The R1 Paradigm and the Job Search

For a long time now, the worldview that dominates at research universities (“The R1 Paradigm”) has also dominated the rest of higher education. High research productivity, relatively low emphasis on teaching, and indifference to, if not disdain for, service activities are large parts of that worldview.

Its dominance can condition the behavior of both candidates and institutions in ways that are neither productive nor helpful. Graduate students who reach the job market are generally high achievers in highly competitive research environments, and have naturally absorbed the values of their mentors whose backgrounds fall within a select circle of research universities. Search committees are filled with people who have been trained and acculturated at those same select research universities.

The challenge for both candidates and committees comes in the collision between the R1 paradigm and institutional and market realities. The great majority of faculty positions exist outside research universities, at institutions ranging from two-year colleges to regional master’s universities to the most selective liberal-arts colleges. Jobs at all of those institutions call for skills and values that are different from the ones that characterize successful faculty work in a research-intensive, doctoral university.

Job candidates who aim all of their preparation and applications in the direction of research universities are drastically limiting their career prospects. Even those who do not so limit themselves will likely face major adjustments in institutional culture and priorities when they arrive at new jobs on campuses that fall outside the research-university circle. There can be much unhappiness.

Committees, too, need to be sensible about how they approach candidates and develop priorities for their searches. While it is certainly glamorous to pursue budding research superstars, and we have almost all been conditioned to think especially well of such candidates, institutions where research is not the top priority need to consider carefully the values they project in the search versus the values that actually work at their institutions.

It is not very productive for 40 institutions to pursue the same dozen candidates at the expense of many wonderful people who may go without interviews.

Everyone profits from a good dose of reality — candidates from understanding how rare those top research jobs are, and hiring institutions from recruiting candidates who will actually fit their campus ethos. Great candidates may thus be brought together with excellent opportunities in a way that seems rarer than it should be.