Um. I can think of several classicists in London who don't fit the Oxbridge bill (in fact, a fair few were educated in New Jersey, and not all are EU). Just cos you can't cut it in the UK doesn't mean that it's impossible.
I considered applying to a fixed term position at at British university last year and was told by the department chair not to bother because non-EU citizens wouldn't be considered. At another institution, I was shortlisted. Each institution behaves differently.
Note Penn placement got PhD in 2012, and spent four years in the wilderness before landing TT job. Some "top" programs did have a good year: Harvard, Princeton and Stanford all did quite well, although many of their placements had slogged through multiple VAPs as well.
I am very surprised that people are surprised that three Ohio State people found tenure-track positions this year. My friendly advice to everyone is to quit thinking there is such a thing as a preference for Tier 1 or Tier 2 institutions. It would really be very helpful if they did. What really mattered in this case was the quality of both the candidates and of their advisors and committees that included at least three of the greatest scholars of their generation. Additionally, there is at least one more such person at Ohio State that is arguably one of the greats of their field ever. It's not just a solid department, it's much much more. Trust me: fabulous scholars do not necessarily want to work at Ivy League or University of Fabulous. People have all sorts of reasons to stay where they are.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Ohio State University. Seriously.
Your response is hilarious. Very "collegial" too. However, their students are pretty successful in finding good jobs, aren't they? Not bad for a "lousy" program... lol
Go on believing it if it gives you comfort. However, the question is whether it's really helpful to do so when trying to explain the job market and those who are successful in it.
TLL in the news: http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/05/14/476873307/the-ultimate-latin-dictionary-after-122-years-still-at-work-on-the-letter-n
First time FV poster here (long time reader). I recently served on my first search committee and found the experience illuminating for lots of reasons. But what I want to say here is that most of our applicants and all of our interviewees were extremely qualified scholars (with frighteningly good publication records) and teachers, able to speak eloquently about their work, and nice people to boot. We could only choose one, and I wish the others the best of luck.
This actually makes me more sad, because it just confirms that no matter how hard I try, I (and all the other rejected interviewees) may never, ever get a job. The market is just way too saturated. There is nothing I can do to improve my chances. A lot of publishing, teaching, polished, nice classicists will end up with no career at the end of the day. Alas.
7:01 here. I wanted to say something positive but also knew that others would fill in the obvious blanks, i.e. that the market is way too saturated, many won't get jobs, etc., etc. So, while I truly admire the qualifications of our applicants (much better than when I was first applying, which was not long ago), I hate the conditions that have made the field so brutally competitive.
12:36 here. Thank you, 7:01, really. I didn't mean to diminish your kindness by my despair. I am grateful for your perspective and your honest praise of all of your interviewees.
In my view, here is the most important thing that senior people can do to be "allies" to those of us on the market today: take refereeing seriously. Do it in a careful and timely way. Recognize that if you procrastinate on a ms, especially of a book, through an entire job market cycle, you are damaging a young person's career. Most of us are not trying to publish in the relatively leisurely tenure-track timeframe that you might have had, but from one job market cycle to the next, and these things can make the difference of being among the lucky few to get a job or not.
I second that! If I send something out in April and don't hear back until the next April (yes, this has happened), all the work I put into the ms was wasted since "under review" on a CV does not count for much, if anything, and then, if rejected, I have to wait another 4-6 months (best case scenario) after I've sent it out to another journal. Let's please make 4 months the absolute limit (I'm petitioning editors here), and if the referee can turn it around in less (i.e., read it as soon as it hits your desk), your praises will be sung (albeit anonymously) by the grateful job-seeker for all eternity.
Four months maximum would mean that if I completed and sent something out July 31 (i.e., a paper I labored over all summer), I could hope to hear back (crossing my fingers for good news) at the latest by Nov. 31, which is close to the deadline for many T-T jobs. (Obviously earlier would be even better, especially if the reply is a rejection or an r-and-r.)
I have also had things sit for many, many months. Articles for six months, a book for nearly a year and then reviewed with so many misunderstandings I was pretty sure the person was simultaneously watching CSI: Miami. This is one area where you as an individual can make a difference, and you as an individual are actively shaping who gets to be the next generation of classics.
As co-editor of CLASSICAL WORLD I strongly encourage young scholars with interesting papers to submit them to CW. We don't have much of a backlog; recent issues have featured articles that were submitted only a year before actual publication (NB, those pieces were really good and did not require revision). Articles that involve Roman culture and Latin language are especially likely to get to print quickly. Articles with us have been generally been published 1-2 years after initial submission.
CW is published by JHUP for CAAS. As part of Project Muse, it offers high visibility.
Submissions should be sent to clswrld@temple.edu. Questions may be addressed to me at robin@temple.edu
The really sad thing is that someone can say "articles with us have been generally published 1-2 years after initial submission" as though that's a good thing.
For what it's worth, my experience has been: one article published 1 year after submission; one article published 7 months after submission; one article published 4 months after submission; one article published 3 years after submission. This is no doubt somewhat unusual since I have never received a revise & resubmit decision (I just get rejected repeatedly until it's good enough that someone accepts it straightaway). But all but one of the journals I've published in is likely to receive at least as many submissions as CW. So it's possible to do better, though also much worse. Perhaps CW's "1-2 years after initial submission" makes it exceptional, but other journals out there are at least sometimes doing better. One would hope that the rest could do at least as well as CW.
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Anonymous Anonymous said... If anyone is still interested in this kind of thing, this is how the polisci board tracks placement:
Only list first TT jobs (copy and paste entire list each time you make new addition)
School (number of placements) - Placed At * - via POSTDOC ** - via VAP
E.g. UCSD (2) - Central Florida, UCLA Stony Brook (1) - U Georgia
August 3, 2016 at 9:58 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Time for the new job market...
As to August 3's suggestion: YES! Let's have something like that we can use when advising undergrads. Who can make this?
August 18, 2016 at 3:58 PM
It seems like whoever is the current incarnation of Servius could make TWO new pages this year: the regular job listing and a permanent Placement listing.
The placement listing would need to be subdivided by year (easily done in exactly the same way the job listing is subdivided by type of job). Then enterprising and interested souls could fill in the data from past years and it could be continually updated.
I know one of the Servii and she is still overseas doing research since classes don't start here until the 22nd. Not sure why they haven't gotten the page up, however.
Anyone with an admin account can add a page. The classicswiki@gmail.com account can't add pages. This is the error message if you try: "Sorry, you can not create a new page in this category. Only site administrators and perhaps selected moderators are allowed to do it."
The current Servii just need to hand their position over to others who are able to run these sites effectively. It hardly matters whether FV is updated, but the wiki actually plays a helpful role. It's no great crisis that we don't have a new wiki by September 16th, but it'd sure be nice. There's no shortage of people who would be willing and able to take on the role.
Yeah, and humans survived for ages without electricity, but it's a nice convenience. And I doubt it matters to you in terms of job prospects, either; if you actually had a job you wouldn't feel the need to shit on other people in order to make yourself feel better for your inadequacies, and if you really feel that bad about yourself, there's probably a reason why, and it'll probably make itself manifest in your applications. But hey, if it makes you feel better...
Well, before the Servii do show up and, as per tradition, come up with new names for the subpages can someone please explain the meaning of "Ollars in Conshy" and "Down da Shore," and whether these are actually funny, or at least clever? It's been bothering me for the past year.
Several years ago, if I recall correctly, another job search blog that I followed collapsed when its then-pseudonymous moderator died. Eventually, a prior moderator returned and deleted the blog.
I think it is looking a little better than the past few years, isn't it? Certainly not the mythical "recovery" we were once told to expect once the economy rebounded, but a little better.
It might be looking better for some people in some fields, but on the whole it is no better than last year, and perhaps a bit worse. When I counted a little over a week and a half ago, there were fewer total non-senior tenure-track positions so far this year than at the same time last year. We have been hovering around a 10 to 1 candidate to tenure-track job ratio for the past few years. Perhaps FV and the Wiki are dead because the Servii have recognized that the field is too.
Not sure why some of you enterprising young whippersnappers out there, who know how to operate this here series of tubes here, don't just build a new FV and a new wiki. I'm too old to do it, and I'm not on the market, but if these little juke joints are needed then it should be up to the next generation to make them so. Or we can all wait until the APA upgrades their 2400baud modem and produces their own version of FV on MySpace. That would be rad.
Alright everybody, I (not a former Servius) am trying to create a new wiki. Easier said than done, but I am hoping to have it up and ready to edit today.
Sorry everyone. Wikidot is really clumsy to use, and while it is easy to control who edits a page, if you don't want the page to be public (i.e. classicists' names and workplaces accessible to the entire internet), you have to pay for it. I'm not going to pay, and I think we just need to find a better platform, but I've had enough of this for today.
Hi anonymous above: Thanks for starting this. I'd be glad to help with finding another solution and setting it up-- email me at archwhat @ gmail.com if you want--
I wonder if Servia realizes that by not updating this page or passing it off to another, she is not only complicit in the system but also a bad person. For realz.
I suppose people who sell their souls don't miss them much.
I am so sad at the idea of a job market year with no wiki. It gives me a sense of community during a very lonely and depressing process. Not to mention that it's helpful to know when to give up on hope (i.e., seeing when jobs have contacted interviewees) and when to hope. It's not that we need it necessarily--you can still apply for and get jobs without it--but it provides some emotional support.
Hey everyone, we've got a new wiki up and ready to go. We're going to wait until Monday, though, to see if the Servii want to turn up and pass the baton for the old page, for the sake of continuity.
Jumping on the bandwagon of October 4, 2016 at 1:30 PM: It ticks me off that the Servii have apparently dumped this site. This happened last year, and I had just offered on the blog to start a new site when they swooped in at the last moment (late August, as I recall), saying that they had been abroad, etc., etc.
I know how helpful this site can be. I've been using it since 2008 (yes, on the market for that long). They should have handed it off rather than leaving in the lurch people who are or are soon to be in precarious positions.
Kudos and thank you to those who are starting a new site. Best of luck to all!
A question for Birmingham-Southern, if they are reading this. The new listing says that the position starts Fall 2017, but not when it ends. Is this a VAP-type job (as is implied by the "Instructor" title), or a long-term one (as is implied by the lack of an end date)? Is it an adjunct position with a fancy name? And a comment for the SCS: please have universities make these things clear in job ads!
Since the SCS can't be arsed to maintain demographic information or job information, maybe someone could scrape the employment data from the wiki and add it to the new site, or back it up somehow. Would be a shame to lose what little information we have.
I'm one of the people working on the stop-gap wiki for this year: we can totally add the old data to the new wiki. The real problem with not having contact with the old servii, however, is that there is no way for us to add clear links from the old wiki (and from the main page of this blog) to the new wiki. This will make it much harder for people to find the new wiki and might well lead to lower participation. It is the reason we wanted to wait a few more days and put out one final call for the old servii...
One of the new-wiki people here. i agree that it would be great to get thoughts about what people want out of a new wiki and FV. Here are some things that we learned when setting up the stop-gap wiki: (this is posted in a bunch of short chunks, b/c blogger keeps rejecting the longer comment. sorry.)
1) Privacy is expensive. Almost every hosted wiki platform makes password-protection a feature available only to paying customers. We're not sure whether the old admins were paying for the old site (if so, thanks!), or whether they were grandfathered in under different rules. A lot of other disciplines have their job wikis on non-password-protected sites, but they don't post candidates' names, and we are not comfortable being admins on an open site that posts names.
2) Having a fully anonymous log-in option, as the old wiki had, is impossible on many of the larger platforms. Googlesites, for example, would be a good option, except that it requires users to log in with a gmail account. We suspect that google would suspend an account with a shared password, because it would seem fraudulent to have dozens of users logging in from different IP addresses (I've had this happen before with shared gmails). This rules out using services in the google family, and probably also dropbox. We could ask everyone to log in with their own private (or burner) email accounts, but thought it that this would reduced participation.
3) We also thought about switching to a blogging platform rather than a wiki for the job site, but none of the free options seem to enable the type of editing capabilities that make the wiki useful.
4) The option that would give us the most control would be to set up our own wiki from scratch, rather than using one of the hosted options. This requires a bit of coding, which is fine. But it also requires that we host it ourselves-- which costs money and so is not fine (unless someone has server space that they'd like to donate?).
As a quick solution to get a wiki up and running for the season that's already well underway (without spending money), we found another wiki platform that is free and allows for password-protected access through a shared anonymous login. It's not the most elegant thing, but editing works the same way it did on the old wiki.
This is just some background info. I think it would be very useful to have a wider conversation about what the ideal set-up would look like.
In the absence of a new FV in which to post: holy crap, you guys, USC won the lottery: http://main.hercjobs.org/jobs/8508455/professor-open-rank-of-classics
Here's another option: someone who knows the identity of the Servii should publicly out them for their negligence, which will inspire them to show the fuck up and hand the keys over to others so we can keep the same damn sites working for us that we've had for years. Nasty, yes, but probably more effective and efficient.
Another of the new Servii here. It wasn't the most elegant thing for the old Sevii to disappear, but they performed a service to all of us for many years, for which they will not be thanked. Let's keep it positive. Placement statistics is something that I have long thought we should be keeping track of, but that depends on enough participation to make it meaningful. Would people participate? Just to keep it very simple, it could be University year: (defended PhD) (placed in TT positions through normal searches, by which I mean the position was advertised and multiple candidates were interviewed)
So something like University of Wisconsin 2008: (7) (4). 2009: (4) (2) 2010: (6) (3)
I know this omits a lot of important info like years on the market or time to PhD, but it would gather some basic statistics. Are people interested?
I'm the Oct. 6 5.13 new wiki person-- I just want to echo Oct. 7 12.39's comment re: thanks to the old Servii, who did a tremendous amount of work for the whole discipline. Our emails are archwhat @ gmail and classicsjobs2016 @ gmail if they want to get in touch with us directly.
Wikispaces.com has worked well for me in the past, and it offers a private, password protected wiki for free. Perhaps a shared login will work there like with the old wiki.
By year do you mean year entered? So if in 2009 4 people started out, 3 defended, and 1 got a TT job, it would look like this:
2009: (3) (1)
?
Or do you mean by year that they defended that year? I have no idea who all defends in a given year at my institution. The year I defended I was out working ABD.
Yes, my idea was year defended, not matriculated. So your entry would mean, "At X university in 2009, three people defended a PhD, one of whom attained a tenure track job (at any point in time)."
Admittedly important data gets lost: attrition, time to degree, and time on the market. I'm open to suggestions if that can be gathered in an accurate and uncomplicated way. Very very few people start a tenure track job ABD, at least in this era, but they would look no different on this schema than if they had gotten the job post PhD. (Nor would people who took multiple tries on the market, which is much more the norm.)
For what it's worth, to answer 12:39AM's question: yes, I'd be interested. I think this data is likely to be incomplete and potentially inaccurate, since it will just come from individuals volunteering information, there might not be such people for each year in each department, people might misremember things, and so on. But so long as everyone remembers that, it should still be interesting, at least. It'd be nice if all departments would just make this information available to the SCS, but since that doesn't seem likely to happen soon, this way of doing it is better than nothing.
Oh, and I'll third gratitude for the Servii's past work, but it's still a shame that they've completely dropped the ball and aren't even willing to pass it.
For the question of placement data, I think it would be far less complicated and far more helpful to have the date marker refer to the year of matriculation.
I, for example, can easily remember how many people entered my alma mater the same year I did, and I know where each of them are now (even though it's been several years since the last of us left)--however, I barely even remember the year in which I defended my own dissertation.
While we're discussing these demographic questions, I would like to tip my hat toward UNC-CH, which for a long time has had one of the more transparent lists of their alums and where they are now. Nice job, whoever there is behind the initiative. Michigan also had a pretty respectable list, tho I think it got buried in a new departmental page last I checked.
Original Servius here. Checking in for the first time this season, and dismayed to see all of the chaos and confusion. I don't know who the current Servii are, though I can certainly find out if I want to take the time to ask my successors to ask their successors. I also haven't poked around to see if some of my old passwords still work, but I will do that. I will email the people trying to get a new FV/wiki off the ground. It has been almost 10 years since I made this site and things have changed in terms of technology, so I don't know how much help I can offer.
New Servius here: we're holding off for now to see if the old login info can be located. Something will be up pretty soon, though, either the old or the new site.
Other new Servius here: we totally agree with you, anon 12.06. We want to use the old wiki too, but it now costs money to set up the same type of site on wikidot. That's is why we'll need to move if the passwords/login for the old site don't turn up. Fingers crossed, though.
Got just the old car out of repo. Fixed the tires, and filled up the tank. Let's roll.
archwhat and classicsjobs2016, please give me a holler, I just left you both a message.
To the rest of you, a brief explanation, as much as I can relay.
The latest moderators were the 4th generation of Servii. Unfortunately, between the 3rd and 4th generations a crucial tradition was disregarded. Namely, that old Servii and new Servii declare to each other who they are in real life. I insisted on this for my successors, and they did for theirs, but then the temples were ignored and the gods disrespected. Once again, Augustus is proven to have been correct.
Fortunately, the 4th generation lacked not only respect for the FV community, but also basic technical competence. They neglected to change all of the old passwords. Thus I am here talking to you now, summoned up from below and still a bit befuddled from the harsh glare of the light.
Operating under the assumption that the Mos Maiorum will be embraced by this, the 5th generation of Servii, I can hand the keys on yet again and quit channeling my inner Appius Claudius Caecus. You all can then get on with helping each other out. My last bit of advice before again fading away:
Don't engage in conspiracy theories (inside hires and the like), assume good intentions all around until definitely proven otherwise, and be excellent to each other (and be especially excellent to the archaeologists -- those folks got a really tough row to hoe).
Any info for this year, but posted on the 2015-2016 wiki, has been maintained on the old wiki page. But it will have to be copied over to the new wiki page if necessary and appropriate. Sorry for that, but I thought it better to start from scratch than try to ferret out edits from this year.
1,319 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 1201 – 1319 of 1319@5:33pm
Um. I can think of several classicists in London who don't fit the Oxbridge bill (in fact, a fair few were educated in New Jersey, and not all are EU). Just cos you can't cut it in the UK doesn't mean that it's impossible.
I considered applying to a fixed term position at at British university last year and was told by the department chair not to bother because non-EU citizens wouldn't be considered. At another institution, I was shortlisted. Each institution behaves differently.
Penn placed one TT this year and at least 4 last year, so that top-tier program still would appear to be thriving
As if anyone could thrive in this job market!
Note Penn placement got PhD in 2012, and spent four years in the wilderness before landing TT job. Some "top" programs did have a good year: Harvard, Princeton and Stanford all did quite well, although many of their placements had slogged through multiple VAPs as well.
I am very surprised that people are surprised that three Ohio State people found tenure-track positions this year. My friendly advice to everyone is to quit thinking there is such a thing as a preference for Tier 1 or Tier 2 institutions. It would really be very helpful if they did. What really mattered in this case was the quality of both the candidates and of their advisors and committees that included at least three of the greatest scholars of their generation. Additionally, there is at least one more such person at Ohio State that is arguably one of the greats of their field ever. It's not just a solid department, it's much much more. Trust me: fabulous scholars do not necessarily want to work at Ivy League or University of Fabulous. People have all sorts of reasons to stay where they are.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Ohio State University. Seriously.
You deserve the award for most idiotic post of the season. It's a lousy program, and it's always been a lousy program.
Your response is hilarious. Very "collegial" too. However, their students are pretty successful in finding good jobs, aren't they? Not bad for a "lousy" program... lol
DNFT OSU Troll
Go on believing it if it gives you comfort. However, the question is whether it's really helpful to do so when trying to explain the job market and those who are successful in it.
TLL in the news: http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/05/14/476873307/the-ultimate-latin-dictionary-after-122-years-still-at-work-on-the-letter-n
New text of Pseudo-Aristotle discovered.
A must-read for everybody here:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.region.europe/22171
Surprised to read that the CUA medieval Latin search failed. Did the Princeton one fail too?
First time FV poster here (long time reader). I recently served on my first search committee and found the experience illuminating for lots of reasons. But what I want to say here is that most of our applicants and all of our interviewees were extremely qualified scholars (with frighteningly good publication records) and teachers, able to speak eloquently about their work, and nice people to boot. We could only choose one, and I wish the others the best of luck.
Thanks, man. But I still really wish you'd given me that job.
This actually makes me more sad, because it just confirms that no matter how hard I try, I (and all the other rejected interviewees) may never, ever get a job. The market is just way too saturated. There is nothing I can do to improve my chances. A lot of publishing, teaching, polished, nice classicists will end up with no career at the end of the day. Alas.
7:01 here. I wanted to say something positive but also knew that others would fill in the obvious blanks, i.e. that the market is way too saturated, many won't get jobs, etc., etc. So, while I truly admire the qualifications of our applicants (much better than when I was first applying, which was not long ago), I hate the conditions that have made the field so brutally competitive.
12:36 here. Thank you, 7:01, really. I didn't mean to diminish your kindness by my despair. I am grateful for your perspective and your honest praise of all of your interviewees.
In my view, here is the most important thing that senior people can do to be "allies" to those of us on the market today: take refereeing seriously. Do it in a careful and timely way. Recognize that if you procrastinate on a ms, especially of a book, through an entire job market cycle, you are damaging a young person's career. Most of us are not trying to publish in the relatively leisurely tenure-track timeframe that you might have had, but from one job market cycle to the next, and these things can make the difference of being among the lucky few to get a job or not.
I second that! If I send something out in April and don't hear back until the next April (yes, this has happened), all the work I put into the ms was wasted since "under review" on a CV does not count for much, if anything, and then, if rejected, I have to wait another 4-6 months (best case scenario) after I've sent it out to another journal. Let's please make 4 months the absolute limit (I'm petitioning editors here), and if the referee can turn it around in less (i.e., read it as soon as it hits your desk), your praises will be sung (albeit anonymously) by the grateful job-seeker for all eternity.
Four months maximum would mean that if I completed and sent something out July 31 (i.e., a paper I labored over all summer), I could hope to hear back (crossing my fingers for good news) at the latest by Nov. 31, which is close to the deadline for many T-T jobs. (Obviously earlier would be even better, especially if the reply is a rejection or an r-and-r.)
I have also had things sit for many, many months. Articles for six months, a book for nearly a year and then reviewed with so many misunderstandings I was pretty sure the person was simultaneously watching CSI: Miami. This is one area where you as an individual can make a difference, and you as an individual are actively shaping who gets to be the next generation of classics.
What's the average time-to-response with Classics journals? Here's my experience:
one where the time to first response was 2.5 months
one where the time to first response was 6.25 months
(both were r-and-r; the time to response after resubmission was about the same as the time to first response in both cases).
Article submissions: 9 months, 3 months. R+r response much faster, probably about a month both times.
Book submissions: 9 months, 12 months.
As co-editor of CLASSICAL WORLD I strongly encourage young scholars with interesting papers to submit them to CW. We don't have much of a backlog; recent issues have featured articles that were submitted only a year before actual publication (NB, those pieces were really good and did not require revision). Articles that involve Roman culture and Latin language are especially likely to get to print quickly. Articles with us have been generally been published 1-2 years after initial submission.
CW is published by JHUP for CAAS. As part of Project Muse, it offers high visibility.
Submissions should be sent to clswrld@temple.edu. Questions may be addressed to me at robin@temple.edu
Robin Mitchell-Boyask
The really sad thing is that someone can say "articles with us have been generally published 1-2 years after initial submission" as though that's a good thing.
For what it's worth, my experience has been: one article published 1 year after submission; one article published 7 months after submission; one article published 4 months after submission; one article published 3 years after submission. This is no doubt somewhat unusual since I have never received a revise & resubmit decision (I just get rejected repeatedly until it's good enough that someone accepts it straightaway). But all but one of the journals I've published in is likely to receive at least as many submissions as CW. So it's possible to do better, though also much worse. Perhaps CW's "1-2 years after initial submission" makes it exceptional, but other journals out there are at least sometimes doing better. One would hope that the rest could do at least as well as CW.
I had an article published in CJ about 1 year and 2 months after first submission WITH an initial r&r response. This was a couple of years ago.
Thanks for the tip, CW! Really appreciated!
Thanks, CW!
7 months from submission to publication (Submitted June, revised and resubmitted August, published January) with GRBS.
Can't remember exactly what the timeline was, but I had a respectable turnaround and very professional and competent treatment with CP.
I missed both CAMWS and the SCS this year. How were the presidential addresses? Did they address the challenges Classics faces?
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So Yes's are out for the SCS, but No's not yet?
Time for a new page!
Holy shit! The silos are already full of disappointment...maybe we should let the fields lie fallow for a few years?
Hold your horses: last year I think the new FV didn't come up until late August.
If anyone is still interested in this kind of thing, this is how the polisci board tracks placement:
Only list first TT jobs (copy and paste entire list each time you make new addition)
School (number of placements) - Placed At
* - via POSTDOC
** - via VAP
E.g.
UCSD (2) - Central Florida, UCLA
Stony Brook (1) - U Georgia
Time for the new job market...
As to August 3's suggestion: YES! Let's have something like that we can use when advising undergrads. Who can make this?
Anonymous Anonymous said...
If anyone is still interested in this kind of thing, this is how the polisci board tracks placement:
Only list first TT jobs (copy and paste entire list each time you make new addition)
School (number of placements) - Placed At
* - via POSTDOC
** - via VAP
E.g.
UCSD (2) - Central Florida, UCLA
Stony Brook (1) - U Georgia
August 3, 2016 at 9:58 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Time for the new job market...
As to August 3's suggestion: YES! Let's have something like that we can use when advising undergrads. Who can make this?
August 18, 2016 at 3:58 PM
It seems like whoever is the current incarnation of Servius could make TWO new pages this year: the regular job listing and a permanent Placement listing.
The placement listing would need to be subdivided by year (easily done in exactly the same way the job listing is subdivided by type of job). Then enterprising and interested souls could fill in the data from past years and it could be continually updated.
Boy what a banner year for our field. First Daddy Cruel and now a murderer.
We're a classy bunch, that's for sure.
Servius, will the new stuff go up Sept. 1 again? It's time for the wiki to get running.
August 27--I wouldn't hold my breath. With the APA offices transferred from Philly to NY, who knows what will happen, or when?
Wait...I didn't know Servius was connected with the APA?
I am sure the Servii are not connected with the APA. Can we get a new page please?
Can't anyone with the wiki password add a 2016-2017 page to the wiki?
I know one of the Servii and she is still overseas doing research since classes don't start here until the 22nd. Not sure why they haven't gotten the page up, however.
Can you ask this Servia how one of us mere mortals can do this?
Maybe the Servii should bring in a younger generation? The originals must be tenured by now. How does one apply to be a Servian apprentice?
"The originals must be tenured by now."
Oh, you poor naive soul.
Anyone with a password can do it.
Anyone with an admin account can add a page. The classicswiki@gmail.com account can't add pages. This is the error message if you try: "Sorry, you can not create a new page in this category. Only site administrators and perhaps selected moderators are allowed to do it."
Can we just start a different wiki blog page?
I'm willing to give it until the end of September. Most upcoming due dates are at the end of Oct/early Nov.
Wow, even the Servii don't care about us.
Going forward, perhaps it would be best for the Servii to configure the coming year's pages *before* the summer dig/research season.
The current Servii just need to hand their position over to others who are able to run these sites effectively. It hardly matters whether FV is updated, but the wiki actually plays a helpful role. It's no great crisis that we don't have a new wiki by September 16th, but it'd sure be nice. There's no shortage of people who would be willing and able to take on the role.
Whiners. The field survived for ages without a wiki. Like it really matters to most of you in terms of job prospects.
Yeah, and humans survived for ages without electricity, but it's a nice convenience. And I doubt it matters to you in terms of job prospects, either; if you actually had a job you wouldn't feel the need to shit on other people in order to make yourself feel better for your inadequacies, and if you really feel that bad about yourself, there's probably a reason why, and it'll probably make itself manifest in your applications. But hey, if it makes you feel better...
Well, before the Servii do show up and, as per tradition, come up with new names for the subpages can someone please explain the meaning of "Ollars in Conshy" and "Down da Shore," and whether these are actually funny, or at least clever? It's been bothering me for the past year.
Those are all Philly references. I think one of the Servii must be a Penn graduate student, or a Philly native.
The Philly references are, presumably, a reflection of the great brotherly love we show for each other in this venue.
Thanks for the explanation. Let's hope that the quality of subpage names this year will be on the rise, and usher in a period of better job postings.
Hey, already more jobs in several fields underrepresented last year. Perhaps my sacrifices to the job gods are finally finding favor.
Someone? (...someone, someone, someone....) ...anyone? (...anyone, anyone, anyone...)
... one day, even the Servii will leave the broad internet, and there will be no more help against suffering.
Someone with the know-how could start a new wiki and a new forum altogether. I'm not that person.
^ digital humanities ftw.
Several years ago, if I recall correctly, another job search blog that I followed collapsed when its then-pseudonymous moderator died. Eventually, a prior moderator returned and deleted the blog.
Maybe the Servii were recently at Cincy and 'Nova and they are having trouble getting internet access in prison. Give them some time.
..groan..
I hereby declare Famae Volent deceased.
Behold, the New Market! Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate!
Meet the new market, same as the old market.
I think it is looking a little better than the past few years, isn't it? Certainly not the mythical "recovery" we were once told to expect once the economy rebounded, but a little better.
It might be looking better for some people in some fields, but on the whole it is no better than last year, and perhaps a bit worse. When I counted a little over a week and a half ago, there were fewer total non-senior tenure-track positions so far this year than at the same time last year. We have been hovering around a 10 to 1 candidate to tenure-track job ratio for the past few years. Perhaps FV and the Wiki are dead because the Servii have recognized that the field is too.
Not sure why some of you enterprising young whippersnappers out there, who know how to operate this here series of tubes here, don't just build a new FV and a new wiki. I'm too old to do it, and I'm not on the market, but if these little juke joints are needed then it should be up to the next generation to make them so. Or we can all wait until the APA upgrades their 2400baud modem and produces their own version of FV on MySpace. That would be rad.
Alright everybody, I (not a former Servius) am trying to create a new wiki. Easier said than done, but I am hoping to have it up and ready to edit today.
12:01 here:
Sorry everyone. Wikidot is really clumsy to use, and while it is easy to control who edits a page, if you don't want the page to be public (i.e. classicists' names and workplaces accessible to the entire internet), you have to pay for it. I'm not going to pay, and I think we just need to find a better platform, but I've had enough of this for today.
Hi anonymous above: Thanks for starting this. I'd be glad to help with finding another solution and setting it up-- email me at archwhat @ gmail.com if you want--
I wonder if Servia realizes that by not updating this page or passing it off to another, she is not only complicit in the system but also a bad person. For realz.
I suppose people who sell their souls don't miss them much.
I am so sad at the idea of a job market year with no wiki. It gives me a sense of community during a very lonely and depressing process. Not to mention that it's helpful to know when to give up on hope (i.e., seeing when jobs have contacted interviewees) and when to hope. It's not that we need it necessarily--you can still apply for and get jobs without it--but it provides some emotional support.
12:01 again: we'll have a wiki. I think a lot of us need it. We just might have to switch platforms.
"2. SCS has launched a new online discussion forum for members."
Wait, what, a tamed, housebroken, official version of FV? I am not sure how I feel about this.
Somebody could do something with this already existing page:
http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Classics
Thanks 12:01/2:02!
Just wanted to wish everyone good luck in the new job market!
Hey everyone, we've got a new wiki up and ready to go. We're going to wait until Monday, though, to see if the Servii want to turn up and pass the baton for the old page, for the sake of continuity.
Ditto, good luck and thanks!
Jumping on the bandwagon of October 4, 2016 at 1:30 PM:
It ticks me off that the Servii have apparently dumped this site. This happened last year, and I had just offered on the blog to start a new site when they swooped in at the last moment (late August, as I recall), saying that they had been abroad, etc., etc.
I know how helpful this site can be. I've been using it since 2008 (yes, on the market for that long). They should have handed it off rather than leaving in the lurch people who are or are soon to be in precarious positions.
Kudos and thank you to those who are starting a new site.
Best of luck to all!
A question for Birmingham-Southern, if they are reading this. The new listing says that the position starts Fall 2017, but not when it ends. Is this a VAP-type job (as is implied by the "Instructor" title), or a long-term one (as is implied by the lack of an end date)? Is it an adjunct position with a fancy name? And a comment for the SCS: please have universities make these things clear in job ads!
Since the SCS can't be arsed to maintain demographic information or job information, maybe someone could scrape the employment data from the wiki and add it to the new site, or back it up somehow. Would be a shame to lose what little information we have.
I'm one of the people working on the stop-gap wiki for this year: we can totally add the old data to the new wiki. The real problem with not having contact with the old servii, however, is that there is no way for us to add clear links from the old wiki (and from the main page of this blog) to the new wiki. This will make it much harder for people to find the new wiki and might well lead to lower participation. It is the reason we wanted to wait a few more days and put out one final call for the old servii...
Hey, I just realized something: this thread has now become a commentary on Servius!
(Get it? It's funny because the REAL Servius wrote commentaries.)
Groan.........
This might be a good time for people to think about what they want out of a new wiki and a new FV.
Definitely completion and placement stats on programs (see earlier comments on this theme).
One of the new-wiki people here. i agree that it would be great to get thoughts about what people want out of a new wiki and FV. Here are some things that we learned when setting up the stop-gap wiki: (this is posted in a bunch of short chunks, b/c blogger keeps rejecting the longer comment. sorry.)
1) Privacy is expensive. Almost every hosted wiki platform makes password-protection a feature available only to paying customers. We're not sure whether the old admins were paying for the old site (if so, thanks!), or whether they were grandfathered in under different rules. A lot of other disciplines have their job wikis on non-password-protected sites, but they don't post candidates' names, and we are not comfortable being admins on an open site that posts names.
2) Having a fully anonymous log-in option, as the old wiki had, is impossible on many of the larger platforms. Googlesites, for example, would be a good option, except that it requires users to log in with a gmail account. We suspect that google would suspend an account with a shared password, because it would seem fraudulent to have dozens of users logging in from different IP addresses (I've had this happen before with shared gmails). This rules out using services in the google family, and probably also dropbox. We could ask everyone to log in with their own private (or burner) email accounts, but thought it that this would reduced participation.
3) We also thought about switching to a blogging platform rather than a wiki for the job site, but none of the free options seem to enable the type of editing capabilities that make the wiki useful.
4) The option that would give us the most control would be to set up our own wiki from scratch, rather than using one of the hosted options. This requires a bit of coding, which is fine. But it also requires that we host it ourselves-- which costs money and so is not fine (unless someone has server space that they'd like to donate?).
As a quick solution to get a wiki up and running for the season that's already well underway (without spending money), we found another wiki platform that is free and allows for password-protected access through a shared anonymous login. It's not the most elegant thing, but editing works the same way it did on the old wiki.
This is just some background info. I think it would be very useful to have a wider conversation about what the ideal set-up would look like.
In the absence of a new FV in which to post: holy crap, you guys, USC won the lottery: http://main.hercjobs.org/jobs/8508455/professor-open-rank-of-classics
Here's another option: someone who knows the identity of the Servii should publicly out them for their negligence, which will inspire them to show the fuck up and hand the keys over to others so we can keep the same damn sites working for us that we've had for years. Nasty, yes, but probably more effective and efficient.
Another of the new Servii here. It wasn't the most elegant thing for the old Sevii to disappear, but they performed a service to all of us for many years, for which they will not be thanked. Let's keep it positive. Placement statistics is something that I have long thought we should be keeping track of, but that depends on enough participation to make it meaningful. Would people participate? Just to keep it very simple, it could be
University year: (defended PhD) (placed in TT positions through normal searches, by which I mean the position was advertised and multiple candidates were interviewed)
So something like
University of Wisconsin 2008: (7) (4).
2009: (4) (2)
2010: (6) (3)
I know this omits a lot of important info like years on the market or time to PhD, but it would gather some basic statistics. Are people interested?
I'm the Oct. 6 5.13 new wiki person-- I just want to echo Oct. 7 12.39's comment re: thanks to the old Servii, who did a tremendous amount of work for the whole discipline. Our emails are archwhat @ gmail and classicsjobs2016 @ gmail if they want to get in touch with us directly.
Wikispaces.com has worked well for me in the past, and it offers a private, password protected wiki for free. Perhaps a shared login will work there like with the old wiki.
About 12:39:
By year do you mean year entered? So if in 2009 4 people started out, 3 defended, and 1 got a TT job, it would look like this:
2009: (3) (1)
?
Or do you mean by year that they defended that year? I have no idea who all defends in a given year at my institution. The year I defended I was out working ABD.
Yes, my idea was year defended, not matriculated. So your entry would mean, "At X university in 2009, three people defended a PhD, one of whom attained a tenure track job (at any point in time)."
Admittedly important data gets lost: attrition, time to degree, and time on the market. I'm open to suggestions if that can be gathered in an accurate and uncomplicated way. Very very few people start a tenure track job ABD, at least in this era, but they would look no different on this schema than if they had gotten the job post PhD. (Nor would people who took multiple tries on the market, which is much more the norm.)
For what it's worth, to answer 12:39AM's question: yes, I'd be interested. I think this data is likely to be incomplete and potentially inaccurate, since it will just come from individuals volunteering information, there might not be such people for each year in each department, people might misremember things, and so on. But so long as everyone remembers that, it should still be interesting, at least. It'd be nice if all departments would just make this information available to the SCS, but since that doesn't seem likely to happen soon, this way of doing it is better than nothing.
Oh, and I'll third gratitude for the Servii's past work, but it's still a shame that they've completely dropped the ball and aren't even willing to pass it.
For the question of placement data, I think it would be far less complicated and far more helpful to have the date marker refer to the year of matriculation.
I, for example, can easily remember how many people entered my alma mater the same year I did, and I know where each of them are now (even though it's been several years since the last of us left)--however, I barely even remember the year in which I defended my own dissertation.
How about
Matriculation year: (number of students matriculated) (Number of Completed PhDs) (Number of TT placements)?
We probably each have at least five years of this sort of institutional memory.
While we're discussing these demographic questions, I would like to tip my hat toward UNC-CH, which for a long time has had one of the more transparent lists of their alums and where they are now. Nice job, whoever there is behind the initiative. Michigan also had a pretty respectable list, tho I think it got buried in a new departmental page last I checked.
Original Servius here. Checking in for the first time this season, and dismayed to see all of the chaos and confusion. I don't know who the current Servii are, though I can certainly find out if I want to take the time to ask my successors to ask their successors. I also haven't poked around to see if some of my old passwords still work, but I will do that. I will email the people trying to get a new FV/wiki off the ground. It has been almost 10 years since I made this site and things have changed in terms of technology, so I don't know how much help I can offer.
Thank you, Original Servius. I, for one, would prefer the old wiki to continue, grateful as I am that others have stepped up to get a new one going.
I agree with 3:46.
New Servius here: we're holding off for now to see if the old login info can be located. Something will be up pretty soon, though, either the old or the new site.
The old site was perfectly serviceable and has the advantage of familiarity. I'd go with that if it were an option.
Other new Servius here: we totally agree with you, anon 12.06. We want to use the old wiki too, but it now costs money to set up the same type of site on wikidot. That's is why we'll need to move if the passwords/login for the old site don't turn up. Fingers crossed, though.
Original Servius here.
Got just the old car out of repo. Fixed the tires, and filled up the tank. Let's roll.
archwhat and classicsjobs2016, please give me a holler, I just left you both a message.
To the rest of you, a brief explanation, as much as I can relay.
The latest moderators were the 4th generation of Servii. Unfortunately, between the 3rd and 4th generations a crucial tradition was disregarded. Namely, that old Servii and new Servii declare to each other who they are in real life. I insisted on this for my successors, and they did for theirs, but then the temples were ignored and the gods disrespected. Once again, Augustus is proven to have been correct.
Fortunately, the 4th generation lacked not only respect for the FV community, but also basic technical competence. They neglected to change all of the old passwords. Thus I am here talking to you now, summoned up from below and still a bit befuddled from the harsh glare of the light.
Operating under the assumption that the Mos Maiorum will be embraced by this, the 5th generation of Servii, I can hand the keys on yet again and quit channeling my inner Appius Claudius Caecus. You all can then get on with helping each other out. My last bit of advice before again fading away:
Don't engage in conspiracy theories (inside hires and the like), assume good intentions all around until definitely proven otherwise, and be excellent to each other (and be especially excellent to the archaeologists -- those folks got a really tough row to hoe).
Pax,
Servius I
Servius I gets double portions and a seat of honor at the SCS this year.
New wiki up and active:
http://classics.wikidot.com/1-2016-2017-classics-ancient-history-archaeology-job-market
Any info for this year, but posted on the 2015-2016 wiki, has been maintained on the old wiki page. But it will have to be copied over to the new wiki page if necessary and appropriate. Sorry for that, but I thought it better to start from scratch than try to ferret out edits from this year.
More soon.
Servius I
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