Professionalization and Reform

[lifealive]

 

 

What outrages me about the practice I described? Let me try to explain by way of example in the real world. Allowing a "superstar" in the field to accept a post doc and defer a TT position, is the equivalent of allowing a "superstar" banker to accept an internship at JP Morgan and defer employment at Goldman Sachs. It's just not done in the industry, even where there is fungibility of skills. The only other place I've seen somewhat similar practices is in the legal field where if an entry-level attorney for a firm got an offer to clerk for a judge, s/he would defer employment to go to the clerkship first. BUT in this instance the general practice of the firm is much like that of a school with a candidate who accepts but defers; the firm hires another associate to start in the place of the attorney who deferred. There is no such equivalent rule in the academic setting. And to me, if you are not outraged by this practice, you're much like my friend in thinking that (1) you will be that superstar to benefit from the rigged rules and/or (2) the adjunct situation will not apply to you. I'm not going to repeat the debates RE: adjuncting, but I am totally in agreement with the idea that the growing number of adjunct positions, and the growing inequities between adjuncts and TT academics, is unhealthy for all in academia. 

 

 

I apologize for misinterpreting the reason for the outrage of your original message. Yes, it is outrageous that a university would allow someone to defer for two years and use an adjunct (but more likely a VAP, considering the caliber of this type of institution) in their place.

 

Quite simply, the "winner takes all" approach goes far in academia because academia looks to other institutions for validation. Being able to hire a professor who was sought-out enough to juggle multiple offers is a way to validate your department and to know for sure that you got someone good. Never mind the fact that there are tons of equally qualified people whose CVs are just sitting there. This "one who almost got away" has been rubber-stamp validated by other institutions, so they're the ones to shell out cash for, or to lure away with a hefty research budget.  

 

And that's the kind of thinking that's becoming the slow death of academia. Taken to its other extreme, it's precisely why adjuncts or unemployed academics can't get hired. They weren't rubber-stamp validated. No one thought they were good enough that particular year (even if they have publications or tons of teaching experience), so no other institution is going to stick its neck out either. Many of us have already experienced this kind of thinking in graduate admissions. These programs like to play it safe there too: If you're under 25 and come from a good school, you're a more attractive bet than someone who's older and started off at community college. Etc. 

 

It's insane, really. I was trying to explain today to someone outside of academia why your PhD is basically worthless about 2 years after it's been conferred. They didn't believe me and thought I was making the whole thing up. They were like, "That doesn't make any sense! Why would a PhD stop meaning anything simply because two years have gone by?" They don't understand that in our system, the only way you can make it is to have someone else validate you within a very narrow window of time. Failing to get that validation ripples outward, telling everyone at all the other institutions that you are Not To Be Hired.

 

And as a side note, rising_star is wrong about SLACs wanting people with more teaching experience. SLACs are really the new R1s when it comes to hiring practices. They are looking to hire elite candidates regardless of what kind of teaching they're actually capable of doing. When parents are shelling out $60k for an education, they want professors with elite credentials. In fact, it's now a given that SLACs are notoriously not-picky about the candidate's research, either--unlike R1s. "Professor So-and-So got his PhD at Yale" is much more immediately compelling to parents than "Professor So-and-So got his PhD at Indiana but is published in American Literary History and has a book forthcoming on a topic you've never heard of." My advisor has basically told me that I have a better chance of getting hired at an R1 than a SLAC because an R1 is actually going to look at my research and my publications while a SLAC won't know one journal from the next and goes immediately for the name on the degree.  

Edited May 30, 2015 by lifealive

[VirtualMessage]

The academic market is generally like the economy at large: there will always be that top 1% that is immune to all recessions. https://chroniclevitae.com/news/929-academia-s-1-percent

 

I actually know someone like the person you're describing--postdoc at an Ivy League school, job lined up afterwards at one of the top 15 universities in the country. That job is sitting empty right now. If it's any comfort, though, it doesn't require much teaching anyway, so I doubt that any adjuncts have been hired to take on the onerous 1-1 course load.

 

 

 

 

 

Quite simply: it's an outrage because the person being touted as the "best person for the TT job" is one who has most likely accrued advantages throughout the years and is now sailing by on those privileges. The people sought out for these kinds of positions are generally the ones who came from the right schools, did the least amount of teaching, and were protected from the realities of academic labor at every turn. They were given a lot of time to do their research; therefore, their research is good. Also, it is looked at as good because they were given these advantages. Academia loves this kind of circular logic: the best person for the job is the best person for the job because we have decided that they were the best person for the job. Same stuff that we see here every year: "the best applicants get into the best grad schools because they simply are the best applicants because graduate programs are self-sorting." No one ever stops to examine what this kind of thing implies--that it is the very opposite mentality of the Marxist social justice rhetoric that many faculty profess to believe in.

 

The Chronicle Vitae article I linked above explains it better than I ever could, anyway.

 

Fascinatingly, the person I referenced above has been hailed as the future of our discipline even though they have never published an article. But the scholarship that is coming is amazing, I can guarantee that. Because we've already decided that it's amazing. 

 

Exactly: "Academia loves this kind of circular logic: the best person for the job is the best person for the job because we have decided that they were the best person for the job."

 

Do we want to speculate about what might be the criteria for election, if not merit? I'd offer identity as one, or another way to put this is rationalized prejudice justified by identity politics. Personality is a second-- a personality that validates the unquestionable superiority and value of the faculty that confers the stamp of election. I once had a junior faculty member offer me this piece of advice for interviews/campus visits: "Don't make the mistake of giving them the impression that you might be smarter. You have to convince them that they're smarter than you." Right. At the time, I couldn't believe this advice would be necessary because the idea of placing myself in a hierarchy of smartness seemed ludicrous, especially the suggestion that I perform stupidity. But I was confused. It's not stupidity that is desired--it's servility. Walking through the gate of my graduate University for the first time, I never could have imagined academia was so insecure about its status, so obsessed with prestige, and so destructively at odds with the very intellectual rigor that it is supposed to practice, cultivate, and teach. I know, I was naive, but I enrolled because I wanted to learn how to conduct research and to teach, and I assumed I'd live or die by how well I did it--not who I was judged to be. I thought that kind of discrimination based on the perception of an individual (without even knowing very much about the person, might I add) was reserved for Princeton's eating clubs, law firms, and the precincts of society I was actively trying to avoid. 

Edited May 30, 2015 by VirtualMessage

[rising_star]

And as a side note, rising_star is wrong about SLACs wanting people with more teaching experience. SLACs are really the new R1s when it comes to hiring practices. They are looking to hire elite candidates regardless of what kind of teaching they're actually capable of doing. When parents are shelling out $60k for an education, they want professors with elite credentials. In fact, it's now a given that SLACs are notoriously not-picky about the candidate's research, either--unlike R1s. "Professor So-and-So got his PhD at Yale" is much more immediately compelling to parents than "Professor So-and-So got his PhD at Indiana but is published in American Literary History and has a book forthcoming on a topic you've never heard of." My advisor has basically told me that I have a better chance of getting hired at an R1 than a SLAC because an R1 is actually going to look at my research and my publications while a SLAC won't know one journal from the next and goes immediately for the name on the degree.  

 

It depends on which S you're using in SLAC. If you mean "selective liberal arts colleges", then your statement above is somewhat true but really mostly at the top 25-40 liberal arts colleges. Beyond that, an emphasis is indeed placed on teaching experience. If you're at a "small liberal arts college" (the other way the term SLAC is used), then there's definitely an emphasis on teaching ability (usually evidenced through experience) and breadth of knowledge. At a small liberal arts college, a faculty member in the English department might be asked to teach freshman writing, survey courses on American/British/World literature, and an upper-level more specific course all in the same semester. Not all liberal arts colleges at the same but, at the ones where I and friends have interviewed at in recent years, they were much more interested in our ability to teach than they were in our research agenda. In fact, I've done phone interviews for jobs at liberal arts college where literally not one question about my research was asked. I can only assume that if they're not asking about it for students on their long list, it isn't a major factor in deciding who to bring to campus. They do ask questions about how you approach teaching in general and specifics classes in particular (and, if you're lucky, they'll tell you which specific classes they have in advance so you can prepare a response), how you engage with students beyond the classroom (have you involved them in your research and, if so, how), and what new classes you can bring to their curriculum and why those classes. You don't have to believe me, obviously, but that's been my experience and has also been the experience of friends in my field. Maybe English departments just work totally differently?

 

To fancypants09's points earlier, I've thought of a couple of similar-ish situations that are a frequent topic of conversation here on this board. One is a student who gets admitted to multiple graduate programs with funding then uses the multiple offers to get a higher offer out of one program. That isn't quite the same but it's also an interesting situation because it's not like one person getting more money means that everyone in the entering cohort gets that same bump in pay. I guess the good news is that, in this situation, no one is necessarily receiving a lower salary because someone negotiated for a higher stipend.

 

The second example is more similar to the TT job and postdoc situation and that is when someone gets admitted to a funded graduate program and also wins a prestigious fellowship like a Fulbright. They find out about the fellowship after accepting the graduate program offer and then ask for a deferral. Because decisions have already been made, that person is essentially taking up a spot in a graduate program that no one else can have. The program is probably not going to admit someone for one year with funding and then tell them to fend for themselves in subsequent years. And, if the person's funding came from a TA position, the department has to find someone to teach those classes, which could mean hiring an adjunct. In that situation (and again, this isn't just hypothetical because people have asked about this on this board every single year I've been around), isn't the graduate student doing exactly what you think is wrong when it happens at the hiring stage? And, if you go look at those posts around here, the responders pretty much universally say that the person should absolutely defer the grad program, take the fellowship, then go to the program with funding afterward. More interestingly and relevant here is that there is little concern that this person has taken up a spot in the program that otherwise could have gone to a qualified applicant. That's why I find your position surprising, fancypants09 and lifealive. And, I hope that if you're still around next spring when people are posting about that, you make sure to accuse those people of having a "winner takes all" attitude and taking up a spot that otherwise would've gone to any one of dozens of other qualified applicants/candidates. Otherwise, it's hypocritical to be against it at the end of grad school but not at the beginning.

[fancypants09]

rising_star: Thank you for making this debate a judgement of my personal idiocy with respect to academia. I'm quite shocked and saddened that my desire to discuss a hiring practice in what I have found up to this point to be a welcoming forum has turned into accusations of naivete and hypocrisy on my part. You may know from my past postings that I've never been the one to victimize myself or adopt the woe-is-me attitude during the application process or about the job market situation. 

 

I mentioned it in my posting yesterday and I'll mention it again: I've occupied positions of privilege and have seen, from that vantage point, what it means not to have that privilege in the "real world" job market. It's not pretty, but even out there in that jungle that many associate with de-humanizing people, there are rules. Just because a hiring practice is pervasive doesn't make it right. And if anything, I thought this forum with its shield of anonymity, would have been an ideal place to have a critical discussion about it. But clearly I was wrong. 

 

I wanted to add a piece about the systemic nature of the problem, but I am tired of trying to discuss the issues involved while defending against unjust personal attacks. rising_star, as an admin to GC and a much senior academic than those who are entering doctoral programs this year, may you me kinder to those who are just entering and not jump to conclusions about their character. Just because someone is entering graduate school now doesn't mean that they are wide-eyed and lack knowledge about how things work in academia (or elsewhere, for that matter). 

 

I'm going back to taking a respite from GC because clearly I'm not bright/up-to-snuff for the debate here, but I'll end with an anecdote of someone who did defer a TT position to take a prestigious post doc in the humanities. This person received their PhD from an Ivy League school, and both the TT position and post doc were in top programs. I was having dinner with one of their colleagues with whom I was discussing the post doc + TT position deferral issue, and he mentioned that this candidate was burned by everyone in the field for their behavior because in their particular field, there is an unspoken rule that you do not trample upon your colleague to take it all. The candidate broke ties with their colleagues, assuming that prestigious positions were worth the sacrifice and that their colleagues were simply jealous of their gain. Long and short of it is they were denied tenure at prestigious university and are now teaching at a much lower ranked school that they never thought they would find themselves, and without the support network of former classmates and colleagues. 

Edited May 30, 2015 by fancypants09

[lifealive]

It depends on which S you're using in SLAC. If you mean "selective liberal arts colleges", then your statement above is somewhat true but really mostly at the top 25-40 liberal arts colleges. Beyond that, an emphasis is indeed placed on teaching experience. If you're at a "small liberal arts college" (the other way the term SLAC is used), then there's definitely an emphasis on teaching ability (usually evidenced through experience) and breadth of knowledge.

 

This is just flat-out wrong.

 

First of all, the job market has tightened to the point where small liberal arts colleges can and do command the best and most elite job applicants possible. That's not just the top 25 to 40 programs anymore; that's more like the top 100, maybe 150. It's why you get SLACs far outside of the Oberlin 50 looking for candidates who have a research profile. They might want people who can teach--sure, all schools say they do. But they mostly want people who look good to the outside. Even students at St. Mary's College and Wittenberg University are paying out the nose for an education. So again, the way to secure those investments is to shore up that institutional prestige. I actually interviewed at a SLAC in the top 150 this year, and they were interested in my teaching, sure. But I wouldn't have even gotten the interview if it hadn't been for my research profile/fancy postdoc.

 

Second of all "teaching ability" and "teaching experience" have become increasingly subjective in this day and age. A lot of people get hired at SLACs with precious little teaching experience, or with just enough experience to prove that they can handle themselves in a classroom. When it comes to teaching, these days less is more. If you have taught just a few classes at the right institution, you'll be on the same footing with someone who's taught 10 sections of comp and 5 massive literature surveys. In fact, you might even have an advantage because your teaching portfolio is probably peppered with the articulate feedback of students who were happy to be in your class. You might have also had more freedom to design classes with trendy course themes rather than "functional writing 101" and "Introduction to the entire literary canon for non-majors." Trendy course themes translate well to SLACs. 

 

It is true that non-national SLACs and small teaching colleges put more emphasis on hiring candidates with teaching experience. An elite degree will not help you on that market. Unfortunately, though, many of those schools aren't hiring. They're getting by on adjunct labor, or they're asking their existing faculty to take on increasingly high course loads. They do make some hires, and that's where you can just hope to get lucky. But those schools have really been hurt by the economic crunch. 

 

 

 

To fancypants09's points earlier, I've thought of a couple of similar-ish situations that are a frequent topic of conversation here on this board. One is a student who gets admitted to multiple graduate programs with funding then uses the multiple offers to get a higher offer out of one program. That isn't quite the same but it's also an interesting situation because it's not like one person getting more money means that everyone in the entering cohort gets that same bump in pay. I guess the good news is that, in this situation, no one is necessarily receiving a lower salary because someone negotiated for a higher stipend.

 

The second example is more similar to the TT job and postdoc situation and that is when someone gets admitted to a funded graduate program and also wins a prestigious fellowship like a Fulbright. They find out about the fellowship after accepting the graduate program offer and then ask for a deferral. Because decisions have already been made, that person is essentially taking up a spot in a graduate program that no one else can have. The program is probably not going to admit someone for one year with funding and then tell them to fend for themselves in subsequent years. And, if the person's funding came from a TA position, the department has to find someone to teach those classes, which could mean hiring an adjunct. In that situation (and again, this isn't just hypothetical because people have asked about this on this board every single year I've been around), isn't the graduate student doing exactly what you think is wrong when it happens at the hiring stage? And, if you go look at those posts around here, the responders pretty much universally say that the person should absolutely defer the grad program, take the fellowship, then go to the program with funding afterward. More interestingly and relevant here is that there is little concern that this person has taken up a spot in the program that otherwise could have gone to a qualified applicant. That's why I find your position surprising, fancypants09 and lifealive. And, I hope that if you're still around next spring when people are posting about that, you make sure to accuse those people of having a "winner takes all" attitude and taking up a spot that otherwise would've gone to any one of dozens of other qualified applicants/candidates. Otherwise, it's hypocritical to be against it at the end of grad school but not at the beginning.

 

???

 

Huh? I've never said that the people who take these positions are doing anything wrong. I don't think fancypants09 has said that either. I don't know in what context you've misread this whole thing as moralizing against people who get admitted to multiple graduate programs. I'm saying that I think the structure of graduate and higher education culture--wherein people must accrue advantages through systems of prestige, not actual achievement--is a fucked-up model worth our attention. 

 

I personally don't care about the personal ethics of someone who plays graduate programs off one another, or even jobs off one another. Given the climate of academia, and the meager amount of money typically being negotiated, I think that you'd be stupid to not negotiate out of a sense of moral obligation.

 

What I abhor is that our system actually celebrates such a thing, deliberately seeking out candidates simply because they've been "vetted" or "anointed" by another institution and holding fast to the belief that having a job means you deserve a job, and that failing to secure a job means that you don't deserve to work in academia ever. There is enough talent to go around that institutions don't need to hold positions while people finish postdocs. As fancypants09 pointed out, the working world doesn't operate along those lines. If you get a position at Goldman Sachs but want to try out another job at JP Morgan, Goldman says, "Enjoy JP Morgan; we've got other candidates lined up and work that needs to be done right now." That academia doesn't operate that way is indeed mystifying--and, as I've said in other places on this forum--only serves to devalue its purpose. If you've hired someone to teach at your institution but don't actually need them TO TEACH or physically be present--to the point that you can pawn the duties off on a grad student or adjunct--then that says volumes about how your institution perceives teaching.  And since teaching is the lens through which the public understands our contribution most clearly, this attitude toward teaching--that it can be done by anyone--is harmful to us all. I'm surprised you don't see the issue.

 

ETA: I agree with fancypants09 above that you're being willfully obtuse, rising_star. I really don't understand why you're attributing things to people that they clearly didn't say, or making ridiculous comparisons that make no sense. I don't know what your end game is here, or what your purpose was in derailing this discussion, but you should drop it because it sucks. 

Edited May 30, 2015 by lifealive

[lifealive]

 

 

Do we want to speculate about what might be the criteria for election, if not merit? I'd offer identity as one, or another way to put this is rationalized prejudice justified by identity politics. Personality is a second-- a personality that validates the unquestionable superiority and value of the faculty that confers the stamp of election. I once had a junior faculty member offer me this piece of advice for interviews/campus visits: "Don't make the mistake of giving them the impression that you might be smarter. You have to convince them that they're smarter than you." Right. At the time, I couldn't believe this advice would be necessary because the idea of placing myself in a hierarchy of smartness seemed ludicrous, especially the suggestion that I perform stupidity. But I was confused. It's not stupidity that is desired--it's servility. Walking through the gate of my graduate University for the first time, I never could have imagined academia was so insecure about its status, so obsessed with prestige, and so destructively at odds with the very intellectual rigor that it is supposed to practice, cultivate, and teach. I know, I was naive, but I enrolled because I wanted to learn how to conduct research and to teach, and I assumed I'd live or die by how well I did it--not who I was judged to be. I thought that kind of discrimination based on the perception of an individual (without even knowing very much about the person, might I add) was reserved for Princeton's eating clubs, law firms, and the precincts of society I was actively trying to avoid. 

 

I don't know if I fully understand the point about identity politics. 

 

As to your point about servility: I think appropriate deference is part of it. I also think that academia has an obsession with people who look like they don't work very hard (or work very hard at the wrong things, i.e. teaching or landing a job) or want something too badly. Not to be too tongue-in-cheek, but it harks back to an old-boy system of wealth and privilege where the sons of the WASPy upper class simply told their school masters what Ivy League school they wanted to attend, and it was done. The privileged need not break a sweat about their future because the future is always a sure bet.

 

It's that kind of attitude that lives on even today, totally at odds with our current economic system and needs. Even The Professor Is In lays down a bunch of crap about "not appearing too enthusiastic" about the job you're applying for. The reasoning, of course, is that a candidate who wants a job really badly doesn't have better options. And of course we don't want someone who doesn't have better options; we want someone who is currently being wooed by every university in the English-speaking world, even if the current job market makes such a prospect absolutely ludicrous. The job candidates that universities want to hire will OF COURSE have multiple options. Because other institutions will naturally recognize their genius. And that is what makes them valuable. Apparently academics are incapable of making decisions about a candidate's merits based on their writing sample or some other thing like that. 

 

Take the UC-Riverside case of two years ago. UC-Riverside gave its MLA interviewees five days' notice before the MLA convention even began. This caused a huge uproar; it meant that some candidates might find themselves scrambling to make hotel and flight reservations five days before the convention. And given the cost of such accommodations and the meager pay of most grad students and adjuncts, that could mean two months' salary. 

 

But of course, if you get an interview at MLA--even just ONE interview--you have to go. Why? Because if you don't go--if you tell the committee "gee, I can't afford to go, can we do this on Skype or in some other way?"--Oh my God, you have just shown your hand. You don't have any other interviews. No one else thinks you're worth the time of day, so neither will the committee. Again, in our discipline, our value is determined by all the other institutions that quietly confer our status. Worse, if you don't have money to go to MLA, then you don't have a department with enough clout to pay for MLA. And everyone knows then you are Not To Be Hired. This all goes beyond dressing for the job you want. It's more like buying a house in the neighborhood you someday want to be able to afford so you can get into the country club, even if doing so means taking out the worst mortgage ever. 

 

In fact, I think that MLA interviews are one of the most ludicrous ways that our discipline shows itself to be totally out-of-touch and seeking to ferret out which candidates are backed by invisible currencies of wealth and prestige and which are not. It's like a miserable test--if you can afford to go to MLA, then you must deserve to be there. So much for bootstraps--if you don't have enough invisible institutional wealth backing you, don't bother. "Self-made?" Don't apply.   

 

The list of such behaviors goes on and on. People are told not to teach at community college because you'll never wash off the taint. Yes, seriously. That's what certain gatekeepers think about actually working and teaching for a living--it is a "taint." 

 

Don't email/call a search committee to ask about the status of your application! Doing that shows that you're actually concerned about getting the job. Of course, a sought-after job seeker is one that would never be concerned about the status of their application. 

 

Be cool and unenthusiastic when corresponding with search committees or professors. Again, any kind of enthusiasm could make you look desperate. 

 

And on and on. I was never told to dumb myself down, though. I'm guessing that things are different at different institutions. At most of my interviews I had to prove I could operate at a higher level. 

[rising_star]

This is just flat-out wrong.

 

First of all, the job market has tightened to the point where small liberal arts colleges can and do command the best and most elite job applicants possible. That's not just the top 25 to 40 programs anymore; that's more like the top 100, maybe 150. It's why you get SLACs far outside of the Oberlin 50 looking for candidates who have a research profile. They might want people who can teach--sure, all schools say they do. But they mostly want people who look good to the outside. Even students at St. Mary's College and Wittenberg University are paying out the nose for an education. So again, the way to secure those investments is to shore up that institutional prestige. I actually interviewed at a SLAC in the top 150 this year, and they were interested in my teaching, sure. But I wouldn't have even gotten the interview if it hadn't been for my research profile/fancy postdoc.

 

You're right, lifealive. Clearly my friends and I, quite a few of whom work at SLACs in the top 100, are absolutely wrong about what it takes to get hired. They're so wrong that they got those jobs and obviously have no clue what they're looking for or doing when they're on the search committee for new hires. Like I said before, maybe English is entirely different from the social and natural sciences where my friends and I are but, in our experience, teaching experience and skills outweigh one's research profile. Research isn't what gets you tenure at the medium-ranked SLACs. As a social scientist, I've been told that 3-5 peer-reviewed publications (and no, I don't mean in top-ranked or high-impact journals) is all you need for tenure. Anything more than that suggests you aren't spending enough time on your teaching. And, in quite a few cases, they count publications that came out when you were ABD toward your tenure file. If one's research profile were really that important, then they would be expecting more research in higher impact journals both out of candidates and when you go up for tenure. But at many, they aren't. They want you to advise and mentor undergraduates, recognizing that this means that the research process will be slower than it is if you work with graduate students. They want you to average 4/5 (or higher) on your teaching evaluations in every category. They want you to show knowledge of and have the ability to use active learning techniques in the classroom. Some of this is hard to evaluate on paper but, I can tell you that the students that talk about their research for more than a paragraph in their cover letter, go on and on about their grants and publication plans, and can't explain at all how undergraduates might engage in their research do NOT get offered a job, assuming they even make it to the campus interview stage. That's the nature of the modern SLAC especially those ranked 50-100.

 

I realize you're going to continue to assert that I'm wrong, lifealive. I just hope someone else sees my posts and realizes that I might, just maybe, know what I'm talking about. 

 

ETA: Here are some links from Inside Higher Ed that discuss hiring and getting tenure at a liberal arts college.

[bhr]

This thread, like every other damn thread on here, has become the same sort of circle twerk about privilege and abuse. Yes, it sucks (if you aren't the lucky one) that some people have multiple offers and opportunities, but, once you are on the market, it's too late to do anything to overcome those situations. Personally, I'm all for people grabbing any opportunities they can, though obviously the system unfairly benefits students from "name" programs.

 

Here's the thing though, people from those programs aren't just coasting by on the name, but are often the ones producing the major work in the field. Yes, there are a lot of reasons behind that (institutional support, financial security, connections) but don't deny that people are getting jobs based on the work they are doing just because you didn't get the same job. Look at the programs for major conferences, and you see the same schools, over and over, being the top contributors. We can talk about structural inequality all we want, and we should, but there is a difference between saying "the system is broken and we need to fix it" to "people who get the best jobs/most opportunities do so regardless of their merit." Lets address the first while acknowledging that some people will have advantages at different stages of their careers. Is it easier for the kid who goes from Philip Andover to Harvard to Yale to find a job than the kid who goes from public HS to a state school to a public R1? Sure, but let's not dismiss the accomplishments of the first group out of hand. It may have been easier (and likely was) for them to create an outstanding CV, but stop pretending that the only reason they got a job was the name on their degree.

 

It should also be mentioned that maybe, just maybe, people should consider that when deciding whether to even pursue a degree. If you truly believe that only Ivies ect. graduates are getting the jobs you want, than maybe you shouldn't spend seven years working on a PhD at (regional state school). That conversation, however, quickly becomes classist (and racist and sexist in smaller portions), so we won't have it. Maybe I'm just naive, coming from a field where most of the work is done at land grant universities, but if you truly believe that your institute can't get you a job, why are you there?


I also want to address the person who was, for some idiotic reason, resentful that assistant and associate professors were on the market for lateral moves. Lots of us won't get our dream job right out of school. Some will wind up VAP or NTT, or even adjuncting, while others will receive TT offers from small, regional or teaching colleges, even if they want to be research focused. I have no problem with people jumping positions, as those moves rarely change the number of jobs on the market in any year. I have an acquaintance who is an advance assistant, that, at one point this season, was sitting on a half dozen job offers. Once she accepted an offer that matched everything she wanted, those other five positions opened up, as did a TT line opening at her current institution. Yes, some people had to wait a little longer to find a place, but she did what was best for her career, and I can't fault her for it. Another friend decided not to move, after her current institution raised her pay to be competitive with the offers she was receiving. Academia is the only career I can think of where staying in one place for your entire professional career is considered an option. And how dare anyone criticize internal hires while bitching about NTT and PT jobs, since those are usually the only way that someone stuck in the VAP-cycle can find a TT job after a few years (and completely dismisses the people who have worked full time as NTT faculty while finishing a PhD elsewhere).

Edited June 3, 2015 by bhr

[lifealive]

You're right, lifealive. Clearly my friends and I, quite a few of whom work at SLACs in the top 100, are absolutely wrong about what it takes to get hired. They're so wrong that they got those jobs and obviously have no clue what they're looking for or doing when they're on the search committee for new hires. Like I said before, maybe English is entirely different from the social and natural sciences where my friends and I are but, in our experience, teaching experience and skills outweigh one's research profile.

 

Are your friends representative of all hires out there? Are they even in English?

 

I never said that teaching completely unimportant for getting hired at certain SLACs. Only that the common knowledge--that SLACs are all about teaching, except for the very top ones--no longer holds true in many searches. To repeat: the job market is competitive enough that many schools that were previously considered "teaching oriented" are now looking for different candidates. And much of it is coming from the ground up: promising candidates get hired by SLACs, they turn around and chair search committees a few years later and look to hire similarly promising candidates. They also WANT to spend their time doing research and push for an increase in sabbaticals, or use the promise of sabbaticals to recruit other candidates. Of course this is #notallslacs--never did I say it was. 

 

This isn't exactly news. Why you keep fighting it, I don't know. 

 

This thread, like every other damn thread on here, has become the same sort of circle twerk about privilege and abuse. 

 

Then be the change you want to see in the forums and start new threads. But the rest of us have been having a conversation. No one said you had to read it. It's the internet, get over it. 

 

how dare anyone criticize internal hires while bitching about NTT and PT jobs, since those are usually the only way that someone stuck in the VAP-cycle can find a TT job after a few years (and completely dismisses the people who have worked full time as NTT faculty while finishing a PhD elsewhere).

 

Except that no one said that the people who make lateral moves or move from NTT to TT or hold multiple positions at once are the people at fault here. Literally no one. Other than strawmanning your way through this "circle jerk," do you have anything else to offer?

 

It should also be mentioned that maybe, just maybe, people should consider that when deciding whether to even pursue a degree. If you truly believe that only Ivies ect. graduates are getting the jobs you want, than maybe you shouldn't spend seven years working on a PhD at (regional state school). That conversation, however, quickly becomes classist (and racist and sexist in smaller portions), so we won't have it.

 

Okay.

[rising_star]

Are your friends representative of all hires out there? Are they even in English?

 

I never said that teaching completely unimportant for getting hired at certain SLACs. Only that the common knowledge--that SLACs are all about teaching, except for the very top ones--no longer holds true in many searches. To repeat: the job market is competitive enough that many schools that were previously considered "teaching oriented" are now looking for different candidates. And much of it is coming from the ground up: promising candidates get hired by SLACs, they turn around and chair search committees a few years later and look to hire similarly promising candidates. They also WANT to spend their time doing research and push for an increase in sabbaticals, or use the promise of sabbaticals to recruit other candidates. Of course this is #notallslacs--never did I say it was. 

 

This isn't exactly news. Why you keep fighting it, I don't know. 

 

Some of them are in MLA fields (not just English but other MLA fields too), some in the natural sciences, some in the social sciences. I'm lucky enough to have a diverse group of PhD-holding friends that I associate with. The difference between us and you is that we're all employed and you, as you admit, are not. I'm fighting what you say because you keep acting like most of the SLACs in the top 100 are doing what you say. And they aren't. Trust me. They really are not. You can spend your time doing research at your peril because, even if as you say the newer hires are hiring people with a higher research profile, those newer hires aren't the ones making decisions about tenure and promotion (or at least they won't be for another 5-15 years).

 

Outside of the elite (top 15) SLACs, increases in sabbaticals aren't coming down the pipeline because it's not financially possible or sustainable. Start-up funds are limited. You'll never be competitive for major sources of funding, whether that's NSF, NEH, or NIH. That makes it harder to produce top-notch or cutting-edge research, which people recognize. For those of us who work at SLACs outside the top 25, we all know that we're looking for a colleague that will do some research with students, excel in the classroom, and do service on campus. If they want to be well-known as a researcher and/or can't figure out how to work with undergraduate students, then they need to find another job ASAP.

[lifealive]

The difference between us and you is that we're all employed and you, as you admit, are not. I'm fighting what you say because you keep acting like most of the SLACs in the top 100 are doing what you say. And they aren't. Trust me. They really are not. You can spend your time doing research at your peril because, even if as you say the newer hires are hiring people with a higher research profile, those newer hires aren't the ones making decisions about tenure and promotion (or at least they won't be for another 5-15 years).

 

Thank you for schooling me in my own job market, rising_star. 

 

You're right--my failure to get a TT job (which, by the way, does not make me unusual, and I came quite close for a few different jobs this year) is because I lack the ability to adequately market myself for different kinds of jobs. I lack the ability to see that a 4/4 load at a comprehensive college will require teaching, and therefore I put my research letter forward, which emphasizes nothing but my postdoctoral research, forthcoming book, and published articles. For research jobs, I talk endlessly about how I love teaching composition, emphasizing the 700 students and 14 classes I designed and taught solo during graduate school and after. 

 

I have also never consulted with a JPO, an advisor, an external recommender, other job-seekers from my own institution who have jobs, other postdocs, the professors at SLACs (who, by the way, have been working long enough now that they are the ones making hiring and T&P decisions, not the young "assistant professors" that you seem to think they are), the CHE forums, or TGC. But you, wow. You have really helped me here. Here I was, totally screwing up by barging into comprehensive SLACs, talking all about my research. I had no idea about how the job market worked until you came along, enlightening me about how things are done in social sciences. 

 

Your advice would have worked well in 2005. As for right now--well, as fancypants09 has pointed out, you've done nothing here but argue in bad faith or draw upon a well of bad information that perhaps works in your discipline, but not ours. And your potshot at my employment status is in EXTREMELY poor taste, coming from a mod. In this thread you have done nothing but put people down. You mischaracterized fancypants09's argument in ridiculous ways, and now you're arguing that I am unemployed because I deserve to be, while you have a job because you deserve to have one. Congratulations for demonstrating so well what many of us in this thread have been arguing. But really, you're a lousy representative of TGC's mod team.

 

And I also hope that other job seekers don't take your advice, i.e. apply for a 3/3 load at a SLAC and assume that it's all teaching, all the time. Believe me, no one, and I mean no one, is getting a 3/3 these days without research, and I would not have even been interviewed at 3/3 SLACs without research. Ignore at your own peril. 

Edited June 3, 2015 by lifealive