2:13 says the number is more like seven (tt > tt), but a number of names have quickly been redacted (Harvard, BU, Cornell). I don't have a stake in any of those, but I'll bet the seven vacated positions don't re-appear as searches next year. I also don't blame someone for wanting a "better" job...but the unintended consequence is, I think, fewer overall jobs for Classics through gradual attrition.
11:18 - to be precise, six: I know from a reliable source that the BU job did not go to someone currently on TT. But even six (if correct) is an awful lot of lateral hires.
To be fair, why would you give a job to someone who needs it when you can give it to someone who doesn't?
The logic implied by your comment isn't one that any organization in our society obeys, unless it's a charitable organization or a jobs program, and even in those cases it's only part of their logic. Unilaterally enacting the socialist paradise might be a bit beyond what you can reasonably expect a search committee to do.
even six (if correct) is an awful lot of lateral hires.
No, even in a shitty job market, six hires is not an awful lot of any kind of hire.
There's too much assumption going on here about the motives of people who seek new t-t jobs. Even if you allow that there are a certain number of people for whom it's about prestige and money—and there are—that doesn't exhaust the list of common reasons. What if you want to teach in a graduate program or a SLAC? Not urgent, but that's not necessarily just a matter of raging ego or greed; it's a different kind of teaching, it might matter to you, and it doesn't make you a monster to want it. Do you avoid seeking it because there's someone else whom you've never met who might want it more than you do? More sympathetically, what if you want to work in the same part of the country as your spouse? What if you want to get out of a state that doesn't offer same-sex partner benefits? What if your colleagues are poisonous nutjobs who mean to spike your eventual tenure review? These are all real situations that face t-t faculty with genuine regularity. Getting a t-t job is a major accomplishment, but it doesn't necessarily transport you into a magical land where all of your problems are trivial: your husband's still in Florida and you're in California, or your fellow citizens don't even count your relationship as a real relationship, or your t-t job is never going to be a t job because your colleagues are fuckers. Given the chance to leave, do you just stay in one of those situations, or do you move? The percentage of people who would go with option #1, even if not zero, is pretty damned close to it.
Which is just to say that it's good to remember that people making lateral moves are doing so for a variety of reasons, some you might consider appalling, some you might not consider very compelling, and some you might consider pretty good. This is obviously not the kind of thing that good statistics are kept on, but I've known many more people in the "pretty good" category than in the "I'm a fucking asshole and this stage isn't big enough for me" category (although, as I say, the latter category totally exists).
Regarding the lateral moves: while of course I fully understand wanting to get out of a not-so-great position in order to be in a better position (being in a lower-tier institution myself), this merry-go-round will not last forever.
I know that if I left my position for somewhere else, it's not unlikely there will be no search for a successor–the line will be permanently lost. This may be the case as well in some of these jobs that are being left, not because the department doesn't want them, but because deans and higher administrators are always looking for lines to cut.
Lower tier institutions are starting to pick up on this a little more, and while it's a buyer's market, they may decide they're better off with the less prestigious PhD from a lesser program who will stay than choose a high-powered "star" in the making with an Ivy or equivalent degree who probably only took the job to park themselves for year or two while getting out the book and applying for a better job.
So, if it gets especially noticeable this year, the word does get around and lower ranked places will be more cautious in their hiring, and there may be fewer of these moves going on.
I know, this doesn't help any of you looking for that first job unless some of these jilted spouses, so to speak, go out looking again soon.
This point about lines not being replaced is absolutely crucial. Here we can see how individuals acting out of perfectly reasonable and understandable self-interest do real damage to the system as a whole.
Deans aren't stupid, and they are going to seize pretty much any opportunity they are given in order to shift resources from departments like Classics to, say, departments like Economics or Biology. They also do this in very proactive ways, by denials of reappointment and tenure.
I'm not blaming the lateral movers, but we can understand why their colleagues may view their departures with more than simple annoyance. They can devastate programs, especially at smaller institutions. Losses by individual departments weaken us all, even if we don't recognize it at the time.
Do any of you actually know what you're talking about? For example, how many deans who oversee classics also oversee biology and economics? Perhaps at small schools, but that's not the norm.
There are a few good points being made here, but what I'm seeing here is valuable evidence that grads often know less than they think they do.
And the idea that we should resent even a little those who are t-t and move to other t-t jobs is simply absurd, just as it's absurd to expect them to take one for the team and not apply for fear that the dean might eliminate their line?
I don't fault people for applying when they already have a TT job. I just can't fathom how a SC member could live with themselves after picking someone who already has a job over someone who may well now go unemployed for a year. Call me a socialist if you like, whatever; but I couldn't live with myself if I did that.
Yes. Let's go further and say that no one should retire either for fear that their line will not be renewed. No, they should keep drilling those little fuckbots with gerunds and gerundives until they drop dead. Even then we can pretend that they're not dead. We can prop them up to a chair like they did to El Cid. Field saved.
"Do any of you actually know what you're talking about? For example, how many deans who oversee classics also oversee biology and economics? Perhaps at small schools, but that's not the norm"
What universe do you live in? Many, many colleges/universities have "Arts and Sciences" divisions/colleges in which one dean oversees all such departments, including classics, bio, and econ. It is indeed a norm. At my university, we had someone in a tenured line leave for a tenured line at another place several years ago. We have been struggling ever since to get the position replaced. To be fair, though, all non-science departments have been struggling in this way along with us.
Let's get real for a second: those of us who are not getting jobs are actually the lucky ones. We're being forced out now, while, though we're old as fuck to be competing for entry-level jobs, we're still not THAT old (late twenties or thirties). The folks who are getting TT jobs now will mostly be pushed out by this same process, but after they've sunk many additional years of their lives into this field which is worthless in the eyes of society at large.
"Do any of you actually know what you're talking about? For example, how many deans who oversee classics also oversee biology and economics? Perhaps at small schools, but that's not the norm"
What universe do you live in? Many, many colleges/universities have "Arts and Sciences" divisions/colleges in which one dean oversees all such departments, including classics, bio, and econ. It is indeed a norm. At my university, we had someone in a tenured line leave for a tenured line at another place several years ago. We have been struggling ever since to get the position replaced. To be fair, though, all non-science departments have been struggling in this way along with us.
Oops. Now that I think of it, my own undergraduate school combined sciences with humanities. There are plenty of places that don't, though.
So which reason was it for you, 2:48, since you are obviously more invested in this question than your garden-variety devil's advocate? All of the above?
Let's get real for a second: those of us who are not getting jobs are actually the lucky ones. We're being forced out now, while, though we're old as fuck to be competing for entry-level jobs, we're still not THAT old (late twenties or thirties). The folks who are getting TT jobs now will mostly be pushed out by this same process, but after they've sunk many additional years of their lives into this field which is worthless in the eyes of society at large.
Do you people not enjoy reading Homer and Vergil? Do you agree that they are worthless?
I have a non-academic interview lined up for next week, but I have no doubt that the work I am doing now is better than the work that a good 90% of our society does. For that reason, I will always look for opportunities to convince others that they ought to be reading / supporting their local Classics department.
Loving Classics and realizing that it isn't a viable career in the society we live in are very different things.
These days I acknowledge and adapt to reality instead of raging against it; I wish I had been this way seven years ago. I never would have gone to grad school (in *any* discipline, but especially not in the humanities). I can always read Homer and Vergil on my own time without sweating blood trying in vain to get paid for it.
I have been on the job market for yrs, done sessional teaching and VAPs all over the place. I am fed with this this life and I very much want out. I have book with top press which is coming out by end of summer. Will that make a difference? does anybody know?
Will it make a difference? Who knows? Who can tell what goes through the minds of a committee. Some will take it as a sign that something is wrong with you: "Why didn't she get a job already, with a record like that?" Others will say, "Clearly she thinks she's hot shit, too good for us." The normal ones will say, "This profile is impressive, but it's not what we're looking for." Bottom line: it's all dumb luck.
I want to share something about going on the job market with a book. After I finished my book -- also with a major press -- I thought I was finally going to have a really blockbuster year on the market. But, in fact, I ended up getting fewer interviews than ever: a grand total of two. That said, all the finalists for one of the jobs had books out and I ended up getting the job. I think this confirms the statement that it's hard to know what a search committee is looking for. A book can either hurt, not help, or be necessary for getting a job. And, of course, it's important to remember that it only takes one interview to get a job.
Many thanks for your thoughts. This yr on the job market has been particularly devastating. Among my interviewers there were people who invited me to contribute to their own books in the past. All kinds of people that I never met in person but had contacts with for various projects. I hoped it would help, but it did not. Now, for the upcoming round, I have a book out and I should have a second one under contract. And I am depressed to no end.
Just a thought: I have no book (several articles) but lots of great references, excellent teaching evaluations, and on-going collaborative projects. I got a TT job the first time out. Now I'm a finalist for "the" job in my area a year later.
If the book wasn't the ticket for you the first time out, a second book might not do any better (however impressive). Try, instead, to look at your CV critically -- how can you make your CV look like a person they would want to work with? Sometimes too much scholarly production too early might read 1) they are going to putter out, or 2) they are going to make me look bad.
Again, just a thought, but maybe try to cover the spread some.
I'm glad you're hot shit and scored TT the first time. Good for you. But the 'dumb yourself down or you'll scare the natives' argument is troubling. You could be right - but if you are it makes academics look more pavid and squirrelly than they do otherwise. We really should counsel people on the market to hold off on their productivity so that mediocre middle age (or older) people who did not publish will in turn hire the candidate in question? We really want to endorse this? Maybe this is fine for teaching and touchy feelies, but it spells bad news for intellectualism in the academy.
Don't let's get shrill. I don't think it spells bad news for the academy per se. People can, and need to, rationalize any decision. And decisions when faced with many equally good options are very very difficult. It's like the proverbial ass between two piles of hay, except with job candidates. This isn't just a problem within classics or the academy.
Now, for the upcoming round, I have a book out and I should have a second one under contract.
Hmmm, that won't fly well with Professor Squeers on the Search Committee; think about breaking that contract and cannibalizing the individual chapters of your second book as articles in online journals, nothing peer-reviewed please. Alternatively, publish it pseudonymously, if possible through a vanity press or Amazon Print-on-Demand, and then send two applications to every position next year, one in your given and the other in your assumed name; ideally you would have no book at all, but since it's too late for that, two good applications are better than one outstanding one. To be on the safe side, you might send advance copies of the new book to a few enemies who owe you a disservice and have them write negative blurbs for the back cover. That way sales will be more likely to be low and reviews hostile. Source(s): no books, TT job first time out, Hor. Carm. 2.10
Re: Anon 8:06 So much of this process is down to luck (including something as basic as what year you finish your Ph.D.) that I simply don't think any one person's experience can provide generalized guidelines. But yes, 8:06, you have succeeded in making me hate you, in part because you seem too ready to take credit for your good fortune.
But, I am starting to think that I myself have become over the last few years a bit too obsessed with publications. I recently finished the PhD; I am in a temporary position; and I struggled to get a few interviews this year. I have no idea what I will be doing next year. I have, however, published several articles; and my book is under contract and will be out before long. All this to say, I am not hot shit, but I have published.
At what cost? I have missed lectures; I have put off reading that would have been good for me; I have missed opportunities for conversation. My teaching--my classes are better than most of the classes taught by the tenured jokes sitting across the hall fro me--it could have been better. Some people can do it all. I had family obligations that meant I could not. If you have managed to publish like mad and you have managed to remain human and interesting, then this should show in your CV and your recommendations. For those who still have time, I don't think it is bad advice to stress a little less about those publication lines on your CV. Another good idea would be to stop reading this stupid blog and to interact instead with non-anonymous human beings.
11:42 here. I just re-read my comment. Everyone from Harvard I have actually met has been very kind and intelligent. And I am deeply sick of the anti-elitism that believes we are all just as good as the people who got into the best graduate programs. If I could, I would retract the idiotic comment about Harvard, because it simply feeds non-thinking prejudices.
I read 8:06 as saying, "If you've already published a bunch, will publishing more make your application that much better, or would it be better to focus on building up your teaching or community service?" Like 11:42, I experience a real tension between teaching and research, but I have tended to err on the side of teaching (not just prepping my current classes more, but also attending pedagogy workshops, taking on independent studies, etc). Of course, every committee is looking for a different purple squirrel, but I think the question here is, in the absence of knowledge of a given committee's expectations, are two books better than one book + faculty advisor for student group + teaching award.
Someone said " Sometimes too much scholarly production too early might read 1) they are going to putter out."
No, no one ever thinks this. What are we, theoretical physicists? Too many publications might mean you seem right for job X and not for job Y, so Y will reject you.
And everyone is right who says you need to work on all areas of your game, esp. teaching and research.
As are those who say you can't fully predict what a department will like.
If you want to be be on Broadway, do you need to work on your singing, dancing, acting, or all three? Depends on the play.
Many issues are likely at play when considering how best to present yourself as a candidate. Overall within the academy I think that the time and energy for doing research is being reduced, owing to the loss of lines for full-time faculty in many departments and the increasing emphasis on part-time/adjunct teachers. To survive financially, part-time/adjunct professors often take on several courses per semester, while full-time faculty are seeing their own teaching and service requirements increase.
The extent to which this influences hiring decisions will vary from department to department, however. To return to the issue of when do multiple publications become bad (if this is even a relevant issue), perhaps a department will be cautious about a candidate with an extensive publication record who could become resentful when faced with reduced research time due to teaching and service commitments at a particular institution. Departments are well aware of the risks of losing lines when t-t holders leave for a different position (as discussed in this thread above). Of course, whether that actually is something that a search committee would even consider is speculative.
While research is an important component of the hiring process, I think one aspect that gets underemphasized is the performance of candidates in interviews and during on-campus visits. Search committees are looking for a future colleague, someone who may have an office next to theirs for the next two decades. A very impressive CV will likely not cancel out a bad impression. This is where mock interviews (if they are feasible to arrange), practicing dissertation summaries and other predictable questions aloud, and research into particular departments becomes paramount. What can get lost in the discussion about research, CVs, etc. is the short-term need to make as good an impression as possible in a very brief period. Yes, interviews at the APA/AIA can be random when it comes to choosing finalists, but there are ways to augment your own appeal. Evidence for long-term success is important (publication record, teaching experience), but it should coincide with an emphasis on preparing for the soul-shattering gauntlet that is the interview process.
Having just witnessed several searches at a SLAC (not all in classics, but all humanities), I can say that personal comportment, demeanor and a basic sense of "institutional fit" mattered far more to each of the committees than anyone's research.
To all the committees who had their searches cancelled, including dear old Cornell: look in the mirror. You are the curse and the corruption of this land.
Yes, a bar. not a frigging hotel room in some expensive place. Does anyone know why Cornell cancelled their search? As someone who did not make it, I would love to know!
The Cornell job was too narrowly defined. They invited applications from anyone working on "Greek and/or Latin literature" but they limited themselves to people from Earth. Next year if they advertise on Vulcan and Gallifrey they'll draw a better pool.
I tend to defend search committees, because searches are more complicated than people realize and they're making decisions on the basis of imperfect information. But Jesus, how incompetent or dysfunctional do you need to be to fail to identify one person you can hire in this market?
I'm fairly certain that Cornell did find someone they wanted to hire, but said person was also the top choice for another search.
A too-kind assessment might thus be that either the Cornell administration won't allow the department to make an offer to its second-favorite candidate (evidently this is a rule at some universities), or that the administration has a final-decision deadline too soon to bring another candidate to campus, or the like.
My sense of the situation at Cornell is similar to 12:38. This is not to discredit the possibility of dysfunction playing a role: it is amazing that 200 applicants could yield only one apparently suitable candidate. But if one's first choice does not work out, for whatever reason, you might imagine the difficulty in choosing between the few remaining candidates, each of whom presumably divided opinions amongst the faculty. This is also to completely ignore the possibility of external administrative pressures mentioned in the previous post.
This does not let the SC off the hook, of course, and it offers little consolation to those who applied and were overlooked. Perhaps one can take heart in the fact that—this being Cornell—the line probably has not died and there will likely be a search next year.
March 15, 2013 at 11:39 AM said: "you might imagine the difficulty in choosing between the few remaining candidates, each of whom presumably divided opinions amongst the faculty..."
Few remaining candidates? Weren't there about 200 applicants? This is "few" in some fields, but not in ours. I think I get the point you're making, but let's call this what it is, a plethora of applicants. If they can't choose a stellar option after their first choice falls through, then they have such absurd standards that the same search will fail again next year.
Re: Hawaii's EEO request, I'm far more likely to be honest on these "anonymous" forms after I know I'm not going to get the job than while the search is still in course. People who are likely to score better on the EEO scale than I do will naturally feel otherwise.
It's quite possible that the search committee didn't have enough time to bring out a fourth campus visitor before the deadline imposed by their administration, particularly if the first person to whom they made the offer took a couple of weeks to negotiate before choosing somewhere else.
My sense is that, regardless of the number of qualified applicants on the whole, once the campus visitors have been chosen, it becomes a pool of 3, not 200.
"My sense is that, regardless of the number of qualified applicants on the whole, once the campus visitors have been chosen, it becomes a pool of 3, not 200."
Yep. This is why one of those candidates needs to be someone you're sure no one else would employ, just in case.
At a place like Cornell (where there will be funding for a new search next year), you do not hire someone (for fifty years!) whom no one else would employ.
They are not eager to have dead weight as a colleague, nor are they eager to bring in someone just to deny them tenure.
Disclosure: I am without a job and bitter, but show some common sense.
(Temporarily dragging the conversation back 2-3 days...)
Like some who were posting the other day, I've also been on the market for several years, and also have produced a large amount of scholarship but do not yet have a book out, and now must once again wait a year for another shot at a tenure-track job. I just want those who know me to know that I'm not the one who wrote those other posts, especially since it would bother me if they were to read them and figure I was the one who wrote them, and were distressed to see me so distraught. Those who know me know that, like Tony Soprano, I wonder what ever happened to Gary Cooper, and therefore should realize without my telling them that I wouldn't have written those posts. But those who don't know me as well might be less skeptical, and jump to conclusions.
Obviously, there are a few of us out here in similar situations, but we react differently. Me, it's a mixture of optimism, gallows humor, and semi-obscure TV references.
Okay, now back to the Cornell-bashing, I guess. (Might I add that Cornell wait-listed me back when I was in high school? This failed search is the least of their crimes...)
"The principle of evaluation is the same on both the personality and the commodity market: on the one, personalities are offered for sale; on the other, commodities…only in exceptional cases is success predominantly the result of skill and of certain other human qualities like honesty, decency, and integrity…Success depends largely on how well a person sells himself on the market, how well he gets his personality across, how nice a “package” he is…
The fact that in order to have success it is not sufficient to have the skill and equipment for performing a given task but that one must be able to “put across” one’s personality in competition with others shapes the attitude toward oneself…since success depends largely on how one sells one’s personality, one experiences oneself as a commodity or rather simultaneously as the seller and the commodity to be sold…self-esteem depends on conditions beyond his control. If he is “successful,” he is valuable; if he is not, he is worthless. The degree of insecurity which results from this orientation can hardly be overestimated…Hence one is driven to strive relentlessly for success, and any setback is a severe threat to one’s self-esteem; helplessness, insecurity, and inferiority feelings are the result. If the vicissitudes of the market are the judges of one’s value, the sense of dignity and pride is destroyed…"- Erich Fromm, Man for Himself (1947).
Antiphon, it is common opinion among us in regard to beauty and wisdom that there is an honourable and a shameful way of bestowing them. For to offer one's beauty for money to all comers is called prostitution; but we think it virtuous to become friendly with a lover who is known to be a man of honour. So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of wisdom, but we think that he who makes a friend of one whom he knows to be gifted by nature, and teaches him all the good he can, fulfils the duty of a citizen and a gentleman. — X. Mem. 1.6.13
I have no job for next year, and I am as depressed and self-loathing as the next person out there.
I was particularly bitter this morning at a certain individual until I happened to run into them and realized that they had been going out of their way to help me in my job search, rather than sabotage it. This story is just a reminder that depression skews your outlook on the world, and there are a lot of wonderful human beings out there (in positions of power and in subordinate roles). We do ourselves a disservice to allow the systems of late capitalism to control our own thinking.
As always, it's best to reserve impressions of where most of the hires come from till some significant portion of the positions have posted outcomes. Stanford had a big jump in its representatives on the wiki just now because Stanford just posted its current year placement results for current and past students on its website and somebody transcribed them to the wiki. It's smart for Stanford to publicize its placements, but it's helpful to recognize that you know all of Stanford's results so far right now because Stanford is advertising them, while you don't know results from institutions that haven't done that yet.
It's really not all that surprising, especially if you're talking history/archaeology. There are four or five programs that will always be on top with the programs in the lead changing periodically. Stanford and Penn happen to be on top now with Berkeley, Michigan, and maybe Brown waiting their turn when faculty turnover and other subtle shifts change the pecking order. Stanford just happens to be the one firing on all cylinders these days.
Princeton's classical archaeology is art history based like Columbia's. Harvard and Chicago's programs are ill-defined to say the least and don't seem to care all that much about archaeology these days. Cincinnati has great archaeology but its philology and overall rep are mediocre. There are smaller programs out there like Bryn Mawr that are successful, but they'll never have the resources to compete for a top spot.
Re failed searches: Here, the SC has to send the Dean a list of the top five candidates after the preliminary interviews. The pool then becomes a pool of exactly five and no more than five, no matter how many applicants there originally were. Yes, it's insane.
The pool can't expand beyond those five names. If the first three don't work out -- for whatever reason -- we are SOMETIMES (not always) allowed to bring a fourth candidate. But if none of the four visits work out, that's it. Failed search, no appeal. Even worse, if we're late off the block and the first three or four people we call for interviews have already accepted another job, we still can't go further down the list. We get to interview just two, or even just one. The SC can scream, wail, cry all they want, but that's the rule. We're not allowed to dip further down into the pool than the five names we sent the Dean, no matter what.
I was on a search some years ago where, as it happened, our first three choices ALL accepted other offers. We were allowed to bring a fourth candidate, who bombed (it happens). We were not allowed to bring a fifth candidate. Blam, failed search. We'd had over 100 applicants, but we could not revisit our rankings.
So it's not quite as simple as saying "How the hell could you not find a single qualified candidate in THIS market?" The adminstration's rules become increasingly Kafkaesque all the time, and departments are left with failed searches. We KNOW there are great people out there, we would love to bring more candidates out, but as it happens the ones we chose went elsewhere and we don't get to do a retake.
Just curious: how badly do you have to bomb for a search to fail over it? Are we talking "Bill over here really doesn't like your approach to x even though it is clearly defensible and is a position held by others in the subfield" or something more like "Dear God, will you please stop humping the students during your teaching demonstration?"
NB: It must be one or the other. No middle ground will be accepted.
Yes, the rules put forth by administrators can be inhibiting. Still, we are to blame as well. For one, I'm still surprised by how little thought often goes into the composition of SCs. Members often don't care or care about the wrong things. With the inbreeding that's prevalent in our discipline, this often leads to a relatively small, homogenous group of "it" finalists that seem to vie for more jobs than they can fill every year. After these handful of candidates accept positions, often dragging their feet until the last moment possible, a bunch of searches are left scrambling so they don't fail. I've had the misfortune of seeing especially gory searches from both sides and it's not pretty. You don't know whether to laugh or cry. There are quality searches out there run by good people, but they're a small minority from my experience.
Agreed. Yes, it sucks that SCs can't go past four or so flybacks. Doesn't it say something that searches (especially for generalists) seem to all come to the independent conclusion that six or seven of the same candidates each year are their finalists? Out of hundreds of applicants, I find it difficult to believe that less than ten are stellar. Plus how many of us have seen one of these so called "it" candidates flame out and not get tenure six years later? So we're somehow inbred to think a narrow group of candidates are the cat's meow yet we're obviously overvaluing traits that are more particular to classics (while overlooking general traits that make a good academic outside departmental walls). Shoot me now.
"Just curious: how badly do you have to bomb for a search to fail over it?"
In the failed search I mentioned yesterday, where candidate four "bombed", it was a combination of two things: a teaching demonstration in which the candidate mumbled, was inaudible, and made several elementary factual mistakes AND a research presentation that was rambling, incoherent, not on the topic the candidate had said s/he'd talk on, and on a topic that had nothing to do with the position as advertised (I'm not going to give specifics, but the disconnect was as great as if a candidate for a position in Latin elegy gave a job talk on Greek tragedy). In short, the Job Candidate From Hell. And yet this person had looked wonderful on paper (with letters talking about her/his stellar teaching!) and had interviewed well at the APA.
The SC was unanimous on this one -- better a failed search than this person as a colleague. But it was very painful not to be allowed to go back into our files and bring out another candidate.
"For one, I'm still surprised by how little thought often goes into the composition of SCs."
For those of us in tiny departments, this is a non-existent issue. All of us serve on the SC automatically and the Dean assigns us one "outside member" -- the Dean's pick, not ours. The luxury of having a large enough department that you're not all on the SC is almost unimaginable to me ...
A friend and I were reminiscing about a bomb of a campus visit some years ago. It came time for teaching the class and X was nowhere to be found. Then they found him in the library, looking up information he needed for his lecture. When told it was time for the class, he wanted to stay and keep looking things up. And this was only one of about a dozen things he did that were crazy. He overslept for a breakfast meeting, right in the hotel, and when called said "I'll be down in a half hour."
But it doesn't have to be a bomb. It can be a Department saying that if we hire this person, he or she will fall short of what we need, and neither the dept nor the person will be well served. When you hire the wrong person, it's hell for both you and the person, especially at tenure time. It's important for hiring SCs to do as much work as they can before making invites, but people make mistakes.
Come on, as if failed searches are always the fault of the candidates - either being too good or too bad. Most of the time it's because of dysfunctional, factional departments; one side supports candidate A and the other side(s) do everything in their power to prevent that candidate from getting the job. In such situations, a failed search is better than letting one's enemies get what they want! And the sabotaging faculty can always argue (self-servingly, but perhaps rightly) that it's better that the candidate not get the job, then that he/she gets sacrificed later down the line when coming up for tenure...
Yeah. Harvard obviously interviewed the best candidates in the field, and, because they are Harvard, they didn't even have to worry about tenuring the candidate, since that's not how they roll. But that search still failed. Why? Because fuck you, that's why.
The Harvard search failed because they made an offer and the candidate declined. The same candidate also declined the Cornell job, which likewise failed.
It is possible that at either or both places there was a desire on the part of many faculty to make an additional offer, but this can be awkward when part of the process of convincing the dean to make a competitive initial offer involves demonstrating the unparalleled virtues of the first choice.
Why make excuses for these committees? They let us all down and there will probably be fewer jobs in the field next year because they fumbled and failed this time around. Does it really matter whether candidates bombed or turned down offers (at Ivy League schools!)? Whether committees bickered childishly or made poor decisions? The more I know about the details (and in some cases I know much more than can be revealed on FV), the less I care for excuses. Bottom line: South Florida didn't even interview at the APA, yet they filled their T-T position before anyone else. Harvard, Cornell et al. couldn't figure out how to close the deal. It's embarrassing and absurd, and I hope they're sufficiently humiliated.
The same candidate declined both jobs. This candidate already had a job and in the end decided to keep it, which I am sure was a blow to the egos of both Ivy League programs.
What exactly is your point? That there are actually three tenure-track positions involved here, but only one candidate in the whole classics universe worthy to hold any one of them? Don't you think this is utterly absurd?
Harvard or Cornell are not going to lose these positions. The third place has not lost a position. In the short term teaching at both places will be given to others in need. Failed searches happen. It's not a big deal.
Care to share from what privileged perspective you make this observation? For the tenured, obviously none of this is a big deal -- you are gambling with someone else's money. For the contingent, these sorts of decisions can make or break careers.
Good for her for deciding to stay where she is: higher quality of life, and a great job. Why give that up to chase a place "higher" on the ladder of prestige? Plus, she no doubt used both offers to score some serious benefits at her home institution, for her and for her colleagues. Well played, miz, well played! Were we all so fortunate and wise.
I certainly don't resent the apparently amazing candidate in question. What I can't understand is in what universe these two very prestigious departments are somehow *not allowed* (per the explanations here) to offer the position to a second choice. Are Deans really such absolute rulers of all they survey? How is that good for the university system?
May we consider the absurd possibility that these were bogus (closed, rather than open) searches designed to attract specific candidates, and that the departments in question would rather leave a "position" open than give the job to one of the unworthy who interviewed on campus? Or do we all agree that the deans make these decisions for us? It's certainly noble for tenured faculty to leverage offers from status institutions into better conditions for themselves, but why should the open position disappear when they eventually turn it down?
The candidate probably updated it themselves without giving the department the time to notify other candidates. But the department should get on that A.S.A.P. because that just leaves bad feelings.
Is it too early for 2013-2014? Rumor is that Vanderbilt will be hiring this fall. All of their junior faculty are leaving, so it is best to consider this announcement a warning. I'll have more to say when the search is underway, but for now I strongly advise against applying to Vanderbilt. The department is in disarray and their chair is a horrendous chair and colleague.
I know no details about the chair at Vanderbilt or what's causing problems there, but one cannot but become aware of noxious fumes when one's canary suddenly keels over while in the coal mine.
Yes, Vanderbilt is a place that I will not apply to, should I still be on the market next year. There is clearly something badly amiss in that department and/or elsewhere in the school.
A question from those of us just entering the cycle of moving each year for the next VAP, to those of you who have done this for years now, with or without eventually landing a tenure-track job:
A question from those of us just entering the cycle of moving each year for the next VAP, to those of you who have done this for years now, with or without eventually landing a tenure-track job:
Is it worth it?
emphatically no. but it is, like the rest of this business, a crap shoot. decide how much of your life and your security you want to gamble on this lunacy. and take your cases. you might win. you might lose. you might be caught up in the endless life-cycle of the adjunct while new t-t jobs go to sweet, impressionable young things that the tweedy sabertooths can sculpt to their liking. you might go postal. good luck. (p.s. i scored t-t after VAP hell, but i would not advise anyone doing it).
It is good advice to take some time to think about whether you really want to go through the VAP experience. If you have children or spouses the VAP positions can come at a high cost to family happiness. Yet, they can be beneficial, too, if you decide to pursue them. I had several VAP positions before I got a t-t job, and while they were financially tough and stressful in terms of never being able to use summers for research (always moving and looking for a new place to live, etc.), I have found that my experience at different types of institutions, from small liberal arts college to major state university, has paid off at my t-t institution. Knowledge of how other institutions work, how students differ, and contacts made, have helped my career. Going through them was horrible at the time, but I value the experiences, now.
Warning for those actually deciding now whether they should pursue the gamble that is the VAP circuit: both of these replies could easily produce Survivor's Bias.
I will tell you that going through this "process" (a charitable word) when you have small children is a cruel, cruel joke. I say forget about it unless you're willing to put your life on hold indefinitely.
the 'process' can directly cost you a marriage (I know several cases), make supporting children impossible, make you thus delay having children (thus, possibly never), shackle you with debts from under which you may never climb, and generally imperil your having a stable, healthy life. ask yourself if the slim shot at tenure (as an end goal) and the perpetual teaching of a narrow raft of material can make the above conditions bearable. As one who has devoted years to the game and produced much scholarship, I say the answer is probably not. This is a cruel, arbitrary, and often heartless arena. Most of those ideas of classicists in some blissful, toga-draped nirvana are just cotton candy dreams. Good luck to the next contingent who fill the VAP ranks and step out over the void (think Wile E. Coyote).
I find these VAP comments silly. There's nothing wrong with a visiting position in this market. There are great people coming out of great programs who have to take visiting positions before moving on to t-t (or not). Most visiting positions are *not* hell.. Nor are all t-t positions shangri la.
I find these VAP comments silly. There's nothing wrong with a visiting position in this market. There are great people coming out of great programs who have to take visiting positions before moving on to t-t (or not). Most visiting positions are *not* hell.. Nor are all t-t positions shangri la.
how many vaps have you done, Anonymous? where did they lead you?
I am someone who survived the VAP circuit (3 years) to go on to a t-t position. Hindsight is 20-20. It was definitely worth it because I got a decent job in the end, but if I hadn't.... I can't lie: it totally sucked.
I think one thing to consider in this is what kind of VAP it is. Is it more than one year? Is it a post doc with a reduced course load? And is it at a good institution? The institution can really matter because (1) it is a good sign of what league you are in (in other words, if all you are getting are offers from schools you'd never heard of before with 4-4 loads, forget the dreams of teaching at an R-1)(2) a good name will help you along and (3) you are more likely to have colleagues there who can go to bat for you in a meaningful way on the job market. (Well, if they care. This can be one of the advantages of a VAP in a top-ranked SLAC-- colleagues who are respected in the field, but don't have graduate students they are already shilling for. You are like their graduate student, and they want to help you. This is what happened for me.) VAPs of this type-- multi-year or reduced course load and/or at a top institution-- may be worth it. I'm not sure about a couple of years of anything less than that though.
I didn't have kids then, but I do now, and I would say that if you have kids, don't do it unless it is for a multi-year job. It's a tough call, though. I know you gotta feed those kids. It's hard no matter what.
To carve out a reasonably normal and civilized existence in academia today, you really have to thread the needle -- either land a T-T job straight away, at a place where someone like you will actually be able to get tenure, or get lucky with a VAP that turns out well -- multiple years, supportive colleagues, the possibility of the position becoming permanent. Anecdotes are nice, but I would really like to see is statistics -- how many of the young people now accepting these positions, VAP or T-T, will get tenure in the end? Surely less than 50%? Maybe less than 30%? How many of those happy few will be satisfied with the way their lives turned out, having sacrificed so much along the way?
I could go on and on, but this article says everything I could want to say. For me, it was deadly accurate: Just Visiting
One way to look at whether or not VAP positions are likely to lead to t-t positions is to look at this Wiki and see who is hired for what job (once this information is known and entered on the Wiki). Last year and this year, at least, there were many people who were in visiting positions who went on to t-t positions.
Sure, you could approach many unpleasant truths this way: e.g. there were a million soldiers in the Union army on May 1, 1865, so the Civil War couldn't have been that bad! But it's hard to make rational decisions unless you weigh the good against the bad -- in this case, how many VAPs go on to get tenure (not just a T-T job) vs. how many, sooner or later, leave academia.
I was just looking at server positions at local restaurants, doing the math, and realizing that I could totally make more money doing that than I could working the same hours as an adjunct for another year.
Have someone (your advisor, or someone else) read and vet your recommendation letters for you. I've come across at least one instance where a recommender has inadvertently or not thrown the applicant under the bus.
Isn't it unethical, as a letter writer, to do that? Shouldn't you simply *tell* the candidate that you don't think they cut it, so that they can move on with their lives, rather than passive-aggressively being encouraging to their face and destroying them in the letter, so that they spend years fighting a lost cause thinking you have their back? Fuck, if I were a faculty member pulling shit like that, I'd be worried about the candidate finding out after a couple of years and going on a fucking rampage.
You're welcome, 3:57 PM. I was answering the question April 3, 2013 at 8:57 PM asked me. This conversation stems from the question of whether VAPs are worth it. Obviously it works out for some and not for others. Perhaps if you're a worthless piece of shit who finds the bad side of everything, it tends not to work out for you.
Isn't it unethical, as a letter writer, to do that? Shouldn't you simply *tell* the candidate that you don't think they cut it, so that they can move on with their lives, rather than passive-aggressively being encouraging to their face and destroying them in the letter, so that they spend years fighting a lost cause thinking you have their back? Fuck, if I were a faculty member pulling shit like that, I'd be worried about the candidate finding out after a couple of years and going on a fucking rampage.
Given that the advice concerns an instance in which the reader of the letter isn't even sure that this was deliberate undercutting, there is a lot of jumping to conclusions in this comment.
It's definitely true, though, that you want someone to vet your letters; if there's a weak effort or one that does a poor job of presenting you, you'll want to get another one.
I can't see why this would be something an SC member would be in favor of, however. The "under the bus" letter presumably gave information that the SC regarded as valuable and probably true; otherwise, it wouldn't have materially affected their decisions about the candidacy. If I'm a search committee member, why would I want a recommender to conceal from me information or views that, if I knew them, would affect whether I wanted to pursue an application?
Does anyone know what's happening with Austin College? He said at the APA they'd be contacting people in February, and as far as I know nothing else has happened...
First, I think every candidate has the right to know which letters may endanger the application so that s/he can pull those. When I was applying for T/T jobs, my adviser had no problem vetting my letters for me and giving his opinion on them.
Second, we all know that there is a certain amount of whitewashing and glossing over that happens when we put together an application. This is inevitable; and as it should be when we're trying to put our best foot forward. BUT SC committees know this too, and are very good at sorting out doxa from episteme, smoke and mirrors from the real deal.
Any advice on how to tactfully vet your letters, then? I can't exactly imagine asking my letter writers to send an extra copy to my advisor or colleague, just to see what they wrote...
Any advice on how to tactfully vet your letters, then? I can't exactly imagine asking my letter writers to send an extra copy to my advisor or colleague, just to see what they wrote...
I guess it's dependent on your Ph.D. institution maintaining a dossier for you that your adviser or placement director can just go look at. I don't think there's a tactful way to ask your recommenders to submit a copy of their letter for vetting.
If you're using Interfolio, it's perfectly acceptable to have your dossier sent to a trusted advisor to vet them. If your school maintains your dossier, they may allow your advisor to go and review them. It's also perfectly reasonable when you're asking for a rec to ask: "Are you willing to write me a *strong* letter?" If someone is enthusiastic about writing for you, they will answer yes. If they're not, this will give them an opportunity to say no.
When I see doom and gloom like the Slate article 10:21 posted, I am reminded of something a wealthy family friend said to me in winter 2009. At that point there had been huge losses in the stock market, and he was feeling much less wealthy than in 2007. He asserted that the stock market would never recover all its losses in his life time. Here we are four years later, he's still alive, and the market is at new highs.
What does this have to do with Classics? We're in year five of a brutal job market. But things are never as bad as they seem at the bottom (nor as good as they seem at the top). Yes, there are some real fundamental problems that are challenges for our field. But in five years I predict that things will look much better...though I'm sure there will still be people on message boards bemoaning their fate. If you love this field, hang in there.
Such a statement belies the author's own likely job security. Those who have been 'hanging on' as visitors and/or adjuncts for 3-5 years can scarcely afford to wait 5 more year and see if Chicken Little is to be proven wrong. One could also hope for real, positive change in the humanities. But hold your breath for 'the love of the field'? Get real.
you can 'love the field' as much as you want - it will never 'love' you back. We're all cogs in an inefficient machine. Unwise to think of it as some lovey-dove, hunky dory nerd family.
what's to love, honestly? The taint of the b.s. makes the intellectual pursuits seem a little sour after a time. Or the demands of the drudge of the job leaves little time for the reason you got in the biz in the first place.
It will be interesting to see how the market treats those who are out 5+ years when/if things start to look up again. I suppose a lot will depend on much people have published despite the punishing teaching loads. I do agree that things are never as bad or as good as they seem at bottom/top. Not that such things make it any better for those who are suffering.
5+ years out with lots of publications is a not a good place to be when the choice candidates are the ones with fresh ink on their diplomas. #jobmarketfail
But hold your breath for 'the love of the field'? Get real.
Well what would you describe what you're doing? Apparently you haven't left the field if you're on Famae. To clarify, by "field" I mean the discipline of Classics: Plato, Homer, whatever got you to go to grad school. I can't imagine anyone loves the system of the academy. I apologize for the ambiguity.
At that point there had been huge losses in the stock market, and he was feeling much less wealthy than in 2007. He asserted that the stock market would never recover all its losses in his life time. Here we are four years later, he's still alive, and the market is at new highs.
What does this have to do with Classics? We're in year five of a brutal job market. But things are never as bad as they seem at the bottom (nor as good as they seem at the top). Yes, there are some real fundamental problems that are challenges for our field. But in five years I predict that things will look much better...though I'm sure there will still be people on message boards bemoaning their fate.
I'm sorry, but this is totally fatuous. The stock market is not in any meaningful way comparable to a specific industry. If you want to say that higher education is like the housing industry and that the labor market there will inevitably bounce back because we have more people, people need places to live, and somebody has to build those places, fine. And if you want to say that higher education is like manufacturing, or print media, or book and music retail, where technology makes many of the jobs that are lost obsolete and where therefore there will never be any meaningful recovery, that's fine, too. But just saying that the stock market's bounced back so everything will eventually bounce back is nonsense: the stock market has bounced back, but it did so without the job market for record store clerks suddenly looking up.
You're right that the stock market does not correlate with the job market in any given industry, perhaps especially classics.
As a point of fact, I did not claim that the stock market is like the classics job market. My point is that humans tend to overestimate the predicative power of recent experiences as a baseline for what will happen in the future. I.e., recency bias (http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/tomorrows-market-probably-wont-look-anything-like-today/).
When things are good, we tend to think they will continue to be good in the future and vice versa. Recency bias applies to stock markets, sports, coin flips, and the classics job market.
I don't particularly care about this argument, but would just like to point out that someone in 2007 believing that the stock market might take years and years to recover is not really an example of recency bias.
Moreover, since we are by no means out of this fiscal crisis, for all we know this could be a temporary peak before the stock market loses a lot of value (as some are predicting)... which would make your claim that the market has recovered itself an example of recency bias!
One of the basic questions in play here was whether someone who has not succeeded yet in making it in to a TT position should hold on for another year of temporary / contingent teaching.
I don't know whether there is good evidence of how being on the market for multiple years affects one's statistical odds of getting a TT job.
Here is my anecdotal evidence:
ABD: 5 applications out, 1 school was interested but ultimately did not interview me, 1 interview for a dream job.
Dissertation finished: 3 APA interviews, one temporary position very late in the season.
One year out: 3 APA interviews, nothing definite so far.
In my own experience, my best opportunities were all while I still was young and inexperienced.
Now that I have experience, my prospects seem to have leveled off, and the only question is whether I can manage in difficult financial circumstances long enough to find my perfect job. My advice: go all out while you are still young, i.e. before you finish your dissertation. You may never get another chance at the job you wanted.
I agree with April 6, 2013 at 9:21 PM, continued experience in teaching and scholarship seems to equal the law of diminishing returns for t-t employment, at least in some cases.
I went through the Classics Job wiki for this year and the prior two years (2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13). I count 25 examples of individuals accepting T-T jobs who only had their graduate program beside their name (and thus may have gotten the job their first time on the market).
I count 54 instances in which individuals accepting T-T jobs have more than one institution next to their name (and thus held another position prior to this job).
It's not clear from the wiki whether these individuals were VAP, T-T, or had post-docs in their prior position. I also saw several instances where individuals that I know held a visiting position did not have that position listed next to the announcement of their T-T job. I also excluded instances where I knew that a person was moving from one T-T position to another.
While these are rough numbers, it appears likely that people are getting T-T jobs after holding a NTT position at a significantly higher rate than people who have never held a NTT position.
I apologize in advance if someone has already brought up these numbers. I do not claim to have read all 950+ posts.
April 6, 2013 at 9:21 PM, thank you for sharing. I wonder if you'd be willing to provide a little context. Have you published anything since you began as a VAP? In the years that you've been on the market have any other people from your graduate program gotten T-T jobs? If so, how many?
While these are rough numbers, it appears likely that people are getting T-T jobs after holding a NTT position at a significantly higher rate than people who have never held a NTT position.
From my perspective at a graduate program, proceeding from an NTT to a TT has become the "new normal" model, replacing an "old normal" path from Ph.D. straight to TT. There are still a percentage who land a TT the first time out, but it is now much smaller, and many of those who would once also have gotten a TT right away now start with an NTT and then get a TT within a window of a few years. The fraction who six or seven years ago would have gotten an NTT and used that to move up to a TT are those for whom things have gotten really bad, because now some of them aren't getting anything. But the whole addition of a new stage of temporary employment of NTT before TT is itself maddening, because it doesn't benefit these folks in any way: it's just an extra thing to do, involving additional uprooting and extended stress, and not asking them to prove anything about themselves that they couldn't have done if hired straight into a TT job.
I do think, additionally, that it is worth thinking about whether it's correct to rage about "bright shiny new things" hogging the jobs, because it's clear that many institutions with TT jobs to offer are actually crediting people's experience in temporary positions and using it to prefer those people to newly minted Ph.D.s. And that makes sense! It's nice to know somebody's not going to melt down when they have to teach more than one class at a time.
This is an improvement from the past, when having only gotten a VAP might have been cause for concern, and the reason why this improvement has happened is that SCs in general are aware that the the job market has gotten far tighter, and that there are fantastic candidates who were only able to get temporary jobs. I do not think however that this understanding has become infinite, and I think that it's still possible to spend "too much" time in temporary jobs and pass the "Sell By" date (I'm not endorsing this thinking, merely characterizing it). People who have spent a few years in temporary jobs are now however very viable candidates.
So it's good, I guess, that expectations have adjusted somewhat to existing conditions. The basic problem however is that, in the continuing existence of a vast gap between the number of jobs and the number of candidates, a lot of new Ph.D.s and a lot of people with temporary jobs are screwed, no matter what SC expectations are.
It would be nice to have more information about who snagged T-T jobs this year, and where they were coming from (i.e. grad school plus previous gigs). Why aren't the people who have accepted jobs (or placement directors, or hiring departments) posting this information on the wiki? C'mon, don't be shy, folks!
The best way to get a fairly decent set of data, which could then answer these questions, is to peruse all of the old APA job listings, and then match those up with the APA newsletter announcements, and the websites of the hiring departments.
This would then let you coordinate job announcements with hirings, and figure out what the status of the person was when they were hired (ABD, PHD, NTT elsewhere, internal, transitive TT, etc.) The further you go back the more statistically significant will be the data.
This takes time, however, so I nominate one of us unemployed people to do it. I would, except I have two children and a part-time temp job keeping me busy. Anybody else want to volunteer?
I managed to get hired for a T-T this year. Last year I was on the market as an ABD, sent out 40+ applications, got one (non APA) interview for a 1 year VAP and wound up with the job.
This year, that same school ended up running a T-T search. I applied widely again (~30 apps), still only nabbed one interview (where I was already employed), which turned into a campus interview, which turned into me getting a tenure track job as an inside candidate.
And I know it was 95% luck. I did not get the job because I was the best scholar (I'm not), or because there weren't better teachers (there are), or because of my publishing record (mediocre at best). It was mostly "institutional fit." But really, it was luck. Pure, dumb luck.
It is easy to become embittered when years of work and struggle results in a few ntt jobs and then nothing. One knows the risks. Since there will never be enough tt jobs for all of the PhDs who want one (and are qualified), a bigger question is whether our discipline ought to think about a broader spectrum professional training for PhD students. For instance, classics could branch out and embrace digital humanities, for example, as part of its standard curriculum. Curricula could include more methodological courses in various areas (stats, GIS, sampling, education) to improve the post-PhD employment chances. It is a helpless feeling to arrive at 30-something (or 40-something), decide to abandon the academic pursuit, and then be told that a) your work was worthless and b) many prospective employers will hold against you the fact that you hold a doctorate. Since PhD programs are not going to slack off the rate at which they produce students, they ought to be a bit more up front with students and adjust their (often woefully antediluvian) curricula accordingly.
You may not understand what recency bias means. And noting that the stock market has recovered is a statement about the present (i.e., major indices are trading higher than they were prior to the recession). It is not in any sense a claim about what will happen in the future. Other than that, thanks for your insight.
I am not discounting the frustration and disappointment that people who have been on the market for several year with little or nothing to show for it are experiencing. There are good people out there who deserve decent jobs.
I am only trying to offer a small reason for limited optimism. Just because the Classics job market has sucked for the last 4-5 years doesn't mean that it will continue to suck. Those who feel that way may be succumbing to recency bias.
Aside from HS teaching, I've never heard anyone propose alternative career paths that involve reading, researching, or teaching any Greek or Latin whatsoever. Does anyone have any ideas about this?
Speaking only from my own perspective, this is what's finally so depressing about the talk of "transferring skills" and "training for plan B".
Well, to some limited extent, a career/vocation in ministry could allow for some work with Latin and/or Greek. But I cannot think of much else beyond that.
If you become a fallen classicist, like me, there's nothing preventing you from reading Latin and Greek. But if you decide to do something else professionally, by choice or necessity, it's best to focus on that, whatever it is, and let Greek and Latin be a leisure pursuit.
It's a pity that museums, libraries, and publishing all got liquidated at the same time as the academy, because those might have been interesting alternative paths.
Okay, that's enough wallowing. Time to polish off this conference paper!
Anyone have an idea about what the job market for teaching high school is like? Do they want Classics PhDs? In theory one could teach a better caliber of student at an elite independent school than at a third rate college. And perhaps even live in a desirable location. The money probably isn't worse, right?
How do these British and Australian TT-equivalent jobs work for American applicants, given that they don't interview until June for hires starting in September? Do people who get them then leave whatever VAP they already have lined up high and dry?
Kudos to all the departments which now specify in their ads the kinds of things they expect when they use the phrase "evidence of teaching effectiveness". That's immensely helpful.
I'm not sure why one poster up above is so distressed about people having to hold one or two VAP's before getting a t-t position -- I find it senseless for departments to hire anyone who hasn't done some teaching beyond grad school. And I find it doubly senseless for top programs to do so, especially when it's a buyer's market. I'm thinking here of one tip-top program that hired someone a few years back without knowing that he was incompetent. (Whether they have discovered this yet I do not know.) I'm also thinking of another top program that saddled itself with not one, but two, duds who came straight out of top programs. And I'm thinking of my own graduate institution, which hired an ABD who proved to be seriously flawed in the classroom. There are, of course, numerous examples of those who came straight from grad school and did everything they were expected to. But why would a department want to engage in risky behavior?
I'm not sure why one poster up above is so distressed about people having to hold one or two VAP's before getting a t-t position -- I find it senseless for departments to hire anyone who hasn't done some teaching beyond grad school. And I find it doubly senseless for top programs to do so, especially when it's a buyer's market.
Presumably because the person was viewing the situation from the perspective of people seeking jobs, not from your perspective, which seems to assume that the only thing worth considering is what's good for institutions.
You all are being unfair to April 7, 2013 at 6:34 PM. The poster's point should give hope to those who have/will secure VAP positions because they will have a better shot at getting a t-t position in the future. As was pointed out yesterday, over the last 3 years more than twice as many t-t jobs have gone to people who have held a position elsewhere (usually NTT) than to people who are straight out of grad school. It's the new (or current) normal.
Some of you sound like raw grad students who are angry you're not immediately being given an endowed chair at an Ivy. Your first time on the market you should be happy to get anything. Getting a job makes you one of the lucky ones. Many don't.
I'm sure someone is going to chime in about how bad their adjunct job is now. But really, think of how many other applicants you beat out. You may not like the job; but you were still one of the chosen few.
"I’d rather slave on earth for another man, some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive, than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”
I'm not sure why one poster up above is so distressed about people having to hold one or two VAP's before getting a t-t position -- I find it senseless for departments to hire anyone who hasn't done some teaching beyond grad school. And I find it doubly senseless for top programs to do so, especially when it's a buyer's market.
Presumably because the person was viewing the situation from the perspective of people seeking jobs, not from your perspective, which seems to assume that the only thing worth considering is what's good for institutions.
No, I was actually viewing the situation with regard to what is best for the students. (Remember them? Two of the four I mentioned have performed poorly as teachers, another is not competent to oversee graduate students, and the fourth is probably a pretty good teacher but does not publish.) If there is someone who is not up to snuff in the classroom I don't care how much he/she wants a tenure-track job -- I hope he/she does not get it. And I believe that institutions can make better decisions regarding tenure-track hires when their candidates have had to prove themselves beyond grad school.
You say, "You all are being unfair to April 7, 2013 at 6:34 PM. The poster's point should give hope to those who have/will secure VAP positions because they will have a better shot at getting a t-t position in the future. As was pointed out yesterday, over the last 3 years more than twice as many t-t jobs have gone to people who have held a position elsewhere (usually NTT) than to people who are straight out of grad school. It's the new (or current) normal."
Again, you are missing the point completely. What percentage of folks who take temporary positions end up eventually securing a TT? That is the question that is important, right now, for those considering whether to continue with the VAP circuit. It has nothing to do with feeling sorry for myself, and I look nothing like Clint Eastwood, so I don't know why you are bringing him up! Even if we assume, very generously, that 50% of the people who start on the VAP circuit eventually land a tenure track job, that is no reason to assume that even 2-3 years of moving across the country is worth it for everyone. Get over the fact that I might not find your tenure track life to be as desirable as you seem to think I should!
That last sentence was spoken with the bitterness that comes from knowing that grad programs will on the whole continue to pump out graduates without changing anything, because it is in their own short term self-interest to do so.
grad programs will on the whole continue to pump out graduates without changing anything, because it is in their own short term self-interest to do so.
First off, this isn't true, as I've said before. As state support declines, the number of people admitted to grad programs at state institutions is also declining. But the effects of that won't be felt on the market for a few years; the financial crisis of 2007-2008 only began affecting admissions for 2009.
Second, laying all responsibility at the door of graduate programs is unfair and childish. For one thing, people completing their Ph.D.s now went into graduate school with pre-recession economic expectations; the world into which they are graduating is a radically different one, and the programs didn't have any more inkling of the looming calamity than applicants did. For another, don't individuals actively seek admission to graduate programs and then voluntarily accept offers of admission and continue in those programs year after year after year without leaving, and don't they thereby have agency and responsibility for their own choices? Or do people mainly end up in graduate school through getting kidnapped by pirates and taken and kept there in chains?
My own feeling is that we should have fewer Ph.D. programs in Classics. But it would be a Hell of a lot easier to have fewer of them if people weren't falling all over themselves to be admitted to them. And at least in my experience trying to keep an undergraduate from applying to grad school once they've got the idea in their heads is like trying to reason with a bear that's trying to get into a trash can: they're going to get their heads down in that delicious trash, and they don't really care what discouraging noises you're making while they're trying to do it.
Actually, that's probably unfair to bears, as my understanding is that if you yell and wave your arms, they might actually stop what they're doing and leave.
Again, you are missing the point completely. What percentage of folks who take temporary positions end up eventually securing a TT? That is the question that is important, right now, for those considering whether to continue with the VAP circuit. It has nothing to do with feeling sorry for myself, and I look nothing like Clint Eastwood, so I don't know why you are bringing him up! Even if we assume, very generously, that 50% of the people who start on the VAP circuit eventually land a tenure track job, that is no reason to assume that even 2-3 years of moving across the country is worth it for everyone. Get over the fact that I might not find your tenure track life to be as desirable as you seem to think I should!
I don't understand: is your complaint that there aren't enough T-T jobs or that T-T jobs aren't desirable enough?
I guess you should have chosen to go into a field where everyone is guaranteed a life long position. They're just handing those out if you're not in Classics.
"Trying to keep an undergraduate from applying to grad school once they've got the idea in their heads is like trying to reason with a bear that's trying to get into a trash can."
Vivid image there. But I've been trying my best to wrestle those bears out of those particular trashcans for my entire career (20-plus years now). It has been, in my opinion, unethical to encourage BA students to go on to graduate work in the Humanities for at least the past 25 or 30 years.
Yes, the crash of 2008 made a horrible situation much, much worse. But the prospects for a t-t have been dismal since 1980s, and references to a hiring "boom" in the late 1990s seem to me to be mainly rose-colored romanticizing. I was on the job market in the late 1990s, and I sure don't remember any "boom" for me or my cohort. I finally snagged a t-t, after years on the one-year circuit, and so did some of my friends, but many others did not.
It's worse now. But it's been ghastly for a very long time. None of us have had any justification for encouraging undergrads to go on to grad school at any time in the past several decades. But those bears are awfully hard to pull away from the garbage cans.
It's also worth noting, once again, that there are definitely people out there who are actively *trying* to get the bears in the trashcans. In fact, they have built their careers on it.
Why don't these evangelical institutions make their requirements clear in the ad? Do they really want to sift through a bunch of applications only to disqualify half of them at interview because the candidates are unwilling to bullshit about a personal relationship with Jesus?
@1:03am, which evangelical institution(s) are you concerned about? Wouldn't it be ironic if you were getting all bent out of shape because of a very recent APA ad placed by an institution that has no religious affiliation at all? I'm just curious to know where I might be sending my application, in case there's some ad that I didn't see.
What, precisely, should I be looking up? The ad that spurred 1:03AM's comment clearly does not relate to a religious institution. Is there some other ad that I don't know about? If so, again, I'd love to know where that is so that I can be outraged along with the rest of us. But for now, 1:03AM had the anonymous guts to admit an error, and you're apparently hoping to inflame passions over nothing. So which institution should I be angry about? I've certainly gotten screwed in the past by applying for positions at institutions that don't hire people who aren't members of their particular club, and sometimes that is not stated in the ad, but at present I'm not aware of any PS ads that appear to be guilty of this horrific crime against humanity. Please, make me less ignorant by sharing the information that you have!
Turns out everything I needed to know about the meaning of "irony" could be learned from that 'Futurama' episode when the Robot Devil gives Bender an air horn attached to his face.
Interesting for the numbers it provides ... though the skepticism it reports about whether the proportional increase in "contingent faculty" negatively affects education is intensely irritating (as if the concern about exploitation were just that it might negatively impact productivity)!
I thought I'd share my experience here. Graduated about 6 yrs ago, done a few VAPs, had a baby and then accepted a research grant. Sent at least 200 applications around the globe. I built a respectable research profile, I am well published, have connections. None of this has given me a job. Indeed, the more qualified I get, the less successful I am on the job market. Do institutions fear people who can indeed become tenured? sometimes I do wonder.
I thought I'd share my experience here. Graduated about 6 yrs ago, done a few VAPs, had a baby and then accepted a research grant. Sent at least 200 applications around the globe. I built a respectable research profile, I am well published, have connections. None of this has given me a job. Indeed, the more qualified I get, the less successful I am on the job market. Do institutions fear people who can indeed become tenured? sometimes I do wonder.
I suspect that many places want someone want someone not just very good, but really outstanding. I think, in a lot of situations, someone who is potentially a rock star gets the edge over a merely very good known quantity, even if the very good known quantity is better than the average potential rock star turns out to be. I saw a number of top places that only invited newly minted PhDs this year. That seems to me to be an irrational policy, but I keep hoping that reason will carry the day.
I built a respectable research profile, I am well published, have connections. None of this has given me a job. Indeed, the more qualified I get, the less successful I am on the job market. Do institutions fear people who can indeed become tenured? sometimes I do wonder.
right there with you. I think that building up a scholar's profile scares a lot of search committees, especially when many of them have anemic cvs. Feels like picking teams on the playground.
The APA (or NACA or whatever horrible name it'll have soon): your one-stop shop for being forced to create a separate login for any conceivable task you might want to do. (Membership; placement; abstract submission; message boards; ...)
"Also, some SCs may want someone who has not become embittered by actual experience in this market.
You can be sure that one of us who has been out for six years is not, for instance, going to be eager about sending undergrads into grad school."
This assumes that SCs want a new hire to be "eager about sending undergrads into grad school." Not my experience at all.
I consider it clearly unethical to advise undergrads to go to grad school in any humanities field. As an SC member, I would see a propensity to encourage undergraduate majors towards grad school as a strike against a candidate. I'd consider such a candidate definitely unethical and possibly delusional.
If one thinks that a BA in Humanities has value (which I do), then an undergraduate major in Classics is worthwhile. But none of us have any business at all encouraging our majors to go to grad school. Indeed, I think it is our clear and pressing duty to do everything in our power to persuade them away from graduate studies if we possibly can. Some won't be persuaded, but we have to try.
This assumes that SCs want a new hire to be "eager about sending undergrads into grad school." Not my experience at all.
I consider it clearly unethical to advise undergrads to go to grad school in any humanities field. As an SC member, I would see a propensity to encourage undergraduate majors towards grad school as a strike against a candidate.
It is difficult for me to imagine any SC making any decisions whatever on the basis of whether a candidate would be more or less discouraging about undergraduates going to graduate school. This is such a tiny part of the job that I can't even imagine it coming up.
But none of us have any business at all encouraging our majors to go to grad school. Indeed, I think it is our clear and pressing duty to do everything in our power to persuade them away from graduate studies if we possibly can. Some won't be persuaded, but we have to try.
I'm a little more flexible on this. I don't spontaneously encourage anybody, but if they come to me about it, I tell them not to go unless they get into one of the handful of programs with very strong placement (eight, maybe?) and unless they get a funding package that will keep them out of debt. I also explain the different things that people don't like about graduate school, that employment at the end even for people from programs with strong placement isn't guaranteed and in any case now probably means several years of itinerant teaching before a t-t job, that you have very little control over where you live, that it's very difficult to envision economic conditions 7-10 years down the road, and that higher education is undergoing a massive transformation at the moment whose outcome it's hard to be sure about but may include 1). a steady attrition of positions because of technology-enabled "productivity enhancement" measures (i.e., online courses) and 2). the disappearance of tenure.
This should be intimidating, but I feel as though it's a bit of a cop-out, since I don't typically say up front whether I think particular students are going to get into elite programs unless their grades make this totally uncontroversial, and when they don't they'll sometimes go ahead and go to their "safety" school anyway (or go to a post-bac or MA to enhance their chances next time around); it might be better just to tell them up front that I don't think they're up to it, but that's very hard to do, and I fully recognize that I could be wrong about somebody's potential.
All the same, if somebody genuinely wants to do it, has a vivid impression of all of the downsides and risks, has some specific and stringent criteria for what terms of attending grad school will maximize the chances for success, and satisfies those criteria with acceptance and funding from an elite program, I think it's OK to go. They're adults, in possession of autonomy and capable of making their own choices. Plus, it's not as though it's a booming labor market out there for folks with bachelor's degrees, or as though the professional schools are a better bet in any sense; a kid graduating today has relatively crummy job prospects wherever they turn.
1,279 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 801 – 1000 of 1279 Newer› Newest»To be fair, why would you give a job to someone who needs it when you can give it to someone who doesn't?
2:13 says the number is more like seven (tt > tt), but a number of names have quickly been redacted (Harvard, BU, Cornell). I don't have a stake in any of those, but I'll bet the seven vacated positions don't re-appear as searches next year. I also don't blame someone for wanting a "better" job...but the unintended consequence is, I think, fewer overall jobs for Classics through gradual attrition.
11:18 - to be precise, six: I know from a reliable source that the BU job did not go to someone currently on TT. But even six (if correct) is an awful lot of lateral hires.
I, too, made a lateral move. From not having a job to also not having a job! Suck it, bitches!
To be fair, why would you give a job to someone who needs it when you can give it to someone who doesn't?
The logic implied by your comment isn't one that any organization in our society obeys, unless it's a charitable organization or a jobs program, and even in those cases it's only part of their logic. Unilaterally enacting the socialist paradise might be a bit beyond what you can reasonably expect a search committee to do.
even six (if correct) is an awful lot of lateral hires.
No, even in a shitty job market, six hires is not an awful lot of any kind of hire.
There's too much assumption going on here about the motives of people who seek new t-t jobs. Even if you allow that there are a certain number of people for whom it's about prestige and money—and there are—that doesn't exhaust the list of common reasons. What if you want to teach in a graduate program or a SLAC? Not urgent, but that's not necessarily just a matter of raging ego or greed; it's a different kind of teaching, it might matter to you, and it doesn't make you a monster to want it. Do you avoid seeking it because there's someone else whom you've never met who might want it more than you do? More sympathetically, what if you want to work in the same part of the country as your spouse? What if you want to get out of a state that doesn't offer same-sex partner benefits? What if your colleagues are poisonous nutjobs who mean to spike your eventual tenure review? These are all real situations that face t-t faculty with genuine regularity. Getting a t-t job is a major accomplishment, but it doesn't necessarily transport you into a magical land where all of your problems are trivial: your husband's still in Florida and you're in California, or your fellow citizens don't even count your relationship as a real relationship, or your t-t job is never going to be a t job because your colleagues are fuckers. Given the chance to leave, do you just stay in one of those situations, or do you move? The percentage of people who would go with option #1, even if not zero, is pretty damned close to it.
Which is just to say that it's good to remember that people making lateral moves are doing so for a variety of reasons, some you might consider appalling, some you might not consider very compelling, and some you might consider pretty good. This is obviously not the kind of thing that good statistics are kept on, but I've known many more people in the "pretty good" category than in the "I'm a fucking asshole and this stage isn't big enough for me" category (although, as I say, the latter category totally exists).
Regarding the lateral moves: while of course I fully understand wanting to get out of a not-so-great position in order to be in a better position (being in a lower-tier institution myself), this merry-go-round will not last forever.
I know that if I left my position for somewhere else, it's not unlikely there will be no search for a successor–the line will be permanently lost. This may be the case as well in some of these jobs that are being left, not because the department doesn't want them, but because deans and higher administrators are always looking for lines to cut.
Lower tier institutions are starting to pick up on this a little more, and while it's a buyer's market, they may decide they're better off with the less prestigious PhD from a lesser program who will stay than choose a high-powered "star" in the making with an Ivy or equivalent degree who probably only took the job to park themselves for year or two while getting out the book and applying for a better job.
So, if it gets especially noticeable this year, the word does get around and lower ranked places will be more cautious in their hiring, and there may be fewer of these moves going on.
I know, this doesn't help any of you looking for that first job unless some of these jilted spouses, so to speak, go out looking again soon.
This point about lines not being replaced is absolutely crucial. Here we can see how individuals acting out of perfectly reasonable and understandable self-interest do real damage to the system as a whole.
Deans aren't stupid, and they are going to seize pretty much any opportunity they are given in order to shift resources from departments like Classics to, say, departments like Economics or Biology. They also do this in very proactive ways, by denials of reappointment and tenure.
I'm not blaming the lateral movers, but we can understand why their colleagues may view their departures with more than simple annoyance. They can devastate programs, especially at smaller institutions. Losses by individual departments weaken us all, even if we don't recognize it at the time.
Do any of you actually know what you're talking about? For example, how many deans who oversee classics also oversee biology and economics? Perhaps at small schools, but that's not the norm.
There are a few good points being made here, but what I'm seeing here is valuable evidence that grads often know less than they think they do.
And the idea that we should resent even a little those who are t-t and move to other t-t jobs is simply absurd, just as it's absurd to expect them to take one for the team and not apply for fear that the dean might eliminate their line?
I don't fault people for applying when they already have a TT job. I just can't fathom how a SC member could live with themselves after picking someone who already has a job over someone who may well now go unemployed for a year. Call me a socialist if you like, whatever; but I couldn't live with myself if I did that.
Yes. Let's go further and say that no one should retire either for fear that their line will not be renewed. No, they should keep drilling those little fuckbots with gerunds and gerundives until they drop dead. Even then we can pretend that they're not dead. We can prop them up to a chair like they did to El Cid. Field saved.
"Do any of you actually know what you're talking about? For example, how many deans who oversee classics also oversee biology and economics? Perhaps at small schools, but that's not the norm"
What universe do you live in? Many, many colleges/universities have "Arts and Sciences" divisions/colleges in which one dean oversees all such departments, including classics, bio, and econ. It is indeed a norm. At my university, we had someone in a tenured line leave for a tenured line at another place several years ago. We have been struggling ever since to get the position replaced. To be fair, though, all non-science departments have been struggling in this way along with us.
Let's get real for a second: those of us who are not getting jobs are actually the lucky ones. We're being forced out now, while, though we're old as fuck to be competing for entry-level jobs, we're still not THAT old (late twenties or thirties). The folks who are getting TT jobs now will mostly be pushed out by this same process, but after they've sunk many additional years of their lives into this field which is worthless in the eyes of society at large.
"Do any of you actually know what you're talking about? For example, how many deans who oversee classics also oversee biology and economics? Perhaps at small schools, but that's not the norm"
What universe do you live in? Many, many colleges/universities have "Arts and Sciences" divisions/colleges in which one dean oversees all such departments, including classics, bio, and econ. It is indeed a norm. At my university, we had someone in a tenured line leave for a tenured line at another place several years ago. We have been struggling ever since to get the position replaced. To be fair, though, all non-science departments have been struggling in this way along with us.
Oops. Now that I think of it, my own undergraduate school combined sciences with humanities. There are plenty of places that don't, though.
So which reason was it for you, 2:48, since you are obviously more invested in this question than your garden-variety devil's advocate? All of the above?
Hey, an admission of temporary idiocy and a considered retraction, by an anonymous person on the internet.
Epic Win!
Let's get real for a second: those of us who are not getting jobs are actually the lucky ones. We're being forced out now, while, though we're old as fuck to be competing for entry-level jobs, we're still not THAT old (late twenties or thirties). The folks who are getting TT jobs now will mostly be pushed out by this same process, but after they've sunk many additional years of their lives into this field which is worthless in the eyes of society at large.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmQ5VJIQekc
2:35, that was the perfect response. Please fill me with your babies now.
Look, you all knew coming in that this was a pyramid scheme, not a career.
Do you people not enjoy reading Homer and Vergil? Do you agree that they are worthless?
I have a non-academic interview lined up for next week, but I have no doubt that the work I am doing now is better than the work that a good 90% of our society does. For that reason, I will always look for opportunities to convince others that they ought to be reading / supporting their local Classics department.
Loving Classics and realizing that it isn't a viable career in the society we live in are very different things.
These days I acknowledge and adapt to reality instead of raging against it; I wish I had been this way seven years ago. I never would have gone to grad school (in *any* discipline, but especially not in the humanities). I can always read Homer and Vergil on my own time without sweating blood trying in vain to get paid for it.
I have been on the job market for yrs, done sessional teaching and VAPs all over the place. I am fed with this this life and I very much want out. I have book with top press which is coming out by end of summer. Will that make a difference? does anybody know?
Will it make a difference? Who knows? Who can tell what goes through the minds of a committee. Some will take it as a sign that something is wrong with you: "Why didn't she get a job already, with a record like that?" Others will say, "Clearly she thinks she's hot shit, too good for us." The normal ones will say, "This profile is impressive, but it's not what we're looking for." Bottom line: it's all dumb luck.
Will that make a difference?
It might. Depends on the book.
I want to share something about going on the job market with a book. After I finished my book -- also with a major press -- I thought I was finally going to have a really blockbuster year on the market. But, in fact, I ended up getting fewer interviews than ever: a grand total of two. That said, all the finalists for one of the jobs had books out and I ended up getting the job. I think this confirms the statement that it's hard to know what a search committee is looking for. A book can either hurt, not help, or be necessary for getting a job. And, of course, it's important to remember that it only takes one interview to get a job.
Many thanks for your thoughts. This yr on the job market has been particularly devastating. Among my interviewers there were people who invited me to contribute to their own books in the past. All kinds of people that I never met in person but had contacts with for various projects. I hoped it would help, but it did not. Now, for the upcoming round, I have a book out and I should have a second one under contract. And I am depressed to no end.
Just a thought: I have no book (several articles) but lots of great references, excellent teaching evaluations, and on-going collaborative projects. I got a TT job the first time out. Now I'm a finalist for "the" job in my area a year later.
If the book wasn't the ticket for you the first time out, a second book might not do any better (however impressive). Try, instead, to look at your CV critically -- how can you make your CV look like a person they would want to work with? Sometimes too much scholarly production too early might read 1) they are going to putter out, or 2) they are going to make me look bad.
Again, just a thought, but maybe try to cover the spread some.
I'm glad you're hot shit and scored TT the first time. Good for you. But the 'dumb yourself down or you'll scare the natives' argument is troubling. You could be right - but if you are it makes academics look more pavid and squirrelly than they do otherwise. We really should counsel people on the market to hold off on their productivity so that mediocre middle age (or older) people who did not publish will in turn hire the candidate in question? We really want to endorse this? Maybe this is fine for teaching and touchy feelies, but it spells bad news for intellectualism in the academy.
Don't let's get shrill. I don't think it spells bad news for the academy per se. People can, and need to, rationalize any decision. And decisions when faced with many equally good options are very very difficult. It's like the proverbial ass between two piles of hay, except with job candidates. This isn't just a problem within classics or the academy.
Now, for the upcoming round, I have a book out and I should have a second one under contract.
Hmmm, that won't fly well with Professor Squeers on the Search Committee; think about breaking that contract and cannibalizing the individual chapters of your second book as articles in online journals, nothing peer-reviewed please. Alternatively, publish it pseudonymously, if possible through a vanity press or Amazon Print-on-Demand, and then send two applications to every position next year, one in your given and the other in your assumed name; ideally you would have no book at all, but since it's too late for that, two good applications are better than one outstanding one. To be on the safe side, you might send advance copies of the new book to a few enemies who owe you a disservice and have them write negative blurbs for the back cover. That way sales will be more likely to be low and reviews hostile.
Source(s):
no books, TT job first time out, Hor. Carm. 2.10
Re: Anon 8:06
So much of this process is down to luck (including something as basic as what year you finish your Ph.D.) that I simply don't think any one person's experience can provide generalized guidelines.
But yes, 8:06, you have succeeded in making me hate you, in part because you seem too ready to take credit for your good fortune.
Sure, 8:06 is probably a jack-ass from Harvard.
But, I am starting to think that I myself have become over the last few years a bit too obsessed with publications. I recently finished the PhD; I am in a temporary position; and I struggled to get a few interviews this year. I have no idea what I will be doing next year. I have, however, published several articles; and my book is under contract and will be out before long. All this to say, I am not hot shit, but I have published.
At what cost? I have missed lectures; I have put off reading that would have been good for me; I have missed opportunities for conversation. My teaching--my classes are better than most of the classes taught by the tenured jokes sitting across the hall fro me--it could have been better. Some people can do it all. I had family obligations that meant I could not. If you have managed to publish like mad and you have managed to remain human and interesting, then this should show in your CV and your recommendations. For those who still have time, I don't think it is bad advice to stress a little less about those publication lines on your CV. Another good idea would be to stop reading this stupid blog and to interact instead with non-anonymous human beings.
11:42 here. I just re-read my comment. Everyone from Harvard I have actually met has been very kind and intelligent. And I am deeply sick of the anti-elitism that believes we are all just as good as the people who got into the best graduate programs. If I could, I would retract the idiotic comment about Harvard, because it simply feeds non-thinking prejudices.
I read 8:06 as saying, "If you've already published a bunch, will publishing more make your application that much better, or would it be better to focus on building up your teaching or community service?" Like 11:42, I experience a real tension between teaching and research, but I have tended to err on the side of teaching (not just prepping my current classes more, but also attending pedagogy workshops, taking on independent studies, etc). Of course, every committee is looking for a different purple squirrel, but I think the question here is, in the absence of knowledge of a given committee's expectations, are two books better than one book + faculty advisor for student group + teaching award.
Someone said " Sometimes too much scholarly production too early might read 1) they are going to putter out."
No, no one ever thinks this. What are we, theoretical physicists? Too many publications might mean you seem right for job X and not for job Y, so Y will reject you.
And everyone is right who says you need to work on all areas of your game, esp. teaching and research.
As are those who say you can't fully predict what a department will like.
If you want to be be on Broadway, do you need to work on your singing, dancing, acting, or all three? Depends on the play.
Many issues are likely at play when considering how best to present yourself as a candidate. Overall within the academy I think that the time and energy for doing research is being reduced, owing to the loss of lines for full-time faculty in many departments and the increasing emphasis on part-time/adjunct teachers. To survive financially, part-time/adjunct professors often take on several courses per semester, while full-time faculty are seeing their own teaching and service requirements increase.
The extent to which this influences hiring decisions will vary from department to department, however. To return to the issue of when do multiple publications become bad (if this is even a relevant issue), perhaps a department will be cautious about a candidate with an extensive publication record who could become resentful when faced with reduced research time due to teaching and service commitments at a particular institution. Departments are well aware of the risks of losing lines when t-t holders leave for a different position (as discussed in this thread above). Of course, whether that actually is something that a search committee would even consider is speculative.
While research is an important component of the hiring process, I think one aspect that gets underemphasized is the performance of candidates in interviews and during on-campus visits. Search committees are looking for a future colleague, someone who may have an office next to theirs for the next two decades. A very impressive CV will likely not cancel out a bad impression. This is where mock interviews (if they are feasible to arrange), practicing dissertation summaries and other predictable questions aloud, and research into particular departments becomes paramount. What can get lost in the discussion about research, CVs, etc. is the short-term need to make as good an impression as possible in a very brief period. Yes, interviews at the APA/AIA can be random when it comes to choosing finalists, but there are ways to augment your own appeal. Evidence for long-term success is important (publication record, teaching experience), but it should coincide with an emphasis on preparing for the soul-shattering gauntlet that is the interview process.
Having just witnessed several searches at a SLAC (not all in classics, but all humanities), I can say that personal comportment, demeanor and a basic sense of "institutional fit" mattered far more to each of the committees than anyone's research.
In that case, they should just hang out with candidates at the bar instead of conducting interviews.
To all the committees who had their searches cancelled, including dear old Cornell: look in the mirror. You are the curse and the corruption of this land.
Yes, a bar. not a frigging hotel room in some expensive place. Does anyone know why Cornell cancelled their search? As someone who did not make it, I would love to know!
Fuck. Now I have VAP interviews.
In a way I was hoping not to get any. It would have made leaving the field so much easier.
Does anyone know why Cornell cancelled their search?
Yes.
Cornell canceled the search because they felt that the applicant pool was far too weak. They'll run it again next year, though. Hope springs eternal.
Jeesh, They got over 200 applications, they had their pick of the litter, but didn't pick anyone because we're all runts? Nice.
The Cornell job was too narrowly defined. They invited applications from anyone working on "Greek and/or Latin literature" but they limited themselves to people from Earth. Next year if they advertise on Vulcan and Gallifrey they'll draw a better pool.
I tend to defend search committees, because searches are more complicated than people realize and they're making decisions on the basis of imperfect information. But Jesus, how incompetent or dysfunctional do you need to be to fail to identify one person you can hire in this market?
I'm fairly certain that Cornell did find someone they wanted to hire, but said person was also the top choice for another search.
A too-kind assessment might thus be that either the Cornell administration won't allow the department to make an offer to its second-favorite candidate (evidently this is a rule at some universities), or that the administration has a final-decision deadline too soon to bring another candidate to campus, or the like.
So, why are the Centro jobs not listed this year as they have been every year?
My sense of the situation at Cornell is similar to 12:38. This is not to discredit the possibility of dysfunction playing a role: it is amazing that 200 applicants could yield only one apparently suitable candidate. But if one's first choice does not work out, for whatever reason, you might imagine the difficulty in choosing between the few remaining candidates, each of whom presumably divided opinions amongst the faculty. This is also to completely ignore the possibility of external administrative pressures mentioned in the previous post.
This does not let the SC off the hook, of course, and it offers little consolation to those who applied and were overlooked. Perhaps one can take heart in the fact that—this being Cornell—the line probably has not died and there will likely be a search next year.
Dear Hawaii,
No, I'm not going to fill out your EOE form well after the position was offered to someone else. Fuck you.
Sincerely,
Applicant
March 15, 2013 at 11:39 AM said: "you might imagine the difficulty in choosing between the few remaining candidates, each of whom presumably divided opinions amongst the faculty..."
Few remaining candidates? Weren't there about 200 applicants? This is "few" in some fields, but not in ours. I think I get the point you're making, but let's call this what it is, a plethora of applicants. If they can't choose a stellar option after their first choice falls through, then they have such absurd standards that the same search will fail again next year.
Re: Hawaii's EEO request, I'm far more likely to be honest on these "anonymous" forms after I know I'm not going to get the job than while the search is still in course. People who are likely to score better on the EEO scale than I do will naturally feel otherwise.
It's quite possible that the search committee didn't have enough time to bring out a fourth campus visitor before the deadline imposed by their administration, particularly if the first person to whom they made the offer took a couple of weeks to negotiate before choosing somewhere else.
My sense is that, regardless of the number of qualified applicants on the whole, once the campus visitors have been chosen, it becomes a pool of 3, not 200.
"My sense is that, regardless of the number of qualified applicants on the whole, once the campus visitors have been chosen, it becomes a pool of 3, not 200."
Yep. This is why one of those candidates needs to be someone you're sure no one else would employ, just in case.
At a place like Cornell (where there will be funding for a new search next year), you do not hire someone (for fifty years!) whom no one else would employ.
They are not eager to have dead weight as a colleague, nor are they eager to bring in someone just to deny them tenure.
Disclosure: I am without a job and bitter, but show some common sense.
Does common sense include the ability to detect sarcasm?
(Temporarily dragging the conversation back 2-3 days...)
Like some who were posting the other day, I've also been on the market for several years, and also have produced a large amount of scholarship but do not yet have a book out, and now must once again wait a year for another shot at a tenure-track job. I just want those who know me to know that I'm not the one who wrote those other posts, especially since it would bother me if they were to read them and figure I was the one who wrote them, and were distressed to see me so distraught. Those who know me know that, like Tony Soprano, I wonder what ever happened to Gary Cooper, and therefore should realize without my telling them that I wouldn't have written those posts. But those who don't know me as well might be less skeptical, and jump to conclusions.
Obviously, there are a few of us out here in similar situations, but we react differently. Me, it's a mixture of optimism, gallows humor, and semi-obscure TV references.
Okay, now back to the Cornell-bashing, I guess. (Might I add that Cornell wait-listed me back when I was in high school? This failed search is the least of their crimes...)
Confess, Not-Tony. You're doing the drugs right now, aren't you? Did you inject a whole marijuana?
I'm drunker than you, bitches, and declare myself the consequent winner.
http://wordsinmocean.com/2013/02/28/stereotypical-job-advertisement-for-a-lectureshipassistant-professorship-position/
"The principle of evaluation is the same on both the personality and the commodity market: on the one, personalities are offered for sale; on the other, commodities…only in exceptional cases is success predominantly the result of skill and of certain other human qualities like honesty, decency, and integrity…Success depends largely on how well a person sells himself on the market, how well he gets his personality across, how nice a “package” he is…
The fact that in order to have success it is not sufficient to have the skill and equipment for performing a given task but that one must be able to “put across” one’s personality in competition with others shapes the attitude toward oneself…since success depends largely on how one sells one’s personality, one experiences oneself as a commodity or rather simultaneously as the seller and the commodity to be sold…self-esteem depends on conditions beyond his control. If he is “successful,” he is valuable; if he is not, he is worthless. The degree of insecurity which results from this orientation can hardly be overestimated…Hence one is driven to strive relentlessly for success, and any setback is a severe threat to one’s self-esteem; helplessness, insecurity, and inferiority feelings are the result. If the vicissitudes of the market are the judges of one’s value, the sense of dignity and pride is destroyed…"- Erich Fromm, Man for Himself (1947).
Wow. Thanks for posting that. It's good to see once again that this phenomenon isn't unique to me or even our specific time and situation.
-Unemployed Classics PhD Struggling Not to Think of Himself as a Worthless Pile of Shit That Doesn't Deserve to Live
Antiphon, it is common opinion among us in regard to beauty and wisdom that there is an honourable and a shameful way of bestowing them. For to offer one's beauty for money to all comers is called prostitution; but we think it virtuous to become friendly with a lover who is known to be a man of honour. So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of wisdom, but we think that he who makes a friend of one whom he knows to be gifted by nature, and teaches him all the good he can, fulfils the duty of a citizen and a gentleman. — X. Mem. 1.6.13
So...we should only offer to fuck the search committee chair if we admire them for their various virtues?
to fuck
You mean "be fucked by."
Can't it be both, Mr. Foucault? I'm very flexible.
I have no job for next year, and I am as depressed and self-loathing as the next person out there.
I was particularly bitter this morning at a certain individual until I happened to run into them and realized that they had been going out of their way to help me in my job search, rather than sabotage it. This story is just a reminder that depression skews your outlook on the world, and there are a lot of wonderful human beings out there (in positions of power and in subordinate roles). We do ourselves a disservice to allow the systems of late capitalism to control our own thinking.
Wow. Go Stanford.
And not-go my department. Though I can hardly say I'm surprised.
The most hilarious thing is that our faculty mostly act like they are.
?
As always, it's best to reserve impressions of where most of the hires come from till some significant portion of the positions have posted outcomes. Stanford had a big jump in its representatives on the wiki just now because Stanford just posted its current year placement results for current and past students on its website and somebody transcribed them to the wiki. It's smart for Stanford to publicize its placements, but it's helpful to recognize that you know all of Stanford's results so far right now because Stanford is advertising them, while you don't know results from institutions that haven't done that yet.
It's really not all that surprising, especially if you're talking history/archaeology. There are four or five programs that will always be on top with the programs in the lead changing periodically. Stanford and Penn happen to be on top now with Berkeley, Michigan, and maybe Brown waiting their turn when faculty turnover and other subtle shifts change the pecking order. Stanford just happens to be the one firing on all cylinders these days.
Er, Chicago, Princeton and Harvard might have something to say about that, if the wiki for the last 3 years says anything...
Princeton's classical archaeology is art history based like Columbia's. Harvard and Chicago's programs are ill-defined to say the least and don't seem to care all that much about archaeology these days. Cincinnati has great archaeology but its philology and overall rep are mediocre. There are smaller programs out there like Bryn Mawr that are successful, but they'll never have the resources to compete for a top spot.
Who the fuck cares about archaeology, anyway?
Not Harvard and Chicago.
They do, just not the classical kind.
Re failed searches:
Here, the SC has to send the Dean a list of the top five candidates after the preliminary interviews. The pool then becomes a pool of exactly five and no more than five, no matter how many applicants there originally were. Yes, it's insane.
The pool can't expand beyond those five names. If the first three don't work out -- for whatever reason -- we are SOMETIMES (not always) allowed to bring a fourth candidate. But if none of the four visits work out, that's it. Failed search, no appeal. Even worse, if we're late off the block and the first three or four people we call for interviews have already accepted another job, we still can't go further down the list. We get to interview just two, or even just one. The SC can scream, wail, cry all they want, but that's the rule. We're not allowed to dip further down into the pool than the five names we sent the Dean, no matter what.
I was on a search some years ago where, as it happened, our first three choices ALL accepted other offers. We were allowed to bring a fourth candidate, who bombed (it happens). We were not allowed to bring a fifth candidate. Blam, failed search. We'd had over 100 applicants, but we could not revisit our rankings.
So it's not quite as simple as saying "How the hell could you not find a single qualified candidate in THIS market?" The adminstration's rules become increasingly Kafkaesque all the time, and departments are left with failed searches. We KNOW there are great people out there, we would love to bring more candidates out, but as it happens the ones we chose went elsewhere and we don't get to do a retake.
Just curious: how badly do you have to bomb for a search to fail over it? Are we talking "Bill over here really doesn't like your approach to x even though it is clearly defensible and is a position held by others in the subfield" or something more like "Dear God, will you please stop humping the students during your teaching demonstration?"
NB: It must be one or the other. No middle ground will be accepted.
Yes, the rules put forth by administrators can be inhibiting. Still, we are to blame as well. For one, I'm still surprised by how little thought often goes into the composition of SCs. Members often don't care or care about the wrong things. With the inbreeding that's prevalent in our discipline, this often leads to a relatively small, homogenous group of "it" finalists that seem to vie for more jobs than they can fill every year. After these handful of candidates accept positions, often dragging their feet until the last moment possible, a bunch of searches are left scrambling so they don't fail. I've had the misfortune of seeing especially gory searches from both sides and it's not pretty. You don't know whether to laugh or cry. There are quality searches out there run by good people, but they're a small minority from my experience.
Agreed. Yes, it sucks that SCs can't go past four or so flybacks. Doesn't it say something that searches (especially for generalists) seem to all come to the independent conclusion that six or seven of the same candidates each year are their finalists? Out of hundreds of applicants, I find it difficult to believe that less than ten are stellar. Plus how many of us have seen one of these so called "it" candidates flame out and not get tenure six years later? So we're somehow inbred to think a narrow group of candidates are the cat's meow yet we're obviously overvaluing traits that are more particular to classics (while overlooking general traits that make a good academic outside departmental walls). Shoot me now.
"Just curious: how badly do you have to bomb for a search to fail over it?"
In the failed search I mentioned yesterday, where candidate four "bombed", it was a combination of two things: a teaching demonstration in which the candidate mumbled, was inaudible, and made several elementary factual mistakes AND a research presentation that was rambling, incoherent, not on the topic the candidate had said s/he'd talk on, and on a topic that had nothing to do with the position as advertised (I'm not going to give specifics, but the disconnect was as great as if a candidate for a position in Latin elegy gave a job talk on Greek tragedy). In short, the Job Candidate From Hell. And yet this person had looked wonderful on paper (with letters talking about her/his stellar teaching!) and had interviewed well at the APA.
The SC was unanimous on this one -- better a failed search than this person as a colleague. But it was very painful not to be allowed to go back into our files and bring out another candidate.
"For one, I'm still surprised by how little thought often goes into the composition of SCs."
For those of us in tiny departments, this is a non-existent issue. All of us serve on the SC automatically and the Dean assigns us one "outside member" -- the Dean's pick, not ours. The luxury of having a large enough department that you're not all on the SC is almost unimaginable to me ...
Talk about inbreeding...
Who are the in-breeders? Did Oedipus diddle his mom again?
Bad Oedipus! Bad! Go back into your secret hole like a good hero.
A friend and I were reminiscing about a bomb of a campus visit some years ago. It came time for teaching the class and X was nowhere to be found. Then they found him in the library, looking up information he needed for his lecture. When told it was time for the class, he wanted to stay and keep looking things up. And this was only one of about a dozen things he did that were crazy. He overslept for a breakfast meeting, right in the hotel, and when called said "I'll be down in a half hour."
But it doesn't have to be a bomb. It can be a Department saying that if we hire this person, he or she will fall short of what we need, and neither the dept nor the person will be well served. When you hire the wrong person, it's hell for both you and the person, especially at tenure time. It's important for hiring SCs to do as much work as they can before making invites, but people make mistakes.
Come on, as if failed searches are always the fault of the candidates - either being too good or too bad. Most of the time it's because of dysfunctional, factional departments; one side supports candidate A and the other side(s) do everything in their power to prevent that candidate from getting the job. In such situations, a failed search is better than letting one's enemies get what they want! And the sabotaging faculty can always argue (self-servingly, but perhaps rightly) that it's better that the candidate not get the job, then that he/she gets sacrificed later down the line when coming up for tenure...
Yeah. Harvard obviously interviewed the best candidates in the field, and, because they are Harvard, they didn't even have to worry about tenuring the candidate, since that's not how they roll. But that search still failed. Why? Because fuck you, that's why.
The Harvard search failed because they made an offer and the candidate declined. The same candidate also declined the Cornell job, which likewise failed.
It is possible that at either or both places there was a desire on the part of many faculty to make an additional offer, but this can be awkward when part of the process of convincing the dean to make a competitive initial offer involves demonstrating the unparalleled virtues of the first choice.
I'd like to know if these searches failed bc candidate declined or because no offer was made. There have been mixed messages on this board.
I find it weird that someone would go thru the interviewing process only to turn down an offer from two top schools.
Why make excuses for these committees? They let us all down and there will probably be fewer jobs in the field next year because they fumbled and failed this time around. Does it really matter whether candidates bombed or turned down offers (at Ivy League schools!)? Whether committees bickered childishly or made poor decisions? The more I know about the details (and in some cases I know much more than can be revealed on FV), the less I care for excuses. Bottom line: South Florida didn't even interview at the APA, yet they filled their T-T position before anyone else. Harvard, Cornell et al. couldn't figure out how to close the deal. It's embarrassing and absurd, and I hope they're sufficiently humiliated.
The same candidate declined both jobs. This candidate already had a job and in the end decided to keep it, which I am sure was a blow to the egos of both Ivy League programs.
What exactly is your point? That there are actually three tenure-track positions involved here, but only one candidate in the whole classics universe worthy to hold any one of them? Don't you think this is utterly absurd?
Harvard or Cornell are not going to lose these positions. The third place has not lost a position. In the short term teaching at both places will be given to others in need. Failed searches happen. It's not a big deal.
"Failed searches happen. It's not a big deal."
Care to share from what privileged perspective you make this observation? For the tenured, obviously none of this is a big deal -- you are gambling with someone else's money. For the contingent, these sorts of decisions can make or break careers.
Good for her for deciding to stay where she is: higher quality of life, and a great job. Why give that up to chase a place "higher" on the ladder of prestige? Plus, she no doubt used both offers to score some serious benefits at her home institution, for her and for her colleagues. Well played, miz, well played! Were we all so fortunate and wise.
I certainly don't resent the apparently amazing candidate in question. What I can't understand is in what universe these two very prestigious departments are somehow *not allowed* (per the explanations here) to offer the position to a second choice. Are Deans really such absolute rulers of all they survey? How is that good for the university system?
What happened with the Roman history job in Toronto? Can anybody pls get me out of my misery? Long time, no word.
May we consider the absurd possibility that these were bogus (closed, rather than open) searches designed to attract specific candidates, and that the departments in question would rather leave a "position" open than give the job to one of the unworthy who interviewed on campus? Or do we all agree that the deans make these decisions for us? It's certainly noble for tenured faculty to leverage offers from status institutions into better conditions for themselves, but why should the open position disappear when they eventually turn it down?
The Toronto Roman History position is filled.
Foundational Myths and Archetypes
Earlham's position is listed as having gone -- to the inside candidate -- without notification to the other candidates.
Surprised?
The candidate probably updated it themselves without giving the department the time to notify other candidates. But the department should get on that A.S.A.P. because that just leaves bad feelings.
I guess I know why I didn't get a job: I didn't go to Stanford. Bastards!
So what's the deal over at Stanford? Maybe they have faculty who give a shit?
Is it too early for 2013-2014? Rumor is that Vanderbilt will be hiring this fall. All of their junior faculty are leaving, so it is best to consider this announcement a warning.
I'll have more to say when the search is underway, but for now I strongly advise against applying to Vanderbilt. The department is in disarray and their chair is a horrendous chair and colleague.
I know no details about the chair at Vanderbilt or what's causing problems there, but one cannot but become aware of noxious fumes when one's canary suddenly keels over while in the coal mine.
Yes, Vanderbilt is a place that I will not apply to, should I still be on the market next year. There is clearly something badly amiss in that department and/or elsewhere in the school.
A question from those of us just entering the cycle of moving each year for the next VAP, to those of you who have done this for years now, with or without eventually landing a tenure-track job:
Is it worth it?
A question from those of us just entering the cycle of moving each year for the next VAP, to those of you who have done this for years now, with or without eventually landing a tenure-track job:
Is it worth it?
emphatically no. but it is, like the rest of this business, a crap shoot. decide how much of your life and your security you want to gamble on this lunacy. and take your cases. you might win. you might lose. you might be caught up in the endless life-cycle of the adjunct while new t-t jobs go to sweet, impressionable young things that the tweedy sabertooths can sculpt to their liking. you might go postal. good luck. (p.s. i scored t-t after VAP hell, but i would not advise anyone doing it).
It is good advice to take some time to think about whether you really want to go through the VAP experience. If you have children or spouses the VAP positions can come at a high cost to family happiness. Yet, they can be beneficial, too, if you decide to pursue them. I had several VAP positions before I got a t-t job, and while they were financially tough and stressful in terms of never being able to use summers for research (always moving and looking for a new place to live, etc.), I have found that my experience at different types of institutions, from small liberal arts college to major state university, has paid off at my t-t institution. Knowledge of how other institutions work, how students differ, and contacts made, have helped my career. Going through them was horrible at the time, but I value the experiences, now.
Thank you for the thoughtful replies.
Warning for those actually deciding now whether they should pursue the gamble that is the VAP circuit: both of these replies could easily produce Survivor's Bias.
I will tell you that going through this "process" (a charitable word) when you have small children is a cruel, cruel joke. I say forget about it unless you're willing to put your life on hold indefinitely.
the 'process' can directly cost you a marriage (I know several cases), make supporting children impossible, make you thus delay having children (thus, possibly never), shackle you with debts from under which you may never climb, and generally imperil your having a stable, healthy life. ask yourself if the slim shot at tenure (as an end goal) and the perpetual teaching of a narrow raft of material can make the above conditions bearable. As one who has devoted years to the game and produced much scholarship, I say the answer is probably not. This is a cruel, arbitrary, and often heartless arena. Most of those ideas of classicists in some blissful, toga-draped nirvana are just cotton candy dreams. Good luck to the next contingent who fill the VAP ranks and step out over the void (think Wile E. Coyote).
I find these VAP comments silly. There's nothing wrong with a visiting position in this market. There are great people coming out of great programs who have to take visiting positions before moving on to t-t (or not). Most visiting positions are *not* hell.. Nor are all t-t positions shangri la.
Anonymous said...
I find these VAP comments silly. There's nothing wrong with a visiting position in this market. There are great people coming out of great programs who have to take visiting positions before moving on to t-t (or not). Most visiting positions are *not* hell.. Nor are all t-t positions shangri la.
how many vaps have you done, Anonymous? where did they lead you?
I am someone who survived the VAP circuit (3 years) to go on to a t-t position. Hindsight is 20-20. It was definitely worth it because I got a decent job in the end, but if I hadn't.... I can't lie: it totally sucked.
I think one thing to consider in this is what kind of VAP it is. Is it more than one year? Is it a post doc with a reduced course load? And is it at a good institution? The institution can really matter because (1) it is a good sign of what league you are in (in other words, if all you are getting are offers from schools you'd never heard of before with 4-4 loads, forget the dreams of teaching at an R-1)(2) a good name will help you along and (3) you are more likely to have colleagues there who can go to bat for you in a meaningful way on the job market. (Well, if they care. This can be one of the advantages of a VAP in a top-ranked SLAC-- colleagues who are respected in the field, but don't have graduate students they are already shilling for. You are like their graduate student, and they want to help you. This is what happened for me.) VAPs of this type-- multi-year or reduced course load and/or at a top institution-- may be worth it. I'm not sure about a couple of years of anything less than that though.
I didn't have kids then, but I do now, and I would say that if you have kids, don't do it unless it is for a multi-year job. It's a tough call, though. I know you gotta feed those kids. It's hard no matter what.
To carve out a reasonably normal and civilized existence in academia today, you really have to thread the needle -- either land a T-T job straight away, at a place where someone like you will actually be able to get tenure, or get lucky with a VAP that turns out well -- multiple years, supportive colleagues, the possibility of the position becoming permanent. Anecdotes are nice, but I would really like to see is statistics -- how many of the young people now accepting these positions, VAP or T-T, will get tenure in the end? Surely less than 50%? Maybe less than 30%? How many of those happy few will be satisfied with the way their lives turned out, having sacrificed so much along the way?
I could go on and on, but this article says everything I could want to say. For me, it was deadly accurate:
Just Visiting
One way to look at whether or not VAP positions are likely to lead to t-t positions is to look at this Wiki and see who is hired for what job (once this information is known and entered on the Wiki). Last year and this year, at least, there were many people who were in visiting positions who went on to t-t positions.
Sure, you could approach many unpleasant truths this way: e.g. there were a million soldiers in the Union army on May 1, 1865, so the Civil War couldn't have been that bad! But it's hard to make rational decisions unless you weigh the good against the bad -- in this case, how many VAPs go on to get tenure (not just a T-T job) vs. how many, sooner or later, leave academia.
I was just looking at server positions at local restaurants, doing the math, and realizing that I could totally make more money doing that than I could working the same hours as an adjunct for another year.
Worth thinking about.
And restaurant server, at least, is a position that has a future.
Some advice from an SC member, take or leave:
Have someone (your advisor, or someone else) read and vet your recommendation letters for you. I've come across at least one instance where a recommender has inadvertently or not thrown the applicant under the bus.
Tired Texan
Isn't it unethical, as a letter writer, to do that? Shouldn't you simply *tell* the candidate that you don't think they cut it, so that they can move on with their lives, rather than passive-aggressively being encouraging to their face and destroying them in the letter, so that they spend years fighting a lost cause thinking you have their back? Fuck, if I were a faculty member pulling shit like that, I'd be worried about the candidate finding out after a couple of years and going on a fucking rampage.
A role model for us all:
http://www.poliscijobrumors.com/topic.php?id=86850
I did two VAPs (both of which ended up being multi-year gigs) before landing a t-t position.
Thanks you, 2:56, for the hindsight bias once again!
You're welcome, 3:57 PM. I was answering the question April 3, 2013 at 8:57 PM asked me. This conversation stems from the question of whether VAPs are worth it. Obviously it works out for some and not for others. Perhaps if you're a worthless piece of shit who finds the bad side of everything, it tends not to work out for you.
No human being is a worthless piece of shit.
You've been in Classics too long, friend.
You're right. That was the wrong choice of words on my part.
Isn't it unethical, as a letter writer, to do that? Shouldn't you simply *tell* the candidate that you don't think they cut it, so that they can move on with their lives, rather than passive-aggressively being encouraging to their face and destroying them in the letter, so that they spend years fighting a lost cause thinking you have their back? Fuck, if I were a faculty member pulling shit like that, I'd be worried about the candidate finding out after a couple of years and going on a fucking rampage.
Given that the advice concerns an instance in which the reader of the letter isn't even sure that this was deliberate undercutting, there is a lot of jumping to conclusions in this comment.
It's definitely true, though, that you want someone to vet your letters; if there's a weak effort or one that does a poor job of presenting you, you'll want to get another one.
I can't see why this would be something an SC member would be in favor of, however. The "under the bus" letter presumably gave information that the SC regarded as valuable and probably true; otherwise, it wouldn't have materially affected their decisions about the candidacy. If I'm a search committee member, why would I want a recommender to conceal from me information or views that, if I knew them, would affect whether I wanted to pursue an application?
another one . . .
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/04/there_are_no_academic_jobs_and_getting_a_ph_d_will_make_you_into_a_horrible.single.html
Does anyone know what's happening with Austin College? He said at the APA they'd be contacting people in February, and as far as I know nothing else has happened...
Tired from Texas here:
Two points on the previous comment.
First, I think every candidate has the right to know which letters may endanger the application so that s/he can pull those. When I was applying for T/T jobs, my adviser had no problem vetting my letters for me and giving his opinion on them.
Second, we all know that there is a certain amount of whitewashing and glossing over that happens when we put together an application. This is inevitable; and as it should be when we're trying to put our best foot forward. BUT SC committees know this too, and are very good at sorting out doxa from episteme, smoke and mirrors from the real deal.
Any advice on how to tactfully vet your letters, then? I can't exactly imagine asking my letter writers to send an extra copy to my advisor or colleague, just to see what they wrote...
yeah, I tried that and one letter writer basically did not agree to write anything for me after that. tread lightly.
Any advice on how to tactfully vet your letters, then? I can't exactly imagine asking my letter writers to send an extra copy to my advisor or colleague, just to see what they wrote...
I guess it's dependent on your Ph.D. institution maintaining a dossier for you that your adviser or placement director can just go look at. I don't think there's a tactful way to ask your recommenders to submit a copy of their letter for vetting.
If you're using Interfolio, it's perfectly acceptable to have your dossier sent to a trusted advisor to vet them. If your school maintains your dossier, they may allow your advisor to go and review them. It's also perfectly reasonable when you're asking for a rec to ask: "Are you willing to write me a *strong* letter?" If someone is enthusiastic about writing for you, they will answer yes. If they're not, this will give them an opportunity to say no.
When I see doom and gloom like the Slate article 10:21 posted, I am reminded of something a wealthy family friend said to me in winter 2009. At that point there had been huge losses in the stock market, and he was feeling much less wealthy than in 2007. He asserted that the stock market would never recover all its losses in his life time. Here we are four years later, he's still alive, and the market is at new highs.
What does this have to do with Classics? We're in year five of a brutal job market. But things are never as bad as they seem at the bottom (nor as good as they seem at the top). Yes, there are some real fundamental problems that are challenges for our field. But in five years I predict that things will look much better...though I'm sure there will still be people on message boards bemoaning their fate. If you love this field, hang in there.
If you love this field, hang in there.
Such a statement belies the author's own likely job security. Those who have been 'hanging on' as visitors and/or adjuncts for 3-5 years can scarcely afford to wait 5 more year and see if Chicken Little is to be proven wrong. One could also hope for real, positive change in the humanities. But hold your breath for 'the love of the field'? Get real.
you can 'love the field' as much as you want - it will never 'love' you back. We're all cogs in an inefficient machine. Unwise to think of it as some lovey-dove, hunky dory nerd family.
what's to love, honestly? The taint of the b.s. makes the intellectual pursuits seem a little sour after a time. Or the demands of the drudge of the job leaves little time for the reason you got in the biz in the first place.
Loving a field that doesn't love you back, and continuing to pursue it despite signs of disinterest, is just stalking.
It will be interesting to see how the market treats those who are out 5+ years when/if things start to look up again. I suppose a lot will depend on much people have published despite the punishing teaching loads. I do agree that things are never as bad or as good as they seem at bottom/top. Not that such things make it any better for those who are suffering.
5+ years out with lots of publications is a not a good place to be when the choice candidates are the ones with fresh ink on their diplomas. #jobmarketfail
But hold your breath for 'the love of the field'? Get real.
Well what would you describe what you're doing? Apparently you haven't left the field if you're on Famae. To clarify, by "field" I mean the discipline of Classics: Plato, Homer, whatever got you to go to grad school. I can't imagine anyone loves the system of the academy. I apologize for the ambiguity.
Look, I'm only smart enough to realize how stupid it is, not smart enough to stop doing it. Grad school conditioned me well.
At that point there had been huge losses in the stock market, and he was feeling much less wealthy than in 2007. He asserted that the stock market would never recover all its losses in his life time. Here we are four years later, he's still alive, and the market is at new highs.
What does this have to do with Classics? We're in year five of a brutal job market. But things are never as bad as they seem at the bottom (nor as good as they seem at the top). Yes, there are some real fundamental problems that are challenges for our field. But in five years I predict that things will look much better...though I'm sure there will still be people on message boards bemoaning their fate.
I'm sorry, but this is totally fatuous. The stock market is not in any meaningful way comparable to a specific industry. If you want to say that higher education is like the housing industry and that the labor market there will inevitably bounce back because we have more people, people need places to live, and somebody has to build those places, fine. And if you want to say that higher education is like manufacturing, or print media, or book and music retail, where technology makes many of the jobs that are lost obsolete and where therefore there will never be any meaningful recovery, that's fine, too.
But just saying that the stock market's bounced back so everything will eventually bounce back is nonsense: the stock market has bounced back, but it did so without the job market for record store clerks suddenly looking up.
I'm sorry, but this is totally fatuous.
You're right that the stock market does not correlate with the job market in any given industry, perhaps especially classics.
As a point of fact, I did not claim that the stock market is like the classics job market. My point is that humans tend to overestimate the predicative power of recent experiences as a baseline for what will happen in the future. I.e., recency bias (http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/tomorrows-market-probably-wont-look-anything-like-today/).
When things are good, we tend to think they will continue to be good in the future and vice versa. Recency bias applies to stock markets, sports, coin flips, and the classics job market.
the previous poster is really full of shit.
Am I? My first comment was misinterpreted. My second one, clarifying the first, was dismissed without any reason given.
I suppose there is no arguing with pessimism. Best of luck to you all!
I don't particularly care about this argument, but would just like to point out that someone in 2007 believing that the stock market might take years and years to recover is not really an example of recency bias.
Moreover, since we are by no means out of this fiscal crisis, for all we know this could be a temporary peak before the stock market loses a lot of value (as some are predicting)... which would make your claim that the market has recovered itself an example of recency bias!
One of the basic questions in play here was whether someone who has not succeeded yet in making it in to a TT position should hold on for another year of temporary / contingent teaching.
I don't know whether there is good evidence of how being on the market for multiple years affects one's statistical odds of getting a TT job.
Here is my anecdotal evidence:
ABD: 5 applications out, 1 school was interested but ultimately did not interview me, 1 interview for a dream job.
Dissertation finished: 3 APA interviews, one temporary position very late in the season.
One year out: 3 APA interviews, nothing definite so far.
In my own experience, my best opportunities were all while I still was young and inexperienced.
Now that I have experience, my prospects seem to have leveled off, and the only question is whether I can manage in difficult financial circumstances long enough to find my perfect job. My advice: go all out while you are still young, i.e. before you finish your dissertation. You may never get another chance at the job you wanted.
I agree with April 6, 2013 at 9:21 PM, continued experience in teaching and scholarship seems to equal the law of diminishing returns for t-t employment, at least in some cases.
I went through the Classics Job wiki for this year and the prior two years (2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13). I count 25 examples of individuals accepting T-T jobs who only had their graduate program beside their name (and thus may have gotten the job their first time on the market).
I count 54 instances in which individuals accepting T-T jobs have more than one institution next to their name (and thus held another position prior to this job).
It's not clear from the wiki whether these individuals were VAP, T-T, or had post-docs in their prior position. I also saw several instances where individuals that I know held a visiting position did not have that position listed next to the announcement of their T-T job. I also excluded instances where I knew that a person was moving from one T-T position to another.
While these are rough numbers, it appears likely that people are getting T-T jobs after holding a NTT position at a significantly higher rate than people who have never held a NTT position.
I apologize in advance if someone has already brought up these numbers. I do not claim to have read all 950+ posts.
April 6, 2013 at 9:21 PM, thank you for sharing. I wonder if you'd be willing to provide a little context. Have you published anything since you began as a VAP? In the years that you've been on the market have any other people from your graduate program gotten T-T jobs? If so, how many?
While these are rough numbers, it appears likely that people are getting T-T jobs after holding a NTT position at a significantly higher rate than people who have never held a NTT position.
From my perspective at a graduate program, proceeding from an NTT to a TT has become the "new normal" model, replacing an "old normal" path from Ph.D. straight to TT. There are still a percentage who land a TT the first time out, but it is now much smaller, and many of those who would once also have gotten a TT right away now start with an NTT and then get a TT within a window of a few years. The fraction who six or seven years ago would have gotten an NTT and used that to move up to a TT are those for whom things have gotten really bad, because now some of them aren't getting anything. But the whole addition of a new stage of temporary employment of NTT before TT is itself maddening, because it doesn't benefit these folks in any way: it's just an extra thing to do, involving additional uprooting and extended stress, and not asking them to prove anything about themselves that they couldn't have done if hired straight into a TT job.
I do think, additionally, that it is worth thinking about whether it's correct to rage about "bright shiny new things" hogging the jobs, because it's clear that many institutions with TT jobs to offer are actually crediting people's experience in temporary positions and using it to prefer those people to newly minted Ph.D.s. And that makes sense! It's nice to know somebody's not going to melt down when they have to teach more than one class at a time.
This is an improvement from the past, when having only gotten a VAP might have been cause for concern, and the reason why this improvement has happened is that SCs in general are aware that the the job market has gotten far tighter, and that there are fantastic candidates who were only able to get temporary jobs. I do not think however that this understanding has become infinite, and I think that it's still possible to spend "too much" time in temporary jobs and pass the "Sell By" date (I'm not endorsing this thinking, merely characterizing it). People who have spent a few years in temporary jobs are now however very viable candidates.
So it's good, I guess, that expectations have adjusted somewhat to existing conditions. The basic problem however is that, in the continuing existence of a vast gap between the number of jobs and the number of candidates, a lot of new Ph.D.s and a lot of people with temporary jobs are screwed, no matter what SC expectations are.
It would be nice to have more information about who snagged T-T jobs this year, and where they were coming from (i.e. grad school plus previous gigs). Why aren't the people who have accepted jobs (or placement directors, or hiring departments) posting this information on the wiki? C'mon, don't be shy, folks!
The best way to get a fairly decent set of data, which could then answer these questions, is to peruse all of the old APA job listings, and then match those up with the APA newsletter announcements, and the websites of the hiring departments.
This would then let you coordinate job announcements with hirings, and figure out what the status of the person was when they were hired (ABD, PHD, NTT elsewhere, internal, transitive TT, etc.) The further you go back the more statistically significant will be the data.
This takes time, however, so I nominate one of us unemployed people to do it. I would, except I have two children and a part-time temp job keeping me busy. Anybody else want to volunteer?
Alright, I'll bite.
I managed to get hired for a T-T this year. Last year I was on the market as an ABD, sent out 40+ applications, got one (non APA) interview for a 1 year VAP and wound up with the job.
This year, that same school ended up running a T-T search. I applied widely again (~30 apps), still only nabbed one interview (where I was already employed), which turned into a campus interview, which turned into me getting a tenure track job as an inside candidate.
And I know it was 95% luck. I did not get the job because I was the best scholar (I'm not), or because there weren't better teachers (there are), or because of my publishing record (mediocre at best). It was mostly "institutional fit." But really, it was luck. Pure, dumb luck.
It is easy to become embittered when years of work and struggle results in a few ntt jobs and then nothing. One knows the risks. Since there will never be enough tt jobs for all of the PhDs who want one (and are qualified), a bigger question is whether our discipline ought to think about a broader spectrum professional training for PhD students. For instance, classics could branch out and embrace digital humanities, for example, as part of its standard curriculum. Curricula could include more methodological courses in various areas (stats, GIS, sampling, education) to improve the post-PhD employment chances. It is a helpless feeling to arrive at 30-something (or 40-something), decide to abandon the academic pursuit, and then be told that a) your work was worthless and b) many prospective employers will hold against you the fact that you hold a doctorate. Since PhD programs are not going to slack off the rate at which they produce students, they ought to be a bit more up front with students and adjust their (often woefully antediluvian) curricula accordingly.
Dear April 6, 2013 at 6:23 PM,
You may not understand what recency bias means. And noting that the stock market has recovered is a statement about the present (i.e., major indices are trading higher than they were prior to the recession). It is not in any sense a claim about what will happen in the future. Other than that, thanks for your insight.
I am not discounting the frustration and disappointment that people who have been on the market for several year with little or nothing to show for it are experiencing. There are good people out there who deserve decent jobs.
I am only trying to offer a small reason for limited optimism. Just because the Classics job market has sucked for the last 4-5 years doesn't mean that it will continue to suck. Those who feel that way may be succumbing to recency bias.
Re: April 7, 2013 at 11:34 AM:
Aside from HS teaching, I've never heard anyone propose alternative career paths that involve reading, researching, or teaching any Greek or Latin whatsoever. Does anyone have any ideas about this?
Speaking only from my own perspective, this is what's finally so depressing about the talk of "transferring skills" and "training for plan B".
Well, to some limited extent, a career/vocation in ministry could allow for some work with Latin and/or Greek. But I cannot think of much else beyond that.
If you become a fallen classicist, like me, there's nothing preventing you from reading Latin and Greek. But if you decide to do something else professionally, by choice or necessity, it's best to focus on that, whatever it is, and let Greek and Latin be a leisure pursuit.
4.7.13 1:05 writing again:
I appreciate your candor, Fallen Classicist.
It's a pity that museums, libraries, and publishing all got liquidated at the same time as the academy, because those might have been interesting alternative paths.
Okay, that's enough wallowing. Time to polish off this conference paper!
Anyone have an idea about what the job market for teaching high school is like? Do they want Classics PhDs? In theory one could teach a better caliber of student at an elite independent school than at a third rate college. And perhaps even live in a desirable location. The money probably isn't worse, right?
How do these British and Australian TT-equivalent jobs work for American applicants, given that they don't interview until June for hires starting in September? Do people who get them then leave whatever VAP they already have lined up high and dry?
Kudos to all the departments which now specify in their ads the kinds of things they expect when they use the phrase "evidence of teaching effectiveness". That's immensely helpful.
I'm not sure why one poster up above is so distressed about people having to hold one or two VAP's before getting a t-t position -- I find it senseless for departments to hire anyone who hasn't done some teaching beyond grad school. And I find it doubly senseless for top programs to do so, especially when it's a buyer's market. I'm thinking here of one tip-top program that hired someone a few years back without knowing that he was incompetent. (Whether they have discovered this yet I do not know.) I'm also thinking of another top program that saddled itself with not one, but two, duds who came straight out of top programs. And I'm thinking of my own graduate institution, which hired an ABD who proved to be seriously flawed in the classroom. There are, of course, numerous examples of those who came straight from grad school and did everything they were expected to. But why would a department want to engage in risky behavior?
I'm not sure why one poster up above is so distressed about people having to hold one or two VAP's before getting a t-t position -- I find it senseless for departments to hire anyone who hasn't done some teaching beyond grad school. And I find it doubly senseless for top programs to do so, especially when it's a buyer's market.
Presumably because the person was viewing the situation from the perspective of people seeking jobs, not from your perspective, which seems to assume that the only thing worth considering is what's good for institutions.
If the established faculty at your grad program are not *themselves* teaching duds, you must come from a very different top program from mine.
You all are being unfair to April 7, 2013 at 6:34 PM. The poster's point should give hope to those who have/will secure VAP positions because they will have a better shot at getting a t-t position in the future. As was pointed out yesterday, over the last 3 years more than twice as many t-t jobs have gone to people who have held a position elsewhere (usually NTT) than to people who are straight out of grad school. It's the new (or current) normal.
Some of you sound like raw grad students who are angry you're not immediately being given an endowed chair at an Ivy. Your first time on the market you should be happy to get anything. Getting a job makes you one of the lucky ones. Many don't.
I'm sure someone is going to chime in about how bad their adjunct job is now. But really, think of how many other applicants you beat out. You may not like the job; but you were still one of the chosen few.
"I’d rather slave on earth for another man, some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive, than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”
Yeah, I think that staying in Classics should be Hades' in this analogy rather than vice versa.
I'm not sure why one poster up above is so distressed about people having to hold one or two VAP's before getting a t-t position -- I find it senseless for departments to hire anyone who hasn't done some teaching beyond grad school. And I find it doubly senseless for top programs to do so, especially when it's a buyer's market.
Presumably because the person was viewing the situation from the perspective of people seeking jobs, not from your perspective, which seems to assume that the only thing worth considering is what's good for institutions.
No, I was actually viewing the situation with regard to what is best for the students. (Remember them? Two of the four I mentioned have performed poorly as teachers, another is not competent to oversee graduate students, and the fourth is probably a pretty good teacher but does not publish.) If there is someone who is not up to snuff in the classroom I don't care how much he/she wants a tenure-track job -- I hope he/she does not get it. And I believe that institutions can make better decisions regarding tenure-track hires when their candidates have had to prove themselves beyond grad school.
Okay, you may now reach for your pitchforks.
"Some of you sound like raw grad students who are angry you're not immediately being given an endowed chair at an Ivy."
This whole comment kind of reminded me of Clint Eastwood's character in Gran Torino if he was a classicist.
You say, "You all are being unfair to April 7, 2013 at 6:34 PM. The poster's point should give hope to those who have/will secure VAP positions because they will have a better shot at getting a t-t position in the future. As was pointed out yesterday, over the last 3 years more than twice as many t-t jobs have gone to people who have held a position elsewhere (usually NTT) than to people who are straight out of grad school. It's the new (or current) normal."
Again, you are missing the point completely. What percentage of folks who take temporary positions end up eventually securing a TT? That is the question that is important, right now, for those considering whether to continue with the VAP circuit. It has nothing to do with feeling sorry for myself, and I look nothing like Clint Eastwood, so I don't know why you are bringing him up! Even if we assume, very generously, that 50% of the people who start on the VAP circuit eventually land a tenure track job, that is no reason to assume that even 2-3 years of moving across the country is worth it for everyone. Get over the fact that I might not find your tenure track life to be as desirable as you seem to think I should!
That last sentence was spoken with the bitterness that comes from knowing that grad programs will on the whole continue to pump out graduates without changing anything, because it is in their own short term self-interest to do so.
grad programs will on the whole continue to pump out graduates without changing anything, because it is in their own short term self-interest to do so.
First off, this isn't true, as I've said before. As state support declines, the number of people admitted to grad programs at state institutions is also declining. But the effects of that won't be felt on the market for a few years; the financial crisis of 2007-2008 only began affecting admissions for 2009.
Second, laying all responsibility at the door of graduate programs is unfair and childish. For one thing, people completing their Ph.D.s now went into graduate school with pre-recession economic expectations; the world into which they are graduating is a radically different one, and the programs didn't have any more inkling of the looming calamity than applicants did. For another, don't individuals actively seek admission to graduate programs and then voluntarily accept offers of admission and continue in those programs year after year after year without leaving, and don't they thereby have agency and responsibility for their own choices? Or do people mainly end up in graduate school through getting kidnapped by pirates and taken and kept there in chains?
My own feeling is that we should have fewer Ph.D. programs in Classics. But it would be a Hell of a lot easier to have fewer of them if people weren't falling all over themselves to be admitted to them. And at least in my experience trying to keep an undergraduate from applying to grad school once they've got the idea in their heads is like trying to reason with a bear that's trying to get into a trash can: they're going to get their heads down in that delicious trash, and they don't really care what discouraging noises you're making while they're trying to do it.
Actually, that's probably unfair to bears, as my understanding is that if you yell and wave your arms, they might actually stop what they're doing and leave.
Again, you are missing the point completely. What percentage of folks who take temporary positions end up eventually securing a TT? That is the question that is important, right now, for those considering whether to continue with the VAP circuit. It has nothing to do with feeling sorry for myself, and I look nothing like Clint Eastwood, so I don't know why you are bringing him up! Even if we assume, very generously, that 50% of the people who start on the VAP circuit eventually land a tenure track job, that is no reason to assume that even 2-3 years of moving across the country is worth it for everyone. Get over the fact that I might not find your tenure track life to be as desirable as you seem to think I should!
I don't understand: is your complaint that there aren't enough T-T jobs or that T-T jobs aren't desirable enough?
I guess you should have chosen to go into a field where everyone is guaranteed a life long position. They're just handing those out if you're not in Classics.
"Trying to keep an undergraduate from applying to grad school once they've got the idea in their heads is like trying to reason with a bear that's trying to get into a trash can."
Vivid image there. But I've been trying my best to wrestle those bears out of those particular trashcans for my entire career (20-plus years now). It has been, in my opinion, unethical to encourage BA students to go on to graduate work in the Humanities for at least the past 25 or 30 years.
Yes, the crash of 2008 made a horrible situation much, much worse. But the prospects for a t-t have been dismal since 1980s, and references to a hiring "boom" in the late 1990s seem to me to be mainly rose-colored romanticizing. I was on the job market in the late 1990s, and I sure don't remember any "boom" for me or my cohort. I finally snagged a t-t, after years on the one-year circuit, and so did some of my friends, but many others did not.
It's worse now. But it's been ghastly for a very long time. None of us have had any justification for encouraging undergrads to go on to grad school at any time in the past several decades. But those bears are awfully hard to pull away from the garbage cans.
It's also worth noting, once again, that there are definitely people out there who are actively *trying* to get the bears in the trashcans. In fact, they have built their careers on it.
Why don't these evangelical institutions make their requirements clear in the ad? Do they really want to sift through a bunch of applications only to disqualify half of them at interview because the candidates are unwilling to bullshit about a personal relationship with Jesus?
@1:03am, which evangelical institution(s) are you concerned about? Wouldn't it be ironic if you were getting all bent out of shape because of a very recent APA ad placed by an institution that has no religious affiliation at all? I'm just curious to know where I might be sending my application, in case there's some ad that I didn't see.
Ouch. Yes, you're right. There's more than one institution with exactly the same name.
I'm an ass. Carry on!
@7:49am, no, that would not be ironic. Look it up.
@April 10, 2013 at 12:36 PM
What, precisely, should I be looking up? The ad that spurred 1:03AM's comment clearly does not relate to a religious institution. Is there some other ad that I don't know about? If so, again, I'd love to know where that is so that I can be outraged along with the rest of us. But for now, 1:03AM had the anonymous guts to admit an error, and you're apparently hoping to inflame passions over nothing. So which institution should I be angry about? I've certainly gotten screwed in the past by applying for positions at institutions that don't hire people who aren't members of their particular club, and sometimes that is not stated in the ad, but at present I'm not aware of any PS ads that appear to be guilty of this horrific crime against humanity. Please, make me less ignorant by sharing the information that you have!
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/isnt-it-ironic-probably-not/
Turns out everything I needed to know about the meaning of "irony" could be learned from that 'Futurama' episode when the Robot Devil gives Bender an air horn attached to his face.
How is the market actually this bad?
This is fucking unreal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/education/gap-in-university-faculty-pay-continues-to-grow-report-finds.html?_r=3&
Interesting for the numbers it provides ... though the skepticism it reports about whether the proportional increase in "contingent faculty" negatively affects education is intensely irritating (as if the concern about exploitation were just that it might negatively impact productivity)!
I thought I'd share my experience here. Graduated about 6 yrs ago, done a few VAPs, had a baby and then accepted a research grant. Sent at least 200 applications around the globe. I built a respectable research profile, I am well published, have connections. None of this has given me a job. Indeed, the more qualified I get, the less successful I am on the job market. Do institutions fear people who can indeed become tenured? sometimes I do wonder.
I thought I'd share my experience here. Graduated about 6 yrs ago, done a few VAPs, had a baby and then accepted a research grant. Sent at least 200 applications around the globe. I built a respectable research profile, I am well published, have connections. None of this has given me a job. Indeed, the more qualified I get, the less successful I am on the job market. Do institutions fear people who can indeed become tenured? sometimes I do wonder.
I suspect that many places want someone want someone not just very good, but really outstanding. I think, in a lot of situations, someone who is potentially a rock star gets the edge over a merely very good known quantity, even if the very good known quantity is better than the average potential rock star turns out to be. I saw a number of top places that only invited newly minted PhDs this year. That seems to me to be an irrational policy, but I keep hoping that reason will carry the day.
I built a respectable research profile, I am well published, have connections. None of this has given me a job. Indeed, the more qualified I get, the less successful I am on the job market. Do institutions fear people who can indeed become tenured? sometimes I do wonder.
right there with you. I think that building up a scholar's profile scares a lot of search committees, especially when many of them have anemic cvs. Feels like picking teams on the playground.
Also, some SCs may want someone who has not become embittered by actual experience in this market.
You can be sure that one of us who has been out for six years is not, for instance, going to be eager about sending undergrads into grad school.
why not just send them to capture an enemy machine gun nest?
The APA (or NACA or whatever horrible name it'll have soon): your one-stop shop for being forced to create a separate login for any conceivable task you might want to do. (Membership; placement; abstract submission; message boards; ...)
"Also, some SCs may want someone who has not become embittered by actual experience in this market.
You can be sure that one of us who has been out for six years is not, for instance, going to be eager about sending undergrads into grad school."
This assumes that SCs want a new hire to be "eager about sending undergrads into grad school." Not my experience at all.
I consider it clearly unethical to advise undergrads to go to grad school in any humanities field. As an SC member, I would see a propensity to encourage undergraduate majors towards grad school as a strike against a candidate. I'd consider such a candidate definitely unethical and possibly delusional.
If one thinks that a BA in Humanities has value (which I do), then an undergraduate major in Classics is worthwhile. But none of us have any business at all encouraging our majors to go to grad school. Indeed, I think it is our clear and pressing duty to do everything in our power to persuade them away from graduate studies if we possibly can. Some won't be persuaded, but we have to try.
This is why I said some SCs.
This assumes that SCs want a new hire to be "eager about sending undergrads into grad school." Not my experience at all.
I consider it clearly unethical to advise undergrads to go to grad school in any humanities field. As an SC member, I would see a propensity to encourage undergraduate majors towards grad school as a strike against a candidate.
It is difficult for me to imagine any SC making any decisions whatever on the basis of whether a candidate would be more or less discouraging about undergraduates going to graduate school. This is such a tiny part of the job that I can't even imagine it coming up.
But none of us have any business at all encouraging our majors to go to grad school. Indeed, I think it is our clear and pressing duty to do everything in our power to persuade them away from graduate studies if we possibly can. Some won't be persuaded, but we have to try.
I'm a little more flexible on this. I don't spontaneously encourage anybody, but if they come to me about it, I tell them not to go unless they get into one of the handful of programs with very strong placement (eight, maybe?) and unless they get a funding package that will keep them out of debt. I also explain the different things that people don't like about graduate school, that employment at the end even for people from programs with strong placement isn't guaranteed and in any case now probably means several years of itinerant teaching before a t-t job, that you have very little control over where you live, that it's very difficult to envision economic conditions 7-10 years down the road, and that higher education is undergoing a massive transformation at the moment whose outcome it's hard to be sure about but may include 1). a steady attrition of positions because of technology-enabled "productivity enhancement" measures (i.e., online courses) and 2). the disappearance of tenure.
This should be intimidating, but I feel as though it's a bit of a cop-out, since I don't typically say up front whether I think particular students are going to get into elite programs unless their grades make this totally uncontroversial, and when they don't they'll sometimes go ahead and go to their "safety" school anyway (or go to a post-bac or MA to enhance their chances next time around); it might be better just to tell them up front that I don't think they're up to it, but that's very hard to do, and I fully recognize that I could be wrong about somebody's potential.
All the same, if somebody genuinely wants to do it, has a vivid impression of all of the downsides and risks, has some specific and stringent criteria for what terms of attending grad school will maximize the chances for success, and satisfies those criteria with acceptance and funding from an elite program, I think it's OK to go. They're adults, in possession of autonomy and capable of making their own choices. Plus, it's not as though it's a booming labor market out there for folks with bachelor's degrees, or as though the professional schools are a better bet in any sense; a kid graduating today has relatively crummy job prospects wherever they turn.
So does anyone know if NYU is already interviewing? It has been a while, but the wiki is silent.
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