May 21, 2012, 8:52 am
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
Buzz Bissinger’s recent Wall Street Journal column advocated for the elimination of college football, striking many a nerve in academe. His argument included his belief that athletics ends up undermining quality academics on many campuses.
As I pondered the institutions named in the column, I remembered something a mentor told me when I was on the job market. He indicated that you could move into faculty positions south and west of your doctoral alma mater, but rarely north and east, but he further indicated that football-conference affiliations dominated hiring patterns. Southeastern Conference institutions, for example, will hire graduates of other major bowl conferences (PAC 10, Big 12, etc.) but rarely will hire the “lesser” championship conference institutions.
His advice was anecdotal, of course, but in the context of Bissinger’s essay, there is some substance to the…
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May 11, 2012, 1:43 pm
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
So, let’s say you are a tenured faculty member at a troubled institution. It may be a crisis of leadership, a cliff’s edge of a budget from the state, or even the kind of torpor that sometimes overtakes a place. Or, let’s say you are three or four years into the tenure track but it has become clear that the department/university is not going in the direction you had hoped and you now must commence a search in order to maintain your sanity and preserve your career long term.
Your résumé is spotless, your reputation is equally as unsullied, but you are now fielding phone interviews and one question keeps coming up: “Why are you on the market?” Other than saying that you feel like you are serving at the University of the Titanic, you are at a loss for what to say to explain your reasons for looking elsewhere. If you speak ill of your current employers, however, you risk sounding like…
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April 20, 2012, 2:15 pm
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
Every academic leader dreads the next few weeks: resignation season. Contracts are out, but so are offers to job applicants. Nothing creates fear in administrators during these final weeks of the semester quite like the request for a meeting with no explanation or obvious reason. Late-semester resignations mean either quick searches or one-year appointments, or worse yet, overloads for existing personnel.
As a dean, I’ve always appreciated resignations that have been handled well. The person has been upfront and has tried to give us as much lead time as possible. In some cases, there has been an offer of assistance in jump-starting a search or even in teaching a course over the summer to smooth the transition.
Nothing is quite as discouraging as an ill-conceived departure, especially when colleagues are being left behind at a troubled unit or institution. No need to brag about…
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March 30, 2012, 9:55 am
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
By now you may have seen David C. Levy’s op-ed piece in the Washington Post, which claims that professors do not work enough hours to justify their wages. His “money” statement is: “faculty members teaching 12 to 15 hours per week for 30 weeks spend only 360 to 450 hours per year in the classroom. Even in the unlikely event that they devote an equal amount of time to grading and class preparation, their workload is still only 36 to 45 percent of that of non-academic professionals. Yet they receive the same compensation.” On the compensation issue, he observes that “senior faculty at most state universities and colleges now earn $80,000 to $150,000″ annually.
My inner skeptic wants to see some actual data to back up his statements on workload and compensation, as I have taught at a wide variety of institutions, just as I have held a number of private-sector jobs, and his statements do …
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March 5, 2012, 11:24 am
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
In my most recent post, I encouraged folks to review other ads to make sure that their job listings were as effective as possible. There is, however, another reason to review other listings.
Most institutions know they compete with other universities for students, but in reality we compete for faculty members too. Institutions are lumped into tiers or affinity groups by prospective faculty: by mission, by location, or even by benefits packages. Good institutions compete against each other for good faculty, even in a tight job market.
This means it is incumbent on search committees to know which other institutions are looking for the same specialties that they are seeking and to make sure that the administration knows as well. The strongest applicants will be likely to be considered by these peer institutions. Savvy institutions will actually alter typical timelines to speed up the …
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February 21, 2012, 1:36 pm
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
I have many fond memories of looking at job ads in The Chronicle when I was on the market during my final year of the Ph.D. I worked in a campus office that had a subscription and, this being just prior to the days of the online version, we practically stood in line when the weekly issue arrived in the mail on Thursdays. No search-term shortcuts were available to us; we had to hunt and scavenge to make sure we didn’t miss anything.
I likewise remember how often my perceptions of institutions were shaped by their ads. Good ads (clear job descriptions, good layout, nice description of the institution itself) have lingered in my memory and prolonged my positive impressions. Odd ads created hesitations, especially those that lacked basic information such as specialty areas or that seemed to have a surplus of positions that might indicate campus troubles.
I often ask our search…
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January 27, 2012, 4:16 pm
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
Interviews are being set up all across academe these days, as searches begin to near their final stages. Professional conference interviews are concluding, phone interviews are in high season, and on-campus interviews are on the horizon.
When I went on the market for the first time, I sent out loads of thank-you notes. Call or e-mail me? You get a thank-you note. Interview me? A note to everyone on the committee. Turn me down and hire someone else? A final note expressing gratitude. I suppose this was a testament to my parents’ interests in good manners, which merged with my deep-seated desire to have a job.
On the other side of the job-search table, I have received stacks of thank-you notes over the years. They stand out visually in my mail, as the vast bulk of my mail is in standard business envelopes that dwarf the smaller hand-written notes. I always smile when I get them, in…
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January 24, 2012, 2:36 pm
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
Most of us in academe are not in it for the money. We like the intellectual camaraderie, the flexible time, and even the sense of purpose that we often feel about our work. The paychecks we earn may make us wince from time to time, but we know that if we have a steady job that comes with some form of security, we are better off than most folks on this earth.
But then there are the times that make us gulp. Don’t you hate it when a student comes back to thank you for helping her to prepare for a professional degree that actually does make money and you find out that this 24- or 25-year-old already outearns you significantly? We can smile and act like it doesn’t bother us, but let’s be honest, it does smart sometimes.
Similarly, it hurts a bit to find out that one of your students has been admitted to a graduate school that turned you down when you were a student. It’s easy to…
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January 12, 2012, 2:14 pm
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
In my first full-time position, I dropped by to see a senior colleague in another department. I saw that his door was cracked open, so I knocked and called out his name as I opened the door slowly. I was shocked to see him coming out of what I had thought was a janitor’s closet but now saw was a bathroom! He had his own private bathroom in what I then began to think of as an office suite. I mentioned this to my department chair later that day, and he smiled and said, “Seniority has its privileges.”
I am mindful of how some celebrity contracts will specify perks that must be offered, things like a particular color of M & M’s or a particular brand of beverage. I’m wondering, during this insanely tight budget cycle, what kinds of dream perks faculty and staff would like to include in their contracts if funds were no consideration? What kinds of unique perks have you actually heard of…
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December 14, 2011, 12:25 pm
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
Recently a noted classicist in the UK resigned her position as department chair over budget cuts in her unit. As an administrator myself, I immediately thought of Richard Russo’s classic higher-education novel Straight Man, wherein a beleaguered department chair threatens to kill a duck a day from the campus pond unless budget cuts are rescinded.
Anyone who is in the decision-making process knows how complicated these matters are. We also know some people who seem to be better at navigating (or manipulating?) budgets, personnel requests, and other things financial. Some folks almost seem prescient in how they construct their budgets and can alter them effortlessly whenever hard times come along.
What advice would you offer to department chairs or other administrators in order to exert stronger pressure on these sorts of challenges? What’s the most extreme action you’ve seen taken…
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