Tenure Track Jobs

[curufinwe]

Hi,

My professor told me that, with the competition, more and more universities refrain from offering tenure track jobs and that in the near future, only the awesomest ones among us will be able to land one while others will not have much job security. I have no idea how true that is. So I thought I'd ask you guys and what you have been hearing.

[tomorrows verse]

Sounds about right. Most of my profs have said that a PhD from a school outside the top 20 will be hard to transfer into a job...makes my only acceptance less exciting. Oh well.

[curufinwe]

Sounds about right. Most of my profs have said that a PhD from a school outside the top 20 will be hard to transfer into a job...makes my only acceptance less exciting. Oh well.

Where is your acceptance from?

And you mean it is very hard to get a "job" or a "TT job"?

[gsams]

I don't know if this is true. Many traditionally male departments are offering more and more tenure-track jobs to females. According to one of my advisors (a prof who is female and just got tenure), they are actively recruiting women at my university and many others, despite the econ downturn. IDK. I guess we'll see in years. I think there are still many opportunities for my line of work with think tanks, so I am not all that concerned.

[tomorrows verse]

My only acceptance is from UMass-Amherst. When I say a "job" I mean a TT position. The professors in my dept seem to think that if you get a PhD from a middle of the road institution (such as UMass), your best chances of landing a job will be in the region where that school is. I'm not sure how valid that assumption is, but that's what a lot of my profs have said. If UMass is my only offer, then I will certainly go (especially since I was offered funding), but I'm certainly nervous that I will have a tough time finding a job when I (hopefully) finish up in 5-6 years. It also helps that I'm an Americanist, and Intro to American is on the menu basically everywhere, but it still won't be easy.

[ladedodaday]

On 2/19/2010 at 12:30 PM, tomorrows verse said:

My only acceptance is from UMass-Amherst. When I say a "job" I mean a TT position. The professors in my dept seem to think that if you get a PhD from a middle of the road institution (such as UMass), your best chances of landing a job will be in the region where that school is. I'm not sure how valid that assumption is, but that's what a lot of my profs have said. If UMass is my only offer, then I will certainly go (especially since I was offered funding), but I'm certainly nervous that I will have a tough time finding a job when I (hopefully) finish up in 5-6 years. It also helps that I'm an Americanist, and Intro to American is on the menu basically everywhere, but it still won't be easy.

I think that's actually a neglected point about all programs through. Even higher ranked schools like Northwestern and WashU place some of their candidates regionally. Either way, Western Mass is an interesting and beautiful place to live.

[tomorrows verse]

I grew up and lived in Western Mass most of my life, so at least if I go to UMass, I'll be going back home.

[The Realist]

I think that we're on the verge of a revolution in higher education in which smaller, less wealthy, and less competitive colleges will come to rely exclusively on lecturers and adjuncts to do their teaching. This is already common in many such institutions, but the difference is that in the future, I predict that these institutions will no longer offer any tenure-track positions at all.

Larger, better endowed, and more competitive colleges will continue to have tenure much as they do today for popular fields such as political science, but they too may cease to rely on tenured faculty for smaller niche departments.

This does not bode well, I don't think, for future PhDs.

[poli90]

The key, quite simply, is unionization of adjuncts and lecturers and bringing them under negotiated collective agreements with job security, benefits, negotiating wages, etc. Administrators have used the guilt of perceived academic failure to abuse and exploit the many academics who do not get plush tenure track appointments without them pushing back. The only solution is to argue for non-TT jobs in higher education as legitimate careers that need to be treated like other careers, with job security and the like. And the only way I see that happening is if non-TT faculty begin to seriously organize and assert their rights as essential part of the enormous and lucrative higher education industry (the same goes for TAs).

[The Realist]

The key, quite simply, is unionization of adjuncts and lecturers and bringing them under negotiated collective agreements with job security, benefits, negotiating wages, etc. Administrators have used the guilt of perceived academic failure to abuse and exploit the many academics who do not get plush tenure track appointments without them pushing back. The only solution is to argue for non-TT jobs in higher education as legitimate careers that need to be treated like other careers, with job security and the like. And the only way I see that happening is if non-TT faculty begin to seriously organize and assert their rights as essential part of the enormous and lucrative higher education industry (the same goes for TAs).

Unionization is well and good and I support it totally. But it's not going to turn non-TT jobs into TT jobs. I fear that so long as the supply of lecturers and adjuncts far outstrips the demand for them we will never solve this problem.