Most of you won't get tenure-track jobs

[notcoachrjc]

9 hours ago, southerngent said:

To clarify, I just graduated from a US program ranked 55-65 (last May). I just had my first semester as a TT AP at a regional R2 (meaning one of a couple of large state universities in this state, 2-3 load, some funding, reasonable tenure requirements, etc.). It was great. I came out of my program with a well-balanced portfolio of two courses taught as instructor (and a bunch of TAing), 8 peer-reviewed articles (mostly second tier, only one in a "top" journal) and an interesting dissertation project. 

Just realize that if you want a job at a decent university (i.e. your priorities are different from these chest-blowers obsessed with prestige) you need to be a self-starter and build the profile that sells! 

Understandably, you've had a lot of success. But, I have to point out that you are a huge outlier in terms of job market files across the board. There are very few ABDs out there from any department that have EIGHT publications with one "top" outlet (top-3) included when they're on the market. So, there is a degree of confirmation bias here. Of course it's good advice to publish a lot and you may have succeeded at that, but some programs may not sufficiently train people or give people opportunities to pursue such a strategy, so that's where reputation and rankings become important. Having said that, there are departments in the top-10 that train their students poorly and there are departments in the 55-65 area that train their students well. But, to be a self-starter, you need to know where to start and that's where training comes in. 

4 hours ago, cooperstreet said:

Mentioning the massive amount of luck you had seems appropriate.  The data do not lie: the chances of getting a TT job coming out of a low ranked PhD program are very slim. Which is fine, but people need to know that going into it.

As eigen said, these aren't attributable to just luck. It has to be said that the training at many higher ranked departments is better than the training at lower ranked departments. And, I'm not just talking about statistics and formal theory -- although these are factors. It includes knowing how to structure publishable work and research products, how to become socialized in the discipline and getting feedback on what you're working on from others grad students and faculty who well-trained (not just your adviser). Again, some departments do this better than others.

Anyway, since these debates tend to turn into fights about how everyone is obsessed with rankings and R1s, I should restate that 1/3 of those on the job market get ANY TT jobs, that includes R1s, but also R2s, directionals and LACs. The point is that the job market is hard everywhere and there unplaced students ranging from Harvard to unranked PhD programs and that's something to consider at the beginning of your graduate school career, rather than the May before you're on the job market. 

 

6 hours ago, GradSchoolTruther said:

To be honest, you'll probably have to outwork almost everyone in your cohort. That's a huge weight. You're not competing over grades, as law school students do, but you do compete for faculty attbetion. You'll likely need to start presenting in your second year. Do not think of seminar papers as one-time projects. Even a mediocre one can be revised hopefully land at some journal. You'll have to deal with rejection.

 

Just a footnote, I disagree with most of this. You're not competing with your cohort for faculty attention, few will have overlapping advisers. Maybe there will be some ranking if you have overlapping letter writers and apply for the same jobs, but your competition is squarely in other departments. Also, going to conferences is important, but presenting is a double-edged sword. Conferences are for networking first, second and third. If you present at a big conference, it's likely to be poorly attended with a disinterested discussant. Small conferences are better, but as a second year, whatever you present is likely to be kinda bad and you don't want people to remember you based on that. So, present, but make sure it doesn't suck -- that's where training and being able to get feedback from your department comes into play. 

[southerngent]

21 hours ago, cooperstreet said:

Mentioning the massive amount of luck you had seems appropriate.  The data do not lie: the chances of getting a TT job coming out of a low ranked PhD program are very slim. Which is fine, but people need to know that going into it.

I'd say that most people responding on this thread since yesterday have it roughly right. There are a mixture of things that go into getting a TT position from any rank-level program and disciplined hard work is a massive (probably the biggest) part of it. Hard work, of course, entails figuring out what strategy is likely to work getting you where you want to go from where you are, executing that strategy in publishing and teaching terms, and networking/being collegial at every step.

Cooperstreet's post about luck perturbs me somewhat, as have other posts made in the same vein. I didn't mention luck of any kind, so don't assume that plays a big part. I had two offers for PhD programs around rank 30 (locations not ideal, but still) and decided that I could do better with networking and building my portfolio at my lower program. I then worked my ass off and the results of myself and others that have (roughly) shared my profile on the market (as well as my route through grad school, where I didn't come in with pre-existing relationships or many skills) certainly don't suggest a noticeable degree of luck. Notcoachjrc makes a great point about potential selection bias with my experience and those at my school, of course, and it should be noted that I'm not saying possible prospects means an easy path. You have to work at it.

The other thing that gets me about cooperstreet's comment and others like it is that its a relatively limited way to interpret data. Saying "[t]he data do not lie" is fine, but you are attributing a lot to one explanatory variable. Why not look past numbers and try for some theory, eh? While other data about work ethic, networking skills, SC behavioral tendencies, etc. might be hard to come by and easy to discount, you shouldn't discount the fact that this is just a job market. Merit has value and hiring is made via a range of SC decision-making paradigms, much of which has nothing to do with pedigree once you move past the top 60 PhD granting R1s. Citing the pedigree correlation, regardless of whether its a good idea or not, is simply not good practice for you as a potential applicant in future markets. Try to do some research and get a more nuanced idea of what actually breeds success and I think you'd find that there are common factors that matter across all programs. I'd argue that focusing on these is more important than worrying about the difference between ranks 10 and 18, 15 and 27, or 38 and 51. SCs certainly care about who you've become and what you've accomplished more than what school you were able to get into 5 years ago.

Also try to remember that most professional grad-school-to-chosen-career job markets look like this. Percentages of folk getting the specific job they trained for out of law school, public policy school or in the sciences are pretty much the same as the 30% TT number. If academia wasn't as hung up about the TT status (arguably for good reason, sure), the market wouldn't be near as scary looking.

[southerngent]

17 hours ago, notcoachrjc said:

Just a footnote, I disagree with most of this. You're not competing with your cohort for faculty attention, few will have overlapping advisers. Maybe there will be some ranking if you have overlapping letter writers and apply for the same jobs, but your competition is squarely in other departments. Also, going to conferences is important, but presenting is a double-edged sword. Conferences are for networking first, second and third. If you present at a big conference, it's likely to be poorly attended with a disinterested discussant. Small conferences are better, but as a second year, whatever you present is likely to be kinda bad and you don't want people to remember you based on that. So, present, but make sure it doesn't suck -- that's where training and being able to get feedback from your department comes into play. 

I also want to underline this. I couldn't agree more. Competition (in any meaningful sense) is not primarily with others in your cohort but with others in the field in general. Success will almost never be the direct result of only outperforming others in your department, particularly if your cohort happens to be a meh one. Measure yourself against others in the field at your level or just above and craft your strategies around competition (collegial competition, mind) with them. Did they publish in ISQ? Well look at their available project work and how they went about doing it....aaaaaaand mimic (with your own research, of course).

Conferences can also bring some of the most important connections you have. I had a job interview in my fourth year (I was in my fifth as an ABD when I got my current job, so one year before that) because I met an associate professor from a regional school at a conference who remembered my background a few months later. Great experience, even if the job ultimately went elsewhere.

[Eigen]

51 minutes ago, southerngent said:

Cooperstreet's post about luck perturbs me somewhat, as have other posts made in the same vein. I didn't mention luck of any kind, so don't assume that plays a big part. I had two offers for PhD programs around rank 30 (locations not ideal, but still) and decided that I could do better with networking and building my portfolio at my lower program. I then worked my ass off and the results of myself and others that have (roughly) shared my profile on the market (as well as my route through grad school, where I didn't come in with pre-existing relationships or many skills) certainly don't suggest a noticeable degree of luck. Notcoachjrc makes a great point about potential selection bias with my experience and those at my school, of course, and it should be noted that I'm not saying possible prospects means an easy path. You have to work at it.

I want to highlight this in our discussion about the importance of a highly ranked school. 

A lot of the people I know who've been quite successful had offers at top-5 and top-10 schools in our field, but chose to go to a lower-ranked school that they thought would be better for networking and their particular interests. Then they kept building networks and a portfolio of publications and research work to stay competitive with people who did go to a top-tier school.

There's often a bias that leads people to think that because faculty at top-tier schools publish more, that it always leads to better opportunities for publications and writing and research experience for grad students there- and that can be true, but isn't a given. Sometimes top tier schools are much less focused on training graduate students, and view them as cogs in the machine rather than helping them develop as individuals. Smaller schools can be more reliant on individual students developing as independent scholars, rather than just what they can get done for the school while they're there. 

It's also much more likely that you'll be relatively isolated to a sub-section of faculty members, as opposed to the support of an entire (smaller) department at a lower ranked school. Coming from a small, lower-ranked program, many of our outstanding graduate students have the entire program helping them build networks, not just faculty in their area. Lots of recent offers for post-grad work have come through connections from faculty at the other end of the spectrum of interests, but a small program facilitates the development of mentors and relationships with a wider range of faculty.