I know it doesn't excuse the state of the discipline nor the terrible job descriptions, Greek archaeology applicants, but I do know that the offending departments have big problems. I wish a solution was readily available, but it's not. Hang in there if you can.
One position was offered, but has not yet been formally accepted. The faculty were unable to find a second candidate that fulfilled the department's needs, therefore the search was closed for the time being. It will most likely reopen next year.
In a year when there was the greatest number of scholars, old and young, looking for a job since (some people say) the 30ies, Cincinnati was unable to find a good candidate!?!?!? It sounds a bit WEIRD....
Then instead of blaming the already largely frustrated candidates by saying that they were not able to meet the standards of a department, let's just use a bit more of transparency when describing the outcome of a search process. It is way more respectful.
It's actually surprisingly easy to screw up a search. Yes, there were vast numbers of people on the market, but the SC has to narrow that down to 15 (max) interviews at the APA and then 3 on-campus interviews. VERY rarely, a Dean may agree to a 4th on-campus, but usually you get three and that's it.
Before I served on a search committee, I would never have believed how poor a guide an APA interview can be to how a candidate will do in the on-campus interview. Some candidates give *terrible* job talks. Some make howlers in their language classes that 2nd-semester students detect (and ask about in the next class meeting). Those are relatively rare -- more common are the ones whose on-campus interviews make it abundantly clear that they're really just not going to be a good fit for this program or this college; they're great candidates but not right for this particular job.
With luck, an SC misjudges only one or at most two of its fly-outs and still can make a job offer. But it's by no means unlikely that an occasional SC could misjudge all three, and that the Dean would then say "Sorry, you had your chance; failed (or at least postponed) search." This doesn't mean that the "right candidate" wasn't out there somewhere among the hundreds of applications. But alas, we don't get to interview all the applicants -- we have to try to figure out which ones are most likely to fit our program, and if we get that wrong, the search fails.
Then instead of blaming the already largely frustrated candidates by saying that they were not able to meet the standards of a department
Oh for Zeus' sake! I don't care what I say and how I say it, someone on this board will take it as an insult. You find blame where I intended none.
"The department couldn't find the right candidate" is by no means an insult to the candidates. It doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that you all suck. Like Anon 6:06 said: it is surprisingly easy for a search to fail. Each department needs something very specific. It isn't about you being objectively better than everyone else. There is no such thing! Either you fit with the bizarre and very specific set of requirements the department has or you don't. I don't care if you are Theodor Mommsen himself: if the department doesn't want a historian, then you aren't getting hired.
Anon 6:06 described pretty well the numerous reasons why searches fail. It is extremely common. He/she left out a biggie, though: the ad. The ad doesn't reflect what all faculty want, yet at the end of the search, all faculty have to unanimously agree on a candidate. You can't know what bizarre mixture of skills will satisfy enough people to get you the job.
It's not your fault Cincy didn't hire you. If you really want it, apply again next year. The Cincy faculty are very disappointed that they couldn't make it work this year, and they will try to run a better search next year so that those final 3 or 4 more closely match what they need.
Or at least that's what they tell me. But I'm sure someone on here will tell me that I've somehow insulted their grandmother and I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm sure someone on here will tell me that I've somehow insulted their grandmother and I don't know what I'm talking about.
Look, I don't know what your problem is with my grandma, but if I were you I'd try to inform myself a little better about how the world works before commenting here.
Gonna try this one again. UMBC? I hate when SCs give you a timeline, then leave you with no indication that a shortlist has or hasn't been made well past that timeline.
How bad of a fit do the candidates have to be for no job to be offered? I'm extremely sympathetic to the difficulties of running a job search, and I am sure that Cincinnati did their best. But in the abstract, shouldn't departments do everything in their power to offer a job at the end of a search? I've seen unsuccessful searches that weren't extended the following year, and I must think that deans aren't on the whole impressed by departments who do not even offer the position they've approved. In an economy and a world in which Classics departments as a whole want to be growing instead of shrinking, shouldn't we heavily weight the process towards growth, as much as we can? I'm not saying hire the bum who fooled you for 15 minutes in San Antonio; but if the candidate shows any promise and can interact with the rest of the faculty on any level, why not offer the job now, rather than delay the growth of the department?
I'm with you, 10.24. I have 20+ rejection letters lying around my living room which specifically attest to the quality of candidates on this year's market (Wake Forest's extended middle finger notwithstanding). IMHO Cinci are really letting the side down by having a position and failing to fill it - for whatever reason.
How bad of a fit do the candidates have to be for no job to be offered? ... But in the abstract, shouldn't departments do everything in their power to offer a job at the end of a search?
Keep in mind that, when you make a t-t hire, you're telling a person that if she plays her cards right she can be a part of your department for the next 30-40 years. I'd say that considerations of "fit" with somebody who might be working down the hall from me for the next third of a century are actually pretty important.
And I'd say that your ability to suss out "fit" and "qualifications" over 30 minutes in a hotel room, and a few hours of interaction on campus, are much lower than you think they are.
Just as candidates tend to over-value their own virtues, SCs tend to develop tunnel-vision when it comes to hiring the "perfect" candidate. The glut of qualified, competent, candidates has meant that more and more SC members look first for reasons *not* to hire individual candidates. In doing so they end up letting perfectly good people fall through the cracks. Then they have the balls to come on this site and complain about how *hard* it is to find a good hire, and justify the failure of a search like UC's. Crazy.
In a buyer's market like this the UC faculty should be ashamed of themselves for failing like this. If it weren't bad for the field I'd hope the Provost tells them to go take a hike when they try to renew this search next year.
I read this blog on occasion and rarely post, but I have to say that March 30, 2011 1:22 PM hits the nail squarely on the head. I do not wish to direct any direct critique at UC (I was not a candidate for their post), but I think that the symptoms discussed here are signs of a serious illness. Finding the 'perfect' person is rare. Finding an interesting and compatible person is quite possible, especially in this 'market' (if you can call this environment a job market). The argument that 'we're hiring this person for a lifetime' holds less and less water - look around, people are pretty mobile these days, even those with tenure and associate (or full) standing. This tunnel vision about the 'perfect' person comes directly from the typical tunnel vision of the Classical studies mindset. This lack of vision and bad strategy, along with a continuing weakness in terms of focusing on interdisciplinarity and demonstrating why the study of the ancient world matters today (btw, it is not the 19th century anymore) will be the things that sign the death warrant for Classics departments and see them either eliminated or parceled out, piecemeal, to join other colleagues in 'studies' departments, Comparative Literature, History, etc. And if myopia is what kills the Dodo, then doesn't it serve him/her right?
And I'd say that your ability to suss out "fit" and "qualifications" over 30 minutes in a hotel room, and a few hours of interaction on campus, are much lower than you think they are.
No, I don't think it's especially high. It is however the best information we have. We can either use it or ignore it, and if we're just going to ignore it, then we might as well skip the interview and the campus visit and make an offer on the basis of the initial application file.
Imagine a scenario in which a department feels on the basis of what it has seen that a candidate isn't a good fit or isn't viable, but also is aware of the limitations of the interview and the campus visit and realizes that its impression may be wrong. What do you counsel that department to do? Offer the job and hope that they're wrong?
I should note that I've never actually observed up close a search in which every finalist turned out not to be appointable, but I've seen more than one in which all but one finalist did so, so I can see how it might happen.
That said, though, if your finalist pool turns out not to have a single appointable person in it, you've probably done something wrong at one or more stages of the search, or your department is full of eris (the bad kind), or both.
This tunnel vision about the 'perfect' person comes directly from the typical tunnel vision of the Classical studies mindset.
This is a pretty awesome argument already, but what would make it extra super awesome would be some kind of evidence that searches fail with any greater frequency in Classics than in English or Biology or Engineering. Without it, we might mistakenly get the impression that you're just using the subject of searches as a springboard to the topic you really want to talk about, which is how Classics sucks so much because Classicists are sucky.
I'm not at Cincy and have no idea what went wrong in their search, but these things do happen.
As someone who is now tenured in a position for which I was the FOURTH candidate called to campus, after the other three bombed, I have to be grateful that the SC in question that time didn't go with someone about whom they had strong doubts.
That part of the anecdotal evidence isn't very important. Here's what is: The other 3 candidates all blew it in the Greek class they were asked to teach. Of course I don't know the details but according to colleagues who were there (and on the SC), all three of them made very basic and embarrassing errors that they clearly did not catch (we all make mistakes and then say "Oops, sorry, let me revise that", but these candidates didn't realize that they'd made errors).
Suppose the Dean had refused to authorize a fourth candidate (as he probably would now, when times are harder than they were nearly a decade ago when I got this job). Should the SC have "settled" for someone who was not competent to teach Greek, in a very small department where every faculty member has to teach both languages at all levels? I think not -- I think a request to try again the next year would have been appropriate then.
This is worth thinking about, because there's no way that an APA interview can tell a SC if a candidate can teach the languages. You can only know that by putting him/her in a classroom and watching, and that can only happen on a campus visit. Yes, it was very bad luck for that SC several years ago to get three in a row who couldn't teach Greek (though good luck for me), but it CAN happen.
I don't think it's fair, Anon. 400, to suggest that if a search failed the candidates must have failed--whether to conjugate a mi-verb correctly or to impress the department as being the right fit. Although I'm sure they will themselves see it in those terms, and perhaps the UC dept will as well. It's hard to avoid labeling people as "good" or "bad" in these situations, but we need to make an effort. It's a complicated process, in which the candidates and their performances are only one variable, and not necessarily the main one.
I don't know what happened in this situation, but it does seem that (proportionally) failed searches are too common in the past few years. Maybe the problem isn't the candidates or the committees, but the market: because there are so many options you get a "match.com" effect, where you're always wondering about who else is out there who could meet your needs better. It's happened in the general labor market too (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/your-money/10shortcuts.html?scp=1&sq=interviewing%20process&st=cse). Risk aversion? Commitment fears? Committees need to be aware of this tendency and maybe stop waiting for Mr. Right, because he's really just a figment of the imagination.
"Yes, it was very bad luck for that SC several years ago to get three in a row who couldn't teach Greek (though good luck for me), but it CAN happen."
First of all, I have to take issue with this comment. Since when can ONE class given under such artificial conditions allow someone to determine if a one can teach Greek?
I have been on both sides of this issue. I think committees need to realize the limitations of the model class. The poster assumed that if the candidate doesn't immediately correct the erro that they were unaware of this. This is just stupid. There are a number of reasons why a candidate might not bring it up with only one possibility being ignorance. Let's be honest, the class is such a crapshoot and as the candidate you're dealing with six million things rushing through your head which you normally wouldn't feel and can lead to brain lock or more commonly the need to brush over a mistake and move on. One of the things is with this class is that you don't have the option of coming back the next class after realizing your mistake and clearing it up.
I know when I have watched candidates come in for interviews, I am looking for how they interact with the students and how they manage the class. Mistakes will be made and even howlers. People in job situations, esp in this job market, might not acknowledge them not because they didn't realize the mistake but for a number of other justifiable reasons. I have also seen committee members give some stuff a pass while not forgiving others which makes the "just admit it" notion problematic at best.
Let's just admit it too, we have all had our bad days in front of a class and would not like to be judged on those. That's teaching. To state that you can tell if someone can teach Greek from one day, well, I would say only in the MOST extreme cases--meaning with the best and worst. Most of us, I think are very much in between those poles. This is not a meritocracy--look at some of the hires recently--and not all great teachers and scholars are capable of dazzling us from the start.
Of course, it's artificial to judge someone's language abilities from one class. But that one class is *all the SC has* for judging language abilities. SCs have to work with what the candidates show them. It's the candidate's responsibility to prepare the material that's being taught that day so meticulously, so thoroughly, so obsessively that the possibility of mistakes is minimized. Believe me, a SC can tell when the candidate has thoroughly prepared and when s/he has not.
Is it a lot of work to prepare a class that thoroughly (parsing every word, trying to think of every imaginable question a student might ask, etc.)? Sure it is. But I suggest you look at it this way. Your future hangs on that class (not ONLY on that class, but partly on that class). The stakes are about as high as they can ever be. Make the time, whatever it takes, before your fly-out. Prepare that lesson as you have never prepared any lesson before in your life.
Considering the high stakes, what message do you think it gives the SC if you come into the classroom and make it evident that you have NOT prepared that day's lesson so thoroughly and completely that you're as close as possible to error-proof?
Remember, all of us on SCs have been candidates. We know all about the pressures, etc., that candidates are laboring under. But we also know it's possible either to prepare well for an on-campus interview or to prepare inadequately -- and the difference does matter.
I can't speak to anything happening (or not) at UC, but from my experience on SCs, it doesn't have to be a case of Candidate Fail or SC Perfectionism, but there might be hiccups on both sides. I know of two recent searches where of the three short-listed candidates, two were excellent and the third did not perform at the same -- or indeed, at an adequate -- level. When both of the top candidates accepted positions elsewhere, the choice was to hire the third candidate or no one, and since the SC felt that candidate #3 didn't turn out in the long run to fit the parameters of the position, there was really no choice.
Maybe the SC should have been better attuned to possible failure in the early stages of the search, but when 2/3 of the short list ends up rejecting your institution's position, there's little that can be done but to try again next year (deans willing).
I am not the one who judged other candidates' teaching abilities based on one class. The respondent did. I am merely responding to the conclusions others have made.
As for prep, YES, I have prepped and prepped but there is always something you miss. Yes, how a candidate responds is key, but I was merely saying it is so subjective how we read that. I have gone into hiring meetings thinking it's clear only to be blindsided by someone who saw the whole visit differently.
And, yes, search committee members have been on the other side, I admitted this, but I think some have either forgotten or are less forgiving. I have seen both sides of both sides. I think some committee members (esp. senior ones) just have forgotten how easy it is to mess things up and when you bring that up in a meeting with them, they often still don't want to buy it.
Once again, I just think everyone needs to get off their high horses and just admit that as much as we want to defend our positions that ultimately the process sucks. We make bad decisions all the time and more often than not we pass over great candidates for the most trivial of reasons which often get dressed up and justified with even more asinine comments... ugh... I am going to go back to grading. It's more fun than this.
Let's be realistic about the ability to prepare meticulously. I went on at least 3 campus visits where I was told what to prep--both for language classes and lectures--and when I got there, they said, "Oops! We told you to prep the wrong thing! Can you do this instead?" imagine prepping on the hymn to Demeter and Eleusis only to be told you were actually doing Heracles' labors. Good times.
They wrote the world's shortest and most vague job advertisement, too. I bet their desks were creaking under the combined weight of student teaching evals from every hopeful on the market. And they still couldn't find one to hire.
I don't think the SF St had anything to do with the funding. They brought in six candidates. That's not a money issue.
I think their top candidate took another position, and they probably decided against the others. We keep hearing about schools being too picky and I think that is what is going on hear. There were over 200 candidates. That's a fact.
Sources tell me that they are not in immediate jeopardy of losing their department like MI St or SUNY Albany... despite the horrendous budget shortfalls in that state.
Anyone hear from New Hampshire? And why so quiet on the wiki? Have people given up updating or are the short lists just that short for these one-years?
The search is temporarily out of our hands, wending its way through the bureaucracy before we can contact our intended short list about setting up interviews. Once those interviews have been conducted, assuming we make an offer to one of those we talk to in the first round, we will be in touch as soon as we can with those not selected. "As soon as we can," in our case means "as soon as we have an accepted offer." We are not authorized to close the search (and, therefore, to notify those who are not selected to fill the position) until we have that accepted offer in hand.
Thanks to all the applicants for their continued patience. Please be assured that we are trying to bring the search to a successful conclusion as quickly as we can.
Man, there are some mean-spirited, nasty people posting here (see the previous two comments). The person who posted a thank you for the NH update did so anonymously; so how could it be construed as currying favor, when the SC at NH can't know which candidate posted the thank you?
I thought it was a gracious note that a beleaguered SC (obviously dealing with a more than usually officious administration) would very likely appreciate. Then come the latest two commenters, spewing scorn all over it. Wow.
Check out the post under 'job announcements' - an opportunity at Bolchazy Carducci for Classics Ph.D.s...
On a different note, I completely agree with you 7:07, that was simply a note of gratitude for an SC's transparency and honesty. On the other hand, this *is* the place for folks to take out their frustrations. But it is too bad these frustrations have to be vented on the undeserving.
Junior endowed positions are fraught with issues. We academics are usually full of ourselves (classicists a bit more than others I would argue) so SCs for these positions want a candidate who they consider superior ("worthy of them"), but controllable. They often have a "too many chefs" problem.
My original diss advisor was in just such a position and he had all the faculty who were not on his side gunning for him during his six years. When he didn't receive tenure, the most common line was, "Obviously, he wasn't good enough for the position." He moved on to get full professorship within ten years and the position sat empty while searches failed year after year. They couldn't find a candidate who was even close to as good. It wasn't until almost ten years later the position was filled, when all the highly opinionated troublemakers had largely dispersed.
I'm not saying this is what happened with SFSU, but it is peculiar that a CA state school would fail a search during these economic times. I guess they're assuming that they'll get another shot next year?
A great deal of wasted time and effort by all involved, with nothing but egg on SFSU faces to show for it. If you can't find at least three excellent, hireable candidates in this market then you don't deserve to keep the line. Pathetic.
I have it on good authority that the UC search failed because the faculty found it impossible to agree among themselves about which candidates to hire. Anyone familiar with that department's reputation for severe stasis between archaeologists and philologists will not be surprised. Hint: both of the hires were supposed to be philologists.
Hint: both of the hires were supposed to be philologists.
I don't understand the hint. Are you suggesting archaeologists were/are attempting to make the open line an archaeologist position? This seems unlikely to me. Or, are you suggesting archaeologists and philologists could not agree because of innately different perspectives on what is a good philologist candidate? Honestly, I'm just trying to understand what was meant.
If I understand the situation correctly (based on some second-hand insider comments), the archaeologists at Cincinnati were not directly involved in the searches they ran this year.
Second-hand insider comments about failed searches SO reliable, especially when there is a car wreck and people are gossiping about who is and is not responsible.
Second-hand insider comments about failed searches SO reliable, especially when there is a car wreck and people are gossiping about who is and is not responsible.
Jesus, I didn't hear about that. Good argument for taking public transportation to your job talk, I guess. Hope nobody got hurt.
Anonymous said... Second-hand insider comments about failed searches SO reliable, especially when there is a car wreck and people are gossiping about who is and is not responsible. April 9, 2011 9:43 PM
Ahhh, criticizing someone else's opinion, and in the process offering nothing at all. Now that's constructive! Well done. In the future, I'd appreciate it if everyone could just keep all this insider information to themselves. Why make this blog a place to read rumors that come direct from the departments that are hiring? That just seems silly to me.
Second-hand insider comments about failed searches SO reliable, especially when there is a car wreck and people are gossiping about who is and is not responsible.
aw, thought Cincinnati had a penchant for direction of traffic in Pompeii.
The wiki has been pretty quiet lately - any forward movement on the VAP/lecturer positions posted for March and early April?
Other than that we're screwed? Nope.
PS - Thanks for the PFO Wabash. Not only was it mailed over a month after decisions were made, and it had that classy pixelated signature, but it also informed me that a degree from an ivy league institution is now a prerequisite to teach at a SLAC in Indiana.
I might as well should have gone to the University of Phoenix, online.
if it's any consolation, i can't get a job either, and i actually went to a school worth going to. imagine how i, your intellectual better, must be feeling!
And yet I personally know at least three people not from ivy league schools who got jobs this year. No doubt the hiring committee just didn't want to bring on one of their intellectual betters as a junior colleague.
The Ivy League obsession, if it's actually real, is strange. Undergraduate education is very different from graduate, and there's definitely no reason why institutions that specialize in the socialization of the elite should also be good at training researchers and teachers. And in fact they aren't as a category especially good at it, though individually some of them are very good.
With the exception of a good year for one of them, it does not seem from the Wiki that the Ivies are doing so well this year in placing their own. I think the myth of Ivy preference is just that: a myth created by other nervous job seekers.
A myth? Are you $&*! serious? Look at the wiki. Ok, Stanford and Cambridge are *technically* not ivy league. But elite nonetheless. How many state system PhDs are getting jobs in Classics? And I mean, normal, budget-strapped, proletariat state schools (besides Michigan, Berkeley and UT Austin that are basically elite in their own right). IMO everyone else needs to stop training people - because we're not ever getting jobs. This PhD looks great on the wall, but don't mean shit to this elite field of snobbery.
I did not realize we were discussing all so-called "elite" institutions. I thought we were discussing the Ivy league. Sure - by whatever metric you are qualifying "elite" the schools you name are doing well. I meant that the idea that the Ivies ruled everything was a myth, as plenty of other schools are doing just as well if not better. But if we open it up to "some schools which we will vaguely classify as elite often place better than others" well then sure. A vague rule usually holds.
Ok, Stanford and Cambridge are *technically* not ivy league. But elite nonetheless. How many state system PhDs are getting jobs in Classics? And I mean, normal, budget-strapped, proletariat state schools (besides Michigan, Berkeley and UT Austin that are basically elite in their own right).
Wait, so you're saying that there are a bunch of different elite schools—Ivy League and not, private and public, U.S. and U.K.—and that the elite schools have better placement records than non-elite schools? Are you sure about this? Doesn't sound right to me. I'd have expected that the non-elite schools would be the ones with the great placement records and the elite ones would be the ones that can't get people jobs. After all, isn't failing to get their Ph.D.s employment what makes the elite programs elite in the first place?
Yeah exactly. And everyone from the elite schools are my intellectual betters and deserve all the jobs, too, right? It has nothing to do with luck or socio-economic background either. Right? So, I stand corrected. Guess I'll take my sub-par intellect back to flipping burgers where I belong. I apologize for rocking your superior boat. Can I get you a coffee while I'm at it? I'm real good at makin' coffee.
not to disrupt the elite v. non-elite argument that is going so well, but anyone know the status on Brown's search? The wiki has twice posted "offered and accepted" and each time by different people. Has it been accepted?
Second the luck comment. The Ivies have great people and they have clunkers, like every school. Sometimes great people get jobs; sometimes not. Sometimes clunkers get jobs; sometimes not. The first step to serenity is recognizing you don't deserve a job.
Nobody would ever admit it in person, but I bet every one of us can name two or three Ph.D. programs that we think shouldn't exist. Is it elitist to point out that some faculty have no business convincing naive undergrads to enroll in a program that gives them very little chance at securing a tenure-track position? Here are the three programs I personally think would be better off converting from Ph.D. to terminal M.A./M.A.T. programs:
Iowa, Colorado, and Florida
Call me elitist, but those programs are exploiting their graduate students.
Nobody would ever admit it in person, but I bet every one of us can name two or three Ph.D. programs that we think shouldn't exist. Is it elitist to point out that some faculty have no business convincing naive undergrads to enroll in a program that gives them very little chance at securing a tenure-track position? Here are the three programs I personally think would be better off converting from Ph.D. to terminal M.A./M.A.T. programs:
Iowa, Colorado, and Florida
Call me elitist, but those programs are exploiting their graduate students.
Not at all. An undergraduate degree in classics (or philosophy, or anthropology, or english, etc. etc. etc.) is not a professional degree. There is little to no long-term correlation between undergraduate major and employment.
A Ph.D. is a professional degree. One gets a Ph.D. in a field like classics, etc. in order to get a job as a professor. If programs aren't placing their students in such jobs then they are failing in the training of professionals.
When I received the acceptance letter to the PhD program in which I enrolled, that letter said that I should get a PhD in Classics because of the intellectual challenge and my love of Classics. It specifically said "Don't do this because you think there will be a job at the end; do it for the other reasons listed, because it is hard to get a job in Classics."
This was a common theme throughout the program.
I did end up with a job, but I kept that letter in my mind the entire time. I thought it was a very responsible letter and hope that it still goes out to newly accepted students, maybe in boldface, underlined, and with sparkly stars all around it.
Was it a luxury? Yes. Do I necessarily think this is what all programs should do? I don't know. But it was effective, at least in my case, in keeping me focused on why I was there. No, I don't have tenure, and if I get booted out of the field (always a possibility), I'll probably pick myself up, dust myself off, and go find a non-Classics, probably non-academic job to pay the bills, and I won't regret having spent the better part of a decade developing my mind. It was a calculated risk that still can fail, but I made the choice with my eyes wide open.
Well, there is your answer. You weren't a business traveler, you were a tourist. Perhaps more to your credit, but you understood that graduate school was a luxury. If that is a necessary attitude then we need to admit that trying to become a classics professor must be left to the idle rich. Otherwise it is much too risky an endeavor. At least your grad department was honest with you, however.
Nobody would ever admit it in person, but I bet every one of us can name two or three Ph.D. programs that we think shouldn't exist.
There should probably be half as many programs as there are, and the other half should take (or graduate) fewer students.
Is it elitist to point out that some faculty have no business convincing naive undergrads to enroll in a program that gives them very little chance at securing a tenure-track position?... Call me elitist, but those programs are exploiting their graduate students.
I would think that no faculty would have any business doing this. But I'm not convinced this is a common scenario. I find myself unable to persuade naive undergrads that they shouldn't be going to grad school. They don't understand how difficult it is to get in to an elite one, how much determination and talent it takes to finish, and how much good luck it takes to get a job. In most cases it's an absolutely terrible idea, but they inevitably think that it's the best idea they've ever had, and they are impervious to evidence and arguments to the contrary.
And, honestly, there are elderly Japanese soldiers still hiding out on Pacific islands and fighting World War II who are aware that seeking a humanities Ph.D. is a dumbass move. How out of it does a person need to be to be unaware of this? In fact, I think, people aren't unaware of it, they're just sure that it doesn't apply to them.
"Well, there is your answer. You weren't a business traveler, you were a tourist. Perhaps more to your credit, but you understood that graduate school was a luxury. If that is a necessary attitude then we need to admit that trying to become a classics professor must be left to the idle rich. Otherwise it is much too risky an endeavor. At least your grad department was honest with you, however."
Let me be clear that I am not idle rich and do not have much of a safety net other than that my parents wouldn't care if I moved back in with them temporarily while trying to jumpstart a second career. I think the difference is that when you're repeatedly told "A job is not a sure thing, so have a plan B and an exit strategy," you spend time in graduate school honing skills that can get you a non-faculty job should you need to procure one. It's all about taking a calculated risk, and in my case, I was able to lessen that risk by being reminded that there were other jobs in which I could use my skills. So I think it would be terrible for Classics to return to the purview of the idle rich, because there are lots of non-silver-spoon types who are successful in getting jobs. It's just that departments and universities need to be more upfront about the risks (the burden being not on undergraduate advisers but on graduate programs) and more proactive in helping students translate their academic skills into real world jobs. I come up for an annual review where I can lose my contract each and every year, and when it is time for my review, I apply to a handful of real world jobs and usually get as far as a second interview stage before my review gives me another year at my school. This upcoming year the chances of my passing my review are 50/50, so I will be applying more aggressively while I await the review outcome. It really does give me more control over my life when I take this stance, and I credit my department in helping me develop the mental fortitude to see the possibilities outside of a traditional academic career.
The whining about "there are no jobs" does have a funny ring to it. I mean really, what did you think? It's an elitist field, whether you have a Harvard PhD or one from Iowa. You sit around reading Apollonius of Rhodes while the world crumbles and most people have to work for a living.
Someone asked, "How many state system PhDs are getting jobs in Classics? And I mean, normal, budget-strapped, proletariat state schools (besides Michigan, Berkeley and UT Austin that are basically elite in their own right)."
UNC people have gotten tenure track jobs this year and last, and a large number of visiting positions.
Only people from the Ivies can get jobs! Or Stanford. But only them. Oh all right, Ivies, Stanford and Chicago, but that's it. Oh, plus publics like Berkeley, Texas, Michigan, UNC. Oh and Virginia. But that's all. Except for OSU and Illinois, I forgot them. And those two people from UCSB. And Cincinnati. And USC and UCLA. But that's all. And Toronto. And Duke. But that's really all. "Our three main weapons are...."
Kid yourself all you want, if your Classics PhD says Iowa, Buffalo, Florida, FSU, CUNY, just to start, you're not getting a tenure track job.
UF has given out four traditional PhDs in Classics (the program started in 2001, and that's not counting the distance PhDs), and two of them have TT jobs and the other two hold full-time positions. I'm no mathematician, but a 50% success rate for TT jobs isn't so bad.
Is it just me or does the trend this year seem to be in favor of hiring people in their mid-late 30s who have spent 8 or more years on their doctorates? I have no axe to grind here, I just find it interesting given what is so often said about the favoring of young hot-shots.
"Is it just me or does the trend this year seem to be in favor of hiring people in their mid-late 30s who have spent 8 or more years on their doctorates? I have no axe to grind here, I just find it interesting given what is so often said about the favoring of young hot-shots."
I observe no such trend. Scanning the wiki, I count four, possibly five who got their degrees in the normal time. The laudable desire to make sense of, or to find patterns in hiring data is I think misguided for two (to me anyway) obvious reasons: (a.) no two search committees are alike and (b.) a *lot* of factors go into the hiring decision.
I'm mystified by the last two posts--how can you possibly tell from the wiki how old candidates are or how long it took them to get their doctorates??
And by the way, there's no correlation between those two things. I got my PhD at age 35, not because it took me a long time (I did the MA and PhD in a total of 5 year--3 semesters for the MA, then the next 7 for the PhD) but because I spent 8 years working after college and started grad school when I was 30.
Right you are. Leave age out of this - not everyone starts a Ph.D. at age 22. What I'm pointing out is that there *is* no correlation between time to degree and success on the job market, as 8:44am seems to suggest.
Nothing like intolerance on a nice Saturday morning. Way to go, asshole.
I'm not actually bothered by either of the comments, but I'm curious to know why you think "zombie carpenter god" is annoying while "I suggest everyone go celebrate Holy Week and Passover" isn't. Seems like both could be read as equally religiously insensitive by people inclined to get butthurt over things like this.
You seriously don't see the difference between the two jokes (that first one was a joke, not an imperative)? If you don't see it, I'm not sure I can explain it to you. One is joking that everyone should go off and celebrate holidays that we all know are not celebrated by a majority of Classicists, while the other is kind of crossing the line when it comes to those of our fellow Classicists who are Christians. I don't think they'd be as offended by the first joke as the second, although both imply the absurdity of religious behavior.
But this argument isn't going to hold water with you, and we both know it, so why I'm even bothering, I don't know. Probably because I suspect my ex-boyfriend wrote the zombie carpenter god joke, and he annoys me. You hear that? You STILL aren't funny.
One is joking that everyone should go off and celebrate holidays that we all know are not celebrated by a majority of Classicists
Yeah, and when people say "Merry Christmas" to me in late December, I always infer that they're making an ironic comment on our mutual godlessness, rather than wishing me a merry Christmas. People say "Jesus is the reason for the season" but really it's wry humor that's the reason for the season.
Seriously, you don't have any reason to think this was a joke beyond that, if you said it, you'd mean it as a joke.
As for the zombie carpenter, that's definitely a joke, and its main problem isn't that it makes fun of people's beliefs—and why shouldn't we be able to do that? the state should be tolerant of people's beliefs, but that doesn't mean private citizens have to remain in respectful silence about ideas they think are nuts—but that it's such an old, lame joke and was trotted out for cleverness points which will NOT be awarded.
Yes, I was the one who said it, and I meant it as a joke, because there are about five people here who are going to observe Easter/Passover (both of which I think are perfectly nice holidays) in a religious sense.
I was not the one who said the "asshole" comment, but I did want to reply why I saw the two as different.
Yes, I am in favor of freedom of speech. Also in favor of civility.
This is perhaps the dumbest discussion that either of us ever has been in, so let's just end it now and ALL GO EAT SOME PEEPS!
Yes, I was the one who said it, and I meant it as a joke, because there are about five people here who are going to observe Easter/Passover
Oh, real nice. So you're all just a bunch of morally degenerate secular humanists making different kinds of jokes about people who take their religion seriously and disagreeing about which kind are OK. Well, I for one think you should all be ashamed of yourselves, and I'd say you all owe an apology to a certain notable undead craftsman, as well. (I refer of course to Zombie Paul Revere.)
I for one am not sure why everyone thinks the zombie comment was a joke. I was dead serious.
Then your ignorance of zombies is profound. Some of us here actually care about zombies, and the suggestion that a zombie appeared to the disciples after rising from the grave and didn't try to eat the brains of a single one of them is offensive to me. And Thomas at least was right f*cking there, sticking his finger in him. Delicious, tantalizing brains just inches away. I don't know any zombie who can resist that, champ. Maybe a revenant or something, but never a zombie.
Next time, try doing a little bit of research about zombies before you go on the internet to make jokes about them. You just might learn something, and you'd save yourself some embarrassment.
I'm usually not one to suggest this, but could you remove the comments from the last, say, 24 hours?
And, all, I'd like to point out, on a practical level, that many of our students study Latin and Greek for reasons that have at least some connection to their religious faith.
I'm usually not one to suggest this, but could you remove the comments from the last, say, 24 hours?
1). Doesn't anybody say please anymore? Bossy bossy bossy.
2). You've got a pretty low bar for deletion. Although I guess Zombie Paul Revere was mentioned by name, so maybe strike that one? And it's all completely off topic but a). so have been half of the comments on this thread and b). it's not as though anybody was commenting about anything else.
3). My comment won the Internet! I don't see you winning any Internets. I kind of suspect that you're just jealous. Would you stop trying to get my comment deleted if I sent you a "Certificate of Internet Participation"? It's not as good as winning the Internet, but it's something, and it would look cool on your wall.
i hardly think this is the appropriate forum for calling out one's ex-boyfriend for his trotting out of stale, anti-intellectual quips. oh, wait: it turns out this is the perfect forum for just that, in more ways than i could possibly ever enumerate. please, all of you (not just the aforementioned embittered ex), carry on with the inanities. i'd especially enjoy a continuation of this rather lively "debate" concerning the place of religion within our little hovel of the academy. really, it's been just fascinating so far, and on both sides.
failing that, i'd like to hear from more people whining about how the crapiness of their degrees is hindering their job prospects. i'd also like to push a bit further in this direction of whining, and open up the floor to those who feel that the crapiness of their dissertations, cover letters, cumulative teaching experience, or any other completely relevant factors might be unfairly damaging their chances at gainful employment within the field.
I, zombie carpenter guy, am definitely not your ex-boyfriend. I have never dated another classicist, for obvious reasons (see the above 1300 or so comments, including my own).
I know, but, you know, it's kind of been a while, and a lot of stuff has happened in the meantime. And honestly, I didn't think you'd come back on the complaints thread of a blog. Still, it's Easter and all, so I guess that makes sense. So, welcome back, man. I actually had some questions: are you gonna be around this thread for a while?
I had a question, Jesus. Why do you and your father and the rest of you all up in there let bad things happen to good people? Is it because you think good people deserve punishment, or are you powerless to stop it? Also, why did you create a universe in which people could do wrong? Super grateful to get some answers... finally! lol
For the last six years I've asked you, begged you -- on my knees at times, for a tenure-track job. What gives? Why have you banished me to adjunct hell?
First you made it very uncomfortable for Christians to read this blog without feeling disparaged. Now you interject a jibe aimed at those of us who consume horse meat on a regular basis. I, for one, would hope that we maintain some level of tolerance for a variety of dietary regimes, be they bovine or equine. For my part, I do not proselytize with regard to my diet, and I ask in return that we refrain from further reference to eating ponies--a gratuitous aside meant to do nothing more than conjure horrific images of small horses being devoured uncooked. No same person would eat pony without first cooking it thoroughly, and the so-called 'palermo Affair' is nothing more than a rumor re-told to scare junior archaeologists. Let's grow up, shall we?
I'm so sorry. Have we been neglecting your entertainment needs? Quick, everybody, do something amusing! Some random anonymous person on the Internet is bored!
anyone know anything about the searches in Brown's Joukowsky Institute?
I hate to put words in anyone's mouth, but I'm guessing that the random Internet person is going to be bored by this comment. In your next comment, please try to include some exclusive celebrity news. We can't afford to lose this commenter!
* Ultimate Band List * United Bank Limited * United Baseball League * United Basketball League * United Breweries Ltd, an Indian brewery * Universal Business Language - an XML dialect * Usama bin Laden, late leader of the Al Qaeda network
Back in the world of Classics, we all just received the May job listings.
Does anyone else think it's absurd that (for a tenure track job beginning in Fall of 2012) the University of Michigan is only interested in candidates who complete their dissertation by August 2011?
Cincinnati required this year that applicants have Ph.D. in hand by the time of application, and we all know how that turned out for them . . .
you may not like it, but not considering abd candidates in a market saturated with qualified applicants isn't exactly the dumbest thing a state university search committee has ever done.
also, the connection of cin.'s half-failed search and their refusal to consider abd candidates is obviously specious, even if sfsu had a fully failed search after only considering those with phd in hand. searches fail for lots of reasons, but narrowing an absurdly large field isn't one of them.
The pool can easily be cut down by looking for more publications or teaching experience, both of which are easy to measure from the CV and much more meaningful than whether the applicant has happened to be on the market an extra year.
Also, you reduce to zero the chance that your new colleague will arrive without having finished the dissertation, which is a terrible situation that does in fact occur.
I don't really think this is about screening the applicant pool just for the sake of getting the numbers down: you put a restriction like that into your ad because the restriction means something to you (or to your administration), not because you can only stand to see so many files.
Also, you reduce to zero the chance that your new colleague will arrive without having finished the dissertation, which is a terrible situation that does in fact occur.
Yes, and this is a legitimate concern. But it can also be minimized by (e.g.) asking to see what there is of the dissertation of short-listed ABD candidates, just to determine that they are near completion.
hard to know whether the last two posters are being obstinate or obtuse...harder still to care. yet, i'll still reiterate one reason (other than an SC being "lazy") to not consider abd candidates.
hiring abd candidates is a real risk. this one may never finish. that one may finish, but only after having been in her new job for a year. both scenarios are disasters for the place that hired our hypothetical abd candidates. both of these scenarios can be avoided by not hiring an abd candidate.
If you restrict your search to people who have completed their dissertation, you can evaluate them on the basis of their whole dissertation rather than the three chapters of five that are done by January.
Not saying that that's worth categorically excluding ABDs from consideration, just observing that it's a possible advantage. Chapters 4 and 5 might turn out to be duds, after all.
Does anyone else think it's absurd that (for a tenure track job beginning in Fall of 2012) the University of Michigan is only interested in candidates who complete their dissertation by August 2011?
To those ABDs incensed that Michigan won't consider them: apply anyway. If you really are that amazing, maybe they won't mind that you're ABD. The worst that will happen is that they throw out your application in the first cut, which is what's going to happen to most ABD applications to most jobs anyway.
None of the posts expressing concerns about the exclusion of ABDs seem particularly "incensed" to me. Nor did any of these posts misunderstand 5:59's point (one of them explicitly acknowledged it). They have an opinion, and it isn't yours. Deal with it without the straw man act. You're members of an academic community.
"To those ABDs incensed [or annoyed] that Michigan won't consider them: apply anyway. ... The worst that will happen is that they throw out your application in the first cut.."
No, the worst that can happen is that they will be pissed at you for wasting their time, and remember this when they have a one-year job in the Spring or a t.t. job in the future.
None of the posts expressing concerns about the exclusion of ABDs seem particularly "incensed" to me.
Uhh....
Does anyone else think it's absurd that (for a tenure track job beginning in Fall of 2012) the University of Michigan is only interested in candidates who complete their dissertation by August 2011?
I'm going to go ahead and score that as "incensed."
the worst that can happen is that they will be pissed at you for wasting their time, and remember this when they have a one-year job in the Spring or a t.t. job in the future.
No, the worst that can happen is that they are SO pissed by your application that they steal the codes for our nuclear arsenal, attack Russia, and precipitate a global thermonuclear war that obliterates most forms of life on Earth. Which would be terrible!!! And it would be all your fault for sending that application and making them so pissed. How dare you make Michigan Classics so pissed that they destroy life on Earth?!?
They probably won't be that annoyed, though. Also, they probably won't be so annoyed that they ignore your VAP applications. So I'd relax about both of those outcomes, personally.
I'm the one who originally brought up the fact that the U of M is restricting their applicant pool to those who have finished their dissertations by this August.
I neither was nor am neither incensed nor pissed off. I did and do think it an absurd requirement. This makes me mildly annoyed.
I will be an ABD candidate, but I do not do Greek literature. I will finish my dissertation sometime this year after August but before the APA.
I should have made my original post more direct. Is there real value in search committees excluding ABD candidates? (Yes, this question is self-interested for the obvious reason stated above, but hear me out.)
1. I see no reason that any search committee should ever think of hiring someone who is not going to finish their dissertation by the time they arrive on campus.
1.a. I don't know how a search committee could fail to verify whether a candidate in whom they were interested would actually complete their work by the time they are to arrive. If they do not want to request the applicant's draft before interviewing at the APA, they could certainly ask several pointed questions at the APA. God forbid a candidate got so far as an on-campus interview without a finished, or nearly finished, dissertation, I assume that a committee could figure out then their mistake.
2. I would assume that every year there are a number of excellent ABD candidates. Why would you want to exclude them at the outset? I know the obvious reason; and if committees really don't want to skim another 25-50 CV's, then I can accept that's just the way it is. --please don't reply to this last point if you are a bitter Classicist who is without a job or has never actually been on a search committee. I am interested in how to improve the process, not in how those of us without jobs can complain about how horrible they think the people with jobs are.
3. This discussion board is proof that the job market in our field is tough for all sides. Do artificial restrictions improve the ultimate effectiveness of search committees? Do they match the best jobs with the best candidates? Apart from bitter complaining, that's the actual question I want to ask.
Maybe I'll think differently when / if I have to skim 100 applications some day. For now, I think committees would be better off without artificial restrictions.
I'm assuming--and I'm in no way associated with UM or the search process, so take this with a grain of salt--that since it's a TT at a research institution, they want to make certain you're not only done with your dissertation, but have some other publications already accepted or under way. From what I understand, the tenure requirements there are fairly high.
Regardless of the merits of such a requirement - I absolutely prefer that the SC tell you up front that they will not consider ABDs. At least then you know where you stand.
I'm assuming that's because they want to have a job to take up when they finish their dissertation. This is why I applied for jobs—excuse me, sorry: this is why I infested the market—in the last year of my dissertation.
The problem is, there is *absolutely, positively* no way to guarantee that an ABD will finish this year. Of the ABDs who writing cover letters this September, 100% will swear they are finishing in AY11-12, 90% of their advisers will back them up in the letter of recommendation, and only 20% will actually finish. (Yes, I just pulled those numbers out of my ass.)
This is not about merit, it's not about stuffiness, it's not about spectacular ABDs who might get passed over because they don't have degree in hand. It's about risk analysis: the chance you will actually be done when you say you will be done is about 20% (maybe you are the one in five! but they *can't* know that). The chance that the dept will be screwed if you are still working on your dis when you start the job: 100%.
All you spectacular ABDs: plan on at least one transitional year after you graduate (a visiting position, if you are lucky). You'll still be spectacular the next year, and then you'll be a sexy PhD-in-hand and highly competitive on the TT market!
Perhaps Michigan just knows what it wants? The dept. might want someone with more experience. For what it's worth, all the finalists for the Michigan job last year were already in tenure-track positions...
Perhaps Michigan just knows what it wants? The dept. might want someone with more experience. For what it's worth, all the finalists for the Michigan job last year were already in tenure-track positions...
Yeah, it's good to know that a person is actually up to the demands of faculty life, which, as many of you know, are a big jump from what's asked of grad students.
That said, though, I like to see as many applications as possible, and so do lots of other people. I wonder whether the Michigan ad hasn't been drafted to align with some expectation of their administration.
That, or it's a typo for "2012," which would be hilarious after all this. Probably not, though: I reckon they'd have caught it by now.
Is anyone else having a terrible time getting her/his APA proposal submitted? It conks out when I go to save the wretched thing every time--on both mac and pc and chrome and firefox. It's been doing this since noon yesterday.
I know I should have gotten it ready earlier than yesterday, but seriously APA? Why you gotta play me this way?
I've been trying since Sunday. Both the APA and Omnipress (the company that runs the submission website) are aware of the problem but seem unable to fix it. You may have to send your abstract directly to Omnipress to have them enter it into their system manually. The email is bduerst@omnipress.com. Hope this helps.
For all the talk of people "not being able to eat" next year, which I took very seriously and for all the talk about how horrible the job market is, I was surprised to hear from a friend of mine that a position recently posted has only received a dozen applications.
Really? I know it's late but this ad was for both ClArchs and Lit people. I would have thought there would have been 100 applicants based on all the doom and gloom chatter here (in actuality, I expected about 30-40).
Seriously, what is going on here? The location is remote but I thought beggars can't be choosers... I guess unless we're academics.
If it's the one I think you're referring to, maybe it's because they want a VAP to do a 3-1-3 and, one suspects, be all things to all people. May 30, 2011 11:12 AM
agreed. that advert is ridiculous - even in this economy. a real world job would pay more and demand less.
Can someone please tell me what we're talking about? We started off this year discussing Cornell, and continued right through to bitching about the salary at the University of New Hampshire, so this 'certain postition' and 'the one I think you're referring to' baffles me. I could go back and search the listings, but I can't be bothered, so someone cop me a favor and name the Uni and salary and save my lazy butt, will'ya?
The Luther ad seems perfectly normal. There are many schools, especially small colleges with only a few faculty in the Classics Dept., that will ask someone to teach Greek, Latin, and civ courses. Only large universities have the luxury of hiring a bunch of specialists. Teaching loads of 3-3, 3-4, and 4-4 are common. And lots of colleges have some sort of peculiar freshman class that they need covered.
And with a teaching load like 3-1-3, you want someone with PhD in hand, because it will be very, very hard to do your teaching job (and be on the market!) if you are also finishing a dissertation.
As for salary, we all know that we are worth more, but so do the SCs and the colleges themselves. Unfortunately, the money just isn't there, and that is entirely the fault of our American culture which places very little value on educators. Our "perceived worth" in the country as a whole is very low, even though we work 60+ hours a week, at a very difficult job which few can do, and after 10+ years of specialized training.
There's a middle ground between being an R1 that has plenty of specialists and a smaller college that wants to pretend it can do everything and anything. I think it's unrealistic to expect some newbie, PhD in hand or not, to do anything on a 3-1-3 load. It's called exploitation.
I still don't have a job for next year and I chose not to apply to any of these VAPs with a high teaching load. I'd rather leave the field than be so shamelessly exploited. I'm sure that whatever I end up doing I will have my mental health and dignity intact.
I wonder how many of us recent PhDs/current ABDs are planning on abandoning ship. It seems to me that the number is growing every day, not just in our silly little field.
Intially, I thought some of you were being sarcastic about a 3-1-3 being "exploitation" but now I think one of the posts was serious.
I am sorry--a 3-1-3 is not that bad. It really depends on what you're teaching and the numbers. You can't just make a blanket statement. If a 3-3 is exploitation, as someone seemed to suggest, I would suggest working for some of corporations or law firms for which my friends do. I am sorry, it's just not the same. Moreover, some of those lawyers now aren't getting the jobs or the money and are making more what we make at the better paying schools.
BTW, do you guys even know what Luther pays? It's not listed on the ad. Go look up their average salaries. They are not great but they are not UNH levels.
I'll do it for you: the average asst. prof makes $54K so you reckon a visitor makes $50K. (http://www.citytowninfo.com/school-profiles/luther-college) Not great but not bad for a rural location... now if this were NYC... err, that is mediocre.
>>I wonder how many of us recent PhDs/current ABDs are planning on abandoning ship. It seems to me that the number is growing every day, not just in our silly little field.<<
Good riddance. You sound like some pampered pro athlete. Seriously, when things get tough...
Not sure who you were talking to seven years ago, but I was always told that it would not be unusual for you to be a visiting prof for 3-5 years.
Not sure who you were talking to seven years ago, but I was always told that it would not be unusual for you to be a visiting prof for 3-5 years.
This is great for you, but many of us were in fact blatantly deceived about job prospects for many years. Classicists who deny that this happens because it hasn't happened to them piss me off.
Nonetheless, I'll take whatever I can get, Luther job included.
No, really... you people are serious about the Luther ad??? I thought the above comments were a joke, too. If it's real rather than just troll-work.... I can't say strongly enough, SUCK IT UP. Many of us have worked way worse for way less. If you're that much of a princess, you don't belong in academia. Get thee gone and make room for those of us who can handle this career choice and do it cheerfully.
"many of us were in fact blatantly deceived about job prospects for many years. Classicists who deny that this happens because it hasn't happened to them piss me off."
This is news to me. How many people on this list were told it be easy to get a TT job? And how many got their information only from what they were told instead of finding information about the market on their own?
Count me as one who was told from day one of grad school that many new Ph.Ds leave with no confirmed job and that most of the rest do VAPs for at 2-4 years before landing a tenure track.
I'm honestly rather shocked that people are upset with the Luther advert. I'm not sure what recent grads expected--to land a tenure track with an easy teaching load right out of a grad program? In my experience (and from what I've heard from my advisers), it has always been the case that young professors are "exploited" with heavy teaching responsibilities.
If your professors told you differently, then you should aim your criticism at them, rather than Luther or other such schools.
(I am completely unaffiliated with Luther, by the way.)
I'll do it for you: the average asst. prof makes $54K so you reckon a visitor makes $50K.
::squint:: How do you reckon that? Because I'd guess closer to $40k _in the best case_. I don't know Luther, so it might be a bit above that, or a bit below (or significantly below, but it is unlikely that it is significantly above it). Institutions vary widely in what they pay contingent faculty, but very few come close to paying them the _average_ of all assistant professors. That average includes those with 5 years of service at the institution, who are about to go up for tenure, after all. [Which isn't actually a factor at some places, for instance, those that are experiencing severe salary compression at the assistant prof. level. But those institutions aren't likely to be well off enough to pay non-tenure-track faculty particularly well, so it doesn't matter.]
FSU's $32k a year didn't raise the eyebrows that other salaries did here, even thought it was the lowest one on offer; I suspect that's because so few salaries are part of the job announcements. I imagine there are some jobs that will pay less than that. But, honestly, the number of institutions that pay VAPs or Instructors (and there is no consistent distinction between those two things across different institutions either, by the way) anywhere near a beginning tenure-track assistant is relatively small. Yes, there are some. And yes, the number is, at a guess, more than 10. But I suspect that most of those are institutions well enough off also to have PhD-granting classics departments, which is one reason why people often wrongly extrapolate to the market as a whole from what they know. Likewise, most institutions make non-tenure-track faculty teach a heavier load than tenure-track faculty--yes, for less money. There are exceptions, but the point is that they are exceptions rather than the rule.
So, for the record, anyone who thinks, because no one has ever told them otherwise, that a TT job will be easy to come by, and anyone who thinks, because no one has ever told them otherwise, that most non-TT jobs will pay as well as the TT ones--well, I'm telling you that they won't. If you're lucky, you'll get a TT job right away, but few people will be that lucky. And if you're a little less lucky, you'll get a non-TT job or a series of them to tide you over until you find a TT job in a reasonable amount of time. And, if your luck holds out, those non-TT jobs will offer you a salary comparable to the TT faculty's at that institution, and will have you earn that salary with a course load that is the same as the TT faculty's. But most of you won't be that lucky, in fact, can't be that lucky, because of the economics of higher education, especially as they apply to the humanities (no, not just to Classics specifically).
"No, really... you people are serious about the Luther ad??? I thought the above comments were a joke, too. If it's real rather than just troll-work.... I can't say strongly enough, SUCK IT UP. Many of us have worked way worse for way less. If you're that much of a princess, you don't belong in academia. Get thee gone and make room for those of us who can handle this career choice and do it cheerfully."
many of us were in fact blatantly deceived about job prospects for many years. Classicists who deny that this happens because it hasn't happened to them piss me off
So your story is that for many years many people were blithely unaware that humanities Ph.D.s had a hard time finding jobs, that there were far more applicants than jobs, and that the terms of employment could be grim?
As someone who isn't always particularly fond of reality and would like a reliable and effective way to escape it, I have to ask: where is the rock that all these people were hiding under, and is there room for one more?
I was told by several of the faculty at my undergraduate institution that yes, it would be easy to get a tenure track job in Classics. I wasn't paranoid enough to doubt the consensus of multiple apparently expert sources, it's true, and to that extent I am surely a failure as a human being.
The worthlessness of a PhD in the humanities is very apparent to us as academics, but it not at all so to people with very limited education (everyone I knew until recent years). They assume a higher degree always means being more employable and getting more money.
I was told by several of the faculty at my undergraduate institution that yes, it would be easy to get a tenure track job in Classics. I wasn't paranoid enough to doubt the consensus of multiple apparently expert sources, it's true, and to that extent I am surely a failure as a human being.
No, the argument (yours, I assume, but it doesn't really matter) was that "many of us were in fact blatantly deceived about job prospects for many years." I'm willing to believe that a few people never encountered a contrary voice, never searched the Internet for "humanities phd job prospects," never encountered the ubiquitous jokes about the value of a degree in the humanities, and never wondered whether it could really be true that jobs that paid you to think about ancient Greece and Rome instead of fold slacks at the Gap wouldn't be really hard to get. I mean, some people respond to those Nigerian e-mail scams, right?
What I have a hard time believing is that this is a widespread phenomenon, that "many" people have fallen victim to it for "many" years. What I think is that many people have heard how things are and just don't think it applies to them, when really it mostly does.
I'm willing to bet that when todays' jobhunters were considering graduate school, they were given projections about how difficult it would be to get a tenure track job ("fairly difficult") that were made in ignorance of the fact that the economy would collapse in 2008, and that politicians would take over a number of state houses with a fervor for cost-cutting, so that getting a job has become not "fairly difficult" but "quite difficult". Being angry at the people making these predictions is misplaced.
I'm also willing to believe that some of the jerks in the field made overly rosy predictions; I did not see this.
1) A 3-3 load is not objectionable. It's the 3-1-3 thing. Really, Luther? You really need that VAP, who will be on the market and presumably trying to get some pubs out, to have that Jan. term class?
2)SLAC or not, do you really need the VAP to do everything? Greek, Latin, translation, and, oh yeah, your boutique first year student course? That smacks of exploitation.
3) 54k is the average for assistant profs, 50k for lecturers? I don't buy it.
I don't why I'm addicted to these comments, but, alas, I am. Maybe it's because I lack classical colleagues at my current institution, where, by the way, I teach a 5-5 (mitte quaerere; scire nefas). A 3-3 sounds like a delightful walk in the park (unless one of those is a big lecture course in translation, which would be different, obviously).
To fed the other current thread, here are some quotes from my past:
A very famous professor, known to all of you, at the Ivy League school where I was an undergrad, after class: "There will be jobs in Classics, unlike other humanities, for people who can teach the languages."
An well-respected senior professor from a department with a PhD program, c. 2005: "I think in six years there will be more jobs than qualified candidates."
My Latin 101 TA, at the time a first year grad student, who now has a tenure track job in Classics: "Don't go to grad school in Classics; there are no jobs."
1) A 3-3 load is not objectionable. It's the 3-1-3 thing. Really, Luther? You really need that VAP, who will be on the market and presumably trying to get some pubs out, to have that Jan. term class?
2)SLAC or not, do you really need the VAP to do everything? Greek, Latin, translation, and, oh yeah, your boutique first year student course? That smacks of exploitation.
Complaint #1 doesn't make any sense. 3-1-3 is better than 3-3, and you're living in a fantasy world if you think you're going to get a quarter of sabbatical while you're a VAP.
I don't even know where to start with complaint #2. What do you think Classics professors teach, if not Greek, Latin, and civ courses?
To return to the original question about Luther, I am one of the hungry recent Ph.D.'s looking for a job. But I did not apply, not because I'm a pampered wuss afraid to teach seven classes in a year, but because I already signed a lease for next year and told my advisor that I would stick around next year to serve as a T.A.
the ubiquitous jokes about the value of a degree in the humanities
This just shows that you persist in viewing the issue from well within the academic bubble. These jokes don't exist among people with no contact with the academic world.
I know for a fact that at least some entire undergraduate departments are cranking out unreasonable numbers of would-be professional Classicists and telling them all they will be able to get jobs. Even *one* big department doing this (such as the one I came from), in our tiny field, would result in many such students over many years.
Couple that with the fact that many grad schools are admitting way too many new students. This problem isn't only about admittedly real student irresponsibility. Departments and faculty members who actively encourage that irresponsibility for their own ends are contributing much of it, and I find what they are doing with full knowledge much more reprehensible than the the naivete of starry-eyed young Classicists in their early 20's (or younger).
I should say that the department in question is not merely encouraging would-be Classicists: it is *making* them. They take people who have never heard of Classics and persuade them that this is the best career choice for them.
These jokes don't exist among people with no contact with the academic world. This just shows that you persist in viewing the issue from well within the academic bubble.
What are you talking about? Academics are the only people in the world who do think it might be a wise career move to get that bachelor's degree in art history.
I know for a fact that at least some entire undergraduate departments are cranking out unreasonable numbers of would-be professional Classicists and telling them all they will be able to get jobs
Hey, you know what you know. I've never seen a place like that, or even heard of one from any source outside this thread.
Departments and faculty members who actively encourage that irresponsibility for their own ends are contributing much of it, and I find what they are doing with full knowledge much more reprehensible than the the naivete of starry-eyed young Classicists in their early 20's (or younger).
Yes, there are too many graduate programs. Faculty want them because it's nice to teach grad students, and then once you have the program you can't get rid of it, because your department comes to depend on having grad students around to teach classes.
I would not be surprised however if recently graduate admissions had declined overall, since state institutions have had less money to spend on graduate support.
A 3-1-3 means you're also doing a January term class on top of a normal full load.
Ah, I see. That's an evil little invention, isn't it?
It's easy to demonize the old profs who somehow tricked you into believing that studying Plutarch or Juvenal would be a great way to a middle-class lifestyle (and summers off too!)
From my limited experience as a faculty member (4 years out, visiting positions all over the place in all sorts of places) it seems to me that undergrads everywhere take the slightest whiff of encouragement as a gold-plated invitation to go to grad school.
I don't think it's simply because they think they're so amazing. Instead, I suspect that the professionalization of higher ed is so pervasive, and economic pressures so powerful, that they have little chance of resisting the call to treat classics as a vocation, rather than an education.
Once that happens, they're basically stuck (yes, too many grad and grad-like programs out there are more than happy to admit them). That's why it's important to nip that attitude in the bud. But can we do that and still have a crop? I don't know.
This is the case at several schools that I know of. For example, my grad program admitted 10 students with full funding (plus several others with partial) around 2006. This year they admitted only two with full funding. My old adviser told me that they had over 250 applications. In a way this is a very good thing. There are already too many of us. Although prospectives will be disappointed, the economic downturn good help even things out in the long run. /being optimistic today.
Hmmm. My comment above a response to earlier comments and was supposed to quote them:
"Departments and faculty members who actively encourage that irresponsibility for their own ends are contributing much of it, and I find what they are doing with full knowledge much more reprehensible than the the naivete of starry-eyed young Classicists in their early 20's (or younger)."
"Yes, there are too many graduate programs. Faculty want them because it's nice to teach grad students, and then once you have the program you can't get rid of it, because your department comes to depend on having grad students around to teach classes."
Good thing none of the jobs I applied for this year required HTML abilities.
A few posts back, someone wrote: "SLAC or not, do you really need the VAP to do everything? Greek, Latin, translation, and, oh yeah, your boutique first year student course? That smacks of exploitation."
Well, speaking as a tenured Associate Professor at a SLAC with a 2-person classics dept., I can say that yes, we DO need the VAP to do everything. When we advertise for a VAP, it's because one of us is going on sabbatical or leave. And we need a VAP to cover that person's normal courses while s/he is away. And yes, this means classes in both languages, at least one Classical Civ. course, and our college's required first-year course. That's what each of us teaches on our 3/3 load, that's what has to be covered each year for us to maintain our major, and so that's what we need a VAP to teach.
Believe me, we'd love to get out of the obligation to the college's first-year course, but we can't; we're required to teach it as are many humanities professors here (long story). So we don't have the option of creating a VAP position that concentrates on just one or two areas. We need someone to replace the courses that the permanent prof. teaches while that prof. is away. However, we do not ask the VAP to teach the unpaid, uncompensated overloads that we normally carry as the only way we can teach our upper-level language courses; whichever one of us isn't on sabbatical takes those on for the year.
I'd assume it's pretty much the same at most SLACs. The smaller the dept., the more different bases any VAP has to cover. There's really no way around that.
Btw, I'm not at Luther and we don't have a Jan. term here, so I am not talking about that job in particular.
Well, speaking as a tenured Associate Professor at a SLAC with a 2-person classics dept., I can say that yes, we DO need the VAP to do everything.
It's not just SLACs. Classics professors all over the country teach Greek, Latin, and civ courses.
I can't get over the comment that complained about having to do this. Imagine having gone to grad school to become a Classics professor and then on to the job market to find a job as a Classics professor without having ever figured out what a Classics professor is.
I don't know. I'm a tenured associate prof at a SLAC too, and on the handful of occasions we've had a VAP because of a colleague's sabbatical, I've worked with the VAP to see what courses would be best for them to handle since I realized they were getting slave wages for a lot of work and wanted to make the job as palatable as possible, given I was frankly embarrassed knowing how bad the salary was and how much work was expected for a temporary job that required a big move. If the person was a Hellenist (which I am) and that meant giving them Intro. and Int. and Advanced Greek while I covered Latin, so be it. It's a small favor in this culture of exploited classics VAPS and adjuncts.
To the last poster, you are one of the few reasonable and kind people in our field. If only more were like you, we'd all be a lot happier. That, and if we all had jobs. I'm just happy to see that not everyone is a miserable SOB.
I should make clear, I'm also in a 2-person department. And yes, we both have to do both languages at all levels and courses in translation, but I don't expect VAPs and adjuncts to do that. I don't think it's right or fair. If they want experience, great. But all this talk of "what the department needs" and "what the institution needs" is often noble sounding code word for "what the senior person does or does not want to teach in a given semester."
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, people. CALM DOWN. You have your whole lives ahead of you, and you do have valuable skills. You have friends and family and infinite possibilities. All this angst is just going to ruin your physical and mental health.
And no, I'm not a tenured professor. I'm a tenure track professor who is about to fail my mid-tenure review because of a combination of elevated tenure requirements and some very grim personal circumstances. I spent the last three years beating myself up, worrying about the future, and almost drove myself into the ground. With some good therapy, anti-depressants, the support of loving family and friends, and adequate sleep and nutrition, I have turned it around. I am making connections in the real world, lining up non-academic job possibilities, while still throwing a last Hail Mary pass at my review. IT IS GOING TO BE OKAY. For real. There are people out there who would be happy to hire me, and I will get to spend more time with family and friends and ME. Yes, I love Classics, yes, I will be sad to let go of this career, but I made a choice that the professorial life of old is GONE, and for me, it isn't a dream worth chasing if it is going to drive me to the edge of madness and ill health and isolation. So no, I'm not going back on the market, yes, I'm going to stay put, continue looking for a non-academic job (and yes, I've already TURNED DOWN non-academic jobs because my contract isn't up with my current school), and finally live my life a little. I do not regret one moment of Classics other than driving myself to the brink. Grad school did wonders for my mind, introduced me to amazing people, and allowed me to travel all over the world. But that life is worth ONLY SO MUCH, and for me, it may be time to move on.
So while I understand that all this market hell seems like the end of the world, from experience, being in some dark places pre-job, and being in a dark place even while in the job, IT WILL BE OKAY. Please. This isn't worth your mental, emotional, and physical health. Best of luck.
Au contraire - I DO have a book. Open your eyes to the new reality of tenure, sweet cheeks. But the point is that attitudes like yours do nasty things to one's health. I offered that post in a spirit of kindness. You want to trigger isolation, depression, cancer, endocrine disorders with your nasty attitude, be my guest. For those of you who aren't there yet, please take the post in the spirit in which it was intended. I'm not saying don't go for your dreams - I'm still trying. But think about whether the end goal, if reachable, is worth the cost.
Are you asking sincerely or are you asking with snark? Tenure standards have become much higher at many (not all) schools across the country. I am not saying that this is right or wrong - I'm just saying that some schools are requiring a lot more than they used to. But in any case, my intention is not to set you all off again, so it is my hope that this will not become a nasty debate over what tenure requirements should be. I'm trying to make sincere, well-meaning comments. And I mean it sincerely when I say best of luck. It makes me really sad that a person can't make a kind, sincere comment without being jumped all over anymore.
I'll chime in here and say that it's rarely possible to quantify tenure standards. In my experience it's often those who try to quantify it who have problems. How many books? How many articles? It's a holistic decision.
Or those who have tenure committees who try to quantify it, regardless of what the standard is in Classics. You can have the support of your department, but if other fields are churning out umpteen articles and books, and they don't care how things are done in Classics, well, then you have a problem. Not saying that all schools, or even the majority of schools, are doing this - but some are. Also there is the whole problem of electronic publishing and what that does to the dissertation-book transformation. Then of course there are rising standards at places that play the numbers game, given that it is a buyer's market. This isn't happening everywhere, but if you are lucky enough to have a choice on the market, do look carefully at what it took, in terms of publishing, for recently tenured scholars to get tenure. Teaching, service, and collegiality are a whole other game.
1,431 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 1201 – 1400 of 1431 Newer› Newest»I know it doesn't excuse the state of the discipline nor the terrible job descriptions, Greek archaeology applicants, but I do know that the offending departments have big problems. I wish a solution was readily available, but it's not. Hang in there if you can.
We're number 1! We're number 1! We're number 1! We're number 1! We're number 1! We're number 1!
What happened with Cincinnati? Does anybody know?
One position was offered, but has not yet been formally accepted. The faculty were unable to find a second candidate that fulfilled the department's needs, therefore the search was closed for the time being. It will most likely reopen next year.
What are we number 1 at?
In a year when there was the greatest number of scholars, old and young, looking for a job since (some people say) the 30ies, Cincinnati was unable to find a good candidate!?!?!? It sounds a bit WEIRD....
It's a stuffy way of saying that they screwed up their search and/or couldn't agree amongst themselves.
Then instead of blaming the already largely frustrated candidates by saying that they were not able to meet the standards of a department, let's just use a bit more of transparency when describing the outcome of a search process. It is way more respectful.
"What are we number 1 at?"
Making the most interesting subjects as boring as a doorknob?
It's actually surprisingly easy to screw up a search. Yes, there were vast numbers of people on the market, but the SC has to narrow that down to 15 (max) interviews at the APA and then 3 on-campus interviews. VERY rarely, a Dean may agree to a 4th on-campus, but usually you get three and that's it.
Before I served on a search committee, I would never have believed how poor a guide an APA interview can be to how a candidate will do in the on-campus interview. Some candidates give *terrible* job talks. Some make howlers in their language classes that 2nd-semester students detect (and ask about in the next class meeting). Those are relatively rare -- more common are the ones whose on-campus interviews make it abundantly clear that they're really just not going to be a good fit for this program or this college; they're great candidates but not right for this particular job.
With luck, an SC misjudges only one or at most two of its fly-outs and still can make a job offer. But it's by no means unlikely that an occasional SC could misjudge all three, and that the Dean would then say "Sorry, you had your chance; failed (or at least postponed) search." This doesn't mean that the "right candidate" wasn't out there somewhere among the hundreds of applications. But alas, we don't get to interview all the applicants -- we have to try to figure out which ones are most likely to fit our program, and if we get that wrong, the search fails.
Then instead of blaming the already largely frustrated candidates by saying that they were not able to meet the standards of a department
Oh for Zeus' sake! I don't care what I say and how I say it, someone on this board will take it as an insult. You find blame where I intended none.
"The department couldn't find the right candidate" is by no means an insult to the candidates. It doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that you all suck. Like Anon 6:06 said: it is surprisingly easy for a search to fail. Each department needs something very specific. It isn't about you being objectively better than everyone else. There is no such thing! Either you fit with the bizarre and very specific set of requirements the department has or you don't. I don't care if you are Theodor Mommsen himself: if the department doesn't want a historian, then you aren't getting hired.
Anon 6:06 described pretty well the numerous reasons why searches fail. It is extremely common. He/she left out a biggie, though: the ad. The ad doesn't reflect what all faculty want, yet at the end of the search, all faculty have to unanimously agree on a candidate. You can't know what bizarre mixture of skills will satisfy enough people to get you the job.
It's not your fault Cincy didn't hire you. If you really want it, apply again next year. The Cincy faculty are very disappointed that they couldn't make it work this year, and they will try to run a better search next year so that those final 3 or 4 more closely match what they need.
Or at least that's what they tell me. But I'm sure someone on here will tell me that I've somehow insulted their grandmother and I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm sure someone on here will tell me that I've somehow insulted their grandmother and I don't know what I'm talking about.
Look, I don't know what your problem is with my grandma, but if I were you I'd try to inform myself a little better about how the world works before commenting here.
^Like!
The last commenter totally gets the culture of this place.
Has anyone heard back from the folks at Warwick?
Gonna try this one again. UMBC? I hate when SCs give you a timeline, then leave you with no indication that a shortlist has or hasn't been made well past that timeline.
How bad of a fit do the candidates have to be for no job to be offered? I'm extremely sympathetic to the difficulties of running a job search, and I am sure that Cincinnati did their best. But in the abstract, shouldn't departments do everything in their power to offer a job at the end of a search? I've seen unsuccessful searches that weren't extended the following year, and I must think that deans aren't on the whole impressed by departments who do not even offer the position they've approved. In an economy and a world in which Classics departments as a whole want to be growing instead of shrinking, shouldn't we heavily weight the process towards growth, as much as we can? I'm not saying hire the bum who fooled you for 15 minutes in San Antonio; but if the candidate shows any promise and can interact with the rest of the faculty on any level, why not offer the job now, rather than delay the growth of the department?
I'm with you, 10.24. I have 20+ rejection letters lying around my living room which specifically attest to the quality of candidates on this year's market (Wake Forest's extended middle finger notwithstanding). IMHO Cinci are really letting the side down by having a position and failing to fill it - for whatever reason.
How bad of a fit do the candidates have to be for no job to be offered? ... But in the abstract, shouldn't departments do everything in their power to offer a job at the end of a search?
Keep in mind that, when you make a t-t hire, you're telling a person that if she plays her cards right she can be a part of your department for the next 30-40 years. I'd say that considerations of "fit" with somebody who might be working down the hall from me for the next third of a century are actually pretty important.
And I'd say that your ability to suss out "fit" and "qualifications" over 30 minutes in a hotel room, and a few hours of interaction on campus, are much lower than you think they are.
Just as candidates tend to over-value their own virtues, SCs tend to develop tunnel-vision when it comes to hiring the "perfect" candidate. The glut of qualified, competent, candidates has meant that more and more SC members look first for reasons *not* to hire individual candidates. In doing so they end up letting perfectly good people fall through the cracks. Then they have the balls to come on this site and complain about how *hard* it is to find a good hire, and justify the failure of a search like UC's. Crazy.
In a buyer's market like this the UC faculty should be ashamed of themselves for failing like this. If it weren't bad for the field I'd hope the Provost tells them to go take a hike when they try to renew this search next year.
I read this blog on occasion and rarely post, but I have to say that March 30, 2011 1:22 PM hits the nail squarely on the head. I do not wish to direct any direct critique at UC (I was not a candidate for their post), but I think that the symptoms discussed here are signs of a serious illness. Finding the 'perfect' person is rare. Finding an interesting and compatible person is quite possible, especially in this 'market' (if you can call this environment a job market). The argument that 'we're hiring this person for a lifetime' holds less and less water - look around, people are pretty mobile these days, even those with tenure and associate (or full) standing. This tunnel vision about the 'perfect' person comes directly from the typical tunnel vision of the Classical studies mindset. This lack of vision and bad strategy, along with a continuing weakness in terms of focusing on interdisciplinarity and demonstrating why the study of the ancient world matters today (btw, it is not the 19th century anymore) will be the things that sign the death warrant for Classics departments and see them either eliminated or parceled out, piecemeal, to join other colleagues in 'studies' departments, Comparative Literature, History, etc. And if myopia is what kills the Dodo, then doesn't it serve him/her right?
And I'd say that your ability to suss out "fit" and "qualifications" over 30 minutes in a hotel room, and a few hours of interaction on campus, are much lower than you think they are.
No, I don't think it's especially high. It is however the best information we have. We can either use it or ignore it, and if we're just going to ignore it, then we might as well skip the interview and the campus visit and make an offer on the basis of the initial application file.
Imagine a scenario in which a department feels on the basis of what it has seen that a candidate isn't a good fit or isn't viable, but also is aware of the limitations of the interview and the campus visit and realizes that its impression may be wrong. What do you counsel that department to do? Offer the job and hope that they're wrong?
I should note that I've never actually observed up close a search in which every finalist turned out not to be appointable, but I've seen more than one in which all but one finalist did so, so I can see how it might happen.
That said, though, if your finalist pool turns out not to have a single appointable person in it, you've probably done something wrong at one or more stages of the search, or your department is full of eris (the bad kind), or both.
This tunnel vision about the 'perfect' person comes directly from the typical tunnel vision of the Classical studies mindset.
This is a pretty awesome argument already, but what would make it extra super awesome would be some kind of evidence that searches fail with any greater frequency in Classics than in English or Biology or Engineering. Without it, we might mistakenly get the impression that you're just using the subject of searches as a springboard to the topic you really want to talk about, which is how Classics sucks so much because Classicists are sucky.
I'm not at Cincy and have no idea what went wrong in their search, but these things do happen.
As someone who is now tenured in a position for which I was the FOURTH candidate called to campus, after the other three bombed, I have to be grateful that the SC in question that time didn't go with someone about whom they had strong doubts.
That part of the anecdotal evidence isn't very important. Here's what is: The other 3 candidates all blew it in the Greek class they were asked to teach. Of course I don't know the details but according to colleagues who were there (and on the SC), all three of them made very basic and embarrassing errors that they clearly did not catch (we all make mistakes and then say "Oops, sorry, let me revise that", but these candidates didn't realize that they'd made errors).
Suppose the Dean had refused to authorize a fourth candidate (as he probably would now, when times are harder than they were nearly a decade ago when I got this job). Should the SC have "settled" for someone who was not competent to teach Greek, in a very small department where every faculty member has to teach both languages at all levels? I think not -- I think a request to try again the next year would have been appropriate then.
This is worth thinking about, because there's no way that an APA interview can tell a SC if a candidate can teach the languages. You can only know that by putting him/her in a classroom and watching, and that can only happen on a campus visit. Yes, it was very bad luck for that SC several years ago to get three in a row who couldn't teach Greek (though good luck for me), but it CAN happen.
I don't think it's fair, Anon. 400, to suggest that if a search failed the candidates must have failed--whether to conjugate a mi-verb correctly or to impress the department as being the right fit. Although I'm sure they will themselves see it in those terms, and perhaps the UC dept will as well. It's hard to avoid labeling people as "good" or "bad" in these situations, but we need to make an effort. It's a complicated process, in which the candidates and their performances are only one variable, and not necessarily the main one.
I don't know what happened in this situation, but it does seem that (proportionally) failed searches are too common in the past few years. Maybe the problem isn't the candidates or the committees, but the market: because there are so many options you get a "match.com" effect, where you're always wondering about who else is out there who could meet your needs better. It's happened in the general labor market too (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/your-money/10shortcuts.html?scp=1&sq=interviewing%20process&st=cse). Risk aversion? Commitment fears? Committees need to be aware of this tendency and maybe stop waiting for Mr. Right, because he's really just a figment of the imagination.
"Yes, it was very bad luck for that SC several years ago to get three in a row who couldn't teach Greek (though good luck for me), but it CAN happen."
First of all, I have to take issue with this comment. Since when can ONE class given under such artificial conditions allow someone to determine if a one can teach Greek?
I have been on both sides of this issue. I think committees need to realize the limitations of the model class. The poster assumed that if the candidate doesn't immediately correct the erro that they were unaware of this. This is just stupid. There are a number of reasons why a candidate might not bring it up with only one possibility being ignorance. Let's be honest, the class is such a crapshoot and as the candidate you're dealing with six million things rushing through your head which you normally wouldn't feel and can lead to brain lock or more commonly the need to brush over a mistake and move on. One of the things is with this class is that you don't have the option of coming back the next class after realizing your mistake and clearing it up.
I know when I have watched candidates come in for interviews, I am looking for how they interact with the students and how they manage the class. Mistakes will be made and even howlers. People in job situations, esp in this job market, might not acknowledge them not because they didn't realize the mistake but for a number of other justifiable reasons. I have also seen committee members give some stuff a pass while not forgiving others which makes the "just admit it" notion problematic at best.
Let's just admit it too, we have all had our bad days in front of a class and would not like to be judged on those. That's teaching. To state that you can tell if someone can teach Greek from one day, well, I would say only in the MOST extreme cases--meaning with the best and worst. Most of us, I think are very much in between those poles. This is not a meritocracy--look at some of the hires recently--and not all great teachers and scholars are capable of dazzling us from the start.
Of course, it's artificial to judge someone's language abilities from one class. But that one class is *all the SC has* for judging language abilities. SCs have to work with what the candidates show them. It's the candidate's responsibility to prepare the material that's being taught that day so meticulously, so thoroughly, so obsessively that the possibility of mistakes is minimized. Believe me, a SC can tell when the candidate has thoroughly prepared and when s/he has not.
Is it a lot of work to prepare a class that thoroughly (parsing every word, trying to think of every imaginable question a student might ask, etc.)? Sure it is. But I suggest you look at it this way. Your future hangs on that class (not ONLY on that class, but partly on that class). The stakes are about as high as they can ever be. Make the time, whatever it takes, before your fly-out. Prepare that lesson as you have never prepared any lesson before in your life.
Considering the high stakes, what message do you think it gives the SC if you come into the classroom and make it evident that you have NOT prepared that day's lesson so thoroughly and completely that you're as close as possible to error-proof?
Remember, all of us on SCs have been candidates. We know all about the pressures, etc., that candidates are laboring under. But we also know it's possible either to prepare well for an on-campus interview or to prepare inadequately -- and the difference does matter.
I can't speak to anything happening (or not) at UC, but from my experience on SCs, it doesn't have to be a case of Candidate Fail or SC Perfectionism, but there might be hiccups on both sides. I know of two recent searches where of the three short-listed candidates, two were excellent and the third did not perform at the same -- or indeed, at an adequate -- level. When both of the top candidates accepted positions elsewhere, the choice was to hire the third candidate or no one, and since the SC felt that candidate #3 didn't turn out in the long run to fit the parameters of the position, there was really no choice.
Maybe the SC should have been better attuned to possible failure in the early stages of the search, but when 2/3 of the short list ends up rejecting your institution's position, there's little that can be done but to try again next year (deans willing).
I am not the one who judged other candidates' teaching abilities based on one class. The respondent did. I am merely responding to the conclusions others have made.
As for prep, YES, I have prepped and prepped but there is always something you miss. Yes, how a candidate responds is key, but I was merely saying it is so subjective how we read that. I have gone into hiring meetings thinking it's clear only to be blindsided by someone who saw the whole visit differently.
And, yes, search committee members have been on the other side, I admitted this, but I think some have either forgotten or are less forgiving. I have seen both sides of both sides. I think some committee members (esp. senior ones) just have forgotten how easy it is to mess things up and when you bring that up in a meeting with them, they often still don't want to buy it.
Once again, I just think everyone needs to get off their high horses and just admit that as much as we want to defend our positions that ultimately the process sucks. We make bad decisions all the time and more often than not we pass over great candidates for the most trivial of reasons which often get dressed up and justified with even more asinine comments... ugh... I am going to go back to grading. It's more fun than this.
Let's be realistic about the ability to prepare meticulously. I went on at least 3 campus visits where I was told what to prep--both for language classes and lectures--and when I got there, they said, "Oops! We told you to prep the wrong thing! Can you do this instead?" imagine prepping on the hymn to Demeter and Eleusis only to be told you were actually doing Heracles' labors. Good times.
On a not entirely unrelated note:
SFSU WTF?!
They wrote the world's shortest and most vague job advertisement, too. I bet their desks were creaking under the combined weight of student teaching evals from every hopeful on the market. And they still couldn't find one to hire.
I was told that SFSU had 200+ applicants. There must be a problem with funding, as stated in the job ad, that led to this.
I don't think the SF St had anything to do with the funding. They brought in six candidates. That's not a money issue.
I think their top candidate took another position, and they probably decided against the others. We keep hearing about schools being too picky and I think that is what is going on hear. There were over 200 candidates. That's a fact.
Sources tell me that they are not in immediate jeopardy of losing their department like MI St or SUNY Albany... despite the horrendous budget shortfalls in that state.
Anyone hear from New Hampshire? And why so quiet on the wiki? Have people given up updating or are the short lists just that short for these one-years?
Anyone hear from New Hampshire?
The search is temporarily out of our hands, wending its way through the bureaucracy before we can contact our intended short list about setting up interviews. Once those interviews have been conducted, assuming we make an offer to one of those we talk to in the first round, we will be in touch as soon as we can with those not selected. "As soon as we can," in our case means "as soon as we have an accepted offer." We are not authorized to close the search (and, therefore, to notify those who are not selected to fill the position) until we have that accepted offer in hand.
Thanks to all the applicants for their continued patience. Please be assured that we are trying to bring the search to a successful conclusion as quickly as we can.
Dear Professor Trzaskoma,
Thank you for posting this. It is quite heartening (and downright useful) to see a SC communicate like this.
Best wishes for a successful search,
A UNH Applicant
Thank you for posting this. It is quite heartening (and downright useful) to see a SC communicate like this.
Best wishes for a successful search
Get a room.
More like wipe your nose. It's not like both parties considered it a one-on-one conversation.
Man, there are some mean-spirited, nasty people posting here (see the previous two comments). The person who posted a thank you for the NH update did so anonymously; so how could it be construed as currying favor, when the SC at NH can't know which candidate posted the thank you?
I thought it was a gracious note that a beleaguered SC (obviously dealing with a more than usually officious administration) would very likely appreciate. Then come the latest two commenters, spewing scorn all over it. Wow.
Check out the post under 'job announcements' - an opportunity at Bolchazy Carducci for Classics Ph.D.s...
On a different note, I completely agree with you 7:07, that was simply a note of gratitude for an SC's transparency and honesty. On the other hand, this *is* the place for folks to take out their frustrations. But it is too bad these frustrations have to be vented on the undeserving.
On a different note, I completely agree with you 7:07
Get a room.
the sf state position was an endowed chair...impossible that funding was an issue.
Junior endowed positions are fraught with issues. We academics are usually full of ourselves (classicists a bit more than others I would argue) so SCs for these positions want a candidate who they consider superior ("worthy of them"), but controllable. They often have a "too many chefs" problem.
My original diss advisor was in just such a position and he had all the faculty who were not on his side gunning for him during his six years. When he didn't receive tenure, the most common line was, "Obviously, he wasn't good enough for the position." He moved on to get full professorship within ten years and the position sat empty while searches failed year after year. They couldn't find a candidate who was even close to as good. It wasn't until almost ten years later the position was filled, when all the highly opinionated troublemakers had largely dispersed.
I'm not saying this is what happened with SFSU, but it is peculiar that a CA state school would fail a search during these economic times. I guess they're assuming that they'll get another shot next year?
Well, they are fools.
A great deal of wasted time and effort by all involved, with nothing but egg on SFSU faces to show for it. If you can't find at least three excellent, hireable candidates in this market then you don't deserve to keep the line. Pathetic.
I have it on good authority that the UC search failed because the faculty found it impossible to agree among themselves about which candidates to hire. Anyone familiar with that department's reputation for severe stasis between archaeologists and philologists will not be surprised. Hint: both of the hires were supposed to be philologists.
Hint: both of the hires were supposed to be philologists.
I don't understand the hint. Are you suggesting archaeologists were/are attempting to make the open line an archaeologist position? This seems unlikely to me. Or, are you suggesting archaeologists and philologists could not agree because of innately different perspectives on what is a good philologist candidate? Honestly, I'm just trying to understand what was meant.
If I understand the situation correctly (based on some second-hand insider comments), the archaeologists at Cincinnati were not directly involved in the searches they ran this year.
Hint: both of the hires were supposed to be philologists.
I don't understand the hint.
Oh boy. Let's try another hint. Listen carefully:
The squirrel is on the swing.
Repeat:
The squirrel (wink wink) is on (wink) the swing (wink wink wink).
If you can't figure that out, I give up.
Second-hand insider comments about failed searches SO reliable, especially when there is a car wreck and people are gossiping about who is and is not responsible.
Second-hand insider comments about failed searches SO reliable, especially when there is a car wreck and people are gossiping about who is and is not responsible.
Jesus, I didn't hear about that. Good argument for taking public transportation to your job talk, I guess. Hope nobody got hurt.
Anonymous said...
Second-hand insider comments about failed searches SO reliable, especially when there is a car wreck and people are gossiping about who is and is not responsible.
April 9, 2011 9:43 PM
Ahhh, criticizing someone else's opinion, and in the process offering nothing at all. Now that's constructive! Well done. In the future, I'd appreciate it if everyone could just keep all this insider information to themselves. Why make this blog a place to read rumors that come direct from the departments that are hiring? That just seems silly to me.
Is there usually a somewhat large number of jobs posted in April, or is what we have now what we are going to get for the year?
Second-hand insider comments about failed searches SO reliable, especially when there is a car wreck and people are gossiping about who is and is not responsible.
aw, thought Cincinnati had a penchant for direction of traffic in Pompeii.
The wiki has been pretty quiet lately - any forward movement on the VAP/lecturer positions posted for March and early April?
The wiki has been pretty quiet lately - any forward movement on the VAP/lecturer positions posted for March and early April?
Other than that we're screwed? Nope.
PS - Thanks for the PFO Wabash. Not only was it mailed over a month after decisions were made, and it had that classy pixelated signature, but it also informed me that a degree from an ivy league institution is now a prerequisite to teach at a SLAC in Indiana.
I might as well should have gone to the University of Phoenix, online.
if it's any consolation, i can't get a job either, and i actually went to a school worth going to. imagine how i, your intellectual better, must be feeling!
^Like!
And yet I personally know at least three people not from ivy league schools who got jobs this year. No doubt the hiring committee just didn't want to bring on one of their intellectual betters as a junior colleague.
The Ivy League obsession, if it's actually real, is strange. Undergraduate education is very different from graduate, and there's definitely no reason why institutions that specialize in the socialization of the elite should also be good at training researchers and teachers. And in fact they aren't as a category especially good at it, though individually some of them are very good.
With the exception of a good year for one of them, it does not seem from the Wiki that the Ivies are doing so well this year in placing their own. I think the myth of Ivy preference is just that: a myth created by other nervous job seekers.
A myth? Are you $&*! serious? Look at the wiki. Ok, Stanford and Cambridge are *technically* not ivy league. But elite nonetheless. How many state system PhDs are getting jobs in Classics? And I mean, normal, budget-strapped, proletariat state schools (besides Michigan, Berkeley and UT Austin that are basically elite in their own right). IMO everyone else needs to stop training people - because we're not ever getting jobs. This PhD looks great on the wall, but don't mean shit to this elite field of snobbery.
I did not realize we were discussing all so-called "elite" institutions. I thought we were discussing the Ivy league. Sure - by whatever metric you are qualifying "elite" the schools you name are doing well. I meant that the idea that the Ivies ruled everything was a myth, as plenty of other schools are doing just as well if not better. But if we open it up to "some schools which we will vaguely classify as elite often place better than others" well then sure. A vague rule usually holds.
Ok, Stanford and Cambridge are *technically* not ivy league. But elite nonetheless. How many state system PhDs are getting jobs in Classics? And I mean, normal, budget-strapped, proletariat state schools (besides Michigan, Berkeley and UT Austin that are basically elite in their own right).
Wait, so you're saying that there are a bunch of different elite schools—Ivy League and not, private and public, U.S. and U.K.—and that the elite schools have better placement records than non-elite schools? Are you sure about this? Doesn't sound right to me. I'd have expected that the non-elite schools would be the ones with the great placement records and the elite ones would be the ones that can't get people jobs. After all, isn't failing to get their Ph.D.s employment what makes the elite programs elite in the first place?
Wait, what?
And people say you can't find
Yeah exactly. And everyone from the elite schools are my intellectual betters and deserve all the jobs, too, right? It has nothing to do with luck or socio-economic background either. Right? So, I stand corrected. Guess I'll take my sub-par intellect back to flipping burgers where I belong. I apologize for rocking your superior boat. Can I get you a coffee while I'm at it? I'm real good at makin' coffee.
I think the intellectual better comment was a joke.
And if you have not learned that this whole process is about luck, then now might be a good time to learn it.
not to disrupt the elite v. non-elite argument that is going so well, but anyone know the status on Brown's search? The wiki has twice posted "offered and accepted" and each time by different people. Has it been accepted?
Second the luck comment. The Ivies have great people and they have clunkers, like every school. Sometimes great people get jobs; sometimes not. Sometimes clunkers get jobs; sometimes not. The first step to serenity is recognizing you don't deserve a job.
Thanks, Job.
Nobody would ever admit it in person, but I bet every one of us can name two or three Ph.D. programs that we think shouldn't exist. Is it elitist to point out that some faculty have no business convincing naive undergrads to enroll in a program that gives them very little chance at securing a tenure-track position? Here are the three programs I personally think would be better off converting from Ph.D. to terminal M.A./M.A.T. programs:
Iowa, Colorado, and Florida
Call me elitist, but those programs are exploiting their graduate students.
Nobody would ever admit it in person, but I bet every one of us can name two or three Ph.D. programs that we think shouldn't exist. Is it elitist to point out that some faculty have no business convincing naive undergrads to enroll in a program that gives them very little chance at securing a tenure-track position? Here are the three programs I personally think would be better off converting from Ph.D. to terminal M.A./M.A.T. programs:
Iowa, Colorado, and Florida
Call me elitist, but those programs are exploiting their graduate students.
Wow. That's harsh.
I suppose the next step would to eliminate undergrad classics depts too, unless their graduates also get jobs?
Not at all. An undergraduate degree in classics (or philosophy, or anthropology, or english, etc. etc. etc.) is not a professional degree. There is little to no long-term correlation between undergraduate major and employment.
A Ph.D. is a professional degree. One gets a Ph.D. in a field like classics, etc. in order to get a job as a professor. If programs aren't placing their students in such jobs then they are failing in the training of professionals.
When I received the acceptance letter to the PhD program in which I enrolled, that letter said that I should get a PhD in Classics because of the intellectual challenge and my love of Classics. It specifically said "Don't do this because you think there will be a job at the end; do it for the other reasons listed, because it is hard to get a job in Classics."
This was a common theme throughout the program.
I did end up with a job, but I kept that letter in my mind the entire time. I thought it was a very responsible letter and hope that it still goes out to newly accepted students, maybe in boldface, underlined, and with sparkly stars all around it.
Was it a luxury? Yes. Do I necessarily think this is what all programs should do? I don't know. But it was effective, at least in my case, in keeping me focused on why I was there. No, I don't have tenure, and if I get booted out of the field (always a possibility), I'll probably pick myself up, dust myself off, and go find a non-Classics, probably non-academic job to pay the bills, and I won't regret having spent the better part of a decade developing my mind. It was a calculated risk that still can fail, but I made the choice with my eyes wide open.
Was it a luxury? Yes.
Well, there is your answer. You weren't a business traveler, you were a tourist. Perhaps more to your credit, but you understood that graduate school was a luxury. If that is a necessary attitude then we need to admit that trying to become a classics professor must be left to the idle rich. Otherwise it is much too risky an endeavor. At least your grad department was honest with you, however.
Nobody would ever admit it in person, but I bet every one of us can name two or three Ph.D. programs that we think shouldn't exist.
There should probably be half as many programs as there are, and the other half should take (or graduate) fewer students.
Is it elitist to point out that some faculty have no business convincing naive undergrads to enroll in a program that gives them very little chance at securing a tenure-track position?... Call me elitist, but those programs are exploiting their graduate students.
I would think that no faculty would have any business doing this. But I'm not convinced this is a common scenario. I find myself unable to persuade naive undergrads that they shouldn't be going to grad school. They don't understand how difficult it is to get in to an elite one, how much determination and talent it takes to finish, and how much good luck it takes to get a job. In most cases it's an absolutely terrible idea, but they inevitably think that it's the best idea they've ever had, and they are impervious to evidence and arguments to the contrary.
And, honestly, there are elderly Japanese soldiers still hiding out on Pacific islands and fighting World War II who are aware that seeking a humanities Ph.D. is a dumbass move. How out of it does a person need to be to be unaware of this? In fact, I think, people aren't unaware of it, they're just sure that it doesn't apply to them.
"Was it a luxury? Yes."
"Well, there is your answer. You weren't a business traveler, you were a tourist. Perhaps more to your credit, but you understood that graduate school was a luxury. If that is a necessary attitude then we need to admit that trying to become a classics professor must be left to the idle rich. Otherwise it is much too risky an endeavor. At least your grad department was honest with you, however."
Let me be clear that I am not idle rich and do not have much of a safety net other than that my parents wouldn't care if I moved back in with them temporarily while trying to jumpstart a second career. I think the difference is that when you're repeatedly told "A job is not a sure thing, so have a plan B and an exit strategy," you spend time in graduate school honing skills that can get you a non-faculty job should you need to procure one. It's all about taking a calculated risk, and in my case, I was able to lessen that risk by being reminded that there were other jobs in which I could use my skills. So I think it would be terrible for Classics to return to the purview of the idle rich, because there are lots of non-silver-spoon types who are successful in getting jobs. It's just that departments and universities need to be more upfront about the risks (the burden being not on undergraduate advisers but on graduate programs) and more proactive in helping students translate their academic skills into real world jobs. I come up for an annual review where I can lose my contract each and every year, and when it is time for my review, I apply to a handful of real world jobs and usually get as far as a second interview stage before my review gives me another year at my school. This upcoming year the chances of my passing my review are 50/50, so I will be applying more aggressively while I await the review outcome. It really does give me more control over my life when I take this stance, and I credit my department in helping me develop the mental fortitude to see the possibilities outside of a traditional academic career.
The whining about "there are no jobs" does have a funny ring to it. I mean really, what did you think? It's an elitist field, whether you have a Harvard PhD or one from Iowa. You sit around reading Apollonius of Rhodes while the world crumbles and most people have to work for a living.
Someone asked,
"How many state system PhDs are getting jobs in Classics? And I mean, normal, budget-strapped, proletariat state schools (besides Michigan, Berkeley and UT Austin that are basically elite in their own right)."
UNC people have gotten tenure track jobs this year and last, and a large number of visiting positions.
Only people from the Ivies can get jobs! Or Stanford. But only them. Oh all right, Ivies, Stanford and Chicago, but that's it. Oh, plus publics like Berkeley, Texas, Michigan, UNC. Oh and Virginia. But that's all. Except for OSU and Illinois, I forgot them. And those two people from UCSB. And Cincinnati. And USC and UCLA. But that's all. And Toronto. And Duke. But that's really all. "Our three main weapons are...."
Kid yourself all you want, if your Classics PhD says Iowa, Buffalo, Florida, FSU, CUNY, just to start, you're not getting a tenure track job.
Heard from a reliable source -- a Rutgers PhD got a tenure-track this year.
And, if a Rutgers Ph.D. got a tenure-track, there is no telling who can survive this market!
Any word on the UBC or Memorial positions?
Kid yourself all you want, if your Classics PhD says Iowa, Buffalo, Florida, FSU, CUNY, just to start, you're not getting a tenure track job.
UF has given out four traditional PhDs in Classics (the program started in 2001, and that's not counting the distance PhDs), and two of them have TT jobs and the other two hold full-time positions. I'm no mathematician, but a 50% success rate for TT jobs isn't so bad.
Is it just me or does the trend this year seem to be in favor of hiring people in their mid-late 30s who have spent 8 or more years on their doctorates? I have no axe to grind here, I just find it interesting given what is so often said about the favoring of young hot-shots.
"Is it just me or does the trend this year seem to be in favor of hiring people in their mid-late 30s who have spent 8 or more years on their doctorates? I have no axe to grind here, I just find it interesting given what is so often said about the favoring of young hot-shots."
I observe no such trend. Scanning the wiki, I count four, possibly five who got their degrees in the normal time. The laudable desire to make sense of, or to find patterns in hiring data is I think misguided for two (to me anyway) obvious reasons: (a.) no two search committees are alike and (b.) a *lot* of factors go into the hiring decision.
I'm mystified by the last two posts--how can you possibly tell from the wiki how old candidates are or how long it took them to get their doctorates??
And by the way, there's no correlation between those two things. I got my PhD at age 35, not because it took me a long time (I did the MA and PhD in a total of 5 year--3 semesters for the MA, then the next 7 for the PhD) but because I spent 8 years working after college and started grad school when I was 30.
Right you are. Leave age out of this - not everyone starts a Ph.D. at age 22. What I'm pointing out is that there *is* no correlation between time to degree and success on the job market, as 8:44am seems to suggest.
I suggest everyone go celebrate Holy Week and Passover and come back next week.
Yes, let us all take some time to commemorate the rising of our zombie carpenter god.
"Yes, let us all take some time to commemorate the rising of our zombie carpenter god.
Nothing like intolerance on a nice Saturday morning. Way to go, asshole.
Nothing like intolerance on a nice Saturday morning. Way to go, asshole.
I'm not actually bothered by either of the comments, but I'm curious to know why you think "zombie carpenter god" is annoying while "I suggest everyone go celebrate Holy Week and Passover" isn't. Seems like both could be read as equally religiously insensitive by people inclined to get butthurt over things like this.
You seriously don't see the difference between the two jokes (that first one was a joke, not an imperative)? If you don't see it, I'm not sure I can explain it to you. One is joking that everyone should go off and celebrate holidays that we all know are not celebrated by a majority of Classicists, while the other is kind of crossing the line when it comes to those of our fellow Classicists who are Christians. I don't think they'd be as offended by the first joke as the second, although both imply the absurdity of religious behavior.
But this argument isn't going to hold water with you, and we both know it, so why I'm even bothering, I don't know. Probably because I suspect my ex-boyfriend wrote the zombie carpenter god joke, and he annoys me. You hear that? You STILL aren't funny.
Nearly all Iowa PhDs in Classics have eventually landed tt-positions. I don't know where you're getting your information, but it's wrong.
One is joking that everyone should go off and celebrate holidays that we all know are not celebrated by a majority of Classicists
Yeah, and when people say "Merry Christmas" to me in late December, I always infer that they're making an ironic comment on our mutual godlessness, rather than wishing me a merry Christmas. People say "Jesus is the reason for the season" but really it's wry humor that's the reason for the season.
Seriously, you don't have any reason to think this was a joke beyond that, if you said it, you'd mean it as a joke.
As for the zombie carpenter, that's definitely a joke, and its main problem isn't that it makes fun of people's beliefs—and why shouldn't we be able to do that? the state should be tolerant of people's beliefs, but that doesn't mean private citizens have to remain in respectful silence about ideas they think are nuts—but that it's such an old, lame joke and was trotted out for cleverness points which will NOT be awarded.
Yes, I was the one who said it, and I meant it as a joke, because there are about five people here who are going to observe Easter/Passover (both of which I think are perfectly nice holidays) in a religious sense.
I was not the one who said the "asshole" comment, but I did want to reply why I saw the two as different.
Yes, I am in favor of freedom of speech. Also in favor of civility.
This is perhaps the dumbest discussion that either of us ever has been in, so let's just end it now and ALL GO EAT SOME PEEPS!
Yes, I was the one who said it, and I meant it as a joke, because there are about five people here who are going to observe Easter/Passover
Oh, real nice. So you're all just a bunch of morally degenerate secular humanists making different kinds of jokes about people who take their religion seriously and disagreeing about which kind are OK. Well, I for one think you should all be ashamed of yourselves, and I'd say you all owe an apology to a certain notable undead craftsman, as well. (I refer of course to Zombie Paul Revere.)
I for one am not sure why everyone thinks the zombie comment was a joke. I was dead serious.
I for one am not sure why everyone thinks the zombie comment was a joke. I was dead serious.
Then your ignorance of zombies is profound. Some of us here actually care about zombies, and the suggestion that a zombie appeared to the disciples after rising from the grave and didn't try to eat the brains of a single one of them is offensive to me. And Thomas at least was right f*cking there, sticking his finger in him. Delicious, tantalizing brains just inches away. I don't know any zombie who can resist that, champ. Maybe a revenant or something, but never a zombie.
Next time, try doing a little bit of research about zombies before you go on the internet to make jokes about them. You just might learn something, and you'd save yourself some embarrassment.
Dear Servius:
I'm usually not one to suggest this, but could you remove the comments from the last, say, 24 hours?
And, all, I'd like to point out, on a practical level, that many of our students study Latin and Greek for reasons that have at least some connection to their religious faith.
1:21am wins the internet.
Dear Servius:
I'm usually not one to suggest this, but could you remove the comments from the last, say, 24 hours?
1). Doesn't anybody say please anymore? Bossy bossy bossy.
2). You've got a pretty low bar for deletion. Although I guess Zombie Paul Revere was mentioned by name, so maybe strike that one? And it's all completely off topic but a). so have been half of the comments on this thread and b). it's not as though anybody was commenting about anything else.
3). My comment won the Internet! I don't see you winning any Internets. I kind of suspect that you're just jealous. Would you stop trying to get my comment deleted if I sent you a "Certificate of Internet Participation"? It's not as good as winning the Internet, but it's something, and it would look cool on your wall.
i hardly think this is the appropriate forum for calling out one's ex-boyfriend for his trotting out of stale, anti-intellectual quips. oh, wait: it turns out this is the perfect forum for just that, in more ways than i could possibly ever enumerate. please, all of you (not just the aforementioned embittered ex), carry on with the inanities. i'd especially enjoy a continuation of this rather lively "debate" concerning the place of religion within our little hovel of the academy. really, it's been just fascinating so far, and on both sides.
failing that, i'd like to hear from more people whining about how the crapiness of their degrees is hindering their job prospects. i'd also like to push a bit further in this direction of whining, and open up the floor to those who feel that the crapiness of their dissertations, cover letters, cumulative teaching experience, or any other completely relevant factors might be unfairly damaging their chances at gainful employment within the field.
I think somebody's feeling like a little Mr. Grumposaurus today...
I, zombie carpenter guy, am definitely not your ex-boyfriend. I have never dated another classicist, for obvious reasons (see the above 1300 or so comments, including my own).
I, zombie carpenter guy,
Oh, great, now we have people impersonating Jesus.
Unless... Lord, is that really You?
Dude, I said I would come back.
Dude, I said I would come back.
I know, but, you know, it's kind of been a while, and a lot of stuff has happened in the meantime. And honestly, I didn't think you'd come back on the complaints thread of a blog. Still, it's Easter and all, so I guess that makes sense. So, welcome back, man. I actually had some questions: are you gonna be around this thread for a while?
I had a question, Jesus. Why do you and your father and the rest of you all up in there let bad things happen to good people? Is it because you think good people deserve punishment, or are you powerless to stop it? Also, why did you create a universe in which people could do wrong? Super grateful to get some answers... finally! lol
PS your will is super confusing! Thx 4 any help.
Dear Jesus,
For the last six years I've asked you, begged you -- on my knees at times, for a tenure-track job. What gives? Why have you banished me to adjunct hell?
Not an Iowa Ph.D.
Dear Not An Iowa PhD,
There are limits to even my power. Water into wine and the conquest of death, sure. But a tenure track job in this market?
-Your Lord
Dear Jesus,
I understand. Thanks for the pony, though. I was able to eat that off that thing for almost six weeks!
Reverently,
Not an Iowa Ph.D.
Enough is enough!
First you made it very uncomfortable for Christians to read this blog without feeling disparaged. Now you interject a jibe aimed at those of us who consume horse meat on a regular basis. I, for one, would hope that we maintain some level of tolerance for a variety of dietary regimes, be they bovine or equine. For my part, I do not proselytize with regard to my diet, and I ask in return that we refrain from further reference to eating ponies--a gratuitous aside meant to do nothing more than conjure horrific images of small horses being devoured uncooked. No same person would eat pony without first cooking it thoroughly, and the so-called 'palermo Affair' is nothing more than a rumor re-told to scare junior archaeologists. Let's grow up, shall we?
This is sooo boring...
This is sooo boring...
I'm so sorry. Have we been neglecting your entertainment needs? Quick, everybody, do something amusing! Some random anonymous person on the Internet is bored!
::Juggles cross-dressing scorpions::
anyone know anything about the searches in Brown's Joukowsky Institute?
anyone know anything about the searches in Brown's Joukowsky Institute?
I hate to put words in anyone's mouth, but I'm guessing that the random Internet person is going to be bored by this comment. In your next comment, please try to include some exclusive celebrity news. We can't afford to lose this commenter!
I suppose the real question is, how will the death of UBL affect the classics job market next year?
I suppose the real question is, how will the death of UBL affect the classics job market next year
Well, an opportunity did just suddenly become available for somebody who's willing to consider a career outside of academia.
Sorry, but what is UBL?
From my major source for my lectures, Wikipedia:
The acronym UBL can mean:
* Ultimate Band List
* United Bank Limited
* United Baseball League
* United Basketball League
* United Breweries Ltd, an Indian brewery
* Universal Business Language - an XML dialect
* Usama bin Laden, late leader of the Al Qaeda network
So you're saying that United Brewing Ltd. has folded?!?
That's too bad. They were my favorite India-based multinational corporate conglomerate. Well, maybe my second favorite, after Bharti Enterprises.
I hereby employ you all!
Back in the world of Classics, we all just received the May job listings.
Does anyone else think it's absurd that (for a tenure track job beginning in Fall of 2012) the University of Michigan is only interested in candidates who complete their dissertation by August 2011?
Cincinnati required this year that applicants have Ph.D. in hand by the time of application, and we all know how that turned out for them . . .
It's an arbitrary requirement that will certainly exclude some of next year's best applicants. But hey, less work for the SC.
you may not like it, but not considering abd candidates in a market saturated with qualified applicants isn't exactly the dumbest thing a state university search committee has ever done.
also, the connection of cin.'s half-failed search and their refusal to consider abd candidates is obviously specious, even if sfsu had a fully failed search after only considering those with phd in hand. searches fail for lots of reasons, but narrowing an absurdly large field isn't one of them.
The pool can easily be cut down by looking for more publications or teaching experience, both of which are easy to measure from the CV and much more meaningful than whether the applicant has happened to be on the market an extra year.
The pool can easily be cut down by looking for more publications or teaching experience,
That would be the second round of elimination, after weeding out those who are ABD.
Also, you reduce to zero the chance that your new colleague will arrive without having finished the dissertation, which is a terrible situation that does in fact occur.
I don't really think this is about screening the applicant pool just for the sake of getting the numbers down: you put a restriction like that into your ad because the restriction means something to you (or to your administration), not because you can only stand to see so many files.
Also, you reduce to zero the chance that your new colleague will arrive without having finished the dissertation, which is a terrible situation that does in fact occur.
Yes, and this is a legitimate concern. But it can also be minimized by (e.g.) asking to see what there is of the dissertation of short-listed ABD candidates, just to determine that they are near completion.
That would be the second round of elimination, after weeding out those who are ABD.
And what about all the ABD's you just threw out who excelled in both those categories?
hard to know whether the last two posters are being obstinate or obtuse...harder still to care. yet, i'll still reiterate one reason (other than an SC being "lazy") to not consider abd candidates.
hiring abd candidates is a real risk. this one may never finish. that one may finish, but only after having been in her new job for a year. both scenarios are disasters for the place that hired our hypothetical abd candidates. both of these scenarios can be avoided by not hiring an abd candidate.
fin.
If you restrict your search to people who have completed their dissertation, you can evaluate them on the basis of their whole dissertation rather than the three chapters of five that are done by January.
Not saying that that's worth categorically excluding ABDs from consideration, just observing that it's a possible advantage. Chapters 4 and 5 might turn out to be duds, after all.
hard to know whether the last two posters are being obstinate or obtuse...harder still to care.
Wow, you definitely deserve to be a college professor.
Does anyone else think it's absurd that (for a tenure track job beginning in Fall of 2012) the University of Michigan is only interested in candidates who complete their dissertation by August 2011?
Not particularly.
To those ABDs incensed that Michigan won't consider them: apply anyway. If you really are that amazing, maybe they won't mind that you're ABD. The worst that will happen is that they throw out your application in the first cut, which is what's going to happen to most ABD applications to most jobs anyway.
None of the posts expressing concerns about the exclusion of ABDs seem particularly "incensed" to me. Nor did any of these posts misunderstand 5:59's point (one of them explicitly acknowledged it). They have an opinion, and it isn't yours. Deal with it without the straw man act. You're members of an academic community.
"To those ABDs incensed [or annoyed] that Michigan won't consider them: apply anyway. ... The worst that will happen is that they throw out your application in the first cut.."
No, the worst that can happen is that they will be pissed at you for wasting their time, and remember this when they have a one-year job in the Spring or a t.t. job in the future.
None of the posts expressing concerns about the exclusion of ABDs seem particularly "incensed" to me.
Uhh....
Does anyone else think it's absurd that (for a tenure track job beginning in Fall of 2012) the University of Michigan is only interested in candidates who complete their dissertation by August 2011?
I'm going to go ahead and score that as "incensed."
the worst that can happen is that they will be pissed at you for wasting their time, and remember this when they have a one-year job in the Spring or a t.t. job in the future.
No, the worst that can happen is that they are SO pissed by your application that they steal the codes for our nuclear arsenal, attack Russia, and precipitate a global thermonuclear war that obliterates most forms of life on Earth. Which would be terrible!!! And it would be all your fault for sending that application and making them so pissed. How dare you make Michigan Classics so pissed that they destroy life on Earth?!?
They probably won't be that annoyed, though. Also, they probably won't be so annoyed that they ignore your VAP applications. So I'd relax about both of those outcomes, personally.
I'm the one who originally brought up the fact that the U of M is restricting their applicant pool to those who have finished their dissertations by this August.
I neither was nor am neither incensed nor pissed off. I did and do think it an absurd requirement. This makes me mildly annoyed.
I will be an ABD candidate, but I do not do Greek literature. I will finish my dissertation sometime this year after August but before the APA.
I should have made my original post more direct. Is there real value in search committees excluding ABD candidates? (Yes, this question is self-interested for the obvious reason stated above, but hear me out.)
1. I see no reason that any search committee should ever think of hiring someone who is not going to finish their dissertation by the time they arrive on campus.
1.a. I don't know how a search committee could fail to verify whether a candidate in whom they were interested would actually complete their work by the time they are to arrive. If they do not want to request the applicant's draft before interviewing at the APA, they could certainly ask several pointed questions at the APA. God forbid a candidate got so far as an on-campus interview without a finished, or nearly finished, dissertation, I assume that a committee could figure out then their mistake.
2. I would assume that every year there are a number of excellent ABD candidates. Why would you want to exclude them at the outset? I know the obvious reason; and if committees really don't want to skim another 25-50 CV's, then I can accept that's just the way it is. --please don't reply to this last point if you are a bitter Classicist who is without a job or has never actually been on a search committee. I am interested in how to improve the process, not in how those of us without jobs can complain about how horrible they think the people with jobs are.
3. This discussion board is proof that the job market in our field is tough for all sides. Do artificial restrictions improve the ultimate effectiveness of search committees? Do they match the best jobs with the best candidates? Apart from bitter complaining, that's the actual question I want to ask.
Maybe I'll think differently when / if I have to skim 100 applications some day. For now, I think committees would be better off without artificial restrictions.
I should have made my original post more direct. Is there real value in search committees excluding ABD candidates?
Yes, ABD candidates infest the market.
Re: UM
I'm assuming--and I'm in no way associated with UM or the search process, so take this with a grain of salt--that since it's a TT at a research institution, they want to make certain you're not only done with your dissertation, but have some other publications already accepted or under way. From what I understand, the tenure requirements there are fairly high.
Regardless of the merits of such a requirement - I absolutely prefer that the SC tell you up front that they will not consider ABDs. At least then you know where you stand.
ABD candidates infest the market.
I'm assuming that's because they want to have a job to take up when they finish their dissertation. This is why I applied for jobs—excuse me, sorry: this is why I infested the market—in the last year of my dissertation.
Monthly reminder: please don't feed the trolls, the prospect of a free meal only excites them further.
"They probably won't be that annoyed, though. Also, they probably won't be so annoyed that they ignore your VAP applications. "
Have you met people from Michigan.
Dear Anon. May 9, 2011 2:39 PM
The problem is, there is *absolutely, positively* no way to guarantee that an ABD will finish this year. Of the ABDs who writing cover letters this September, 100% will swear they are finishing in AY11-12, 90% of their advisers will back them up in the letter of recommendation, and only 20% will actually finish. (Yes, I just pulled those numbers out of my ass.)
This is not about merit, it's not about stuffiness, it's not about spectacular ABDs who might get passed over because they don't have degree in hand. It's about risk analysis: the chance you will actually be done when you say you will be done is about 20% (maybe you are the one in five! but they *can't* know that). The chance that the dept will be screwed if you are still working on your dis when you start the job: 100%.
All you spectacular ABDs: plan on at least one transitional year after you graduate (a visiting position, if you are lucky). You'll still be spectacular the next year, and then you'll be a sexy PhD-in-hand and highly competitive on the TT market!
there's also the fact that it would be illegal for an institution to hire someone who does not meet the specifications of their ad...
Perhaps Michigan just knows what it wants? The dept. might want someone with more experience. For what it's worth, all the finalists for the Michigan job last year were already in tenure-track positions...
Perhaps Michigan just knows what it wants? The dept. might want someone with more experience. For what it's worth, all the finalists for the Michigan job last year were already in tenure-track positions...
Yeah, it's good to know that a person is actually up to the demands of faculty life, which, as many of you know, are a big jump from what's asked of grad students.
That said, though, I like to see as many applications as possible, and so do lots of other people. I wonder whether the Michigan ad hasn't been drafted to align with some expectation of their administration.
That, or it's a typo for "2012," which would be hilarious after all this. Probably not, though: I reckon they'd have caught it by now.
Is anyone else having a terrible time getting her/his APA proposal submitted? It conks out when I go to save the wretched thing every time--on both mac and pc and chrome and firefox. It's been doing this since noon yesterday.
I know I should have gotten it ready earlier than yesterday, but seriously APA? Why you gotta play me this way?
I've been trying since Sunday. Both the APA and Omnipress (the company that runs the submission website) are aware of the problem but seem unable to fix it. You may have to send your abstract directly to Omnipress to have them enter it into their system manually. The email is bduerst@omnipress.com. Hope this helps.
@11:00 AM: Thank you! It helps so much that I'd internet-marry you if given the chance (and if I weren't already internet-taken, etc.).
Love,
7:03 AM
Geez, you two. Take it to the no-tell e-motel!
For all the talk of people "not being able to eat" next year, which I took very seriously and for all the talk about how horrible the job market is, I was surprised to hear from a friend of mine that a position recently posted has only received a dozen applications.
Really? I know it's late but this ad was for both ClArchs and Lit people. I would have thought there would have been 100 applicants based on all the doom and gloom chatter here (in actuality, I expected about 30-40).
Seriously, what is going on here? The location is remote but I thought beggars can't be choosers... I guess unless we're academics.
If it's the one I think you're referring to, maybe it's because they want a VAP to do a 3-1-3 and, one suspects, be all things to all people.
Anonymous said...
If it's the one I think you're referring to, maybe it's because they want a VAP to do a 3-1-3 and, one suspects, be all things to all people.
May 30, 2011 11:12 AM
agreed. that advert is ridiculous - even in this economy. a real world job would pay more and demand less.
Can someone please tell me what we're talking about? We started off this year discussing Cornell, and continued right through to bitching about the salary at the University of New Hampshire, so this 'certain postition' and 'the one I think you're referring to' baffles me. I could go back and search the listings, but I can't be bothered, so someone cop me a favor and name the Uni and salary and save my lazy butt, will'ya?
I think we're most recently discussing Luther, whose ad, I think, is ridiculous, bad economy/job market notwithstanding.
The Luther ad seems perfectly normal. There are many schools, especially small colleges with only a few faculty in the Classics Dept., that will ask someone to teach Greek, Latin, and civ courses. Only large universities have the luxury of hiring a bunch of specialists. Teaching loads of 3-3, 3-4, and 4-4 are common. And lots of colleges have some sort of peculiar freshman class that they need covered.
And with a teaching load like 3-1-3, you want someone with PhD in hand, because it will be very, very hard to do your teaching job (and be on the market!) if you are also finishing a dissertation.
As for salary, we all know that we are worth more, but so do the SCs and the colleges themselves. Unfortunately, the money just isn't there, and that is entirely the fault of our American culture which places very little value on educators. Our "perceived worth" in the country as a whole is very low, even though we work 60+ hours a week, at a very difficult job which few can do, and after 10+ years of specialized training.
There's a middle ground between being an R1 that has plenty of specialists and a smaller college that wants to pretend it can do everything and anything. I think it's unrealistic to expect some newbie, PhD in hand or not, to do anything on a 3-1-3 load. It's called exploitation.
I still don't have a job for next year and I chose not to apply to any of these VAPs with a high teaching load. I'd rather leave the field than be so shamelessly exploited. I'm sure that whatever I end up doing I will have my mental health and dignity intact.
I wonder how many of us recent PhDs/current ABDs are planning on abandoning ship. It seems to me that the number is growing every day, not just in our silly little field.
Intially, I thought some of you were being sarcastic about a 3-1-3 being "exploitation" but now I think one of the posts was serious.
I am sorry--a 3-1-3 is not that bad. It really depends on what you're teaching and the numbers. You can't just make a blanket statement. If a 3-3 is exploitation, as someone seemed to suggest, I would suggest working for some of corporations or law firms for which my friends do. I am sorry, it's just not the same. Moreover, some of those lawyers now aren't getting the jobs or the money and are making more what we make at the better paying schools.
BTW, do you guys even know what Luther pays? It's not listed on the ad. Go look up their average salaries. They are not great but they are not UNH levels.
I'll do it for you: the average asst. prof makes $54K so you reckon a visitor makes $50K. (http://www.citytowninfo.com/school-profiles/luther-college) Not great but not bad for a rural location... now if this were NYC... err, that is mediocre.
>>I wonder how many of us recent PhDs/current ABDs are planning on abandoning ship. It seems to me that the number is growing every day, not just in our silly little field.<<
Good riddance. You sound like some pampered pro athlete. Seriously, when things get tough...
Not sure who you were talking to seven years ago, but I was always told that it would not be unusual for you to be a visiting prof for 3-5 years.
Not sure who you were talking to seven years ago, but I was always told that it would not be unusual for you to be a visiting prof for 3-5 years.
This is great for you, but many of us were in fact blatantly deceived about job prospects for many years. Classicists who deny that this happens because it hasn't happened to them piss me off.
Nonetheless, I'll take whatever I can get, Luther job included.
Hell, at this point I'd even take Luther Campbell and be one of his hoochie-mamas
No, really... you people are serious about the Luther ad??? I thought the above comments were a joke, too. If it's real rather than just troll-work.... I can't say strongly enough, SUCK IT UP. Many of us have worked way worse for way less. If you're that much of a princess, you don't belong in academia. Get thee gone and make room for those of us who can handle this career choice and do it cheerfully.
"many of us were in fact blatantly deceived about job prospects for many years. Classicists who deny that this happens because it hasn't happened to them piss me off."
This is news to me. How many people on this list were told it be easy to get a TT job? And how many got their information only from what they were told instead of finding information about the market on their own?
Count me as one who was told from day one of grad school that many new Ph.Ds leave with no confirmed job and that most of the rest do VAPs for at 2-4 years before landing a tenure track.
I'm honestly rather shocked that people are upset with the Luther advert. I'm not sure what recent grads expected--to land a tenure track with an easy teaching load right out of a grad program? In my experience (and from what I've heard from my advisers), it has always been the case that young professors are "exploited" with heavy teaching responsibilities.
If your professors told you differently, then you should aim your criticism at them, rather than Luther or other such schools.
(I am completely unaffiliated with Luther, by the way.)
I'll do it for you: the average asst. prof makes $54K so you reckon a visitor makes $50K.
::squint:: How do you reckon that? Because I'd guess closer to $40k _in the best case_. I don't know Luther, so it might be a bit above that, or a bit below (or significantly below, but it is unlikely that it is significantly above it). Institutions vary widely in what they pay contingent faculty, but very few come close to paying them the _average_ of all assistant professors. That average includes those with 5 years of service at the institution, who are about to go up for tenure, after all. [Which isn't actually a factor at some places, for instance, those that are experiencing severe salary compression at the assistant prof. level. But those institutions aren't likely to be well off enough to pay non-tenure-track faculty particularly well, so it doesn't matter.]
FSU's $32k a year didn't raise the eyebrows that other salaries did here, even thought it was the lowest one on offer; I suspect that's because so few salaries are part of the job announcements. I imagine there are some jobs that will pay less than that. But, honestly, the number of institutions that pay VAPs or Instructors (and there is no consistent distinction between those two things across different institutions either, by the way) anywhere near a beginning tenure-track assistant is relatively small. Yes, there are some. And yes, the number is, at a guess, more than 10. But I suspect that most of those are institutions well enough off also to have PhD-granting classics departments, which is one reason why people often wrongly extrapolate to the market as a whole from what they know. Likewise, most institutions make non-tenure-track faculty teach a heavier load than tenure-track faculty--yes, for less money. There are exceptions, but the point is that they are exceptions rather than the rule.
So, for the record, anyone who thinks, because no one has ever told them otherwise, that a TT job will be easy to come by, and anyone who thinks, because no one has ever told them otherwise, that most non-TT jobs will pay as well as the TT ones--well, I'm telling you that they won't. If you're lucky, you'll get a TT job right away, but few people will be that lucky. And if you're a little less lucky, you'll get a non-TT job or a series of them to tide you over until you find a TT job in a reasonable amount of time. And, if your luck holds out, those non-TT jobs will offer you a salary comparable to the TT faculty's at that institution, and will have you earn that salary with a course load that is the same as the TT faculty's. But most of you won't be that lucky, in fact, can't be that lucky, because of the economics of higher education, especially as they apply to the humanities (no, not just to Classics specifically).
"No, really... you people are serious about the Luther ad??? I thought the above comments were a joke, too. If it's real rather than just troll-work.... I can't say strongly enough, SUCK IT UP. Many of us have worked way worse for way less. If you're that much of a princess, you don't belong in academia. Get thee gone and make room for those of us who can handle this career choice and do it cheerfully."
This pretty much sums up what I was going to say.
many of us were in fact blatantly deceived about job prospects for many years. Classicists who deny that this happens because it hasn't happened to them piss me off
So your story is that for many years many people were blithely unaware that humanities Ph.D.s had a hard time finding jobs, that there were far more applicants than jobs, and that the terms of employment could be grim?
As someone who isn't always particularly fond of reality and would like a reliable and effective way to escape it, I have to ask: where is the rock that all these people were hiding under, and is there room for one more?
I was told by several of the faculty at my undergraduate institution that yes, it would be easy to get a tenure track job in Classics. I wasn't paranoid enough to doubt the consensus of multiple apparently expert sources, it's true, and to that extent I am surely a failure as a human being.
The worthlessness of a PhD in the humanities is very apparent to us as academics, but it not at all so to people with very limited education (everyone I knew until recent years). They assume a higher degree always means being more employable and getting more money.
But whatever. I *will* get a TT job eventually or die trying, and when I do, no student will ever be advised by me to enter this field.
I don't need you to believe my sob story, so let's move on.
I was told by several of the faculty at my undergraduate institution that yes, it would be easy to get a tenure track job in Classics. I wasn't paranoid enough to doubt the consensus of multiple apparently expert sources, it's true, and to that extent I am surely a failure as a human being.
No, the argument (yours, I assume, but it doesn't really matter) was that "many of us were in fact blatantly deceived about job prospects for many years." I'm willing to believe that a few people never encountered a contrary voice, never searched the Internet for "humanities phd job prospects," never encountered the ubiquitous jokes about the value of a degree in the humanities, and never wondered whether it could really be true that jobs that paid you to think about ancient Greece and Rome instead of fold slacks at the Gap wouldn't be really hard to get. I mean, some people respond to those Nigerian e-mail scams, right?
What I have a hard time believing is that this is a widespread phenomenon, that "many" people have fallen victim to it for "many" years. What I think is that many people have heard how things are and just don't think it applies to them, when really it mostly does.
I'm willing to bet that when todays' jobhunters were considering graduate school, they were given projections about how difficult it would be to get a tenure track job ("fairly difficult") that were made in ignorance of the fact that the economy would collapse in 2008, and that politicians would take over a number of state houses with a fervor for cost-cutting, so that getting a job has become not "fairly difficult" but "quite difficult". Being angry at the people making these predictions is misplaced.
I'm also willing to believe that some of the jerks in the field made overly rosy predictions; I did not see this.
1) A 3-3 load is not objectionable. It's the 3-1-3 thing. Really, Luther? You really need that VAP, who will be on the market and presumably trying to get some pubs out, to have that Jan. term class?
2)SLAC or not, do you really need the VAP to do everything? Greek, Latin, translation, and, oh yeah, your boutique first year student course? That smacks of exploitation.
3) 54k is the average for assistant profs, 50k for lecturers? I don't buy it.
I don't why I'm addicted to these comments, but, alas, I am. Maybe it's because I lack classical colleagues at my current institution, where, by the way, I teach a 5-5 (mitte quaerere; scire nefas). A 3-3 sounds like a delightful walk in the park (unless one of those is a big lecture course in translation, which would be different, obviously).
To fed the other current thread, here are some quotes from my past:
A very famous professor, known to all of you, at the Ivy League school where I was an undergrad, after class: "There will be jobs in Classics, unlike other humanities, for people who can teach the languages."
An well-respected senior professor from a department with a PhD program, c. 2005: "I think in six years there will be more jobs than qualified candidates."
My Latin 101 TA, at the time a first year grad student, who now has a tenure track job in Classics: "Don't go to grad school in Classics; there are no jobs."
1) A 3-3 load is not objectionable. It's the 3-1-3 thing. Really, Luther? You really need that VAP, who will be on the market and presumably trying to get some pubs out, to have that Jan. term class?
2)SLAC or not, do you really need the VAP to do everything? Greek, Latin, translation, and, oh yeah, your boutique first year student course? That smacks of exploitation.
Complaint #1 doesn't make any sense. 3-1-3 is better than 3-3, and you're living in a fantasy world if you think you're going to get a quarter of sabbatical while you're a VAP.
I don't even know where to start with complaint #2. What do you think Classics professors teach, if not Greek, Latin, and civ courses?
To return to the original question about Luther, I am one of the hungry recent Ph.D.'s looking for a job. But I did not apply, not because I'm a pampered wuss afraid to teach seven classes in a year, but because I already signed a lease for next year and told my advisor that I would stick around next year to serve as a T.A.
the ubiquitous jokes about the value of a degree in the humanities
This just shows that you persist in viewing the issue from well within the academic bubble. These jokes don't exist among people with no contact with the academic world.
I know for a fact that at least some entire undergraduate departments are cranking out unreasonable numbers of would-be professional Classicists and telling them all they will be able to get jobs. Even *one* big department doing this (such as the one I came from), in our tiny field, would result in many such students over many years.
Couple that with the fact that many grad schools are admitting way too many new students. This problem isn't only about admittedly real student irresponsibility. Departments and faculty members who actively encourage that irresponsibility for their own ends are contributing much of it, and I find what they are doing with full knowledge much more reprehensible than the the naivete of starry-eyed young Classicists in their early 20's (or younger).
Luther is on the semester system. A 3-1-3 means you're also doing a January term class on top of a normal full load.
I should say that the department in question is not merely encouraging would-be Classicists: it is *making* them. They take people who have never heard of Classics and persuade them that this is the best career choice for them.
These jokes don't exist among people with no contact with the academic world. This just shows that you persist in viewing the issue from well within the academic bubble.
What are you talking about? Academics are the only people in the world who do think it might be a wise career move to get that bachelor's degree in art history.
I know for a fact that at least some entire undergraduate departments are cranking out unreasonable numbers of would-be professional Classicists and telling them all they will be able to get jobs
Hey, you know what you know. I've never seen a place like that, or even heard of one from any source outside this thread.
Departments and faculty members who actively encourage that irresponsibility for their own ends are contributing much of it, and I find what they are doing with full knowledge much more reprehensible than the the naivete of starry-eyed young Classicists in their early 20's (or younger).
Yes, there are too many graduate programs. Faculty want them because it's nice to teach grad students, and then once you have the program you can't get rid of it, because your department comes to depend on having grad students around to teach classes.
I would not be surprised however if recently graduate admissions had declined overall, since state institutions have had less money to spend on graduate support.
A 3-1-3 means you're also doing a January term class on top of a normal full load.
Ah, I see. That's an evil little invention, isn't it?
It's easy to demonize the old profs who somehow tricked you into believing that studying Plutarch or Juvenal would be a great way to a middle-class lifestyle (and summers off too!)
From my limited experience as a faculty member (4 years out, visiting positions all over the place in all sorts of places) it seems to me that undergrads everywhere take the slightest whiff of encouragement as a gold-plated invitation to go to grad school.
I don't think it's simply because they think they're so amazing. Instead, I suspect that the professionalization of higher ed is so pervasive, and economic pressures so powerful, that they have little chance of resisting the call to treat classics as a vocation, rather than an education.
Once that happens, they're basically stuck (yes, too many grad and grad-like programs out there are more than happy to admit them). That's why it's important to nip that attitude in the bud. But can we do that and still have a crop? I don't know.
This is the case at several schools that I know of. For example, my grad program admitted 10 students with full funding (plus several others with partial) around 2006.
This year they admitted only two with full funding.
My old adviser told me that they had over 250 applications.
In a way this is a very good thing. There are already too many of us. Although prospectives will be disappointed, the economic downturn good help even things out in the long run.
/being optimistic today.
Hmmm. My comment above a response to earlier comments and was supposed to quote them:
"Departments and faculty members who actively encourage that irresponsibility for their own ends are contributing much of it, and I find what they are doing with full knowledge much more reprehensible than the the naivete of starry-eyed young Classicists in their early 20's (or younger)."
"Yes, there are too many graduate programs. Faculty want them because it's nice to teach grad students, and then once you have the program you can't get rid of it, because your department comes to depend on having grad students around to teach classes."
Good thing none of the jobs I applied for this year required HTML abilities.
A few posts back, someone wrote: "SLAC or not, do you really need the VAP to do everything? Greek, Latin, translation, and, oh yeah, your boutique first year student course? That smacks of exploitation."
Well, speaking as a tenured Associate Professor at a SLAC with a 2-person classics dept., I can say that yes, we DO need the VAP to do everything. When we advertise for a VAP, it's because one of us is going on sabbatical or leave. And we need a VAP to cover that person's normal courses while s/he is away. And yes, this means classes in both languages, at least one Classical Civ. course, and our college's required first-year course. That's what each of us teaches on our 3/3 load, that's what has to be covered each year for us to maintain our major, and so that's what we need a VAP to teach.
Believe me, we'd love to get out of the obligation to the college's first-year course, but we can't; we're required to teach it as are many humanities professors here (long story). So we don't have the option of creating a VAP position that concentrates on just one or two areas. We need someone to replace the courses that the permanent prof. teaches while that prof. is away. However, we do not ask the VAP to teach the unpaid, uncompensated overloads that we normally carry as the only way we can teach our upper-level language courses; whichever one of us isn't on sabbatical takes those on for the year.
I'd assume it's pretty much the same at most SLACs. The smaller the dept., the more different bases any VAP has to cover. There's really no way around that.
Btw, I'm not at Luther and we don't have a Jan. term here, so I am not talking about that job in particular.
Well, speaking as a tenured Associate Professor at a SLAC with a 2-person classics dept., I can say that yes, we DO need the VAP to do everything.
It's not just SLACs. Classics professors all over the country teach Greek, Latin, and civ courses.
I can't get over the comment that complained about having to do this. Imagine having gone to grad school to become a Classics professor and then on to the job market to find a job as a Classics professor without having ever figured out what a Classics professor is.
I don't know. I'm a tenured associate prof at a SLAC too, and on the handful of occasions we've had a VAP because of a colleague's sabbatical, I've worked with the VAP to see what courses would be best for them to handle since I realized they were getting slave wages for a lot of work and wanted to make the job as palatable as possible, given I was frankly embarrassed knowing how bad the salary was and how much work was expected for a temporary job that required a big move. If the person was a Hellenist (which I am) and that meant giving them Intro. and Int. and Advanced Greek while I covered Latin, so be it. It's a small favor in this culture of exploited classics VAPS and adjuncts.
To the last poster, you are one of the few reasonable and kind people in our field. If only more were like you, we'd all be a lot happier. That, and if we all had jobs. I'm just happy to see that not everyone is a miserable SOB.
P.S. from Anon 7:18
I should make clear, I'm also in a 2-person department. And yes, we both have to do both languages at all levels and courses in translation, but I don't expect VAPs and adjuncts to do that. I don't think it's right or fair. If they want experience, great. But all this talk of "what the department needs" and "what the institution needs" is often noble sounding code word for "what the senior person does or does not want to teach in a given semester."
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, people. CALM DOWN. You have your whole lives ahead of you, and you do have valuable skills. You have friends and family and infinite possibilities. All this angst is just going to ruin your physical and mental health.
And no, I'm not a tenured professor. I'm a tenure track professor who is about to fail my mid-tenure review because of a combination of elevated tenure requirements and some very grim personal circumstances. I spent the last three years beating myself up, worrying about the future, and almost drove myself into the ground. With some good therapy, anti-depressants, the support of loving family and friends, and adequate sleep and nutrition, I have turned it around. I am making connections in the real world, lining up non-academic job possibilities, while still throwing a last Hail Mary pass at my review. IT IS GOING TO BE OKAY. For real. There are people out there who would be happy to hire me, and I will get to spend more time with family and friends and ME. Yes, I love Classics, yes, I will be sad to let go of this career, but I made a choice that the professorial life of old is GONE, and for me, it isn't a dream worth chasing if it is going to drive me to the edge of madness and ill health and isolation. So no, I'm not going back on the market, yes, I'm going to stay put, continue looking for a non-academic job (and yes, I've already TURNED DOWN non-academic jobs because my contract isn't up with my current school), and finally live my life a little. I do not regret one moment of Classics other than driving myself to the brink. Grad school did wonders for my mind, introduced me to amazing people, and allowed me to travel all over the world. But that life is worth ONLY SO MUCH, and for me, it may be time to move on.
So while I understand that all this market hell seems like the end of the world, from experience, being in some dark places pre-job, and being in a dark place even while in the job, IT WILL BE OKAY. Please. This isn't worth your mental, emotional, and physical health. Best of luck.
The short form: I don't have a book.
Au contraire - I DO have a book. Open your eyes to the new reality of tenure, sweet cheeks. But the point is that attitudes like yours do nasty things to one's health. I offered that post in a spirit of kindness. You want to trigger isolation, depression, cancer, endocrine disorders with your nasty attitude, be my guest. For those of you who aren't there yet, please take the post in the spirit in which it was intended. I'm not saying don't go for your dreams - I'm still trying. But think about whether the end goal, if reachable, is worth the cost.
I'd love to know what this "new reality of tenure" is.
Are you asking sincerely or are you asking with snark? Tenure standards have become much higher at many (not all) schools across the country. I am not saying that this is right or wrong - I'm just saying that some schools are requiring a lot more than they used to. But in any case, my intention is not to set you all off again, so it is my hope that this will not become a nasty debate over what tenure requirements should be. I'm trying to make sincere, well-meaning comments. And I mean it sincerely when I say best of luck. It makes me really sad that a person can't make a kind, sincere comment without being jumped all over anymore.
I'll chime in here and say that it's rarely possible to quantify tenure standards. In my experience it's often those who try to quantify it who have problems. How many books? How many articles? It's a holistic decision.
Or those who have tenure committees who try to quantify it, regardless of what the standard is in Classics. You can have the support of your department, but if other fields are churning out umpteen articles and books, and they don't care how things are done in Classics, well, then you have a problem. Not saying that all schools, or even the majority of schools, are doing this - but some are. Also there is the whole problem of electronic publishing and what that does to the dissertation-book transformation. Then of course there are rising standards at places that play the numbers game, given that it is a buyer's market. This isn't happening everywhere, but if you are lucky enough to have a choice on the market, do look carefully at what it took, in terms of publishing, for recently tenured scholars to get tenure. Teaching, service, and collegiality are a whole other game.
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