I did the UPenn Post-Bac program some years back. One of the nice things that they do there is most of the sitting faculty will, in a once a week lunch session, talk to us about some aspect of the field—usually applying to Phd programs. I’ll never forget what McInerney told us all. He said, “if you don’t get accepted into a top 10-12 PhD program, don’t pursue this field any further, because you won’t get a job. Don’t waste 6 years of your life working for a degree that won’t ever get you anything. I know plenty of very good scholars who went to schools that are just below the top 10-12, they were close friends of mine, but at the end of the day none of them ever got a T-T job. It’s cruel and unfair, but that’s the world. It’s hard enough for those with PhDs from the top schools to land a job; don’t kid yourself because you can *maybe* tell me about prof x who got a job—it doesn’t matter. For every exception (a PhD from Ohio State getting a job) there are 100 from the top 2-3 schools. I say this with as much kindness as I can: don’t accept admittance to a school outside of the top 10-12.”
His list, for what it’s worth:
Harvard Princeton Yale Berkeley Chicago Columbia UNC-Chapel Hill UPenn Cornell Stanford Duke Michigan
...then in an afterthought he added Brown, but stressed that they don’t have a strong record of placement in recent years (he said this in 2010, for what that’s worth)
Sounds like harsh, but good advice. Without a doubt most faculty have their degree from the top-12 than the next 12 on that list, whether in Classics or any discipline. Those schools are the “wow” schools, as my advisor once said. Meaning schools that if you say you received your PhD from their people reply with a “wow.” ..other schools, mainly STEM, would have some different ones (MIT, CalTech...), but those listed are one’s safest bets for a good career in academia. ..well, they provide the possibility for an easier ascent than those below them.
To add, remember that there are two amazing schools not on that list: Oxford and Cambridge. But, I imagine the list was intended to be American.
One could argue about where Texas would fall on that list in terms of general prestige (presumably at or near the bottom), but in terms of placement, I'm pretty sure it's better than a number of those places.
I think the difference is that the next-12 schools fluctuate greatly depending on faculty, administrative support, etc. So before Texas, there was Wisconsin. And before that Illinois, Indiana, and Colorado were placing grads. For the top-12, the default is to be in the game unless admins and/or faculty are in a rut (probably few you realize that Stanford was not a major player until the 80s and beyond despite the stature of the uni as a whole). I would also argue there's a liminal zone where schools are never really out of it but never major players as well - Virginia, UCLA, McGill, NYU (and I would argue Duke, Cornell, Brown, and now Wash U are really in this category).
@1:12, I agree. Another item making the waters murky is # of Phds produced by various schools who continue onto the market. A close friend, a Harvard PhD of some years ago, points out that many at his alma mater do finish degrees but go off and do other things, esp. in the financial sector. I haven't bothered to track this, not knowing the names, but he does, and has. So, his .02.
Edinburgh St. Andrews Toronto Cincinnati Bryn Mawr
From personal observation I'd remove Penn and Columbia, and add Texas and UCLA, but YMMV. We could play this game all night, I imagine. (PS Jeremy's from Berkeley, so no surprise he'd omit UCLA, an old old story there..)
I would say Texas would be a contender for top 15, especially for schools in the South. A lot of southern schools are hesitant to hire a Yankee, but recruit from places like UT Austin and UNC.
Toronto is somewhere in that top 12 or liminal group, in the vicinity of Duke, Cornell, and Brown. Cincinnati and BMC are not even in the liminal group unless it's just archaeology, but we're talking programs as a whole here, right? The overall university reputation will continue to be an albatross for Cincinnati and BMC, which will keep them from ever breaking into the top 15 schools. If they were Vanderbilt or Emory, perhaps. For this reason, I could conceivably see Duke, Cornell, and Brown breaking into the top 10 in the future though many things would have to break in the right direction (including the continued relevance of the discipline, which isn't a foregone conclusion).
But doesn't telling people who don't get accepted to Top-10 or Top-12 programs ultimately mean that we reassert the hegemony of those programs with every new cohort of graduate students? This should be a call to action, for those of who get t-t positions, use that to change the narrative that those programs are good by the simple fact of their being Ivy League or whatever. For those on search committees who say, "We have 200 applications, we need some way to narrow them down so we throw out anyone who's not Top-10," that's lazy and stop doing it. Once there's better representation on search committees, among faculty, in the administrations - which CAN happen, with some active efforts by people not concerned with just reproducing themselves - we can get beyond this pedigree nonsense and recognize people who are good regardless of their institutional affiliation.
Brand name does not necessarily mean quality, it just means recognition, and recognition is not a good measure of a (wo)man because it's so tied up in things like race, sex, religion, sexuality, ability, socioeconomic status, etc.
Also, some people go to graduate school for reasons other than wanting to become an academic. And "success" is not the same thing to everyone.
You really think anyone from Cal goes out of their way to marginalize UCLA? That's lamer than replacing Penn and Columbia with UCLA and Texas, as excellent as they are in their own right. Cal is thinking national and international with Stanford while UCLA is fighting for supremacy of SoCal with USC.
10:45 (and others out there who undoubtedly agree), My degree is from one of those schools named above as around #12. I have taught graduate seminars in a top-5 PhD program, in another that would be ranked around #12-14, and another that would be in the #15-20 range. While there were exceptions in some individual cases, on the whole one can clearly see the difference in the quality of the grads. So let's stop pretending -- and, again, I write this as someone from a non-elite PhD program myself, and as someone still looking for a tenure-track job -- that there is some terrible injustice being committed here against those with degrees from sub-12 schools. In a few individual cases, sure, but in general, no: while there will most certainly be some duds, over time departments really are likely to make a better choice by hiring candidates from better programs.
If you wish to pursue a fairly traditional program of study, definitely think twice if you don't get into a top ten program. Top twenty programs can work if you're truly honest with yourself about your employment chances (as all should be) and dearly wish to specialize in something that top ten programs don't really offer. Linear B and Texas comes to mind along with classical/near east at a place like UBC or BMC (and ironically Harvard). If you want a world class museum in-house and all the whiz bang research that goes with it these days, Penn is really the only game in town (sorry, IPCAA folks).
If you want to read texts, think deeply about what they actually mean, and then concern yourself with how that meaning applies really and practically to the world today and to your life in it, the Classics isn't for you -- top 12, top 15, or top 20.
Classics by this definition is just another self-replicating "Wissenschaft" concerned with advancing members of the in-group while denigrating members of the out-group (as defined by members of the non top-x number plus all those lost souls foolish enough to pursue other studies or even just other employment).
The search for meaning is for noobs, as is any sort of belief that there can be quality and achievement in that search..
@10:53, geezer here. I admire your innocence. Berkeley/UCLA an old, old story. And calling Berkeley "Cal" kind of puts the cherry on top, considering there's a whole lotta "Cal" out there that isn't in the Bay area.
@10:45, yes, I agree with you in terms of what's morally or ethically right. I think the original poster was making a different point, about brand, rather than what's behind the brand. Same problem at tenure: the engineer running the tenure show that includes the humanists will not be aware, say, that Toronto has anything to offer those in the US, if Toronto doesn't come up on the engineering horizons very often.
FYI: bad news for Classics out of the University of Missouri.
"Good morning friends,
As some of you may have heard, the University of Missouri - Columbia recently underwent a review of graduate programs due to the state legislature cutting budgets for universities over the last several years, which will likely continue over the next several years. The university created a task force to analyze the graduate programs currently offered at Mizzou, and published their recommendations a few days ago. Unfortunately, the task force recommended closing the graduate programs - both the MA and PhD - for Art History and Archaeology and Classical Studies. Recently, Art History was moved to the School of Visual Studies, and Archaeology merged with Classical Studies to become Ancient Mediterranean Studies, and faculty, alumni, and friends believe that these changes have both strengthened these programs and addressed the issues raised by the task force.
We would greatly appreciate any letters of support for these programs, especially any personal testimonials about the impact these programs have had on your life, or those of colleagues and students, and on the field as a whole. Mizzou is the only public institution in Missouri to offer this interdisciplinary approach, and we feel that the end of these programs limits access to future students and scholars in the field. Please address your letters of support to Professor Anatole Mori, Ancient Mediterranean Studied Department Chair, at MoriA@missouri.edu, and copy Arts and Science Dean Patricia Okker at OkkerP@missouri.edu.
To view the task force report in full, please visit https://provost.missouri.edu/…/Academic%20Programs%20Task%2…
General information about the task force can be found here: https://provost.missouri.edu/…/academic-programs-…/index.php
To view an article about the task force recommendations published by the Columbia Missourian, and written by a student double majoring in Journalism and Classics, please visit https://www.columbiamissourian.com/…/article_706641b2-0145-…
The information from the task force report specific to these departments is as follows:
" Art History and Archaeology-MA, PhD: The Task Force recommends inactivating the master's and doctoral programs in Art History and Archaeology. The primary rationale for this recommendation include the small average number of graduates per year from both of these programs, the extremely high average time to degree for students in the doctoral program, and concerns about research productivity among faculty in the program relative to peer institutions. " Classical Studies-MA, PhD: The Task Force recommends inactivating the master's and doctoral programs in Classical Studies/Classical Languages, which are housed in the Department of Ancient Mediterranean Studies. The rationales for this recommendation include the small average number of graduates per year from these programs, the very high average number of years to degree for PhD students in this program, and the low research productivity among program faculty relative to peers.
Thank you for your consideration, Dawn Smith-Popielski"
Calling UC-Berkeley "Cal" is pretty normal outside narrow academic circles. That's what undergraduates there call it, not to mention every sportscaster in America.
So, complaints that we're overproducing PhDs from schools not in the Top-10 or Top 12 because those people can't get jobs, and then a university says, we should close this program at Missouri (not a Top-10 or Top 12) because it isn't productive for students or faculty, then a call to arms to keep that program active because . . . ?
I am not among those who think that you have to attend a Top-whatever program to be good and to succeed, and I'm all about saving classics programs, especially those that are *actually* interdisciplinary and admit that "classics" isn't just a synonym for "philology", I just mean, with all of this talk about the problems of classics and the job market and whatever, are you just upset that other people outside of classics recognize the same problems that you do and are doing something about it besides just complaining on an anonymous forum?
There's a man running for Senate in Missouri who has referred to feminists as "she devils" (hmmm wonder what party he's a candidate for). It's rather unsurprising that such a place would be hostile toward public universities. The sort of people that are selected in regressive states to assess and review university programs generally aren't fit to be dogcatcher, let alone make any sort of important recommendations on what needs to be cut.
I'd like to urge everyone here NOT to send any "letters of support" re: the PhD programs under threat at Mizzou. Those programs--like many such programs at lower-tier schools--are simply a source of labor for the department, which uses its grad students to teach undesirable introductory-language courses for extremely low stipends and then pushes them out of the nest with useless degrees and no realistic evaluation of their chances at landing a job. The MA programs might be useful for producing high school Latin teachers or the like, but the PhD is a racket.
The problem is that we as a discipline can't really decide what we are. The top ten programs can (for now) get away with this fuzziness but I suspect the rest will shortly come under more intense scrutiny like Mizzou and largely evaporate. We're not in control of the rubber stamp for elite membership anymore so they don't need us other than to rekindle some nostalgia in increasingly rarer acts of self-indulgence. Yet everything about us screams white lives matter as we hold to the long-established strictures of the discipline. This obviously puts us on the chopping block on the right. There's only so much that sympathetic English Lit colleagues can do to help stave off our extinction when their own survival is at stake. I don't see us surviving the culling that is happening quietly behind the scenes. 1-2 classicists at even major universities - that's the future outside a handful of elite programs.
To the contrary, it is both beneficial and good to protect programs in classics of whatever kind and prestige, wherever in the world, from being shuttered for duplicitous reasons by university administrations, particularly in this age where such moves are likely to be preludes to further cuts to the broader classics and humanities teaching mission. The uselessness of their degrees and the exploitativeness of their program is a question for the self-aware, rational, and agentive adults who have chosen to pursue graduate studies in such a department, rather than for condescending commentators on FV.
Uhm, people, you are right that the PhD program has dubious value, but not so the MA program. That's where new high school Latin teacher in Missouri should be coming from, for one thing. Think of how even without the PhD program Missouri's classics department can still be like its neighbor at Kansas, where there is a fine department. Get rid of the MA as well and then it becomes an unimportant program that ultimately will have fewer teaching slots.
I write this as one who has taught in state universities with a PhD program, with an MA program, and without any grad program, and the places in the third category had mediocre classics programs -- and that's not a coincidence.
New York, too, has issues. SUNY-Albany back in about 2011 closed their Classics Dept down completely along with 3-4 other programs/departments they said weren't viable.
The same year, the SUNY-Albany president received a pay raise from $650,000 to $768,000. Yes, 3/4 a million. Famously, at a public meeting to discuss the closure of Classics, et al., a student asked if, given the financial climate that warrants closing these departments, do you feel that you deserve a pay increase of $118,000? The room exploded in applause. The reply of the President? Simply, "we aren't here today to discuss employee salaries; only the closing of some hemorrhaging departments."
...Doesn't matter what state you're in, Classics isn't seen as any more protected in Democratic-leaning states either. We're a dying field, plain and simple. And when Admins have to find a place to trim the fat, Classics will often be chosen.
First timer on the job market here with a question. I had an interview at the SCS and have not heard anything since, while the wiki shows no indication that any campus invites have gone out. What is the protocol about sending an email to the SC chair to inquire about the timeline of hearing back from them? Is that an ok thing to do?
A common refrain. But to put the numbers in context: a faculty member costs 1.5x their salary, more or less, including benefits, at a gradually increasing rate (inflation, raises) for 20+ years. That $118,000 = one faculty member. Close a department and the “savings” are substantially more. Upper admin salaries last shorter time frames since they tend to move on to new jobs, and then the salary can “reset” a bit.
I’m not arguing that any of this is fair or that compensation is appropriate or that departments should be shut down, I am suggesting that costs are more nuanced than they appear at first.
One additional comment that seems to have been omitted in the discussion of pedigree. In terms of "net worth," an Ivy League Ph.D. has the added benefit of monetary value/prestige outside of the classics academy. Given that even the Ivy League and its kin are struggling to place Ph.D. students in TT jobs, there is the further risk that one will be at an even greater loss if that Ph.D. is not recognized in the business/professional world as having a monetary value.
At least the Ivy League Ph.D. has the added benefit (provided one has the networking skills and social intelligence, or EQ, to put it to good use) of being viewed by some major companies as being equivalent to an MBA (provided one does some slight additional pre-job training).
There's never any harm in writing to a SC chair to ask about the state of the search, especially if you've already been interviewed. That said, if the chair were able to tell you something concrete, such as "we're inviting you to campus" or "we're not pursuing your application any further," you would likely have heard from him/her already.
"Those of you talking about the MA and training high school teachers are confusing MAs with MATs. Discuss."
Not an important distinction at all. My dept., which has MA but not MAT is being practically begged by HS and the like to supply them with Latin teachers. We place them very well.
Why on earth would we do anything other than support the *closure* of Missouri's PhD program. MA program, perhaps not. But there needs to be fewer PhDs out there.
Who decides the culling? Are we resigned to 'market forces' and political hobbyhorses deciding what regions have the privilege of offering affordable graduate study in the classics to their communities?
I ask these questions because the cavalier acceptance of the tier system outlined above and the prestige of the Ivy League and their kin disgusts me. There are plenty of good scholars and teachers who come from outside those schools. I agree, we should not be training as many PhDs as we do, but should we acquiesce to the reifying of a class system that will guarantee the general background of the professorate is a homogenized one?
The loss of a program like Mizzou's is confirmation of obvious changes to education and our public support for it in this country. The proud refusal of Classicists to protest it and support those affected by it confirms that we have internalized this nonsense and will be powerless when they come to close our programs down too
If I were your administration, I'd take your comment as an argument FOR closing your MA program.
Why? You're conflating what an MA aims to produce (we can argue what that might be, but scholars of a minimum level of competence must be first on the list) , and what your MA graduates are actually doing. If what they are doing is becoming high school teachers (paid at the rate of someone with a Master's degree), then your university really does not need an MA in Classics at all. The education program's MAT, supplemented by some extra advanced undergraduate courses in Latin, would do just as well getting them those teaching jobs with the Master's pay bump AND your school wouldn't need faculty for a "graduate" program in Classics. Much more efficient in terms of staffing AND the grads would be better prepared for the bureaucracies of pre-collegiate schools.
There's the class-system. There's market forces. There's oversupply of PhDs. Probably there are other arguments here.
First, PhD programs don't serve geographic communities, at least not in Classics. The community they serve is the community of all potential Classicists. Looked at this way, the geographic location of those programs is irrelevant. Next to no one picks a Classics PhD program because the school is located in their "community." If they do, they're not in it for a job.
Second, we market forces are in tension with what we want and what we believe is best/good/right/truth/beauty, but they're not inherently evil. We have to acknowledge them and act in a way that is ethical for current and future grad students and graduates. That means, we can't just go around proclaiming "Classics for everyone, Classics is equity!"
A better approach would be to reduce the number of PhD programs (as with Missouri) and simultaneously have a more equitable method for admissions to those "top tier" programs. That is, instead of increasing the number of programs to grant access to a profession without then granting access to jobs in that profession, how about we increase access to top programs (dismantle the class in Classics) so that those CAN be the best have the chance to be -- not just those who can AFFORD to be the best?
My approach may be just as pie-in-the-sky as yours, but it's a much less damaging pie-in-the-sky.
@7:01, I can see your perspective but I would add a wrinkle that will help me judge the mizzou program once I learn more about it. Riffing off a previous post, which (wisely, imho) suggested that one should avoid programs that are clearly less regarded if pursuing a traditional program of study, I'm inclined to let PhD programs that are basically lesser clones of the top ones just die.
It's ridiculous how rigid our approach to the study of antiquity continues to be. It's to the point that the most interesting and substantive discussions are taking place on social media rather than in any classical journal I've seen. Worse yet, the manner in which we continue to prejudice narrow, stodgy, dead-end philological pursuits despite every person who has a say in our future trying to tell us that we don't need and they won't support such a narrow focus despite all the lip service on departmental websites claiming to study antiquity broadly. A 5:1 ratio of textual faculty studying several centuries of just one potential source of knowledge betrays our bold claims.
Let these programs die. We don't need a young Homerist from Mizzou getting their hopes utterly dashed once they realize how outgunned they are competing against peers with training that is on the order of several magnitudes better.
It's not necessarily the training that's better at the "top" programs. Most places have some fairly distinguished people. I'd say it's the access to resources at "top" programs that's "on the order of several magnitudes better." It's not that the ivy grads are better scholars or smarter people -- some may be, but the same is true of individuals at the "lesser" places -- it's that they just have access to more STUFF to work with: libraries, collections, funds, networks, and time. YMMV.
"You're conflating what an MA aims to produce (we can argue what that might be, but scholars of a minimum level of competence must be first on the list) , and what your MA graduates are actually doing. If what they are doing is becoming high school teachers (paid at the rate of someone with a Master's degree), then your university really does not need an MA in Classics at all."
I never said ALL (capitals are useful, as you showed) the MA students in my dept. go on to teach HS and similar jobs, but good on you for assuming they do. Some do, some don't.
But we should probably shut the whole thing down, as you suggested, just to be safe.
If universities truly want to save classics from itself (yeah, a huge if), it should run searches where there's only one classicist on the committee so we can get rid of inbred prejudices. Just have them hire the best humanist with interests falling into classical studies broadly defined. We've shown no evidence to have the imagination or courage to move the discipline forward into the future. It's the only way we will get out of this death spiral where we encourage the perpetuation of our flaccid, dying paradigm.
3:19, 5:52, etc.: 3:10 here. I think what is self-serving and disingenuous is the bad-faith displacement of our anxiety and bitterness about the job market into a fake, generalized concern over the future of "the profession." Are there "too many" Classics PhDs? Well, too many for what? For the people who got them? Clearly not. I am sure many of us say we would choose a different career path if we could go back a decade, but we still got our PhDs eespite many opportunities to jump ship and warnings along the way. I've said this here before, but who in this day and age can get into a graduate program in the humanities (let alone study in one for more than a year) without hearing about the dire condition of the job market? Yet we persist--so, again, too many PhDs for what?
What you mean is: too many for you to have gotten the job you want and think you deserve. And, look: I feel you. We all know it's a shit market even for the absolutely most brilliant and qualified. But getting rid of the PhD program at Missouri won't fix the glut of Classicists striving after the same few jobs, and getting rid off all graduate education outside Harvard or wherever you went would be, surely, a disaster for the future of classics in general.
Pursuing a tenure-track job or conducting research in the academy are not the only motivations to get a PhD. I don't know anyone at Mizzou, but I have a hard time believing that anyone starts a graduate program in the humanities at an nth-tier program because they honestly believe Yale will hire them right out of the gate. Maybe they want to teach high school, or are pursuing it as a passion, or whatever other reasons people have for doing things beyond economic rationality.
But instead of admitting your real objection to the Mizzou PhD program, you dress up your own anxiety as paternalistic concern for the poor lil naifs getting duped and exploited by the big bad meanies there.
never said ALL (capitals are useful, as you showed) the MA students in my dept. go on to teach HS and similar jobs, but good on you for assuming they do. Some do, some don't. Nor did I claim you did. You did, however, highlight them and claim that there was no distinction between the MA and the MAT. There is: an MAT doesn't need graduate course-work in Classics and so does not need graduate level Classics faculty. If you think you're helping by highlighting your MA grads who go on to the same jobs they could have gotten without your MA program, well, you're not. You're not helping at all.
With the possible exception of some private schools and few of the stranger locales (Mass, I think?), they don't even need any MA: just teaching certification and an undergraduate major. Or, the MAT and a concentration in advanced level undergrad coursework.
But we should probably shut the whole thing down, as you suggested, just to be safe.
Your argument boils down to: why try to fix an obviously broken system when there are individuals who appear by your reckoning to participate willingly in that broken system, even as it chews them up. You should take some time looking at yourself in the mirror. Then, when you calm down, look some more.
@7:31, I would include resources as a part of training. And it's even worse than you've conveyed since this access to resources extends beyond one's own campus. I'm not saying it's fair. Going to the "Mizzou Homerist" example, Mizzou Classics could be, and probably is, loaded with alums from top programs. In recent history, the top young Homerists have been connected in some fashion with CHS, which is not surprising based on the interests of its senior staff. A Mizzou faculty member could very well be a CHS alum, but that's one more degree of separation. Which recent grad grabs a spot at CHS? The Mizzou alum whose advisor might have been a fellow there, or one from a myriad of programs that has a direct connection to CHS? The same thing can be said about AAR, ASCSA, ISAW, Getty, etc. Unless a lesser regarded program is doing something different like cutting-edge digital humanities that will allow alums to stick out, I agree with previous posts and we haven't even factored in reputation and brand here as discussed above. Let them die.
So before those who are undecided potentially jump in to vouch for Mizzou, can any alumni/ae chime in to let us know what this PhD program objectively offers that is different from the top dozen programs out there? Please, no warm fuzzies bout how nurturing the faculty are.
The fact that FV has just had its annual pointless "Rank the PhD programs" argument, coming immediately after the "rank the journals" argument, and followed quickly by calls from many to kill a graduate program (with, presumably, an accompanying reduction in academic positions), might suggest that the whole field, even those of us from the magical 'Top Dozen Programs,' is in need of some strong medicine.
I went through the last 3 years on the Wiki (as long as we've been separating T-T from VAP and other temp positions) to see which programs actually have been placing people in permanent positions lately. For what it's worth, here are the "top ranking" programs by that metric. I'll hasten to add that it's not complete (not all positions have a person/PhD-granting institution listed) and that it says nothing about the ratio of PhDs granted by a particular institution to jobs won. Nevertheless, I think it's worth noting that Yale, Cornell, and Duke (listed above as top-12 programs) did not make the top-12 here but Ohio State and Cincinnati certainly did. Minnesota has landed as many as Brown and Duke, and Missouri as many as Boston University and Bryn Mawr.
Berkeley (9 T-T jobs in the last 3 cycles) Cincinnati (9) Cambridge (8) Penn (8) Stanford (8) Michigan (7) Ohio State (7) Princeton (7) Oxford (6) Columbia (5) Harvard (5) UNC – Chapel Hill (5)
Chicago (4) Cornell (4) SNS Pisa (4) Toronto (4) Yale (4) London (3) UCLA (3) USC (3) UT Austin (3) UVA (3) Brown (2) Duke (2) Johns Hopkins (2) Manchester (2) Minnesota (2) NYU (2) UC Santa Barbara (2) Barcelona Boston University Bristol Bryn Mawr Buffalo Colorado CUNY LMU Munich Milan Missouri Newcastle Ottowa Padova and Swansea Rome Ruprecht-Karls Universität, Heidelberg Saint Louis University St Andrews UC Riverside UCSD UIUC University of Bristol University of Siena University of Warwick Vienna Wisconsin
Cincinnati is overrepresented by the fact that a heavy in the department and his subfield (and former director of ASCSA) threw his weight around to place students in the somewhat unnatural manner described above. Time will tell if they stick around with tenure.
Sure seems to follow the rankings explicated earlier. I would have expected Chicago, Yale, Johns Hopkins higher, but perhaps they're not pumping out graduates. For instance, I would guess that the four from Yale represents the majority of its grads while UCLA's three probably represents a minority.
"Cincinnati is overrepresented by the fact that a heavy in the department and his subfield (and former director of ASCSA) threw his weight around to place students in the somewhat unnatural manner described above. Time will tell if they stick around with tenure."
...So you'd have us believe that Cincinnati place NINE people in the past three years in permanent positions who study Bronze Age archaeology? Since that's the field of the "heavy" in question. It seems a bit of a stretch for one of the niche subfields in the discipline.
Why does this person, whom I don't know, have to be pushing only his archaeology students? Director of ASCSA obviously resonates broadly across classics as someone pointed out with Hesperia. More power to this person. Maybe it's a reason to attend Cincinnati. I would have considered it more strohngly if I had known.
For what it's worth Cincinnati was one of the places where I was accepted for the PhD; I ultimately turned them down and went elsewhere, but one of the things that was emphasized by the archaeology faculty is that they get their students permanent jobs in academia.
The above list is extremely interesting. Thanks, 8:41. As is obvious, sizes of the programs differ: Chicago and Yale admit, and thus graduate, far fewer students than Michigan and Berkeley, for example.
All is fair in love, war, and the job market but if someone is peddling students that get placed over ones that could do more for the field, we all lose. I don't care what school they're at or what the rationale might be. It stinks.
But we'd only know who could do less and who could do more if we had a clear set of criteria for excellence. I don't mean number or impact of publications. I mean the ability (and willingness) to know what good scholarship looks like. When I float around the AIA-SCS, I don't see that sort of consensus (though I think it is worse in the SCS, and before anyone jumps down my throat, I am a literature person).
To clarify, it seems a bit silly that people are poo-pooing an influential faculty member at Cincinnati for getting his students jobs, since...that's part of their job to begin with.
I don't think anyone would disparage a faculty member for going to bat for a student, perhaps even a bit overzealously. Shit happens. It's just when it's pushed too far, which seems to be the case here by someone holding a prominent position that's ostensibly representing the entire field. I know plenty of senior folks in analogous positions who are careful, perhaps overly so to the detriment of their students, not to use this role to unduly influence outcomes. Whatevs, totally not surprised in this case. ASCSA is a inbred, political shitshow even by our infamous standards.
What exactly do we mean by "overzealously" pushing his students? Was he threatening members of hiring committees? Kidnapping family members? This guy must have a real talent. Or, is someone(s) talking nonsense on here again without any evidence?
As someone who has met the Cincinnati Heavy in question and who knows several of said Heavy's (non-Cincinnati) colleagues quite well, I get the feeling that this person isn't the type to lean on people or to threaten to pull a Tonya Harding on them if they don't give their student a job.
Essentially it seems that this person has influence, clout, and the respect of others in the field and uses it to the advantage of their students. This is what, IMO, an advisor is supposed to do, especially in an increasingly brutal job market. If your advisor has influence and they don't use it to help you then what's the point of spending ~5 years of your life studying with them?
Moreover, it's not as if Cincinnati is some marginal program. It has a venerable reputation and by all appearances it is a rigorous place that provides excellent doctoral training. No amount of clout from an advisor is going to get you a job if you're a mediocrity with subpar training.
People, that placement tracker don't mean a thing. It's so erroneous, my own institution included, and incomplete (also including my own institution), that you really can't gauge any sort of statistics based on it.
I remember once overhearing a prominent Berkeley prof bragging about how they get their students jobs by going to bat for them. Now it's clear how true that is.
Man, if only my adviser had gone to bat for me. All they told me is that I would never finish my dissertation (surprise, I did). But getting a job? I can't believe they even think about me.
Let's see what these Cincinnati grads do. If they flame out (and as claimed are occupying a high percentage of the relatively few archaeology positions that are important for the long term vitality of the field) let history judge this heavy (and all others like him) harshly. I know papyrology was set back by a similar scenario with the few heavies controlling the subfield playing god.
That's the problem as 10:30 PM pointed out. Even if they are subpar, they could still very well get tenure and then sit on the position for decades while flying under the radar. I know of a number of people close to retirement as Associates that I'm assuming got their jobs back in the good ole days through a similar network (judging by pedigree, Michigan seems especially guilty to whatever closed-door shenanigans were taking place decades ago). I know one situation where one of these incestuous networks willed and carried one person over the tenure line (e.g. the person's tenure book, essentially the diss, was basically a figment that was then reviewed by a fellow acolyte of the same advisor - yep, shit like this happens). So the swamp has always been there but now we're paying for it with particular harshness with terminated lines with good cause.
Aside from 9:41 apparently being passed over for a job that one of the Cincinnati grads got, what evidence is there that they are subpar?
Truth in advertising: I've met a couple of the archaeologists in question, and didn't get the impression that they were undeserving bumpkins, or that they would drag Aegean archeology down to ruin.
To be fair, it is outrageous to go through a top tier program and then struggle for a permanent job when someone from a program that shouldn't even exist gets one.
If a non-fancy program is placing students better than fancy ones can, by definition they *should* exist, if only to dilute the elitist snobbery of our field, as encapsulated in the above comment.
Friends, whatever you think of the quality of the program at Mizzou, the decision to eliminate it presages similar decisions in other states. This is a manufactured economic crisis based on politically-motivated state divestment and plain old racism: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/us/university-of-missouri-enrollment-protests-fallout.html
State institutions rely on state appropriations and enrollment. When one is cut mercilessly year after year and the other falls because of larger political trends, there is a severe crisis. The entire liberal arts foundation of Mizzou is under threat because its students and faculty ended up in the vanguard of recent protests.
Any mealy-mouthed comments about the quality of the PhDs or their job prospects is really just distraction from the divestment in public education, from the racially motivated attacks on the school, and from the larger battle which is about the purpose of a publicly funded university.
I will support Classics at Mizzou because of these larger issues.
@5:08am, it's outrageous that people think they deserve a job just because they got into a certain program. People from "lower-tier" institutions who face all kinds of obstacles on the way to earning their PhD (and, in some cases, their BA and even high school diploma) and land T-T jobs despite it all should be celebrated even more for their accomplishments. When I see someone from the bottom half of that list above land a T-T job (or even a prestigious VAP, these days), I think, "wow, their work must be amazing if they've been able to push past all the snobbery and succeed anyway." The people I know who have done this are truly remarkable talents. It's unfortunate that you apparently haven't had the pleasure of getting to know any talented people outside of your own social/economic tier.
I get the feeling that a lot of people are mad that Cincinnati is placing people in spite of the fact that the department is housed at a university which isn't a shiny Ivy or par-Ivy by any stretch. Or, that their own advisor sat on their hands when it came time for them to go on the market.
The fact that Cincinnati is able to place so many people when, as others have pointed out, the discipline otherwise leans heavily toward the same handful of elite institutions says a couple things. One, that they have sharp students and provide them with adequate training. Two, that the faculty there actually does its job and throws its weight around so that the students have a chance competing against other candidates from the Ivies and their equivalents.
@6:54 AM--interesting story from the NYT, but it doesn't seem obvious to me that Mizzou is losing enrollment because of _others'_ racism. Sounds like most students are staying away because they DON'T want to live on a campus that they believe to be racist. Others have decided (quite rationally) that future employers glancing at their CV may not have positive associations with the word "Mizzou." If the climate at Mizzou is really as ugly as it sounds (a swastika smeared in feces?) that makes me even more convinced that programs there don't need to be saved.
I have a very different take on whether what is happening at Missouri should just flippantly be attributed to racism, but putting that aside, I have a question more appropriate for this forum. The NYT article says this near the end: "The library is asking for donations to buy 400 books that it wants, including a $5,250 copy of “Complete and Truly Outstanding Works by Homer.”" I Googled it, and that seems to be an edition with a Latin translation beside the Greek. Is this something necessary for a library to have? Not being a Homerist, I've never heard of it. Does one use this to study Homer reception?
Dear FV, Based on the tone of a conversation from about a week ago, we are instituting a new rule. Henceforth, ad hominem attacks on any member of the Classics community, regardless of seniority, will not be tolerated. Universities, SCs, the SCS are all fair game for critique, but attacks against specific individuals based on their (perceived) personal characteristics are not. This has not been an issue here previously, and we don't mean to distract from the current conversation: the vast majority of users can simply continue as usual.
Servii, I am by no means disagreeing with the policy -- this recent business about Cincy has certainly been distasteful -- but I am not sure you are using "ad hominem" properly. An "ad hominem" attack is one that goes after the person rather than the substance of the argument, but here we have had people attacking individuals. Sorry to be pedantic! Sincerely yours, Anonymous [whatever time it is when I confirm "I'm not a robot" and click "Publish Your Comment"]
Hi Anonymous, this is not a reaction to current discussions, but to a conversation that took place a week or so back, the most relevant part of which has been removed. S
On graduate program: A program that places as many people as Cincinnati should be in business, although prospective students should break down the placements: if they are placing people in Aegean Archaeology but not Greek poetry, do not apply to study Greek poetry.
On Missouri, the right wing attack on the institution is appalling, as have right-wing attacks on the University of Wisconsin.
But on a pragmatic level, there are many graduate programs that should close. And many programs in the so-called "top-twelve" should be reducing their admissions, especially under-performers.
"Get rid of Missouri's PhD. One less third rate program clogging the pipeline with unemployable grads."
"To be fair, it is outrageous to go through a top tier program and then struggle for a permanent job when someone from a program that shouldn't even exist gets one."
I can't even tell if either of these is serious, so much unpleasantness do they manage to load into a completely illogical argument, and in so few words! But thanks for making my point for me. (3:10, 7:41 from yesterday here.)
Unrelated to the current discussion: the Haverford Mellon Postdoc appears, according to the Interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences Postdoc wiki (and the Hurford Center website), to have scheduled candidate talks, but it is as yet unclear whether those scheduled talks actually have attached speakers or are simply "reserved" times. In other words neither has someone reported being invited nor have any particulars been included with these scheduled talks. I remain, however, without hope.
^ probably good to keep your expectations low. as with all of these post docs you're probably in the running with a few hundred candidates, many of whom likely work on historical periods in which questions of war are --to the non classicist's eye-- much more salient and urgent
6:46 here again. I'm certain you're right; it was yet delusive for the position to have been advertised through the SCS. (That's not to say, of course, that I was/am a strong applicant.)
Yeah, I'm not really sure why it was included in the SCS job database to be honest, doesn't seem entirely pertinent ... anyway, I just saw that they only take one fellow per year? this is really insane...
"We seek a scholar interested in the comparative history, social and cultural impact, and artistic representation of war."
"Yeah, I'm not really sure why it was included in the SCS job database to be honest, doesn't seem entirely pertinent ... anyway, I just saw that they only take one fellow per year? this is really insane..."
Your argument is that societies that went to war virtually every year of their existence don't seem to be a good fit for a study of the impact of warfare on society? You don't see how artistic representations of warfare, e.g. in drama, historical writing, monumental architecture, funeral orations, etc., have much to do with the study of the Mediterranean past? What are you working on? Roman river boats? I can't think of a period where warfare is more central than to the Greco-Roman era... but hey, that's just me (a candidate who didn't get an interview).
@7:31 the point is that the Haverford postdoc was not specific to Classics/ Ancient Studies, therefore perhaps not a good fit for the SCS job list, not that the topic is not relevant to Ancient Studies. The SCS does not normally publish general humanities postdocs.
"Get rid of Missouri's PhD. One less third rate program clogging the pipeline with unemployable grads."
"To be fair, it is outrageous to go through a top tier program and then struggle for a permanent job when someone from a program that shouldn't even exist gets one."
@6:00pm "I can't even tell if either of these is serious, so much unpleasantness do they manage to load into a completely illogical argument, and in so few words! But thanks for making my point for me. (3:10, 7:41 from yesterday here.)"
The attitude of the two comments that 6:00pm is replying to is are excellent examples of the attitude that a lot of Ivy and par-Ivy types have. This seems to be informing much of the animus toward Cincinnati's success and the relish with which some seem to be anticipating Missouri's demise.
If the well-heeled intellectuals at Haaarvard are losing jobs to dirty plebs at *gasp* public universities that aren't Berkeley, Michigan, or Chapel Hill, what's even the point of going to a place steeped in privilege, elitism, and self-congratulatory wankery?
The SCS isn't out there looking for jobs to post. The SCS posts the jobs for which institutions or even private persons have taken out ads with the SCS. Remember the Greek tutor that ran a couple years in a row?
I was the person who commented during SCS in Boston how I was getting ignored left and right after people looked at my name tag and saw that I came from a 2nd tier school, or when someone more important walked by... I feel like the anxiety and frustration I felt there is manifesting virtually in this forum
I do agree that the SCS is not responsible for humanities post-docts. There are other venues (h-net, Chronicle, European Post-Docs wiki where these are published. If you do Roman river boats and want a post doc, you still have to scan these venues.
@Jan 28, 7:22 PM: ...except that a young Homerist from Mizzou actually did recently get a TT job. I am not said young Homerist (nor am I at Mizzou), but I know for a fact this is true. Mizzou is fine! And worth fighting for simply out of self-interest. This is an administrative Cold War. First the Soviets come for Mizzou, then they keep expanding cuts to the Humanities and Classics until your program is surrounded and you're trapped.
In response to 7:59: I'm not an elitist. I come from a wannabe-ivy-par university that rarely places people, although it does on occasion, and I am wholeheartedly supportive of somewhere like Cincinnati. But I don't believe that programs that can't place students should be training them. This should probably even include my own university, if I think about how many people were in grad school with me and the degree of misery most of the former graduate students suffered once out in the "real world." If only 1/20 or so entering students ends up with a TT job, I think that is just not good enough to justify the costs. It's a tragedy for the academy, but these programs are already generating huge amounts of personal tragedy for their students, not in order to actually train the future of the profession -- they're not, and they know it -- but simply to feed egos or free themselves from teaching Lat 101 and myth sections or whatever it is that causes people to do this.
Whether we want to be political or not, there is an aggressive group of politicians out there who are vehemently opposed to the existence of any kind of public institution, and universities are one of their favorite targets. They are supported by a not insignificant swathe of the public that is proudly anti-intellectual, for whom universities are nothing more than indoctrination factories that turn kids into Communists and where free speech is smothered.
Attacks on places like Missouri presage more aggressive moves against higher education coming down the pipe.
@10:29am in some ways I have to agree. Graduate admissions need to be scaled down or a moratorium needs to happen. But there is pressure on departments, especially in big R1s, to admit a good number of PhD candidates (e.g. 3-6 per year), since they need a number of TAs and Instructors to do a large (sometimes lion's) share of the pedagogical labor. At my R1 Ivy the grads teach about 50% of the classes; virtually 90-100% of the elementary to intermediate progression of Latin and Greek. Universities have a business model that relies on these admissions to increasingly reduce faculty costs (even though they are non-profit entities with enormous endowments--at least where I am), and so, in turn they churn out too many PhDs who can't find jobs, since the universities are increasingly not opening up TT lines, but replace those TT lines with more grad admissions and/or adjuncts or these new "Assistant Professor of Teaching" positions (a.k.a. untenured and heavily exploited lecturer). It's a self-sustaining cycle that will only increasingly do violence to grads, contingent faculty, and untenured professors (recently have heard too many stories of the dept. approving tenure, but the provost denying it!), and finally, the discipline as a whole.
But we all should know this by now... I'm always surprised by how many in the field are shocked that jobs are scarce. It's not in the interests of the neo-liberal administrators of the nation's universities.
Leaving Mizzou aside for a moment, and back to the plight of finding a job. Tell me, FV world, is there any point for a non-EU, North-American trained PhD to apply for a UK position? Honestly wondering whether applying for UK jobs is a hopeless pursuit...do UK institutions ever hire outsiders?
@11:37, Do you have any UK connections? Are you exceedingly well-published ( attractive for committees thinking about REF reputation)? If no, I don't think there's much of a shot.
@11:37 yes, let me second 12:05. Publications (esp. ones coming out soon and can count towards REF 2021) will be crucial, as will be some connections (even some UK referees). I was told that in most cases you won't get an interview in the UK without a book contract or having held a postdoc in the UK or EU. But I have seen a few exceptions: some JRFs at Oxbridge (usually through connections to Ivies) that convert to lectureships (but very rare) and some recent hires at Durham, for example.
11:37, it is certainly far less common than the reverse (weirdly, in my opinion, but that's another conversation) but I can think of one person who got a UK job not longer after finishing their US PhD, and with no connections. As 12:05 and 12:22 have begun to indicate, however, it is worth pointing out that UK universities are compelled to be impossibly reductive and brutal in their expectations of research productivity because of the REF exercises, and quantity most definitely counts over quality. Moreover, most people I can think of who are American or got a PhD in America and then went on to UK jobs had some very significant connections--e.g., "B.A. Oxoniensis" types returning to the fold.
Interviewed at Colgate during the SCS, but have heard nothing back. Colgate's new semester just started last week, which could have delayed things, but at this point it has taken a very long time to produce a short-list, which makes one wonder if the search is somehow in peril.
It also means that Colgate is very behind the curve in terms of scheduling visits and making offers. This is a good year for ancient history, so there is more risk they will lose top candidates to other jobs, although it is as always a buyer's market.
In case it's relevant, I interviewed with Furman and their semester started three weeks ago and I've heard nothing and there's been no movement on the wiki. I think that sometimes at these small liberal arts colleges, there are a lot of levels of approval required that can be a little slow?
^^ Similar to the above, has anyone heard from Case Western? My interview was almost two weeks ago and I've heard nothing and seen no movement on the Wiki. If anyone has received a campus visit invitation, could you please update?
@10:55 is spot on. Another thing to point out is that ABDs can be big money-makers for universities. At mine, if you ran out of your five years of funding but were still a student, they required you to pay 10% tuition as a "non-resident." That's if you were on an external fellowship, on someone else's support, whatever (not teaching, that is - those days of exploitation were reserved for those still within funding). Dozens if not hundreds of humanities PhDs trying to finish the diss but dragging it out by years was actually to the university's advantage, as it guaranteed thousands of dollars in revenue in "non-resident" tuition.
Think about it this way: 100 ABDs spread over various humanities departments x $5,000 tuition per year = $500,000 per year for the university's pockets.
Can I be honest, since this is an anonymous board and all? I had a handful of interviews this year as an ABD but I'm not even sure I even want it anymore...is that just the stress talking, does anyone else feel this way occasionally, and does it go away?
^EXACTLY how I feel! Same boat here. It feels weird not to be grateful to get interviews. None of the jobs for which I got interviews was in a place I particularly liked (I think for most people they are perfectly lovely places, just not for me). It felt weird thinking about having to settle in a place where I have no friends or history just for a job.... And hearing about how ABDs don't really get jobs made me more meh in general during interviews.
@5:12. You may well feel stressed. I do. Even if you do land a TT (which would be great, and a real accomplishment), there's still tenure review. During that time, you'll actually probably go on the market AGAIN. Then there are the everyday stresses of publishing, giving talks, etc. I do love to teach though.
You comment, I think, (and to some extent 5:12pm's as well) indicates that two things are going on. 1) You've both somehow managed to reach the final stage of your PhDs without acquiring along the way any real sort of awareness as to what the Classics PhD job market is like prior to actually being on the job market or 2) This is the result of a major failure on the part of your advisor and department to communicate to you how the job market works and a major failure on your part to interrogate your advisor and department about these things when it was unclear to you. Perhaps attempts at clarifying these things were made which failed. Perhaps it was some combination of everything I outlined.
Now, the above is me being generous; quite frankly anyone who goes into a PhD program in Classics ought to know this from the outset before they even make it to the stage where they decide to apply for doctoral programs. Full stop. That you applied and weren't already apprised of these issues is indicative of a major failure on the part of professors who teach undergraduates. Those of us in this position should be acting as the primary gatekeepers of the field by providing a clear-eyed explanation to students interested in pursuing the PhD on the shape of graduate education in Classics and the abysmal state of the job market and discouraging them from pursuing a PhD. Or, perhaps you were informed of all of this from the outset and along the way and then chose to ignore it. Which is probably the worst case scenario.
6:42, I don't understand why you are being so harsh. I don't think the comments above bespoke a blindness to the realities of the job market, but, rather, hesitation as to whether the profession is for those people, or whether it is worth the sacrifices involved (including, e.g., having no choice in place to live). The latter are, sure, things that everyone (should) know(s) about before getting to the ABD stage (at the latest). I don't think it's realistic to expect people--especially people who aren't from academic families--to never have doubts about the academic life or to know in advance, when they are 22, what they will want out of life when they are 30. Even if the market were amazing and we all got our pick of jobs, there are lots of us who would reach that stage and think, "is this for me?" (just as there are lots of us who leave PhD programs along the way, and not only or even mainly out of fear of the market). Since most of us have little life experience outside the academy, it can be especially difficult to figure these things out.
So to 5:12, 6:09, and others: of course, we all feel that way sometimes. Knowing what you want in life is hard! My advice would be, don't shoot yourself in the foot by assuming you won't get a job anyway.
You act surprised, but faculty are often useless (bc clueless, or because lazy/predatory), and students encouraged to be starry-eyed. After all, their faculty are teaching random seminars at a leading university and seemingly happy.
What seems exciting or at least feasible at, say, age 21 (e.g. moving somewhere shitty to teach shitty students as a VAP with low pay and zero job security while trying to grind out articles and applying to 50+ jobs), may not seem that way at 30.
So I agree there is blame to go around - I mostly blame the faculty and programs rather than the students - but this is more common than it should be. And, 6:09, good for you for not being brainwashed into thinking that its GRRRREEEEEEAT to move somewhere random for fairly low pay and with the expectation that you will be back on the market and tailoring letters extolling the virtues of random depts. Decide what you want out of life and act accordingly.
@5:12 After five years on the job market as a VAP, I still feel that way. I love what I do, but the stress is too much and I don't see it getting any better with a T-T job. Then again, I am just optimistic enough to hope that something might work out and I'll land a job that's a good 'fit.' But this is my last year on the market and I am giving up if it doesn't work out this year! I know enough to know that I've definitely had enough of the VAP life. Ultimately, I think it's a good thing to think about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Evaluating your life choices and (re)prioritizing things is stressful, but good, even if it yields no clear or immediate answers.
I don't think I draw as hard a line as @6:42. You may know the realities of the job market because you've been told but not really understand how it feels until you're there. At least for me, the decision whether to stay or go hasn't been so clear-cut. And sometimes you don't really know whether you want or don't want something until you try it out. Experience (in my experience) is the only real way to tell (though age has made me evaluate things a bit better and more carefully). You need to figure out what your limits are.
It's a personal decision and I've found that it helps to talk about it, especially with friends, family, and/or therapy depending on your circumstances. At the very least this will give you outside perspective which is something you are not likely to find in academia, especially while you're still in it.
6:09 here, thanks for everyone's support. I thought I would be honest about my feelings, following the lead of 5:12, and didn't expect to get a snap reaction such as the one from 6:42. I do not one bit regret my life choices up to this point and knew exactly what I was getting myself into. My advisors warned me when I started grad school and reminded me throughout my years of study. But certain elements of my personal and professional life have changed drastically over the last 1.5 years, and what seemed a dream two years ago has lost a bit of its allure.
I know this may also sound a bit strange to some of you, but I've psychologically absorbed a lot of the shit that's been unfolding following the presidential election and the frustration from all of that has gotten me somewhat down, but it's also made me more conscious about what I ought to be doing in life--a part of me has a hard time justifying teaching Latin 101 at a SLAC when there is so much shit going on out there. I don't have a solution though. But maybe I'm the only one?
A lot has changed over the last 8-10 years. When I started my PhD program, faculty advisors could honestly say that "anyone who finishes this program and wants an academic job can get an academic job." I knew going in that some of those jobs were short-term and/or exploitative, but the better candidates at that time were getting t-t jobs at decent places and I was confident that I would be one of the better candidates to pass through my program. Now t-t jobs are basically unheard of, and we're very lucky to get a multi-year contract and/or one that isn't extremely exploitative. I'm tired of the narrative that we should have known better. We knew it was going to be difficult, but we wouldn't be Classicists if we didn't enjoy a challenge. No one told us it was going to be nearly impossible because they didn't know that at the time.
And yes, things look different once you're actually on the market or even in a job. I know several people who DID score a t-t job and have the same "do I really want to do this?" questions as those of us still on the market. I look at their 4-4 schedules, endless extracurricular obligations, pressure to publish constantly, and anxiety about impending tenure review, and I think, "so that's the dream that I'm fighting so hard to achieve?"
@7:47, I feel the same way about the larger societal and political problems we're currently facing and feel I could be doing more to help if I gave up on this particular dream.
ABD here, and I feel the same way. I have been well aware of the realities of the market and I love my project and teaching, but I feel a kind of apathy about continuing in the field. It feels pretty indulgent sometimes, what we do, and it's hard to think how you're actually contributing to a better society when you're sitting in a basement, typing away on a project that six people (if you count my parents skimming it) are going to read. Plus, now that I'm in my 30s, moving around from place to place until I find a permanent position - and even then, probably not somewhere I necessarily *want* to be - feels a lot different than it did when I was 22 or even 25.
Something else that doesn't help: seeing your friends with relatively well paying jobs start families and buy homes, while you're living stipend to stipend with no savings. This somehow felt OK or justifiable when we were all in the same boat at the age of 21 just getting out of college but the differences are very stark 10 years later...
9:19 - I suspect the more elite one's UG was, the more bitter one is. Some folks are making 6 figures out of undergrad, and others who went to school with them are making 30k (if they're lucky) after 6 years of stipend, no retirement savings, etc.
9:11 here. I went to a good but not great public school -- people in this field have literally scoffed at me when I told them where I went to college -- and I'm doing well now (good program, good project, good advisor, good prospects) and I just wonder, especially after recent discussions on here, if these are seriously the colleagues I want for the rest of my life. It's a combination of everything, where you live, the job you get, the lifestyle you can have, and some of these people (not all, I get that, but too many maybe).
Well, there are certainly jerks in every professional field (doctor, lawyer, teachers, cops, etc.), and FV like many fora brings out trolls who express ideas they would not want their true identities associated with.
"Well, there are certainly jerks in every professional field (doctor, lawyer, teachers, cops, etc.), and FV like many fora brings out trolls who express ideas they would not want their true identities associated with."
@9:43 and 10:28—Actually, I found the recent discussion on FV extremely refreshing. The comments from all sides about leaving the field and how ones opinions have changed over time given the process of moving from one's 20s to one's 30s.
It was nice to hear various peoples views on the field. Even the previous comment, "I just wonder, especially after recent discussions on here, if these are seriously the colleagues I want for the rest of my life," can be applied to more than just the discussion on FV. In fact, I would argue it should be applied even more heavily to the non-anonymous famous names that aren't on FV. Even the unfriendly comments are at least genuine, and not hidden behind a false, smug veneer based in nothing more than a university title. I would actually like to have drinks with these commenters.
On the other hand, there are a lot of well known scholars who deserve to be called out as people I may not want as colleagues for the rest of my life. Sure, a fair number of them have only the best of intentions, and care about their students' well-being. But a great many others, who are nothing more than narcissists who have produced work that almost no one from the outside world will bother to read, care only about their image and their selfish lifestyles. The respect they seek, and often demand, from their students has little of substance to back it up. Their actions do not merit respect, so why on earth should their titles earn them any respect?
They are merely fatted cows acting like aristocrats with nothing of value to show for it, apolitical, pretending to care about issues like harassment while sweeping those issues under the rug for their colleagues and administrators so long as the rug will hide it, and always, always, always ready to exploit their students time and labor with promises like, "This will help you out on the job market," when in fact it will do nothing of the sort in today's job market.
They are, in fact, a perfect reflection of the current Gilded Age revival that has emerged in America, and which has taken the once radical bastion of the university to its deathbed. I can only hope that tenure, the one thing that makes this aristocratic behavior possible, will soon be abolished across the board by university administrators, and that the tacit, condescending nods of these individuals will then be taken as little more than signs of approval displayed by heifers having been led to the slaughter.
I realize that what I wrote above is blunt, even harsh, but I feel quite strongly that the problems that plague the field will only be perpetuated and compounded if we don't speak frankly about the state of things. The system will continue to chew up and spit out talented people, grinding up years of their lives and hard work, and if we do anything other than try to break the cycle then we are complicit in it.
When I first applied to doctoral programs I was given a very stern, and yes, harsh talking to about the very likely potential for failure were I to pursue graduate studies and an academic career. Perhaps the professor who gave me the unvarnished truth was one who had a better grasp on how dire the situation was than other people, but they presented me with the cold, hard statistics and explained very clearly how the scales were weighed against me, even as a sharp, qualified undergraduate from a solid program.
They explained that even if, at the end of a PhD I managed to snag a tenure track job and then win tenure, that the academic life was not something for most people. One must deal not only with teaching and research duties, but administrators constantly mulling cuts and questioning the utility of your field, and above them politicians in state legislatures who would feel a great deal of pleasure if they managed to eliminate tenure, police the political views of faculty, and slash funding for universities across the board and eliminate the public ones outright. This, obviously, is extremely stressful and will hang over you no matter what you do, unless you happen to land at one of a handful of insulated places.
So while I understand the uncertainty some people are feeling and that it can arise at various stages of their time on the job market, whether it be ABD or several years into VAP or even as the lucky tenure track and tenured few, the best course is to have no illusions about the field and the job market, and give only the realistic picture to those who come to us wanting to pursue this path. This isn't for everyone, and that's perfectly fine. Moreover, if at any stage you come to the realization that this isn't for you, you can leave the field. You shouldn't feel compelled to continue, and we collectively need to do a better job both expressing this and working to ease the transition for those who do wish to pursue other careers.
"But we all should know this by now... I'm always surprised by how many in the field are shocked that jobs are scarce."
There are among us those who started grad school prior to the bottom falling out, as well as many who were subsequently reassured that the job market situation would recover in a couple of years when the economy did. In most cases I don't think people are shocked at the state of the job market, exactly, it's more that they miscalculated (and were given bad advice by those who thought they could predict the future) and are now having to reckon with that error without a lot of other obvious career options open to them.
This is my third year on the market, and while I'm still convinced this is what I want to do and am not feeling the same apathy about continuing that others describe above, I'm just exhausted by the constant round of applications/interviews/visits that keep leading to nowhere. I plan to keep going if none of the interviews/visits I'm waiting to hear back about results in a job, but I feel a sense of horror and dread at the idea of beginning all over again next year. You get invested in interviews that then don't result in a fly-out, you get invested in campus visits that then don't result in an offer and the cycle of excitement/anxiety, intense preparation, then waiting to hear, then the plummet into despair when you don't is. just. exhausting. I feel so worn down and discouraged. I love this field, I love teaching, and I want to stick with it, but the processes of the market are really destroying me.
"Something else that doesn't help: seeing your friends with relatively well paying jobs start families and buy homes, while you're living stipend to stipend with no savings. This somehow felt OK or justifiable when we were all in the same boat at the age of 21 just getting out of college but the differences are very stark 10 years later..."
This isn't talked about nearly enough: the opportunity cost of graduate school (and then the hamster-wheel of contingent faculty jobs) is steep. Now that I'm in my 30s and have left academia, I really, really wish I had actually made money and been saving for retirement, a home, etc., in my 20s. The trajectory of an academic career is especially brutal if you are a woman who wants to have children. I'm in my mid-thirties now, still don't have my career or finances figured out, and the biological clock is ticking away. It's hard to weigh these considerations when you're a starry-eyed 22 year old just starting a graduate program. I did not realize all the sacrifices I would make for academic life until I was in too deep in graduate school to quit. Really, now, doesn't the idea of sunken costs keep so many of us trudging along?
@1:49pm -- "There are 9 UCs but only one Cal!" That's not Berkeley/Bay Area parochialism, that's a system-wide understanding of how to name the campuses.
To those of you at the end of dissertating/recently finished:
What ideas/aspirations did you have, by the end of the writing and editing process, of what the dissertation should look like vis-a-vis its eventual monograph form? Did you aim for near perfection, hoping to have as little editing to do in transforming the thesis into a book? Or did you finish with the philosophy that the thesis should be very good but not perfect, and that any kinks will be addressed in the manuscript stage?
I fucked up trying to write a dissertation that would need little in the way of revisions. It's a solid diss, but it took me too long to write and I could have finished a year sooner had I buckled down and accepted that it would not be perfect. This article explains why I wanted it to be perfect: https://jacobinmag.com/2018/01/under-neoliberalism-you-can-be-your-own-tyrannical-boss.
The only good dissertation is a finished dissertation. An unfinished dissertation is no good to anyone. And even the best dissertation requires a lot of work to become a book, because what makes a good dissertation is different from what makes a good book.
Incidentally, I found much of value in William Germano's From Dissertation to Book, though in the interest of full disclosure I should say that I haven't published my first book yet.
@1:39, I defended a dissertation with several problems. My plan was to revise it in its essential form (my advisor recommended I write it as a book and not a diss to begin with) and then get it out fast. After sitting on it for a while (which IMHO is absolutely necessary) and then showing a book proposal to several people, I realized that I needed a new framework and a new chapter. The book is so much better now than my revised diss would have ever been. I think you should realize that almost no one's diss becomes a real book and be ready to make some serious changes.
Has anyone received news about the ancient history postdoc at UToronto? I haven't heard back good or bad but would like to be put out of my misery if others have gotten updates...
probably VAP - you get a lot of teaching experience with those. admittedly post-docs are more luxurious-- more time for research and thus more attractive to the recipient but they kind of resemble pre-doc fellowships (with better pay) but you get the feeling like you're prolonging grad school life
I had a post-doc that was actually a full-time job. Thankfully it also had enough room for some of my own research. But I couldn't get a single academic interview after, despite the post-doc being pretty prestigious. I'm not sure a VAP would have been much better, considering I also adjuncted on the side, so I did get some teaching experience, though probably not as much as a VAP.
I've hardly seen post-docs that were full time jobs (other than say, the teaching post doc at Cornell)... are there any others ones like that on the offing this year? If you had to teach so much -- why did they call it a post doc and not a VAP? purely administrative reasons?
newbie here: has it been helpful to you to see who got which jobs? what do you do with this information? Just wondering if this information is motivating for people, or depressing...
Oddly, it is helpful to see who got hired. Sometimes, it gives a sense of the type of person who gets a particular job, which can help you position yourself better the next year.
But it is also depressing in that seeing the successful candidates is a reminder of how utterly random the process is.
Based on our demographics and how others generally view our discipline, we have very few young scholars that stand a chance. It's certainly a steep climb for any applicant, but bordering on the impossible for any of us. Seriously, can you think of even five classicists that stand a chance? I cannot.
A bit of good news for everyone here to be cognizant of:
as you're reading this, 40-50 of the market's top applicants are being offered T-T jobs. Which means that for the VAP season, which has yet to *really* begin, those of us still here (especially those of us who may have interviewed/visited numerous places) in the trenches have less upper-end competition to worry about.
Of course, much of this depends on those who accept T-T offers to cease applying for VAPs (some still do, yes, I know it's awful) and/or notify all SCs that they are now out of the running.
It's been a rough job season, but cheer up! There's going to be a fresh avalanche of (VAP) jobs in the coming 6-8 weeks. It's very hard to remain optimistic, trust me I know (4 dead-end interviews for me thus far), but rather than focus on the fortunate few who can land a T-T job as an ABD with a pathetic CV, let's try to learn from our own past mistakes in interviews or cover letter drafting, etc.. and take some comfort in knowing that it is the absolute norm that people who get T-T jobs are (on average) 4-5 years out from PhD, having held numerous VAPs. ...There will always be those who fall ass-backwards into great gigs, but put them out of your mind; they're the anomaly not those of us fighting our way uphill.
...So, let's all try to cheer up a bit and get ready for the VAP season, which is, in all honesty, the "REAL" job season for those of us on years 1-5 post-PhD.
Why would anyone apply for a VAP after they had a TT? Especially in a way that anyone here would condemn? The only scenario I can think of is that the TT had a truly massive teaching obligation or other serious problems that came to light during the process, or that some kind of other issue made taking the job impossible (unwillingness to sponsor a visa, or an emergency that makes it difficult or otherwise trying to relocate etc).
1.) *perhaps a bit anecdotal* Take a look at the Classics Wiki to see where the lion's share of folks are, most fall in the 3-5 year post-PhD range; very few above
2.) Take a look at practically any newly-TT faculty (post-2005) and you'll see that they almost always didn't land that gig until the 4-5 year mark.
3.) The account of numerous faculty at my PhD institution in both Classics and History (both large and top-5 programs). Both Depts held yearly open talks with 6-12 younger faculty each to field questions to grad students concerning the job market. I went to both, for 4 years. Add to this that each year they all re-iterated the fact that ca. 90% of T-T offers don't come until the 4-5 year mark. They explain it being the case for a few interesting reasons:
A.) After 4-5 years, a junior scholar has had adequate time to 'prove themselves capable of producing quality scholarship; attaining grants; participating in conferences; publishing articles; (maybe) landing a tentative monograph publishing deal.
B.) If you can show that 4-5 times over, Search Committees chose *YOU* that means that there must be something great about you; that if other SCs continually see something in you, time and time again, then you *ARE HIRABLE* ...so, the more that you get 'chosen' the more others want you.
C.) Persistence and drive. It's easy to say "fuck it," after a year or two of no T-T offers coming your way, but to stick with it and keep forcing your way through the shit-storm shows a great deal of integrity and self-sacrifice (sadly, many cannot continue due to personal reasons or financial issues, neither of which indicate a lack of persistence and drive)
@ 1:30,
It happens. There were a few famous instances here where people are offered a T-T job at a very low-ranked third tier school but chose to defer it a year or two so that they can undertake a nice PostDoc or VAP at a shiny Ivy. I also know of a scholar who said that even though he was offered a T-T job in February (2014) he wanted to know "how good he really was" so he kept applying to PostDocs and VAPs just to say "yeah.. I was interviewed for 5 T-T jobs, offered 2, and was offered 9 VAP jobs, and 3 PostDocs." ....NEVER underestimate the arrogance or ego of others.
@12:05, Thanks, that's really helpful. The post-PhD timeline was really never discussed at my institution, what a great idea to actually have faculty talk about that with the students before they go on the market!
4-5 years post-PhD is not at all the norm. That is more like an upper limit--after around 5 years, the few people who are still searching for a new job every year tend to either secure a t-t post or leave the field. Insofar as there is a norm, it is probably more like 2-3 years out, after having had a VAP or two, as the average profile for those securing t-t jobs. The wiki counters are obviously not accurate and complete or even necessarily representative statistics, but there are more people in their first 2 years on the market checked in there than in all other years combined. So, no, it is not the "norm" to do five years of VAPs before getting a t-t job.
That's not to say that there's anything wrong with sticking around that long (I think that persistence, and the aspect of "well, this person has been chosen by SCs X times--there's something to like there!" mentioned above, significantly outweigh the "no longer shiny and new" vibe that people adduce in this context).
Also, 12:05, you mention that this is partly based on new faculty at your PhD-granting institution. Presumably, then, a top, R1 university. How many of those new faculty were hopping up from other institutions where they already held t-t posts (as opposed to visiting gigs)? That's a totally different dynamic from the market as a whole.
I can't speak for all of them, of course, but I am sure that some may have held an Asst. Prof. somewhere else before making it there. To be a bit more specific, it is a top "public Ivy," so it surely can only provide partially helpful information.
We did, just a few years back, take on two ABDs for T-T posts. One was a spousal hire, but they both came to us from Yale. The "norm" (at least for the Depts here) is that most T-T folk come to us not from a sitting T-T job or ABD, but after having gone through 3-5 years of VAP gigs first.
All of the finalists in the current T-T search at our school (Ivy) have either had (a) at least one VAP; (b) a post-doc; (c) already have a T-T job (or equivalent), but are early on in the T-T clock and seem to be seeking greener pastures.
It’s reasons like this that I genuinely feel like all non-top-10 school SCs should be very VERY hesitant to give a T-T job to whomever is the “Michael Jordan” of applicants that year; they’re just going to jump ship at first chance, while the rest of us who have very strong CVs and have good pedigree are passed over because we aren’t “the absolute strongest candidate.” ...why the hell are so many SCs so short-sighted? How can so many honestly think that the MJ of the applicant pool will stay at their sub-top-10 school? To regularly have to fill a vacancy due to people jumping ship not only makes that Dept look inept at selecting the best pick, but it keeps the rest of us out of serious consideration unless we have a Harvard PhD a few books under contract and a CV that looks like Walter Schiedel’s (if any of you haven’t looked at his CV, take a look. Holy shit is it beyond insane).
I couldn’t agree more. It’s mind-boggling that so many schools will (carelessly) make an offer to someone who clearly is so far beyond the sitting faculty at an institution a job and think “he’s going to stay.”
Many 3rd tier and lower 2nd tier schools already realize this, so they make appropriate offers and pass over all of the Glen Bowersock Jr.s. The problem is with all of the upper 2nd tier and lower 1st; they “think” that they can be competitive with the top-10. All that they accomplish is having a constant revolving-door to their dept letting in the “MJs” as you put it year after year only to do it again when *they* leave too.
Sometimes the smartest people are the most gullible and foolish.
I've always been told to think of the job market in academia as analogous to dating. Everyone wants to be with someone smarter and better than themselves, while no one realizes or is willing to admit that this is (on the whole, not case-by-case) a recipe for unhappiness and discontent.
I disagree. Look at the recent job talks posted - what a gamble. Lots of largely unproven, but new and shiny, things gonna be one of only a handful of classicists at R1 schools. It doesn't matter that these are not top schools. As positions dwindle, every position, but especially those at any research school, is incredibly important. We can't afford solid but meh people holding too many of these positions due to some well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided, advisors pulling strings to get their progeny through. This isn't the natural, academic selection that will result in the strongest discipline going forward as we're forced to get leaner.
I'm not saying jobs should all be given to people 3-5 years out. At least some of them aren't excellent. Pick the best fit with the strongest credentials possible. However, I'm not seeing it as a whole and it doesn't bode well for the discipline's long term survival.
Off topic, but can anyone shed any light on what's going on with Case Western? My interview was over two weeks ago now, and it was already postponed by two weeks because of the SCS travel issues. Has anyone gotten a campus invite and if so would they mind posting it on the Wiki? Are they just being super slow? They are getting really behind the other TT jobs in terms of visits/offers.
I was a Gettysburg interviewee and they didn’t contact for campus visits until mid this last week. I want one of them, but I say this because many Depts are running behind schedule. I wouldn’t consider it out until you’ve seen others report something.
Usually makes are listed on Wiki. Though, I’m unsure if those names are added from the actual job recipients or by others who find out and add them. Being said, I don’t know who was offered and accepted the UAlbanu job.
Servius, please be sure to delete 4:57 p.m. -- even if not an all-out attack, it's way uncool for some anonymous jackass to be shining the spotlight on a fellow junior colleague in this manner.
I honestly don’t understand what’s going on here. My sincere questions keep getting deleted.
I’ll have to assume that, what to me, sounds like a completely vague and unidentifiable description of a writing device, a fast food chain, and a piece of formal ware is instantly recognized by others here as referring to a very specific person. Can you elaborate as to what the problem is with this trigger phrase?
...and can someone explain what the use of ‘meta’ means?
**Servius, if you’re going to delete this, have the decency to at least explain why.
I’ll just have to assume that I’m very much out of the loop, as I just assumed it was a generic way of referring to a typical academic hipster who loves to be pompous. ...wild stuff that so many can ID someone specific by that phrase.
...makes me wonder what goofy name others would use to describe me in a similar scenario.
Yes, while I do not approve of the derogatory comments, as a rule junior scholars should avoid sartorial peacocking. Dress conservatively, with a small c. Save the affectations for post-tenure.
In our field, getting noticed for something that is not your research and teaching is seldom a good thing.
Why not, if they're "your thing"? Well, because "your thing" as a jr. scholar is supposed to be work, work, and more work. If work isn't "your thing", then... enjoy your hats, if that's what you want, because it's a buyer's market!
What is the normal protocol to resolve the following dilemma? You agree to accept a short term postdoc but then get offered a TT job or a more prestigious postdoc. Do most SCs anticipate this and keep a short list of candidates in case this happens? A more hypothetical question: You get offered a postdoc and then see that a call for applications comes up for a more prestigious position. Do you go through the trouble of applying for that second one or call it quits after you get offered something?
Any time you are in a non-permanent position you should apply for every suitable TT position and it is not your problem to worry about what happens when you resign a short term position. For the most part the same is true too when it comes to applying for other more suitable short term positions.
If an institution has not made a long-term commitment to you, you have no moral, legal or otherwise commitment to it. (Other than not being a jerk about the manner of your departure.) Trust me, this is a mistake that I have made. Find a better job and go to it whenever it is available. Everyone understands.
4,546 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 1401 – 1600 of 4546 Newer› Newest»I have an anecdote to share as well.
I did the UPenn Post-Bac program some years back. One of the nice things that they do there is most of the sitting faculty will, in a once a week lunch session, talk to us about some aspect of the field—usually applying to Phd programs. I’ll never forget what McInerney told us all. He said, “if you don’t get accepted into a top 10-12 PhD program, don’t pursue this field any further, because you won’t get a job. Don’t waste 6 years of your life working for a degree that won’t ever get you anything. I know plenty of very good scholars who went to schools that are just below the top 10-12, they were close friends of mine, but at the end of the day none of them ever got a T-T job. It’s cruel and unfair, but that’s the world. It’s hard enough for those with PhDs from the top schools to land a job; don’t kid yourself because you can *maybe* tell me about prof x who got a job—it doesn’t matter. For every exception (a PhD from Ohio State getting a job) there are 100 from the top 2-3 schools. I say this with as much kindness as I can: don’t accept admittance to a school outside of the top 10-12.”
His list, for what it’s worth:
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Berkeley
Chicago
Columbia
UNC-Chapel Hill
UPenn
Cornell
Stanford
Duke
Michigan
...then in an afterthought he added Brown, but stressed that they don’t have a strong record of placement in recent years (he said this in 2010, for what that’s worth)
@3:54,
Sounds like harsh, but good advice. Without a doubt most faculty have their degree from the top-12 than the next 12 on that list, whether in Classics or any discipline. Those schools are the “wow” schools, as my advisor once said. Meaning schools that if you say you received your PhD from their people reply with a “wow.” ..other schools, mainly STEM, would have some different ones (MIT, CalTech...), but those listed are one’s safest bets for a good career in academia. ..well, they provide the possibility for an easier ascent than those below them.
To add, remember that there are two amazing schools not on that list: Oxford and Cambridge. But, I imagine the list was intended to be American.
One could argue about where Texas would fall on that list in terms of general prestige (presumably at or near the bottom), but in terms of placement, I'm pretty sure it's better than a number of those places.
I think the difference is that the next-12 schools fluctuate greatly depending on faculty, administrative support, etc. So before Texas, there was Wisconsin. And before that Illinois, Indiana, and Colorado were placing grads. For the top-12, the default is to be in the game unless admins and/or faculty are in a rut (probably few you realize that Stanford was not a major player until the 80s and beyond despite the stature of the uni as a whole). I would also argue there's a liminal zone where schools are never really out of it but never major players as well - Virginia, UCLA, McGill, NYU (and I would argue Duke, Cornell, Brown, and now Wash U are really in this category).
@1:12, I agree. Another item making the waters murky is # of Phds produced by various schools who continue onto the market. A close friend, a Harvard PhD of some years ago, points out that many at his alma mater do finish degrees but go off and do other things, esp. in the financial sector. I haven't bothered to track this, not knowing the names, but he does, and has. So, his .02.
@3:54:
Geezer here. I'd add:
Edinburgh
St. Andrews
Toronto
Cincinnati
Bryn Mawr
From personal observation I'd remove Penn and Columbia, and add Texas and UCLA, but YMMV. We could play this game all night, I imagine. (PS Jeremy's from Berkeley, so no surprise he'd omit UCLA, an old old story there..)
I would say Texas would be a contender for top 15, especially for schools in the South. A lot of southern schools are hesitant to hire a Yankee, but recruit from places like UT Austin and UNC.
Toronto is somewhere in that top 12 or liminal group, in the vicinity of Duke, Cornell, and Brown. Cincinnati and BMC are not even in the liminal group unless it's just archaeology, but we're talking programs as a whole here, right? The overall university reputation will continue to be an albatross for Cincinnati and BMC, which will keep them from ever breaking into the top 15 schools. If they were Vanderbilt or Emory, perhaps. For this reason, I could conceivably see Duke, Cornell, and Brown breaking into the top 10 in the future though many things would have to break in the right direction (including the continued relevance of the discipline, which isn't a foregone conclusion).
But doesn't telling people who don't get accepted to Top-10 or Top-12 programs ultimately mean that we reassert the hegemony of those programs with every new cohort of graduate students? This should be a call to action, for those of who get t-t positions, use that to change the narrative that those programs are good by the simple fact of their being Ivy League or whatever. For those on search committees who say, "We have 200 applications, we need some way to narrow them down so we throw out anyone who's not Top-10," that's lazy and stop doing it. Once there's better representation on search committees, among faculty, in the administrations - which CAN happen, with some active efforts by people not concerned with just reproducing themselves - we can get beyond this pedigree nonsense and recognize people who are good regardless of their institutional affiliation.
Brand name does not necessarily mean quality, it just means recognition, and recognition is not a good measure of a (wo)man because it's so tied up in things like race, sex, religion, sexuality, ability, socioeconomic status, etc.
Also, some people go to graduate school for reasons other than wanting to become an academic. And "success" is not the same thing to everyone.
You really think anyone from Cal goes out of their way to marginalize UCLA? That's lamer than replacing Penn and Columbia with UCLA and Texas, as excellent as they are in their own right. Cal is thinking national and international with Stanford while UCLA is fighting for supremacy of SoCal with USC.
10:45 (and others out there who undoubtedly agree),
My degree is from one of those schools named above as around #12. I have taught graduate seminars in a top-5 PhD program, in another that would be ranked around #12-14, and another that would be in the #15-20 range. While there were exceptions in some individual cases, on the whole one can clearly see the difference in the quality of the grads. So let's stop pretending -- and, again, I write this as someone from a non-elite PhD program myself, and as someone still looking for a tenure-track job -- that there is some terrible injustice being committed here against those with degrees from sub-12 schools. In a few individual cases, sure, but in general, no: while there will most certainly be some duds, over time departments really are likely to make a better choice by hiring candidates from better programs.
Viva la hegemonÃa!
If you wish to pursue a fairly traditional program of study, definitely think twice if you don't get into a top ten program. Top twenty programs can work if you're truly honest with yourself about your employment chances (as all should be) and dearly wish to specialize in something that top ten programs don't really offer. Linear B and Texas comes to mind along with classical/near east at a place like UBC or BMC (and ironically Harvard). If you want a world class museum in-house and all the whiz bang research that goes with it these days, Penn is really the only game in town (sorry, IPCAA folks).
And to add to the discussion above:
If you want to read texts, think deeply about what they actually mean, and then concern yourself with how that meaning applies really and practically to the world today and to your life in it, the Classics isn't for you -- top 12, top 15, or top 20.
Classics by this definition is just another self-replicating "Wissenschaft" concerned with advancing members of the in-group while denigrating members of the out-group (as defined by members of the non top-x number plus all those lost souls foolish enough to pursue other studies or even just other employment).
The search for meaning is for noobs, as is any sort of belief that there can be quality and achievement in that search..
🙄
@10:53, geezer here. I admire your innocence. Berkeley/UCLA an old, old story. And calling Berkeley "Cal" kind of puts the cherry on top, considering there's a whole lotta "Cal" out there that isn't in the Bay area.
@10:45, yes, I agree with you in terms of what's morally or ethically right. I think the original poster was making a different point, about brand, rather than what's behind the brand. Same problem at tenure: the engineer running the tenure show that includes the humanists will not be aware, say, that Toronto has anything to offer those in the US, if Toronto doesn't come up on the engineering horizons very often.
@1:09: Penn, really? :D
FYI: bad news for Classics out of the University of Missouri.
"Good morning friends,
As some of you may have heard, the University of Missouri - Columbia recently underwent a review of graduate programs due to the state legislature cutting budgets for universities over the last several years, which will likely continue over the next several years. The university created a task force to analyze the graduate programs currently offered at Mizzou, and published their recommendations a few days ago. Unfortunately, the task force recommended closing the graduate programs - both the MA and PhD - for Art History and Archaeology and Classical Studies. Recently, Art History was moved to the School of Visual Studies, and Archaeology merged with Classical Studies to become Ancient Mediterranean Studies, and faculty, alumni, and friends believe that these changes have both strengthened these programs and addressed the issues raised by the task force.
We would greatly appreciate any letters of support for these programs, especially any personal testimonials about the impact these programs have had on your life, or those of colleagues and students, and on the field as a whole. Mizzou is the only public institution in Missouri to offer this interdisciplinary approach, and we feel that the end of these programs limits access to future students and scholars in the field. Please address your letters of support to Professor Anatole Mori, Ancient Mediterranean Studied Department Chair, at MoriA@missouri.edu, and copy Arts and Science Dean Patricia Okker at OkkerP@missouri.edu.
To view the task force report in full, please visit https://provost.missouri.edu/…/Academic%20Programs%20Task%2…
General information about the task force can be found here: https://provost.missouri.edu/…/academic-programs-…/index.php
To view an article about the task force recommendations published by the Columbia Missourian, and written by a student double majoring in Journalism and Classics, please visit https://www.columbiamissourian.com/…/article_706641b2-0145-…
The information from the task force report specific to these departments is as follows:
" Art History and Archaeology-MA, PhD: The Task Force recommends inactivating the
master's and doctoral programs in Art History and Archaeology. The primary rationale for this recommendation include the small average number of graduates per year from both of these programs, the extremely high average time to degree for students in the doctoral program, and concerns about research productivity among faculty in the program relative to peer institutions.
" Classical Studies-MA, PhD: The Task Force recommends inactivating the master's and doctoral programs in Classical Studies/Classical Languages, which are housed in the Department of Ancient Mediterranean Studies. The rationales for this recommendation include the small average number of graduates per year from these programs, the very high average number of years to degree for PhD students in this program, and the low research productivity among program faculty relative to peers.
Thank you for your consideration,
Dawn Smith-Popielski"
1:49
Calling UC-Berkeley "Cal" is pretty normal outside narrow academic circles. That's what undergraduates there call it, not to mention every sportscaster in America.
Instead of writing letters to U-Missouri, I suggest we get "some muscle" over there.
So, complaints that we're overproducing PhDs from schools not in the Top-10 or Top 12 because those people can't get jobs, and then a university says, we should close this program at Missouri (not a Top-10 or Top 12) because it isn't productive for students or faculty, then a call to arms to keep that program active because . . . ?
I am not among those who think that you have to attend a Top-whatever program to be good and to succeed, and I'm all about saving classics programs, especially those that are *actually* interdisciplinary and admit that "classics" isn't just a synonym for "philology", I just mean, with all of this talk about the problems of classics and the job market and whatever, are you just upset that other people outside of classics recognize the same problems that you do and are doing something about it besides just complaining on an anonymous forum?
There's a man running for Senate in Missouri who has referred to feminists as "she devils" (hmmm wonder what party he's a candidate for). It's rather unsurprising that such a place would be hostile toward public universities. The sort of people that are selected in regressive states to assess and review university programs generally aren't fit to be dogcatcher, let alone make any sort of important recommendations on what needs to be cut.
Can they place their grads in TT positions? How many have ended up on the tenure track post-2008? (I am truly curious, not trying to imply anything.)
I'd like to urge everyone here NOT to send any "letters of support" re: the PhD programs under threat at Mizzou. Those programs--like many such programs at lower-tier schools--are simply a source of labor for the department, which uses its grad students to teach undesirable introductory-language courses for extremely low stipends and then pushes them out of the nest with useless degrees and no realistic evaluation of their chances at landing a job. The MA programs might be useful for producing high school Latin teachers or the like, but the PhD is a racket.
The problem is that we as a discipline can't really decide what we are. The top ten programs can (for now) get away with this fuzziness but I suspect the rest will shortly come under more intense scrutiny like Mizzou and largely evaporate. We're not in control of the rubber stamp for elite membership anymore so they don't need us other than to rekindle some nostalgia in increasingly rarer acts of self-indulgence. Yet everything about us screams white lives matter as we hold to the long-established strictures of the discipline. This obviously puts us on the chopping block on the right. There's only so much that sympathetic English Lit colleagues can do to help stave off our extinction when their own survival is at stake. I don't see us surviving the culling that is happening quietly behind the scenes. 1-2 classicists at even major universities - that's the future outside a handful of elite programs.
To the contrary, it is both beneficial and good to protect programs in classics of whatever kind and prestige, wherever in the world, from being shuttered for duplicitous reasons by university administrations, particularly in this age where such moves are likely to be preludes to further cuts to the broader classics and humanities teaching mission. The uselessness of their degrees and the exploitativeness of their program is a question for the self-aware, rational, and agentive adults who have chosen to pursue graduate studies in such a department, rather than for condescending commentators on FV.
the self-aware, rational, and agentive adults who have chosen to pursue graduate studies in such a department
This is a self-serving and disingenuous comment. Everyone here knows better.
Uhm, people, you are right that the PhD program has dubious value, but not so the MA program. That's where new high school Latin teacher in Missouri should be coming from, for one thing. Think of how even without the PhD program Missouri's classics department can still be like its neighbor at Kansas, where there is a fine department. Get rid of the MA as well and then it becomes an unimportant program that ultimately will have fewer teaching slots.
I write this as one who has taught in state universities with a PhD program, with an MA program, and without any grad program, and the places in the third category had mediocre classics programs -- and that's not a coincidence.
@ 2:28,
New York, too, has issues. SUNY-Albany back in about 2011 closed their Classics Dept down completely along with 3-4 other programs/departments they said weren't viable.
The same year, the SUNY-Albany president received a pay raise from $650,000 to $768,000. Yes, 3/4 a million. Famously, at a public meeting to discuss the closure of Classics, et al., a student asked if, given the financial climate that warrants closing these departments, do you feel that you deserve a pay increase of $118,000? The room exploded in applause. The reply of the President? Simply, "we aren't here today to discuss employee salaries; only the closing of some hemorrhaging departments."
...Doesn't matter what state you're in, Classics isn't seen as any more protected in Democratic-leaning states either. We're a dying field, plain and simple. And when Admins have to find a place to trim the fat, Classics will often be chosen.
First timer on the job market here with a question. I had an interview at the SCS and have not heard anything since, while the wiki shows no indication that any campus invites have gone out. What is the protocol about sending an email to the SC chair to inquire about the timeline of hearing back from them? Is that an ok thing to do?
Those of you talking about the MA and training high school teachers are confusing MAs with MATs. Discuss.
@3:42
A common refrain. But to put the numbers in context: a faculty member costs 1.5x their salary, more or less, including benefits, at a gradually increasing rate (inflation, raises) for 20+ years. That $118,000 = one faculty member. Close a department and the “savings” are substantially more. Upper admin salaries last shorter time frames since they tend to move on to new jobs, and then the salary can “reset” a bit.
I’m not arguing that any of this is fair or that compensation is appropriate or that departments should be shut down, I am suggesting that costs are more nuanced than they appear at first.
One additional comment that seems to have been omitted in the discussion of pedigree. In terms of "net worth," an Ivy League Ph.D. has the added benefit of monetary value/prestige outside of the classics academy. Given that even the Ivy League and its kin are struggling to place Ph.D. students in TT jobs, there is the further risk that one will be at an even greater loss if that Ph.D. is not recognized in the business/professional world as having a monetary value.
At least the Ivy League Ph.D. has the added benefit (provided one has the networking skills and social intelligence, or EQ, to put it to good use) of being viewed by some major companies as being equivalent to an MBA (provided one does some slight additional pre-job training).
There's never any harm in writing to a SC chair to ask about the state of the search, especially if you've already been interviewed. That said, if the chair were able to tell you something concrete, such as "we're inviting you to campus" or "we're not pursuing your application any further," you would likely have heard from him/her already.
"Those of you talking about the MA and training high school teachers are confusing MAs with MATs. Discuss."
Not an important distinction at all. My dept., which has MA but not MAT is being practically begged by HS and the like to supply them with Latin teachers. We place them very well.
Why on earth would we do anything other than support the *closure* of Missouri's PhD program. MA program, perhaps not. But there needs to be fewer PhDs out there.
Who decides the culling? Are we resigned to 'market forces' and political hobbyhorses deciding what regions have the privilege of offering affordable graduate study in the classics to their communities?
I ask these questions because the cavalier acceptance of the tier system outlined above and the prestige of the Ivy League and their kin disgusts me. There are plenty of good scholars and teachers who come from outside those schools. I agree, we should not be training as many PhDs as we do, but should we acquiesce to the reifying of a class system that will guarantee the general background of the professorate is a homogenized one?
The loss of a program like Mizzou's is confirmation of obvious changes to education and our public support for it in this country. The proud refusal of Classicists to protest it and support those affected by it confirms that we have internalized this nonsense and will be powerless when they come to close our programs down too
@5:32
If I were your administration, I'd take your comment as an argument FOR closing your MA program.
Why? You're conflating what an MA aims to produce (we can argue what that might be, but scholars of a minimum level of competence must be first on the list) , and what your MA graduates are actually doing. If what they are doing is becoming high school teachers (paid at the rate of someone with a Master's degree), then your university really does not need an MA in Classics at all. The education program's MAT, supplemented by some extra advanced undergraduate courses in Latin, would do just as well getting them those teaching jobs with the Master's pay bump AND your school wouldn't need faculty for a "graduate" program in Classics. Much more efficient in terms of staffing AND the grads would be better prepared for the bureaucracies of pre-collegiate schools.
@7:01
You are also conflating multiple arguments.
There's the class-system. There's market forces. There's oversupply of PhDs. Probably there are other arguments here.
First, PhD programs don't serve geographic communities, at least not in Classics. The community they serve is the community of all potential Classicists. Looked at this way, the geographic location of those programs is irrelevant. Next to no one picks a Classics PhD program because the school is located in their "community." If they do, they're not in it for a job.
Second, we market forces are in tension with what we want and what we believe is best/good/right/truth/beauty, but they're not inherently evil. We have to acknowledge them and act in a way that is ethical for current and future grad students and graduates. That means, we can't just go around proclaiming "Classics for everyone, Classics is equity!"
A better approach would be to reduce the number of PhD programs (as with Missouri) and simultaneously have a more equitable method for admissions to those "top tier" programs. That is, instead of increasing the number of programs to grant access to a profession without then granting access to jobs in that profession, how about we increase access to top programs (dismantle the class in Classics) so that those CAN be the best have the chance to be -- not just those who can AFFORD to be the best?
My approach may be just as pie-in-the-sky as yours, but it's a much less damaging pie-in-the-sky.
@7:01, I can see your perspective but I would add a wrinkle that will help me judge the mizzou program once I learn more about it. Riffing off a previous post, which (wisely, imho) suggested that one should avoid programs that are clearly less regarded if pursuing a traditional program of study, I'm inclined to let PhD programs that are basically lesser clones of the top ones just die.
It's ridiculous how rigid our approach to the study of antiquity continues to be. It's to the point that the most interesting and substantive discussions are taking place on social media rather than in any classical journal I've seen. Worse yet, the manner in which we continue to prejudice narrow, stodgy, dead-end philological pursuits despite every person who has a say in our future trying to tell us that we don't need and they won't support such a narrow focus despite all the lip service on departmental websites claiming to study antiquity broadly. A 5:1 ratio of textual faculty studying several centuries of just one potential source of knowledge betrays our bold claims.
Let these programs die. We don't need a young Homerist from Mizzou getting their hopes utterly dashed once they realize how outgunned they are competing against peers with training that is on the order of several magnitudes better.
@7:22
It's not necessarily the training that's better at the "top" programs. Most places have some fairly distinguished people. I'd say it's the access to resources at "top" programs that's "on the order of several magnitudes better." It's not that the ivy grads are better scholars or smarter people -- some may be, but the same is true of individuals at the "lesser" places -- it's that they just have access to more STUFF to work with: libraries, collections, funds, networks, and time. YMMV.
"You're conflating what an MA aims to produce (we can argue what that might be, but scholars of a minimum level of competence must be first on the list) , and what your MA graduates are actually doing. If what they are doing is becoming high school teachers (paid at the rate of someone with a Master's degree), then your university really does not need an MA in Classics at all."
I never said ALL (capitals are useful, as you showed) the MA students in my dept. go on to teach HS and similar jobs, but good on you for assuming they do. Some do, some don't.
But we should probably shut the whole thing down, as you suggested, just to be safe.
If universities truly want to save classics from itself (yeah, a huge if), it should run searches where there's only one classicist on the committee so we can get rid of inbred prejudices. Just have them hire the best humanist with interests falling into classical studies broadly defined. We've shown no evidence to have the imagination or courage to move the discipline forward into the future. It's the only way we will get out of this death spiral where we encourage the perpetuation of our flaccid, dying paradigm.
"Let these programs die"
podex perfectus es.
3:19, 5:52, etc.: 3:10 here. I think what is self-serving and disingenuous is the bad-faith displacement of our anxiety and bitterness about the job market into a fake, generalized concern over the future of "the profession." Are there "too many" Classics PhDs? Well, too many for what? For the people who got them? Clearly not. I am sure many of us say we would choose a different career path if we could go back a decade, but we still got our PhDs eespite many opportunities to jump ship and warnings along the way. I've said this here before, but who in this day and age can get into a graduate program in the humanities (let alone study in one for more than a year) without hearing about the dire condition of the job market? Yet we persist--so, again, too many PhDs for what?
What you mean is: too many for you to have gotten the job you want and think you deserve. And, look: I feel you. We all know it's a shit market even for the absolutely most brilliant and qualified. But getting rid of the PhD program at Missouri won't fix the glut of Classicists striving after the same few jobs, and getting rid off all graduate education outside Harvard or wherever you went would be, surely, a disaster for the future of classics in general.
Pursuing a tenure-track job or conducting research in the academy are not the only motivations to get a PhD. I don't know anyone at Mizzou, but I have a hard time believing that anyone starts a graduate program in the humanities at an nth-tier program because they honestly believe Yale will hire them right out of the gate. Maybe they want to teach high school, or are pursuing it as a passion, or whatever other reasons people have for doing things beyond economic rationality.
But instead of admitting your real objection to the Mizzou PhD program, you dress up your own anxiety as paternalistic concern for the poor lil naifs getting duped and exploited by the big bad meanies there.
never said ALL (capitals are useful, as you showed) the MA students in my dept. go on to teach HS and similar jobs, but good on you for assuming they do. Some do, some don't.
Nor did I claim you did. You did, however, highlight them and claim that there was no distinction between the MA and the MAT. There is: an MAT doesn't need graduate course-work in Classics and so does not need graduate level Classics faculty. If you think you're helping by highlighting your MA grads who go on to the same jobs they could have gotten without your MA program, well, you're not. You're not helping at all.
With the possible exception of some private schools and few of the stranger locales (Mass, I think?), they don't even need any MA: just teaching certification and an undergraduate major. Or, the MAT and a concentration in advanced level undergrad coursework.
But we should probably shut the whole thing down, as you suggested, just to be safe.
Now you're getting it!
@7:41
Your argument boils down to: why try to fix an obviously broken system when there are individuals who appear by your reckoning to participate willingly in that broken system, even as it chews them up. You should take some time looking at yourself in the mirror. Then, when you calm down, look some more.
@7:31, I would include resources as a part of training. And it's even worse than you've conveyed since this access to resources extends beyond one's own campus. I'm not saying it's fair. Going to the "Mizzou Homerist" example, Mizzou Classics could be, and probably is, loaded with alums from top programs. In recent history, the top young Homerists have been connected in some fashion with CHS, which is not surprising based on the interests of its senior staff. A Mizzou faculty member could very well be a CHS alum, but that's one more degree of separation. Which recent grad grabs a spot at CHS? The Mizzou alum whose advisor might have been a fellow there, or one from a myriad of programs that has a direct connection to CHS? The same thing can be said about AAR, ASCSA, ISAW, Getty, etc. Unless a lesser regarded program is doing something different like cutting-edge digital humanities that will allow alums to stick out, I agree with previous posts and we haven't even factored in reputation and brand here as discussed above. Let them die.
So before those who are undecided potentially jump in to vouch for Mizzou, can any alumni/ae chime in to let us know what this PhD program objectively offers that is different from the top dozen programs out there? Please, no warm fuzzies bout how nurturing the faculty are.
The fact that FV has just had its annual pointless "Rank the PhD programs" argument, coming immediately after the "rank the journals" argument, and followed quickly by calls from many to kill a graduate program (with, presumably, an accompanying reduction in academic positions), might suggest that the whole field, even those of us from the magical 'Top Dozen Programs,' is in need of some strong medicine.
We're your huckleberries.
I went through the last 3 years on the Wiki (as long as we've been separating T-T from VAP and other temp positions) to see which programs actually have been placing people in permanent positions lately. For what it's worth, here are the "top ranking" programs by that metric. I'll hasten to add that it's not complete (not all positions have a person/PhD-granting institution listed) and that it says nothing about the ratio of PhDs granted by a particular institution to jobs won. Nevertheless, I think it's worth noting that Yale, Cornell, and Duke (listed above as top-12 programs) did not make the top-12 here but Ohio State and Cincinnati certainly did. Minnesota has landed as many as Brown and Duke, and Missouri as many as Boston University and Bryn Mawr.
Berkeley (9 T-T jobs in the last 3 cycles)
Cincinnati (9)
Cambridge (8)
Penn (8)
Stanford (8)
Michigan (7)
Ohio State (7)
Princeton (7)
Oxford (6)
Columbia (5)
Harvard (5)
UNC – Chapel Hill (5)
Chicago (4)
Cornell (4)
SNS Pisa (4)
Toronto (4)
Yale (4)
London (3)
UCLA (3)
USC (3)
UT Austin (3)
UVA (3)
Brown (2)
Duke (2)
Johns Hopkins (2)
Manchester (2)
Minnesota (2)
NYU (2)
UC Santa Barbara (2)
Barcelona
Boston University
Bristol
Bryn Mawr
Buffalo
Colorado
CUNY
LMU Munich
Milan
Missouri
Newcastle
Ottowa
Padova and Swansea
Rome
Ruprecht-Karls Universität, Heidelberg
Saint Louis University
St Andrews
UC Riverside
UCSD
UIUC
University of Bristol
University of Siena
University of Warwick
Vienna
Wisconsin
Cincinnati is overrepresented by the fact that a heavy in the department and his subfield (and former director of ASCSA) threw his weight around to place students in the somewhat unnatural manner described above. Time will tell if they stick around with tenure.
You might want to check your facts on Cincinnati and what exactly the successful students were doing.
Sure seems to follow the rankings explicated earlier. I would have expected Chicago, Yale, Johns Hopkins higher, but perhaps they're not pumping out graduates. For instance, I would guess that the four from Yale represents the majority of its grads while UCLA's three probably represents a minority.
@9:41 P.M.
"Cincinnati is overrepresented by the fact that a heavy in the department and his subfield (and former director of ASCSA) threw his weight around to place students in the somewhat unnatural manner described above. Time will tell if they stick around with tenure."
...So you'd have us believe that Cincinnati place NINE people in the past three years in permanent positions who study Bronze Age archaeology? Since that's the field of the "heavy" in question. It seems a bit of a stretch for one of the niche subfields in the discipline.
I think the operative word was overrepresented, which presumably means more than normal and not all. But I don't have a job so what do I know...
Why does this person, whom I don't know, have to be pushing only his archaeology students? Director of ASCSA obviously resonates broadly across classics as someone pointed out with Hesperia. More power to this person. Maybe it's a reason to attend Cincinnati. I would have considered it more strohngly if I had known.
For what it's worth Cincinnati was one of the places where I was accepted for the PhD; I ultimately turned them down and went elsewhere, but one of the things that was emphasized by the archaeology faculty is that they get their students permanent jobs in academia.
The above list is extremely interesting. Thanks, 8:41. As is obvious, sizes of the programs differ: Chicago and Yale admit, and thus graduate, far fewer students than Michigan and Berkeley, for example.
All is fair in love, war, and the job market but if someone is peddling students that get placed over ones that could do more for the field, we all lose. I don't care what school they're at or what the rationale might be. It stinks.
But we'd only know who could do less and who could do more if we had a clear set of criteria for excellence. I don't mean number or impact of publications. I mean the ability (and willingness) to know what good scholarship looks like. When I float around the AIA-SCS, I don't see that sort of consensus (though I think it is worse in the SCS, and before anyone jumps down my throat, I am a literature person).
There I was thinking it was expected that one's advisor and department would do whatever's in their power to get their students jobs.
10:32 again,
To clarify, it seems a bit silly that people are poo-pooing an influential faculty member at Cincinnati for getting his students jobs, since...that's part of their job to begin with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO_xfR64qSk
I don't think anyone would disparage a faculty member for going to bat for a student, perhaps even a bit overzealously. Shit happens. It's just when it's pushed too far, which seems to be the case here by someone holding a prominent position that's ostensibly representing the entire field. I know plenty of senior folks in analogous positions who are careful, perhaps overly so to the detriment of their students, not to use this role to unduly influence outcomes. Whatevs, totally not surprised in this case. ASCSA is a inbred, political shitshow even by our infamous standards.
What exactly do we mean by "overzealously" pushing his students? Was he threatening members of hiring committees? Kidnapping family members? This guy must have a real talent.
Or, is someone(s) talking nonsense on here again without any evidence?
Lol, someone hit a nerve...where there is smoke...
As someone who has met the Cincinnati Heavy in question and who knows several of said Heavy's (non-Cincinnati) colleagues quite well, I get the feeling that this person isn't the type to lean on people or to threaten to pull a Tonya Harding on them if they don't give their student a job.
Essentially it seems that this person has influence, clout, and the respect of others in the field and uses it to the advantage of their students. This is what, IMO, an advisor is supposed to do, especially in an increasingly brutal job market. If your advisor has influence and they don't use it to help you then what's the point of spending ~5 years of your life studying with them?
Moreover, it's not as if Cincinnati is some marginal program. It has a venerable reputation and by all appearances it is a rigorous place that provides excellent doctoral training. No amount of clout from an advisor is going to get you a job if you're a mediocrity with subpar training.
^ The lies we tell ourselves to sleep at night... .
People, that placement tracker don't mean a thing. It's so erroneous, my own institution included, and incomplete (also including my own institution), that you really can't gauge any sort of statistics based on it.
I remember once overhearing a prominent Berkeley prof bragging about how they get their students jobs by going to bat for them. Now it's clear how true that is.
Man, if only my adviser had gone to bat for me. All they told me is that I would never finish my dissertation (surprise, I did). But getting a job? I can't believe they even think about me.
Let's see what these Cincinnati grads do. If they flame out (and as claimed are occupying a high percentage of the relatively few archaeology positions that are important for the long term vitality of the field) let history judge this heavy (and all others like him) harshly. I know papyrology was set back by a similar scenario with the few heavies controlling the subfield playing god.
That's the problem as 10:30 PM pointed out. Even if they are subpar, they could still very well get tenure and then sit on the position for decades while flying under the radar. I know of a number of people close to retirement as Associates that I'm assuming got their jobs back in the good ole days through a similar network (judging by pedigree, Michigan seems especially guilty to whatever closed-door shenanigans were taking place decades ago). I know one situation where one of these incestuous networks willed and carried one person over the tenure line (e.g. the person's tenure book, essentially the diss, was basically a figment that was then reviewed by a fellow acolyte of the same advisor - yep, shit like this happens). So the swamp has always been there but now we're paying for it with particular harshness with terminated lines with good cause.
Get rid of Missouri's PhD. One less third rate program clogging the pipeline with unemployable grads.
Aside from 9:41 apparently being passed over for a job that one of the Cincinnati grads got, what evidence is there that they are subpar?
Truth in advertising: I've met a couple of the archaeologists in question, and didn't get the impression that they were undeserving bumpkins, or that they would drag Aegean archeology down to ruin.
To be fair, it is outrageous to go through a top tier program and then struggle for a permanent job when someone from a program that shouldn't even exist gets one.
If a non-fancy program is placing students better than fancy ones can, by definition they *should* exist, if only to dilute the elitist snobbery of our field, as encapsulated in the above comment.
Friends, whatever you think of the quality of the program at Mizzou, the decision to eliminate it presages similar decisions in other states. This is a manufactured economic crisis based on politically-motivated state divestment and plain old racism: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/us/university-of-missouri-enrollment-protests-fallout.html
State institutions rely on state appropriations and enrollment. When one is cut mercilessly year after year and the other falls because of larger political trends, there is a severe crisis. The entire liberal arts foundation of Mizzou is under threat because its students and faculty ended up in the vanguard of recent protests.
Any mealy-mouthed comments about the quality of the PhDs or their job prospects is really just distraction from the divestment in public education, from the racially motivated attacks on the school, and from the larger battle which is about the purpose of a publicly funded university.
I will support Classics at Mizzou because of these larger issues.
@5:08am, it's outrageous that people think they deserve a job just because they got into a certain program. People from "lower-tier" institutions who face all kinds of obstacles on the way to earning their PhD (and, in some cases, their BA and even high school diploma) and land T-T jobs despite it all should be celebrated even more for their accomplishments. When I see someone from the bottom half of that list above land a T-T job (or even a prestigious VAP, these days), I think, "wow, their work must be amazing if they've been able to push past all the snobbery and succeed anyway." The people I know who have done this are truly remarkable talents. It's unfortunate that you apparently haven't had the pleasure of getting to know any talented people outside of your own social/economic tier.
Re: Cincinnati's placement
I get the feeling that a lot of people are mad that Cincinnati is placing people in spite of the fact that the department is housed at a university which isn't a shiny Ivy or par-Ivy by any stretch. Or, that their own advisor sat on their hands when it came time for them to go on the market.
The fact that Cincinnati is able to place so many people when, as others have pointed out, the discipline otherwise leans heavily toward the same handful of elite institutions says a couple things. One, that they have sharp students and provide them with adequate training. Two, that the faculty there actually does its job and throws its weight around so that the students have a chance competing against other candidates from the Ivies and their equivalents.
Great to see that your advisors are teaching you the way of Gordon Gekko that has come to define their generation even in academia.
@6:54 AM--interesting story from the NYT, but it doesn't seem obvious to me that Mizzou is losing enrollment because of _others'_ racism. Sounds like most students are staying away because they DON'T want to live on a campus that they believe to be racist.
Others have decided (quite rationally) that future employers glancing at their CV may not have positive associations with the word "Mizzou." If the climate at Mizzou is really as ugly as it sounds (a swastika smeared in feces?) that makes me even more convinced that programs there don't need to be saved.
I have a very different take on whether what is happening at Missouri should just flippantly be attributed to racism, but putting that aside, I have a question more appropriate for this forum. The NYT article says this near the end: "The library is asking for donations to buy 400 books that it wants, including a $5,250 copy of “Complete and Truly Outstanding Works by Homer.”" I Googled it, and that seems to be an edition with a Latin translation beside the Greek. Is this something necessary for a library to have? Not being a Homerist, I've never heard of it. Does one use this to study Homer reception?
Dear FV,
Based on the tone of a conversation from about a week ago, we are instituting a new rule. Henceforth, ad hominem attacks on any member of the Classics community, regardless of seniority, will not be tolerated. Universities, SCs, the SCS are all fair game for critique, but attacks against specific individuals based on their (perceived) personal characteristics are not. This has not been an issue here previously, and we don't mean to distract from the current conversation: the vast majority of users can simply continue as usual.
The Servii
Servii,
I am by no means disagreeing with the policy -- this recent business about Cincy has certainly been distasteful -- but I am not sure you are using "ad hominem" properly. An "ad hominem" attack is one that goes after the person rather than the substance of the argument, but here we have had people attacking individuals. Sorry to be pedantic!
Sincerely yours,
Anonymous [whatever time it is when I confirm "I'm not a robot" and click "Publish Your Comment"]
Hi Anonymous, this is not a reaction to current discussions, but to a conversation that took place a week or so back, the most relevant part of which has been removed.
S
On graduate program: A program that places as many people as Cincinnati should be in business, although prospective students should break down the placements: if they are placing people in Aegean Archaeology but not Greek poetry, do not apply to study Greek poetry.
On Missouri, the right wing attack on the institution is appalling, as have right-wing attacks on the University of Wisconsin.
But on a pragmatic level, there are many graduate programs that should close. And many programs in the so-called "top-twelve" should be reducing their admissions, especially under-performers.
"Get rid of Missouri's PhD. One less third rate program clogging the pipeline with unemployable grads."
"To be fair, it is outrageous to go through a top tier program and then struggle for a permanent job when someone from a program that shouldn't even exist gets one."
I can't even tell if either of these is serious, so much unpleasantness do they manage to load into a completely illogical argument, and in so few words! But thanks for making my point for me. (3:10, 7:41 from yesterday here.)
Unrelated to the current discussion: the Haverford Mellon Postdoc appears, according to the Interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences Postdoc wiki (and the Hurford Center website), to have scheduled candidate talks, but it is as yet unclear whether those scheduled talks actually have attached speakers or are simply "reserved" times. In other words neither has someone reported being invited nor have any particulars been included with these scheduled talks. I remain, however, without hope.
^ probably good to keep your expectations low. as with all of these post docs you're probably in the running with a few hundred candidates, many of whom likely work on historical periods in which questions of war are --to the non classicist's eye-- much more salient and urgent
6:46 here again. I'm certain you're right; it was yet delusive for the position to have been advertised through the SCS. (That's not to say, of course, that I was/am a strong applicant.)
Yeah, I'm not really sure why it was included in the SCS job database to be honest, doesn't seem entirely pertinent ... anyway, I just saw that they only take one fellow per year? this is really insane...
"We seek a scholar interested in the comparative history, social and cultural impact, and artistic representation of war."
"Yeah, I'm not really sure why it was included in the SCS job database to be honest, doesn't seem entirely pertinent ... anyway, I just saw that they only take one fellow per year? this is really insane..."
Your argument is that societies that went to war virtually every year of their existence don't seem to be a good fit for a study of the impact of warfare on society? You don't see how artistic representations of warfare, e.g. in drama, historical writing, monumental architecture, funeral orations, etc., have much to do with the study of the Mediterranean past? What are you working on? Roman river boats? I can't think of a period where warfare is more central than to the Greco-Roman era... but hey, that's just me (a candidate who didn't get an interview).
@7:31 the point is that the Haverford postdoc was not specific to Classics/ Ancient Studies, therefore perhaps not a good fit for the SCS job list, not that the topic is not relevant to Ancient Studies. The SCS does not normally publish general humanities postdocs.
"Get rid of Missouri's PhD. One less third rate program clogging the pipeline with unemployable grads."
"To be fair, it is outrageous to go through a top tier program and then struggle for a permanent job when someone from a program that shouldn't even exist gets one."
@6:00pm
"I can't even tell if either of these is serious, so much unpleasantness do they manage to load into a completely illogical argument, and in so few words! But thanks for making my point for me. (3:10, 7:41 from yesterday here.)"
The attitude of the two comments that 6:00pm is replying to is are excellent examples of the attitude that a lot of Ivy and par-Ivy types have. This seems to be informing much of the animus toward Cincinnati's success and the relish with which some seem to be anticipating Missouri's demise.
If the well-heeled intellectuals at Haaarvard are losing jobs to dirty plebs at *gasp* public universities that aren't Berkeley, Michigan, or Chapel Hill, what's even the point of going to a place steeped in privilege, elitism, and self-congratulatory wankery?
The SCS isn't out there looking for jobs to post. The SCS posts the jobs for which institutions or even private persons have taken out ads with the SCS. Remember the Greek tutor that ran a couple years in a row?
@7:59
I think the wankery is an end on its own, right? I mean, who wouldn't be up for that?
real talk: how many of us in this forum do not go to an ivy / par ivy ?
*raises hand*
*raises hand*
though I went to a wannabe Ivy that wasn't even a par-Ivy, which might be worse than either end of the spectrum.
I was the person who commented during SCS in Boston how I was getting ignored left and right after people looked at my name tag and saw that I came from a 2nd tier school, or when someone more important walked by... I feel like the anxiety and frustration I felt there is manifesting virtually in this forum
I do agree that the SCS is not responsible for humanities post-docts. There are other venues (h-net, Chronicle, European Post-Docs wiki where these are published. If you do Roman river boats and want a post doc, you still have to scan these venues.
NTTAWW Roman river boats, by the way.
I think everyone on this forum can attest to the proud reputation of the Roman Riverine Service.
@Jan 28, 7:22 PM: ...except that a young Homerist from Mizzou actually did recently get a TT job. I am not said young Homerist (nor am I at Mizzou), but I know for a fact this is true. Mizzou is fine! And worth fighting for simply out of self-interest. This is an administrative Cold War. First the Soviets come for Mizzou, then they keep expanding cuts to the Humanities and Classics until your program is surrounded and you're trapped.
In response to 7:59: I'm not an elitist. I come from a wannabe-ivy-par university that rarely places people, although it does on occasion, and I am wholeheartedly supportive of somewhere like Cincinnati. But I don't believe that programs that can't place students should be training them. This should probably even include my own university, if I think about how many people were in grad school with me and the degree of misery most of the former graduate students suffered once out in the "real world." If only 1/20 or so entering students ends up with a TT job, I think that is just not good enough to justify the costs. It's a tragedy for the academy, but these programs are already generating huge amounts of personal tragedy for their students, not in order to actually train the future of the profession -- they're not, and they know it -- but simply to feed egos or free themselves from teaching Lat 101 and myth sections or whatever it is that causes people to do this.
9:59 has it right.
Whether we want to be political or not, there is an aggressive group of politicians out there who are vehemently opposed to the existence of any kind of public institution, and universities are one of their favorite targets. They are supported by a not insignificant swathe of the public that is proudly anti-intellectual, for whom universities are nothing more than indoctrination factories that turn kids into Communists and where free speech is smothered.
Attacks on places like Missouri presage more aggressive moves against higher education coming down the pipe.
@10:29am in some ways I have to agree. Graduate admissions need to be scaled down or a moratorium needs to happen. But there is pressure on departments, especially in big R1s, to admit a good number of PhD candidates (e.g. 3-6 per year), since they need a number of TAs and Instructors to do a large (sometimes lion's) share of the pedagogical labor. At my R1 Ivy the grads teach about 50% of the classes; virtually 90-100% of the elementary to intermediate progression of Latin and Greek. Universities have a business model that relies on these admissions to increasingly reduce faculty costs (even though they are non-profit entities with enormous endowments--at least where I am), and so, in turn they churn out too many PhDs who can't find jobs, since the universities are increasingly not opening up TT lines, but replace those TT lines with more grad admissions and/or adjuncts or these new "Assistant Professor of Teaching" positions (a.k.a. untenured and heavily exploited lecturer). It's a self-sustaining cycle that will only increasingly do violence to grads, contingent faculty, and untenured professors (recently have heard too many stories of the dept. approving tenure, but the provost denying it!), and finally, the discipline as a whole.
But we all should know this by now... I'm always surprised by how many in the field are shocked that jobs are scarce. It's not in the interests of the neo-liberal administrators of the nation's universities.
Leaving Mizzou aside for a moment, and back to the plight of finding a job. Tell me, FV world, is there any point for a non-EU, North-American trained PhD to apply for a UK position? Honestly wondering whether applying for UK jobs is a hopeless pursuit...do UK institutions ever hire outsiders?
@11:37, Do you have any UK connections? Are you exceedingly well-published ( attractive for committees thinking about REF reputation)? If no, I don't think there's much of a shot.
@11:37 yes, let me second 12:05. Publications (esp. ones coming out soon and can count towards REF 2021) will be crucial, as will be some connections (even some UK referees). I was told that in most cases you won't get an interview in the UK without a book contract or having held a postdoc in the UK or EU. But I have seen a few exceptions: some JRFs at Oxbridge (usually through connections to Ivies) that convert to lectureships (but very rare) and some recent hires at Durham, for example.
11:37, it is certainly far less common than the reverse (weirdly, in my opinion, but that's another conversation) but I can think of one person who got a UK job not longer after finishing their US PhD, and with no connections. As 12:05 and 12:22 have begun to indicate, however, it is worth pointing out that UK universities are compelled to be impossibly reductive and brutal in their expectations of research productivity because of the REF exercises, and quantity most definitely counts over quality. Moreover, most people I can think of who are American or got a PhD in America and then went on to UK jobs had some very significant connections--e.g., "B.A. Oxoniensis" types returning to the fold.
anyone heard from or about Colgate?
Interviewed at Colgate during the SCS, but have heard nothing back. Colgate's new semester just started last week, which could have delayed things, but at this point it has taken a very long time to produce a short-list, which makes one wonder if the search is somehow in peril.
It also means that Colgate is very behind the curve in terms of scheduling visits and making offers. This is a good year for ancient history, so there is more risk they will lose top candidates to other jobs, although it is as always a buyer's market.
In case it's relevant, I interviewed with Furman and their semester started three weeks ago and I've heard nothing and there's been no movement on the wiki. I think that sometimes at these small liberal arts colleges, there are a lot of levels of approval required that can be a little slow?
Same boat for Randolph-Macon and Monmouth. Sigh.
^^ Similar to the above, has anyone heard from Case Western? My interview was almost two weeks ago and I've heard nothing and seen no movement on the Wiki. If anyone has received a campus visit invitation, could you please update?
Colgate has e-mailed finalists.
@10:55 is spot on. Another thing to point out is that ABDs can be big money-makers for universities. At mine, if you ran out of your five years of funding but were still a student, they required you to pay 10% tuition as a "non-resident." That's if you were on an external fellowship, on someone else's support, whatever (not teaching, that is - those days of exploitation were reserved for those still within funding). Dozens if not hundreds of humanities PhDs trying to finish the diss but dragging it out by years was actually to the university's advantage, as it guaranteed thousands of dollars in revenue in "non-resident" tuition.
Think about it this way: 100 ABDs spread over various humanities departments x $5,000 tuition per year = $500,000 per year for the university's pockets.
@2:56 PM if that's true, then post it on the wiki. Is it a first hand report? or are you just relaying a series of famae?
On this note, can anyone confirm the Bard invite added to the wiki on 01/11?
Can I be honest, since this is an anonymous board and all? I had a handful of interviews this year as an ABD but I'm not even sure I even want it anymore...is that just the stress talking, does anyone else feel this way occasionally, and does it go away?
^EXACTLY how I feel! Same boat here. It feels weird not to be grateful to get interviews. None of the jobs for which I got interviews was in a place I particularly liked (I think for most people they are perfectly lovely places, just not for me). It felt weird thinking about having to settle in a place where I have no friends or history just for a job.... And hearing about how ABDs don't really get jobs made me more meh in general during interviews.
@5:12. You may well feel stressed. I do. Even if you do land a TT (which would be great, and a real accomplishment), there's still tenure review. During that time, you'll actually probably go on the market AGAIN. Then there are the everyday stresses of publishing, giving talks, etc. I do love to teach though.
@5:12, I felt that way as an ABD and I still feel that way two years later.
@6:09pm:
You comment, I think, (and to some extent 5:12pm's as well) indicates that two things are going on. 1) You've both somehow managed to reach the final stage of your PhDs without acquiring along the way any real sort of awareness as to what the Classics PhD job market is like prior to actually being on the job market or 2) This is the result of a major failure on the part of your advisor and department to communicate to you how the job market works and a major failure on your part to interrogate your advisor and department about these things when it was unclear to you. Perhaps attempts at clarifying these things were made which failed. Perhaps it was some combination of everything I outlined.
Now, the above is me being generous; quite frankly anyone who goes into a PhD program in Classics ought to know this from the outset before they even make it to the stage where they decide to apply for doctoral programs. Full stop. That you applied and weren't already apprised of these issues is indicative of a major failure on the part of professors who teach undergraduates. Those of us in this position should be acting as the primary gatekeepers of the field by providing a clear-eyed explanation to students interested in pursuing the PhD on the shape of graduate education in Classics and the abysmal state of the job market and discouraging them from pursuing a PhD. Or, perhaps you were informed of all of this from the outset and along the way and then chose to ignore it. Which is probably the worst case scenario.
6:42, I don't understand why you are being so harsh. I don't think the comments above bespoke a blindness to the realities of the job market, but, rather, hesitation as to whether the profession is for those people, or whether it is worth the sacrifices involved (including, e.g., having no choice in place to live). The latter are, sure, things that everyone (should) know(s) about before getting to the ABD stage (at the latest). I don't think it's realistic to expect people--especially people who aren't from academic families--to never have doubts about the academic life or to know in advance, when they are 22, what they will want out of life when they are 30. Even if the market were amazing and we all got our pick of jobs, there are lots of us who would reach that stage and think, "is this for me?" (just as there are lots of us who leave PhD programs along the way, and not only or even mainly out of fear of the market). Since most of us have little life experience outside the academy, it can be especially difficult to figure these things out.
So to 5:12, 6:09, and others: of course, we all feel that way sometimes. Knowing what you want in life is hard! My advice would be, don't shoot yourself in the foot by assuming you won't get a job anyway.
6:42:
You act surprised, but faculty are often useless (bc clueless, or because lazy/predatory), and students encouraged to be starry-eyed. After all, their faculty are teaching random seminars at a leading university and seemingly happy.
What seems exciting or at least feasible at, say, age 21 (e.g. moving somewhere shitty to teach shitty students as a VAP with low pay and zero job security while trying to grind out articles and applying to 50+ jobs), may not seem that way at 30.
So I agree there is blame to go around - I mostly blame the faculty and programs rather than the students - but this is more common than it should be. And, 6:09, good for you for not being brainwashed into thinking that its GRRRREEEEEEAT to move somewhere random for fairly low pay and with the expectation that you will be back on the market and tailoring letters extolling the virtues of random depts. Decide what you want out of life and act accordingly.
@5:12 After five years on the job market as a VAP, I still feel that way. I love what I do, but the stress is too much and I don't see it getting any better with a T-T job. Then again, I am just optimistic enough to hope that something might work out and I'll land a job that's a good 'fit.' But this is my last year on the market and I am giving up if it doesn't work out this year! I know enough to know that I've definitely had enough of the VAP life. Ultimately, I think it's a good thing to think about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Evaluating your life choices and (re)prioritizing things is stressful, but good, even if it yields no clear or immediate answers.
I don't think I draw as hard a line as @6:42. You may know the realities of the job market because you've been told but not really understand how it feels until you're there. At least for me, the decision whether to stay or go hasn't been so clear-cut. And sometimes you don't really know whether you want or don't want something until you try it out. Experience (in my experience) is the only real way to tell (though age has made me evaluate things a bit better and more carefully). You need to figure out what your limits are.
It's a personal decision and I've found that it helps to talk about it, especially with friends, family, and/or therapy depending on your circumstances. At the very least this will give you outside perspective which is something you are not likely to find in academia, especially while you're still in it.
@6:42, it's sometimes easy to know these things from the outset, but a decade later, life often changes.
And @6:09, it's perfectly valid to feel that way. Just know that if you leave, the @6:42s of the world will be lining up to take your place.
6:09 here, thanks for everyone's support. I thought I would be honest about my feelings, following the lead of 5:12, and didn't expect to get a snap reaction such as the one from 6:42. I do not one bit regret my life choices up to this point and knew exactly what I was getting myself into. My advisors warned me when I started grad school and reminded me throughout my years of study. But certain elements of my personal and professional life have changed drastically over the last 1.5 years, and what seemed a dream two years ago has lost a bit of its allure.
I know this may also sound a bit strange to some of you, but I've psychologically absorbed a lot of the shit that's been unfolding following the presidential election and the frustration from all of that has gotten me somewhat down, but it's also made me more conscious about what I ought to be doing in life--a part of me has a hard time justifying teaching Latin 101 at a SLAC when there is so much shit going on out there. I don't have a solution though. But maybe I'm the only one?
A lot has changed over the last 8-10 years. When I started my PhD program, faculty advisors could honestly say that "anyone who finishes this program and wants an academic job can get an academic job." I knew going in that some of those jobs were short-term and/or exploitative, but the better candidates at that time were getting t-t jobs at decent places and I was confident that I would be one of the better candidates to pass through my program. Now t-t jobs are basically unheard of, and we're very lucky to get a multi-year contract and/or one that isn't extremely exploitative. I'm tired of the narrative that we should have known better. We knew it was going to be difficult, but we wouldn't be Classicists if we didn't enjoy a challenge. No one told us it was going to be nearly impossible because they didn't know that at the time.
And yes, things look different once you're actually on the market or even in a job. I know several people who DID score a t-t job and have the same "do I really want to do this?" questions as those of us still on the market. I look at their 4-4 schedules, endless extracurricular obligations, pressure to publish constantly, and anxiety about impending tenure review, and I think, "so that's the dream that I'm fighting so hard to achieve?"
@7:47, I feel the same way about the larger societal and political problems we're currently facing and feel I could be doing more to help if I gave up on this particular dream.
ABD here, and I feel the same way. I have been well aware of the realities of the market and I love my project and teaching, but I feel a kind of apathy about continuing in the field. It feels pretty indulgent sometimes, what we do, and it's hard to think how you're actually contributing to a better society when you're sitting in a basement, typing away on a project that six people (if you count my parents skimming it) are going to read. Plus, now that I'm in my 30s, moving around from place to place until I find a permanent position - and even then, probably not somewhere I necessarily *want* to be - feels a lot different than it did when I was 22 or even 25.
Something else that doesn't help: seeing your friends with relatively well paying jobs start families and buy homes, while you're living stipend to stipend with no savings. This somehow felt OK or justifiable when we were all in the same boat at the age of 21 just getting out of college but the differences are very stark 10 years later...
9:19 - I suspect the more elite one's UG was, the more bitter one is. Some folks are making 6 figures out of undergrad, and others who went to school with them are making 30k (if they're lucky) after 6 years of stipend, no retirement savings, etc.
9:11 here. I went to a good but not great public school -- people in this field have literally scoffed at me when I told them where I went to college -- and I'm doing well now (good program, good project, good advisor, good prospects) and I just wonder, especially after recent discussions on here, if these are seriously the colleagues I want for the rest of my life. It's a combination of everything, where you live, the job you get, the lifestyle you can have, and some of these people (not all, I get that, but too many maybe).
Well, there are certainly jerks in every professional field (doctor, lawyer, teachers, cops, etc.), and FV like many fora brings out trolls who express ideas they would not want their true identities associated with.
"Well, there are certainly jerks in every professional field (doctor, lawyer, teachers, cops, etc.), and FV like many fora brings out trolls who express ideas they would not want their true identities associated with."
@9:43 and 10:28—Actually, I found the recent discussion on FV extremely refreshing. The comments from all sides about leaving the field and how ones opinions have changed over time given the process of moving from one's 20s to one's 30s.
It was nice to hear various peoples views on the field. Even the previous comment, "I just wonder, especially after recent discussions on here, if these are seriously the colleagues I want for the rest of my life," can be applied to more than just the discussion on FV. In fact, I would argue it should be applied even more heavily to the non-anonymous famous names that aren't on FV. Even the unfriendly comments are at least genuine, and not hidden behind a false, smug veneer based in nothing more than a university title. I would actually like to have drinks with these commenters.
On the other hand, there are a lot of well known scholars who deserve to be called out as people I may not want as colleagues for the rest of my life. Sure, a fair number of them have only the best of intentions, and care about their students' well-being. But a great many others, who are nothing more than narcissists who have produced work that almost no one from the outside world will bother to read, care only about their image and their selfish lifestyles. The respect they seek, and often demand, from their students has little of substance to back it up. Their actions do not merit respect, so why on earth should their titles earn them any respect?
They are merely fatted cows acting like aristocrats with nothing of value to show for it, apolitical, pretending to care about issues like harassment while sweeping those issues under the rug for their colleagues and administrators so long as the rug will hide it, and always, always, always ready to exploit their students time and labor with promises like, "This will help you out on the job market," when in fact it will do nothing of the sort in today's job market.
They are, in fact, a perfect reflection of the current Gilded Age revival that has emerged in America, and which has taken the once radical bastion of the university to its deathbed. I can only hope that tenure, the one thing that makes this aristocratic behavior possible, will soon be abolished across the board by university administrators, and that the tacit, condescending nods of these individuals will then be taken as little more than signs of approval displayed by heifers having been led to the slaughter.
^ Can I get an "Amen!"?
6:42 here.
I realize that what I wrote above is blunt, even harsh, but I feel quite strongly that the problems that plague the field will only be perpetuated and compounded if we don't speak frankly about the state of things. The system will continue to chew up and spit out talented people, grinding up years of their lives and hard work, and if we do anything other than try to break the cycle then we are complicit in it.
When I first applied to doctoral programs I was given a very stern, and yes, harsh talking to about the very likely potential for failure were I to pursue graduate studies and an academic career. Perhaps the professor who gave me the unvarnished truth was one who had a better grasp on how dire the situation was than other people, but they presented me with the cold, hard statistics and explained very clearly how the scales were weighed against me, even as a sharp, qualified undergraduate from a solid program.
They explained that even if, at the end of a PhD I managed to snag a tenure track job and then win tenure, that the academic life was not something for most people. One must deal not only with teaching and research duties, but administrators constantly mulling cuts and questioning the utility of your field, and above them politicians in state legislatures who would feel a great deal of pleasure if they managed to eliminate tenure, police the political views of faculty, and slash funding for universities across the board and eliminate the public ones outright. This, obviously, is extremely stressful and will hang over you no matter what you do, unless you happen to land at one of a handful of insulated places.
So while I understand the uncertainty some people are feeling and that it can arise at various stages of their time on the job market, whether it be ABD or several years into VAP or even as the lucky tenure track and tenured few, the best course is to have no illusions about the field and the job market, and give only the realistic picture to those who come to us wanting to pursue this path. This isn't for everyone, and that's perfectly fine. Moreover, if at any stage you come to the realization that this isn't for you, you can leave the field. You shouldn't feel compelled to continue, and we collectively need to do a better job both expressing this and working to ease the transition for those who do wish to pursue other careers.
"But we all should know this by now... I'm always surprised by how many in the field are shocked that jobs are scarce."
There are among us those who started grad school prior to the bottom falling out, as well as many who were subsequently reassured that the job market situation would recover in a couple of years when the economy did. In most cases I don't think people are shocked at the state of the job market, exactly, it's more that they miscalculated (and were given bad advice by those who thought they could predict the future) and are now having to reckon with that error without a lot of other obvious career options open to them.
This is my third year on the market, and while I'm still convinced this is what I want to do and am not feeling the same apathy about continuing that others describe above, I'm just exhausted by the constant round of applications/interviews/visits that keep leading to nowhere. I plan to keep going if none of the interviews/visits I'm waiting to hear back about results in a job, but I feel a sense of horror and dread at the idea of beginning all over again next year. You get invested in interviews that then don't result in a fly-out, you get invested in campus visits that then don't result in an offer and the cycle of excitement/anxiety, intense preparation, then waiting to hear, then the plummet into despair when you don't is. just. exhausting. I feel so worn down and discouraged. I love this field, I love teaching, and I want to stick with it, but the processes of the market are really destroying me.
"Something else that doesn't help: seeing your friends with relatively well paying jobs start families and buy homes, while you're living stipend to stipend with no savings. This somehow felt OK or justifiable when we were all in the same boat at the age of 21 just getting out of college but the differences are very stark 10 years later..."
This isn't talked about nearly enough: the opportunity cost of graduate school (and then the hamster-wheel of contingent faculty jobs) is steep. Now that I'm in my 30s and have left academia, I really, really wish I had actually made money and been saving for retirement, a home, etc., in my 20s. The trajectory of an academic career is especially brutal if you are a woman who wants to have children. I'm in my mid-thirties now, still don't have my career or finances figured out, and the biological clock is ticking away. It's hard to weigh these considerations when you're a starry-eyed 22 year old just starting a graduate program. I did not realize all the sacrifices I would make for academic life until I was in too deep in graduate school to quit. Really, now, doesn't the idea of sunken costs keep so many of us trudging along?
Yes, the sunk cost fallacy is a killer.
@12:02, I feel your pain, so much. I wish there were more opportunities to discuss this openly.
Even leaving academia doesn't solve the financial, personal, and professional inadequacies I've found myself in.
@1:49pm -- "There are 9 UCs but only one Cal!" That's not Berkeley/Bay Area parochialism, that's a system-wide understanding of how to name the campuses.
To those of you at the end of dissertating/recently finished:
What ideas/aspirations did you have, by the end of the writing and editing process, of what the dissertation should look like vis-a-vis its eventual monograph form?
Did you aim for near perfection, hoping to have as little editing to do in transforming the thesis into a book? Or did you finish with the philosophy that the thesis should be very good but not perfect, and that any kinks will be addressed in the manuscript stage?
I fucked up trying to write a dissertation that would need little in the way of revisions. It's a solid diss, but it took me too long to write and I could have finished a year sooner had I buckled down and accepted that it would not be perfect. This article explains why I wanted it to be perfect: https://jacobinmag.com/2018/01/under-neoliberalism-you-can-be-your-own-tyrannical-boss.
The only good dissertation is a finished dissertation. An unfinished dissertation is no good to anyone. And even the best dissertation requires a lot of work to become a book, because what makes a good dissertation is different from what makes a good book.
Incidentally, I found much of value in William Germano's From Dissertation to Book, though in the interest of full disclosure I should say that I haven't published my first book yet.
@1:39, I defended a dissertation with several problems. My plan was to revise it in its essential form (my advisor recommended I write it as a book and not a diss to begin with) and then get it out fast. After sitting on it for a while (which IMHO is absolutely necessary) and then showing a book proposal to several people, I realized that I needed a new framework and a new chapter. The book is so much better now than my revised diss would have ever been. I think you should realize that almost no one's diss becomes a real book and be ready to make some serious changes.
Has anyone received news about the ancient history postdoc at UToronto? I haven't heard back good or bad but would like to be put out of my misery if others have gotten updates...
Yes, they are at the interviews stage now.
Anyone have a clue about Reed, whose ad had indicated interviews would be scheduled for the end of January?
Also, has anyone applied to English positions at CCs?
What do people think is more useful to a fresh PhD for future job searches, a post-doc or a VAP?
probably VAP - you get a lot of teaching experience with those. admittedly post-docs are more luxurious-- more time for research and thus more attractive to the recipient but they kind of resemble pre-doc fellowships (with better pay) but you get the feeling like you're prolonging grad school life
I had a post-doc that was actually a full-time job. Thankfully it also had enough room for some of my own research. But I couldn't get a single academic interview after, despite the post-doc being pretty prestigious. I'm not sure a VAP would have been much better, considering I also adjuncted on the side, so I did get some teaching experience, though probably not as much as a VAP.
I've hardly seen post-docs that were full time jobs (other than say, the teaching post doc at Cornell)... are there any others ones like that on the offing this year? If you had to teach so much -- why did they call it a post doc and not a VAP? purely administrative reasons?
@9:08, it wasn't an academic post-doc; the teaching I did was adjunct work that was unrelated. So I wasn't faculty, but staff.
newbie here: has it been helpful to you to see who got which jobs? what do you do with this information? Just wondering if this information is motivating for people, or depressing...
Oddly, it is helpful to see who got hired. Sometimes, it gives a sense of the type of person who gets a particular job, which can help you position yourself better the next year.
But it is also depressing in that seeing the successful candidates is a reminder of how utterly random the process is.
Does anyone have famae about the Stanford joint position? How did it come about? What are they looking for? How will the process go?
Based on our demographics and how others generally view our discipline, we have very few young scholars that stand a chance. It's certainly a steep climb for any applicant, but bordering on the impossible for any of us. Seriously, can you think of even five classicists that stand a chance? I cannot.
A bit of good news for everyone here to be cognizant of:
as you're reading this, 40-50 of the market's top applicants are being offered T-T jobs. Which means that for the VAP season, which has yet to *really* begin, those of us still here (especially those of us who may have interviewed/visited numerous places) in the trenches have less upper-end competition to worry about.
Of course, much of this depends on those who accept T-T offers to cease applying for VAPs (some still do, yes, I know it's awful) and/or notify all SCs that they are now out of the running.
It's been a rough job season, but cheer up! There's going to be a fresh avalanche of (VAP) jobs in the coming 6-8 weeks. It's very hard to remain optimistic, trust me I know (4 dead-end interviews for me thus far), but rather than focus on the fortunate few who can land a T-T job as an ABD with a pathetic CV, let's try to learn from our own past mistakes in interviews or cover letter drafting, etc.. and take some comfort in knowing that it is the absolute norm that people who get T-T jobs are (on average) 4-5 years out from PhD, having held numerous VAPs. ...There will always be those who fall ass-backwards into great gigs, but put them out of your mind; they're the anomaly not those of us fighting our way uphill.
...So, let's all try to cheer up a bit and get ready for the VAP season, which is, in all honesty, the "REAL" job season for those of us on years 1-5 post-PhD.
@12:05 "it is the absolute norm that people who get T-T jobs are (on average) 4-5 years out from PhD, having held numerous VAPs"
Genuinely curious: what is your source on this? That is encouraging; haven't heard that statistic before.
Why would anyone apply for a VAP after they had a TT? Especially in a way that anyone here would condemn? The only scenario I can think of is that the TT had a truly massive teaching obligation or other serious problems that came to light during the process, or that some kind of other issue made taking the job impossible (unwillingness to sponsor a visa, or an emergency that makes it difficult or otherwise trying to relocate etc).
???
12:05 here,
@ 1:01,
There are few sources for that info.
1.) *perhaps a bit anecdotal* Take a look at the Classics Wiki to see where the lion's share of folks are, most fall in the 3-5 year post-PhD range; very few above
2.) Take a look at practically any newly-TT faculty (post-2005) and you'll see that they almost always didn't land that gig until the 4-5 year mark.
3.) The account of numerous faculty at my PhD institution in both Classics and History (both large and top-5 programs). Both Depts held yearly open talks with 6-12 younger faculty each to field questions to grad students concerning the job market. I went to both, for 4 years. Add to this that each year they all re-iterated the fact that ca. 90% of T-T offers don't come until the 4-5 year mark. They explain it being the case for a few interesting reasons:
A.) After 4-5 years, a junior scholar has had adequate time to 'prove themselves capable of producing quality scholarship; attaining grants; participating in conferences; publishing articles; (maybe) landing a tentative monograph publishing deal.
B.) If you can show that 4-5 times over, Search Committees chose *YOU* that means that there must be something great about you; that if other SCs continually see something in you, time and time again, then you *ARE HIRABLE* ...so, the more that you get 'chosen' the more others want you.
C.) Persistence and drive. It's easy to say "fuck it," after a year or two of no T-T offers coming your way, but to stick with it and keep forcing your way through the shit-storm shows a great deal of integrity and self-sacrifice (sadly, many cannot continue due to personal reasons or financial issues, neither of which indicate a lack of persistence and drive)
@ 1:30,
It happens. There were a few famous instances here where people are offered a T-T job at a very low-ranked third tier school but chose to defer it a year or two so that they can undertake a nice PostDoc or VAP at a shiny Ivy. I also know of a scholar who said that even though he was offered a T-T job in February (2014) he wanted to know "how good he really was" so he kept applying to PostDocs and VAPs just to say "yeah.. I was interviewed for 5 T-T jobs, offered 2, and was offered 9 VAP jobs, and 3 PostDocs." ....NEVER underestimate the arrogance or ego of others.
@12:05, Thanks, that's really helpful. The post-PhD timeline was really never discussed at my institution, what a great idea to actually have faculty talk about that with the students before they go on the market!
4-5 years post-PhD is not at all the norm. That is more like an upper limit--after around 5 years, the few people who are still searching for a new job every year tend to either secure a t-t post or leave the field. Insofar as there is a norm, it is probably more like 2-3 years out, after having had a VAP or two, as the average profile for those securing t-t jobs. The wiki counters are obviously not accurate and complete or even necessarily representative statistics, but there are more people in their first 2 years on the market checked in there than in all other years combined. So, no, it is not the "norm" to do five years of VAPs before getting a t-t job.
That's not to say that there's anything wrong with sticking around that long (I think that persistence, and the aspect of "well, this person has been chosen by SCs X times--there's something to like there!" mentioned above, significantly outweigh the "no longer shiny and new" vibe that people adduce in this context).
Also, 12:05, you mention that this is partly based on new faculty at your PhD-granting institution. Presumably, then, a top, R1 university. How many of those new faculty were hopping up from other institutions where they already held t-t posts (as opposed to visiting gigs)? That's a totally different dynamic from the market as a whole.
12:05 again..
@ 3:02,
I can't speak for all of them, of course, but I am sure that some may have held an Asst. Prof. somewhere else before making it there. To be a bit more specific, it is a top "public Ivy," so it surely can only provide partially helpful information.
We did, just a few years back, take on two ABDs for T-T posts. One was a spousal hire, but they both came to us from Yale. The "norm" (at least for the Depts here) is that most T-T folk come to us not from a sitting T-T job or ABD, but after having gone through 3-5 years of VAP gigs first.
All of the finalists in the current T-T search at our school (Ivy) have either had (a) at least one VAP; (b) a post-doc; (c) already have a T-T job (or equivalent), but are early on in the T-T clock and seem to be seeking greener pastures.
@9:01,
It’s reasons like this that I genuinely feel like all non-top-10 school SCs should be very VERY hesitant to give a T-T job to whomever is the “Michael Jordan” of applicants that year; they’re just going to jump ship at first chance, while the rest of us who have very strong CVs and have good pedigree are passed over because we aren’t “the absolute strongest candidate.” ...why the hell are so many SCs so short-sighted? How can so many honestly think that the MJ of the applicant pool will stay at their sub-top-10 school? To regularly have to fill a vacancy due to people jumping ship not only makes that Dept look inept at selecting the best pick, but it keeps the rest of us out of serious consideration unless we have a Harvard PhD a few books under contract and a CV that looks like Walter Schiedel’s (if any of you haven’t looked at his CV, take a look. Holy shit is it beyond insane).
@11:14,
I couldn’t agree more. It’s mind-boggling that so many schools will (carelessly) make an offer to someone who clearly is so far beyond the sitting faculty at an institution a job and think “he’s going to stay.”
Many 3rd tier and lower 2nd tier schools already realize this, so they make appropriate offers and pass over all of the Glen Bowersock Jr.s. The problem is with all of the upper 2nd tier and lower 1st; they “think” that they can be competitive with the top-10. All that they accomplish is having a constant revolving-door to their dept letting in the “MJs” as you put it year after year only to do it again when *they* leave too.
Sometimes the smartest people are the most gullible and foolish.
I've always been told to think of the job market in academia as analogous to dating. Everyone wants to be with someone smarter and better than themselves, while no one realizes or is willing to admit that this is (on the whole, not case-by-case) a recipe for unhappiness and discontent.
I disagree. Look at the recent job talks posted - what a gamble. Lots of largely unproven, but new and shiny, things gonna be one of only a handful of classicists at R1 schools. It doesn't matter that these are not top schools. As positions dwindle, every position, but especially those at any research school, is incredibly important. We can't afford solid but meh people holding too many of these positions due to some well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided, advisors pulling strings to get their progeny through. This isn't the natural, academic selection that will result in the strongest discipline going forward as we're forced to get leaner.
I'm not saying jobs should all be given to people 3-5 years out. At least some of them aren't excellent. Pick the best fit with the strongest credentials possible. However, I'm not seeing it as a whole and it doesn't bode well for the discipline's long term survival.
Off topic, but can anyone shed any light on what's going on with Case Western? My interview was over two weeks ago now, and it was already postponed by two weeks because of the SCS travel issues. Has anyone gotten a campus invite and if so would they mind posting it on the Wiki? Are they just being super slow? They are getting really behind the other TT jobs in terms of visits/offers.
@3:03,
I was a Gettysburg interviewee and they didn’t contact for campus visits until mid this last week. I want one of them, but I say this because many Depts are running behind schedule. I wouldn’t consider it out until you’ve seen others report something.
Any word on *who* accepted the UAlbany position?
Joe
@7:57,
Usually makes are listed on Wiki. Though, I’m unsure if those names are added from the actual job recipients or by others who find out and add them. Being said, I don’t know who was offered and accepted the UAlbanu job.
To be quite fair, I would wager that it doesn't seem artificial to him.
Servius, please be sure to delete 4:57 p.m. -- even if not an all-out attack, it's way uncool for some anonymous jackass to be shining the spotlight on a fellow junior colleague in this manner.
@12:03,
Your comment, if not trolling, is so meta-meta, it's...
Wow.
@2:51,
I want trolling and I have no idea what “meta-meta” means.
(Not trolling)
Servius, with a reminder that derogatory name-calling of easily identifiable junior scholars isn't what we do here.
Servius,
I honestly don’t understand what’s going on here. My sincere questions keep getting deleted.
I’ll have to assume that, what to me, sounds like a completely vague and unidentifiable description of a writing device, a fast food chain, and a piece of formal ware is instantly recognized by others here as referring to a very specific person. Can you elaborate as to what the problem is with this trigger phrase?
...and can someone explain what the use of ‘meta’ means?
**Servius, if you’re going to delete this, have the decency to at least explain why.
Also, lest it get lost in the deletions -- identifying yourself derogatorily with your own academic profile picture isn't smart.
11:56 AM: yes, the person in question is a specific individual, easily identifiable by the phrasing that was used.
@12:12,
Thank you.
I’ll just have to assume that I’m very much out of the loop, as I just assumed it was a generic way of referring to a typical academic hipster who loves to be pompous. ...wild stuff that so many can ID someone specific by that phrase.
...makes me wonder what goofy name others would use to describe me in a similar scenario.
Yes, while I do not approve of the derogatory comments, as a rule junior scholars should avoid sartorial peacocking. Dress conservatively, with a small c. Save the affectations for post-tenure.
In our field, getting noticed for something that is not your research and teaching is seldom a good thing.
Eh, err on the side of being yourself. life is too short. If you like ascots, wear them. if huge russian fur hats are your thing, why not?
Why not, if they're "your thing"? Well, because "your thing" as a jr. scholar is supposed to be work, work, and more work. If work isn't "your thing", then... enjoy your hats, if that's what you want, because it's a buyer's market!
But fedoras are okay, right?
Please refrain from being mean to people until you are certain you are punching up.
What is the normal protocol to resolve the following dilemma? You agree to accept a short term postdoc but then get offered a TT job or a more prestigious postdoc. Do most SCs anticipate this and keep a short list of candidates in case this happens? A more hypothetical question: You get offered a postdoc and then see that a call for applications comes up for a more prestigious position. Do you go through the trouble of applying for that second one or call it quits after you get offered something?
Any time you are in a non-permanent position you should apply for every suitable TT position and it is not your problem to worry about what happens when you resign a short term position. For the most part the same is true too when it comes to applying for other more suitable short term positions.
If an institution has not made a long-term commitment to you, you have no moral, legal or otherwise commitment to it. (Other than not being a jerk about the manner of your departure.) Trust me, this is a mistake that I have made. Find a better job and go to it whenever it is available. Everyone understands.
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