad for everyone, and if in that bad situation you choose a sub par school...can you really blame anyone but yourself for your failures?
@9:10 and 9:19
Is your grasp of logic really that bad? I mean, is it really? Really? I find that mind-boggling, but I'm also ready to accept it. Perhaps your perpetual tiredness has affected your cognition.
The existence of more Ivy (vel sim.) grads than positions does not in any way negate any of the above charges of classism. Note, too, that the charges are of classism and not classicism. Quite different things.
If you're so tired--and you keep using that word, so let's take you at your word--, you should take a nap. Better yet, retire. That would solve several problems at once.
What I'm getting from 9:10/9:19 is a defense of the status quo based on "tiredness". That's pretty damning for the status quo crowd.
There's nothing wrong with the status quo in terms of hiring practices. The problem is the number of jobs.
"Harvard is objectively a better place than Iowa."
When someone believes this so much that they are willing to favor someone from this background over a non-harvard degree with good pubs and teaching, that's what we call "classicism."
If this generation of classicists consists almost entirely of people from only five-ish schools, that is not healthy for the field. And it doesn't bode well for the future of classics in a diversifying world.
This is the crowd that slammed WUSL for starting a new PhD program. You can't have it both ways. There are not enough jobs for the glut of PhDs produced in the field. The existence of more than the top 5-10 programs is unnecessary. The ranking of programs is well known information, allowing for variation depending on one's specialty. The existence of the wiki means anyone can see who is getting jobs and which programs they attended. If one is not admitted to a top program, perhaps this is not the career for him/her. Knowing you didn't get into a top program and still spending 6-8 years pursuing a PhD is your choice, but you probably shouldn't then complain about the hiring practices that were transparent from the beginning.
That's not to say classism is not worth discussing, and I hope that the top programs do more to attract, retain, and graduate more diverse students. It's no secret that the field remains very white, very male, and very rich. The only way to counter that is to train students who fall outside of those parameters and set them up for success.
^ Once again, you assume, quite wrongly, that admittance to one of "5-10 programs" is the sole determiner of merit and should also determine later outcomes, publications and teaching be damned. What's wrong with you?
You are a seriously poor arguer. The claim that there are already too many programs and so there should not be more is VERY DIFFERENT from the claim that objectively good people are graduated from places other than Harvard, Princeton, and Berkeley and that those people have shown through publication, teaching, awards, etc. that they are in fact objectively better than the Ivy grads with nothing.
Even if one accepted your proposition that there should only be 5-10 programs (dubious) and accepted your second proposition that those 5-10 programs should be the ones you identify as "the top" (more doubtful), that would not serve as an argument for sidelining all the people who have previously graduated from any program that is not one of those 5-10. Rather, these people should be judged on what they produce in the three relevant areas: research, teaching, and service, with research and teaching weighted according to the school doing the hiring.
With the market so bad that most applicants have held multiple positions, there is no longer any need to use PhD institution as a measure of quality and promise. Instead, we can look at actual output. Do away with promise. Measure product. The only people who oppose this are those who know they themselves would not measure up. It's fear, embarrassment, and false pride that perpetuates this system.
What we have is closer to the dystopia you suggest: one where people are hired based on those same 5-10 schools (whichever ones they are) with little to no interest in actual, demonstrated quality. Some schools do better. Those that don't should be shamed publicly.
The fact that success in the field is at this point restricted to so few people that deliberately adding to the glut is unethical does not mean that we should just accept the fact that only those coming from a very narrow background are able to get into and attend the "right" undergrad program that will open doors to the "right" graduate program that will open doors to a TT job....
^ Precisely.
@10:37 - Oh, I actually 100% agree with everything you've written (10:24 here). Of course admittance to a top program is not the sole determination of merit in a field where so much is who you know and much of the rest is random. I am not blaming those who don't get in to a top program or saying they are unworthy of this career. I'm just working within the system we have and hate to watch people waste their time if all the odds are stacked against them.
I also happen to agree fervently that it's a damn shame to pass up people who are clearly more qualified but happen to be coming from "lesser" programs. I am always happy when I see one who does get a job over a Harvard or a Berkeley or a Princeton. I wish SCs would review applications without CVs and letters of recommendation first, selecting those with promising research and good teaching evaluations to review further. I'm just not holding my breath while I wait for that to happen, and in the meantime, if someone wants a (slightly better) chance at a job, I'd say familiarizing oneself with the programs that have high placement rates is a smart decision.
Shame on the University of Miami and its faculty. Shame.
Teaching evaluations are oftentimes one of the more dubious parts of an application package. Definitely not worth more than pedigree, frankly. Publications are another story, I'd say...but this frequent claim about allegedly better teachers doesn't hold water.
^ Written like the poor reader you are. Seriously, who are you people? Are you drunk?
No one in this conversation has yet claimed that good teaching evaluations = good teaching. The claim was "better to look at experience, peer-evaluations, and student evaluations". That's three things together that each give context and support to the others.
So, I check in on FV only to find that slurs against identifiable individuals who are not public figures are now allowed. What a cesspool.
No one has been identified, but if you feel identified, then you should also feel shame.
Don't you know? If you're some fabulous teacher with a few articles from a second or even a third rate school, you can trash anyone you want from your position of superior moral authority?
The young faculty on U Miami's page are impressive, and hiding behind your computer screen while calling them out for being undeserving is cowardly. Moreover, notice that at least two of them have proficiency in ancient languages that are not Greek and Latin. Maybe this is something that is attractive to Miami?
Credentialism is a problem in Classics, but if you can't express that notion without insulting individuals, I'd advise that you work on that. It will be better for you and for the field.
^ Someone's feeling a little thin skinned.... Conversation hit too close to home? Having a little publication envy? Poor baby. Go look at your diploma and cry yourself into a little nappy time. An Ivy failure is a double failure.
@11:57 "identifiable" does not mean "identified." If you can't read, and you're a jerk, good luck with tenure.
^ U of Miami faculty detected.
Those feelings you're having, the ones you think are anger and righteous indignation? That's actually shame. It's welling up within you and you don't want to face it, so you're acting out. You should feel shame, though. You're sitting in a position you don't deserve, the product of classism. Your presence contributes to the decline of classics as a discipline. You are a tumor.
Here's hoping you move on or that UM further defunds humanities. Karma's a bitch.
@12:15 This is 12:14, I'm not one of the faculty at U Miami, and I have plenty of publications, thanks. Keep hiding.
Guys, I think we *should* talk about the ways privilege influence the field, but this is getting a bit ugly...
It's pretty obvious that there is one obsessive and vitriolic person who keeps talking about "shame," and references previous comments with "^", and at least two others who pushing back against him/her.
*who are pushing back...
Not as ugly as those faculty who endorse classist privilege and those anonymous "not" UM faculty like 12:14 who support them.
The problem is, there will always be apologists for privilege, especially so in Classics since it is an inherently conservative discipline. The only way to effect change is to be loud, to expose abuse, and to do so despite the discomfort of the 12:14s of the world who would rather shout down any notion that challenges their comfortable self-congratulation.
@ 12:29 x2
Speaking as a non- "^" person, that's not "pretty obvious" to me. It seems more likely that there is only one person "pushing back".
^^
I'll take vitriolic as a compliment. There's nothing inherently negative about it, and the continued use of the word reveals that I'm hitting home. You wouldn't feel it if you weren't guilty.
Oh yeah, I forgot. "Privilege" is the newest trendy issue. Hurry...let's get an SCS panel to discuss it! Give me a break. As a previous poster indicated, we don't need all the Ph.D. programs we have. Just because you made the free choice to go to a lousy program doesn't mean you're some victim of class warfare or class whatever. It means you made a bad decision and now think you're a victim of those mean people who want to hire colleagues from top programs in a buyer's market.
Let's take a serious moment here to discuss/unpack some of 12:37's comment.
Just because you made the free choice to go to a lousy program doesn't mean you're some victim of class warfare or class whatever. It means you made a bad decision and now think you're a victim of those mean people who want to hire colleagues from top programs in a buyer's market.
12:37 makes a number of assumptions that do in fact reflect an unhealthy classism and a deleterious view of privilege.
"you made the free choice to go to a lousy program" assumes (1) total free choice, ignoring undergraduate institution plays in graduate admissions and the role wealth and other privileges play in undergraduate admission and (2) that programs not in 12:37's prejudicial views as "the best" are automatically "lousy". Of course, those "lousy" programs are staffed almost entirely by the same ivy PhDs as the "best" programs....
I'll pass over "buyer's market". The idea that candidates are chattel is readily apparent and obviously unhealthy.
Note again that 12:37 makes no reference to objective criteria of evaluation.
An SCS panel to discuss the role of privilege in graduate admissions and in faculty hiring would be a good start. Any SCS bigwigs reading this? You should think seriously about hosting just such a panel. The ideas espoused here are truly harmful to the field's intellectual diversity, among other things.
This is weird... Where did anybody say that someone couldn't criticize UMiami, or credentialism? It appears that even 12:14 was objecting to the criticism of the junior faculty at UMiami, not the search committee. What are newly minted PhDs from the Ivies and Berkeley supposed to do, not apply to jobs to make way for students from underrepresented PhD programs?
I think most relatively humanistic people are for diversifying the field (especially along lines of race, gender, class, and sexuality), but jeez.
What kind of donkey thinks that publications are "objective"? If somebody's 25 pg dissertation excerpt is better than your 25 pg journal article that you've attached for a writing sample, maybe you got smoked fair + square. But please, keep mansplaining classics into the future.
The.... blind peer review process?
If you're two or three years out of graduate school with a number of highly-placed journal articles, that should be as close to an unbiased indication of scholarly promise as you can get.
mansplaining?
So, at this point, should I assume no news and no wiki updates means I'm not invited to campus?
Is "mansplaining" actually a word?
Probably not, 2:51 PM, although it isn't entirely impossible quite yet.
Mansplaining:
"to explain something to someone, typically a man to woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining
Oooh, I love me a good Trump-style self-righteous defamation!
But here I am struggling to understand the timeliness of the OP's rant against the TT faculty at UM: they were hired years ago, and the current post is for a VAP. Pent up anger?
Miami is just one instance of a pervasive problem. There are many, many more departments which mirror Miami's faculty.
Look, I am the last person you'd find defending the idea that Ivy PhDs are objectively better than everyone else, denying that "prestige" plays an unreasonably large role in who gets hired, or insisting that admission to the "best" graduate programs is entirely meritocratic. But I find this repeated notion that the only people getting T-T jobs in this field come from Ivies or a few other very prestigious programs to be a little odd. First of all, I come from a program that is hardly prestigious, and yet I know many fellow graduates who have landed T-T jobs since 2008. Second, I have taught at some "prestigious" places alongside people with Ivy PhDs who now live in their parents' basements. But I thought anecdotes might be unreliable, so I looked at last year's wiki. Here's what I found:
1) Three TT hires of PhDs from Ohio State University.
2) 1 TT hire each from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas, Illinois, UCLA, UCSB, and Missouri.
3) 2 TT hires each from UNC and Duke
4) 4 TT hires from Cincinnati.
5) 2 TT hires from Toronto
6) 5 hires from Michigan
Of course, we still see a whole lot of hires from Penn, Harvard, Berkeley, etc. And you might be thinking "yeah, but Michigan is really great at some things" or "isn't Cincinnati really great for archaeology?" or "c'mon, UNC is pretty good," and so on. I don't dispute any of these things. What I dispute is the notion that only people from Ivies and a few other prestigious, "elite" programs are getting T-T jobs. Is the situation better for you if you come from one of those schools? Yes. Is it probably unfairly better for you? Yes, at least to some extent. Are you just doomed if you don't come from one of those schools? Hardly.
If we're generalizing, can we blame the obnoxious, elitist baby boomers who believe retirement starts with death and just move on?
A lot of you don't read well. Intellectuals? Hardly.
"If we're generalizing, can we blame the obnoxious, elitist baby boomers who believe retirement starts with death and just move on?"
Speaking as a baby boomer who's now aged 58, let me say that I would LOVE to retire right now, especially since I have several chronic health conditions that are exacerbated by stress and fatigue. I teach in a tiny department with constant overloads -- last semester, I was in the classroom FOURTEEN hours per week -- and there is no doubt at all that this is shortening my life. My doctors tell me so. However, until I see the results of this year's election, I do not dare to retire, precisely because I have several chronic health conditions. I can't sign up for Medicare for seven more years, and I cannot risk being without health insurance. I know that I am too ill and too exhausted to be as effective at my job as I was 10 years ago. I know there are many younger people baying for my blood. But I am ill, and tired, and frightened, and I cannot retire. It may be too much to ask that those of you are are 28 or 30 years old feel any compassion at all for those of us on the other end of our professional lives; but not all baby boomers are "obnoxious" or "elitist" for working to age 65.
@9:58
Right? It just like how people keep crying about racism when I can go to Google and find a list of black CEOs *and* POTUS is black!
I mean, I've heard some talk about some place called Ferguson or something, but don't they know they can find a list on the internet? Jeez, people! As a society we've moved on!
[I don't believe any of this, but people who are uninterested in intellectual honesty or are so limited they can't even see the problems in their own argumentation need to be mocked in a way that they might comprehend. It'll get their backs up, but they were probably lost causes to begin with. I'm more interested in showing the flaws of their arguments to the bystanders.]
@12:36 AM
You have my sympathies for your situation. I know colleagues in similar situations and it's awful. I also am well able to imagine a scenario where I too might be in your situation in a couple decades or less.
For what it's worth, I don't think what you describe is what people are railing at. It's not you. The anger toward Boomers comes from other sources. What I see is anger toward people who are 65+ or 70+ not retiring, whether because they just don't want to or because their finances tanked in 2008. When it's the latter, the anger is really at the whole situation and misdirected at individuals.
But there's also anger at the situation Classics is in as a whole. There are dissertations worth of material on what that is, but the state of Humanities generally and the state of its flagship, Classics, is kind of like Global Warming/Climate Change: bad things are happening, we've seen it coming, and those who could have done something about it -- Boomers in this case -- didn't because change is hard and they weren't going to live to see the results. Add to that the number of people who feel they were lured into Classics under false pretenses by these selfsame Boomers and then blamed by those Boomers for not seeing the lies they were peddled.... Well, you get the picture. Of course not every individual is culpable. But of course there's a lot of anger at the class.
If you're not adding to the excess of grad. students, then try not to take the anger personally.
@2:09 AM:
Nicely put!
Yes, I agree.
If anyone is waiting for Hamilton, I have heard that people have been invited for campus visits, although the wiki does not yet reflect this.
The discussion above has been interesting for the light it shines on current views concerning elite vs. non-elite programs and the success of graduates in getting positions. One aspect that has not been addressed fully is the extent to which advisors and faculty in general can influence those decisions.
I have a Ph.D from a second-tier program and, fortunately, am currently in a T-T position. It has become a regular occurrence at the SCS when talking with faculty from my former department to hear them complain about the failure of their Ph.D’s to get jobs. What is frustrating is that colleagues on search committees also regularly tell me that the letters of reference these profs tend to provide range from apathetic to downright horrible. The candidate applications from the department tend to go into the ‘No’ pile pretty quickly. I haven’t asked any of them about this directly, but I wonder why they complain if they put little effort into promoting people. They also make no effort to ‘talk-up’ candidates while at the meetings. I realize that this part of the Classics culture is a negative with respect to the job market, but I’ve seen numerous professors from elite programs go out of their way at receptions or at the bar to find members of search committees and talk about a particular candidate. This also happens from other programs (not my Ph.D. institution, though) and must have some impact on job searches.
I understand that complaining about the lack of glad-handing is ridiculous, obscene, and probably a little offensive, but I think that this sits at the root of the problem. Either we need a completely new system that relies largely on blind review of applicants to eliminate biases like pedigree or second-tier programs need to step up their game and fight tooth-and-nail to help their grads get jobs. Right now it is a game and certain programs know how to play it much better than others.
That is something that I have also seen and heard about, although I wouldn't have processed the observation without your post. Is it perhaps some kind of unconscious feeling among low-first or even second-tier faculty that their own students, almost certainly attending a less impressive university than they themselves did, are not worth fighting for?
"Add to that the number of people who feel they were lured into Classics under false pretenses by these selfsame Boomers and then blamed by those Boomers for not seeing the lies they were peddled...."
Indeed, though here I guess Boomers stands for "people who were in advising positions in the last decade or two" (many of whom are too young to be actual Boomers).
In my experience, the two groups (the lurers and the blamers) each tend to pretend the other does not exist. In some cases this entails pretending one's past self did not exist.
@1:13AM: If you're interested in flaws in arguments, how about avoiding misrepresenting the views you're criticizing? I think this is covered in introductory critical reasoning courses.
Your comparison of the situation faced by candidates from less prestigious PhD programs in Classics and the situations faced by black people in America is pretty embarrassing. I hope you don't really think that your plight is comparable to Michael Brown's or even to the far larger number of people who are lucky enough not to be shot by the police, but simply harassed and assaulted for nothing more than being black. But perhaps you just chose a really bad analogy, and don't really think that you're a victim of that kind and degree of injustice. I hope so.
But in any case, even in terms of your bad analogy, your "argument" against 9:58PM fails. It fails for the obvious reason that you attack 9:58 for saying things that she or he not only did not say, but explicitly denied. I hope you didn't argue this badly in your dissertation.
^ Emotional response is poor.
@2:29 PM
Wow. I've had first-years show greater metacognitive reflection. Just wow. I hope your arguments won't be this unreflective in your dissertation.
^ Oh, snap!
@2:29
Yeah, 4:13 is an ass, but a correct ass. If you didn't get 1:13's point--and it's clear you didn't, then you're part of the problem.
This just in, an illustration of the last four posters:
http://41.media.tumblr.com/2933a60ec39deeae75c00def7f8039dd/tumblr_mrzo5ae3hu1suxeeyo1_1280.jpg
Dammit 9:16, you had me hoping we'd get our very own FV version of AWildSketchAppeared.
This just in, Oberlin undergrads found FV at 9:16 PM on January 22!
Good luck with the snow, east coast!!
Yeah, stay safe you guys. We all know how dangerous snowflakes are en masse.
Speaking of snow, has anyone heard from New Brunswick yet?
RE UNB:
I'm reasonably sure they haven't shortlisted yet.
"Wow. I've had first-years show greater metacognitive reflection. Just wow. I hope your arguments won't be this unreflective in your dissertation."
"Yeah, 4:13 is an ass, but a correct ass. If you didn't get 1:13's point--and it's clear you didn't, then you're part of the problem."
Aren't responses like these the intellectual equivalent of that kid in grade school who always boasted about his ability to do awesome things, but when asked to do them, simply said, "I could do it if I wanted, but I don't want to"? If you want to know why Classics is dying, don't look to Boomers, just look at the utter inability of people on this board to make an argument that wouldn't show up in an introductory logic textbook to illustrate informal fallacies.
^ Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot.
10:13,
You really do sound like a freshman who's just come home for Winter Break. "I learned in my Logic 101 class that you're not doing it right!" You don't have a full grasp of logic and you don't seem to understand issues of context, medium, or audience. That is, you're confusing your elementary familiarity with logic with best practices in rhetoric. Add to that that you're wrong about the logic, too, and the above-mentioned likeness to the freshman on break is complete.
Posts like yours make me feel sweet-bitter. Bitter for the state of academe that produced you and for the fate of the field that you augur, sweet for myself.
I can't judge the quality of the research here, but it seems topical...
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005
"The faculty job market plays a fundamental role in shaping research priorities, educational outcomes, and career trajectories among scientists and institutions. However, a quantitative understanding of faculty hiring as a system is lacking. Using a simple technique to extract the institutional prestige ranking that best explains an observed faculty hiring network—who hires whose graduates as faculty—we present and analyze comprehensive placement data on nearly 19,000 regular faculty in three disparate disciplines. Across disciplines, we find that faculty hiring follows a common and steeply hierarchical structure that reflects profound social inequality."
Interesting. I wonder if there would be a way to measure the accuracy of doctoral prestige as a tool for predicting not just placement but productivity. Do Ivy League and elite PhDs publish more, teach better, etc. compared with graduates from less prestigious programs? Maybe comparing the productivity of scholars with different PhDs but working at similar types of institutions?
I think much of it has to do with the increased pressures on faculty along with a unhealthy dose of apathy/resignation. After over 50 APA interviews, a dozen flyouts, and three searches (one recently as chair immediately after tenure), I can see how searches are compromised all too often. The pressure to "get it right" is intense while we're rarely in great shape to actually do it right with the beatdowns we now regularly receive in academia. It's like a gut punch, or worse, every week once you join committees and take on administrative duties.
In addition to reckoning pedigree in somewhat lazy fashion, I see an over reliance on quick and dirty networking of dubious worth when the opposite should be happening in these uncertain times. Instead of performing due diligence, we allow colleagues we believe we can trust to hold too much sway. I've seen it happen frequently in subtle and not so subtle ways and my feeling after entering my mid career years is that we are worse off for it.
Responding to 1:36: I wouldn't be surprised if they do, but mostly because of resources and socialization early on. Someone has studied the process from the other end, graduate admissions. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/06/new-book-reveals-how-elite-phd-admissions-committees-review-candidates
Choice quote from a graduate admissions committee member: And they were also unabashed elitists. “This is an elite university and a lot of the people at the university are elitists,” one professor said with a laugh. “So they make a lot of inferences about the quality of someone's work and their ability based on where they come from.”
It's intriguing that January 22, 2016 at 11:00 AM and January 25, 2016 at 2:38 AM make very similar points about networking and 'glad-handing' as influential in the job search process. How is that still a part of the Classics job market? Shouldn't that have gone out of style in the 1970s? I know/hope that at least some search committees use objective, separated perspectives when judging candidates, but I think this is a major issue. If references, cover letters, publications, teaching dossiers, etc. are cancelled out because someone bought someone a beer and talked up a candidate, what is the point?
I know people here have railed against it, but I still don't understand how SCs can so severely undervalue and down right ignore postdoctoral experience. I'm not talking about cushy postdocs lined up by a connected advisor, but positions that actually emulate your own institutional situation.
How does it happen, 12:14? We have Bushes and Clintons in charge of classics - two sides of the same coin. Masters of the universe who are so pleased with themselves that they can't foresee calamity and overestimate their abilities when it does happen. They are exponentially less likely to forgive others as they are to excuse themselves. Now their equally entitled disciples are taking over the field, which explains how inescapable our predicament actually is. I'll be watching from the sidelines as the most wasteful generation gives way to the most entitled generation they're helping to prop up and fail in epic fashion with hubris serving as their common elixir.
Re ""networking and glad-handing," etc.--The last three times I've been on a SC, we have had the distressing experience of receiving almost identical letters for several different candidates from the same recommenders. In one instance, a professor wrote, concerning FOUR different candidates, "X is the best graduate student I have ever taught in my 30-year career." In short, this professor had a template, saying "best student ever," that s/he used for every recommendation letter, and simply didn't notice that four of those identical letters were going to the same search committee. Other letters weren't actually identical but were so similar that again it seemed clear that the writers were just using a template and changing names. They were not bothering to write actual evaluations of individual candidates. Thus, these letters were completely useless for our evaluation of candidates.
Now contrast that with carefully written, individualized letters by colleagues whom I know and respect, in which the writer describes the work the candidate has done and how it will match our needs at this particular college. Imagine further that I run into those colleagues at the SCS and that they volunteer more information about a candidate's strengths. If the dossiers are otherwise of about equivalent impressiveness (as so many of them are), am I more likely to vote to interview someone whose abilities have been described in detail by someone whose opinion I trust, or to interview a candidate whose letters of recommendation were clearly boilerplates the writer uses for every letter? The answer seems clear to me.
I realize how unfair this is, especially since -- horrifyingly -- a candidate cannot know whether his/her recommenders are actually writing recommendation letters or just using templates. But horrifying and unfair though this is, it is an important side of "networking." I cannot imagine that "someone buying somebody a beer" would ever cancel out cover letters, publications, teaching dossiers, etc. But when those things are more or less equal across several applications, and one applicant has a genuine evaluative letter from someone I trust while the others have letters that are basically useless, then networking does play a role.
Yeah, so all things equal (quite common if you've made it as far as a PhD), those that ingratiate themselves with the most connected advisors get overwhelmingly placed. This is all good and fine, but we've seen too many people fail to the point that it's likely more than the result of a crapshoot's unpredictability with so few positions at stake. So basically kiss your advisor's ass and sleep with them if at all possible as it can break things in your favor. Look how far it got certain people at a certain Ivy department in CT and a host of other elite schools that can easily hide this skewing factor behind the facade of merit.
I think the take away is that the placement is basically random, but it becomes exponentially more random the less prestigious your degree is, and prestige is a very sharp curve. And you also have to factor in the laziness and connectedness of your adviser, which, by the time you have the PhD, pretty much qualifies as an act of God, since there's no way to change it.
Since networking is the name of the job-getting game outside of academia (and in administrative positions within academia), don't expect that aspect of the T-T job search to go away in the next decade.
"That is something that I have also seen and heard about, although I wouldn't have processed the observation without your post. Is it perhaps some kind of unconscious feeling among low-first or even second-tier faculty that their own students, almost certainly attending a less impressive university than they themselves did, are not worth fighting for?"
I went to a low-first-tier university (if it matters, I had good reasons for opting to attend this school over ones with better pedigrees). This was exactly the attitude displayed by certain junior professors. It was even openly articulated in a passive-aggressive or underhanded way. Students picked up on it and started saying we shouldn't even try to recruit students from top undergraduate programs.
It's sad to remember that time. I felt betrayed; I'm sure others felt worse, especially if they didn't have close ties to senior professors in that department.
I could imagine that, given hiring patterns, faculty at the tippy top places identify more with their graduate students than faculty at lower-ranked places, which would compound the prestige challenge already facing those attending a lower-first or second-tier university. That would help explain observations a number of people have made about effort put into letters (people still write letters tailored to specific schools?? Not in my universe!!), glad-handing (for good or for bad), and adviser-student relationships.
@10:50 AM: "People still write letters tailored to specific schools?? Not in my universe!!"
Well, yes, they do, judging by the past three SC's I've been on. (I'm the same person who mentioned the individualized letters a few posts back).
Interesting that people here have assumed that the tailored letters came from a "tippy-toppy" program. In fact, no; the colleagues I'm thinking about -- and yes, there were several of them -- who wrote tailored letters were all at solid second-tier universities. Recommendations from the "top" places tended not to be individualized for specific ads. The person who wrote the infamous four letters calling four different candidates "the best I've ever taught" was at a lower-tier school. My sample size is admittedly very small.
Tailored letters are an enormous outlay of time, and by no means everyone can do them. But in a market where (as we heard at the SCS panel on "contingent" faculty) only 20 percent of PhDs ever get a t-t job, tailored letters can and do make a difference.
I know this rightly should be on the WIKI, but has anyone heard anything about Brandeis?
I would also be interested in Brandeis news/rumors.
Does anyone have a sense whether Brandeis went tenured or untenured?
I was interviewed and would be untenured if hired. Anybody else?
I encountered 5 people interviewed by Brandeis. Two have tenure, three do not. Of the three untenured, one was ABD and two others had at least 5 years on the contingent course. This seems like a strange mix.
1:56 again: I would be a sixth person, with several years of non-TT experience, but less than 5. Sounds like they were keeping their options open, interviewing a range.
With no wiki news, maybe they've decided to extend campus invites to tenured candidates only. There was at least one open rank search last year that interviewed ABDs on up to full professors at SCS, but only invited junior candidates to campus. Perhaps Brandeis has decided to do the opposite.
Or, maybe they're just still digging out from the snowstorm, and news will be coming in a few days.
I don't suppose anyone has heard any Agnes Scott rumors?
Anyone else get a rather vague email from Gettysburg asking if they were "still interested in the position"? I assume this is their way of asking if we're committed to somewhere else without actually committing to anyone, but my campus visits are happening in February and so are everyone else's that I know of, so I imagine no one is committed yet and everyone will still be interested, at least in theory.
"This seems like a strange mix."
It seems like an unconventional (but thriving) department so this comes as no surprise.
Does anyone know if Furman has invited candidates for campus visits?
This seemed to work yesterday, so...any news from Grand Valley?
Hey, Boomers! How many of you know that you do not deserve your positions? Of those who know, do you feel any remorse about it?
Oh boy, another super resentful failure on the market speaks...
^ Metacognition fail.
Snowflakes! Boomers! Generation Xers! I accuse you all of belonging to some sort of generation, like the dastardly humans you are! Learn to be born outside of time or go home.
Generation?! Born?! Disgusting! You should learn to sprout from the ground and be picked up at temples outside of time or go home!
Inside Higher Ed reports that there were over 1100 new PhDs in History last year (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/05/report-finds-poor-job-market-history-phds)
Does anyone tally up the numbers for classics?
Boomers to the rescue!
New Hampshire: Go fuck yourself.
Feb 5, when the APA still had a print newsletter, information was published once and sometimes twice a year about dissertations finished (person, title of dissertation, advisor, school), and often information was provided about dissertations started (including name of point person who provided the information for a given school).
That information was sent to the APA by the departments, though I don't think that every PHD-granting school reported. I haven't seen that information in several years, now, like maybe 5 or 8. Is the APA keeping those stats? Did they stop when they became the SCS? Did they stop when the print newsletter quit?
it's that season when the process has petered out and, once again, no tenure-track offer. so, you ask yourself what's next? more of this bull? no thanks.
practical question from a newbie: what is the interview process like for VAPs at SLACs? Is there a Skype interview followed by an on-campus job talk and/or teaching demo? how common is on-campus stuff/teaching demos?
Thanks for deleting my comment about how to transition from Classics to healthcare.
Some SLACs have a campus visit stage for VAP jobs, and some just make the offer based on the Skype interview. (I have no idea on the prevalence of campus visits for VAP jobs, but they seem pretty common.) If there is a campus visit, there will most likely be a teaching demo as well as a job talk. The teaching demo will probably be to have you guest-teach an intro language course.
For the 3 post-SCS VAPs I've interviewed for, here's the rundown: one was Skype interview only; two were Skype interview + campus visit. Of the two campus visits, one required a job talk, but no teaching demo. The other wanted a teaching demo (intermediate Latin) + a short job talk (like a conference paper).
Any idea why San Diego State has apparently already requested a Skype interview for their postdoc, given that they changed the application deadline to March 1?
@4:24
For some Search Committees, there's no HR regulation against looking at files before the application deadline and no regulation against making decisions about files before the application deadline. For them deadline just means that no new files will be considered after that date. So if a committee knows they want to interview someone, there's no benefit (to the committee) to wait to let that person know--especially at this stage when someone might take an inferior job (rather than stalling) if they don't know they've got a much better interview coming up.
This means that, ceteris paribus, earlier applications get better consideration. Again IF the cetera really ARE paria, then the early applicant gets the worm. I personally don't think this is something that we can call fair or unfair. It's just part of the process.
Any word at all on these yellow schools? I mean offers must have been made at this point, right?
Not necessarily. I got a campus invite almost a month ago, but the visit is still a week away. I might be the last candidate coming to campus, but maybe not.
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