The Perils of ‘Fit,’ Part 2

The responses to my previous post demonstrate the tremendous nexus of politics, personality, equity, opportunity, and transparency that gathers around questions of institutional “fit” during the hiring process.

At institutions in less-than-desireable locations, the issue of fit is particularly complicated, due to smaller candidate pools, more difficulty recruiting, and other factors. As promised in an earlier post, I want to consider hiring challenges at such institutions periodically in this blog.

At the beginning of my academic career when I was at another institution in rural Iowa, whenever we would undertake a search, one of my senior colleagues would always say, “we need to hire someone who will stay.” It is true that faculty turnover imposes tremendous challenges on small colleges; it would often take two or three years for a new faculty member to become genuinely effective in class and on the campus. In small departments, those periods of acculturation could often impose real strains on senior colleagues.

When a junior faculty member was hired and only stayed a few years (or less), that process would repeat itself, damaging consistency, quality, and student satisfaction with the program, as well as burdening senior professors with additional work on new searches, program management, and so on. Thus, questions of fit and institutional commitment would understandably arise in the hiring process.

Making fit a priority in the search, however, will almost inevitably mean that candidates who are different from the departmental norm in any significant way — whether due to race, ethnicity, social class, regional origin, disciplinary approach, or some other issue — do not receive fair consideration. For example, in my (English) department back then, one of the sticking points in any search was always the candidate’s training in literary theory — an issue that was the focus of a fairly serious generational divide in the department and a demonstration of diversity’s almost infinite dimensions.

Blindly prioritizing internal notions of institutional fit over academic qualifications, commitment to students, and scholarship is a bad idea for every institution, but especially for those who struggle to attract good candidates. No one disputes that it is crucial to make good, effective hires at any institution, but search committees and others with hiring power need to be constantly aware of how questions of fit can sometimes end up hurting more than helping as they seek the best possible new colleagues.