A campus was suffering through a significant economic struggle, which included a midyear budget cut. At a meeting with the university’s leaders, who were growing impatient with the process of the cuts and with the lack of clear information about the situation, the institution’s president declared, “No one should discuss these things off campus. If there is one thing that neither donors nor prospective students want to hear, it’s that there are financial problems here. Donors won’t give to problems, and prospective students are afraid of them. If we lose either of those groups, our problem will only grow worse.”
That conversation happened over a decade ago, before everyone figured out that information can find new and expansive homes on the Internet. It is almost impossible now to create an information lockdown, especially with the easy availability of Web sites where information, however informal, may be posted for anyone to see. This has added a new wrinkle to faculty-search dynamics: prospective faculty members can read up on the “internal” workings and struggles of an institution. I have known applicants who have used not only Internet search engines to scout such information but the online archives of local newspapers. It’s one way to garner information, which is a kind of power in the job search.
Have public conflicts at an institution ever played a role in your decision to apply for a position or to accept an offer? How should a search committee handle questions about such conflicts?
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6 Responses to Which Foot Shall I Shoot Next?
22228715 - September 10, 2010 at 8:30 am
Q1: Yes, absolutely. Q2: Answer them honestly and from the perspective of what a prospective hire would need to know to make an informed decision about whether to accept the job (not “don’t work here, it’s a mess” but “here’s what the factors are.”) Any savvy job searcher knows better than to dismiss a prospective employer just because there are problems (otherwise, she is perpetually unemployed.) But a savvy job searcher should be looking for clues to the nature of the problems and, more importantly, the way her prospective colleagues are handling them.
12080243 - September 10, 2010 at 11:48 am
Excellent questions. I’d like to answer it from our perspective as users and providers of internet information. We have an internet site and, of course, are advocates of our right to speak on public issues. We also understand the need for limited exercise of confidentiality. However, as our policy indicates and our practice shows, “www.usmnews is opening our business college and university. It is available to all faculty, administrators, students and citizens of our community. We also encourage different points of view in opinion reports. Your news and opinions are valued. Of paramount importance, we welcome corrections to our news reports. Our goal is to establish a foundation for a proud, confident academy that publicly implements a policy of openness and honesty.”Readers choose to read usmnews.net. If readers choose to read public relations reports, University of Southern Mississippi provides them. Our news and opinions do not report only positive news and opinions about the University of Southern Mississippi. As we all learn to navigate and assess the reliability of websites, usmnews.net assists the reader by providing videos, sworn depositions, court reports, freedom of information documents, i.e., a multitude of documentary evidence that is independently verifiable. We are currently running a series of reports about a multi-million dollar airplane President Saunders purchased during a recession. She is, nevertheless, firing tenured faculty because of “economic exigencies.” We obtained our information through Mississippi Open Records requests after USM paid to shut down publicly available information about the flights on the internet site, FlightAware. We encourage faculty at other schools to offer internet news services about their institutions. Chauncey M. DePree, Jr., DBAProfessorSchool of AccountancyCollege of BusinessUniversity of Southern Mississippim.depree@usm.edu
kristel - September 10, 2010 at 6:55 pm
I am someone who turned down an offer because of the negative PR surrounding a particular situation and the way the school was handling it. I did some ‘soul searching’ and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I wanted to throw myself into that mess, especially since (during the interviews) there were comments made that led me to believe the situation had not been resolved. No thank you.
11161452 - September 10, 2010 at 9:45 pm
It depends on how close the conflict is to one’s prospective job. Years ago, there was a school where it was literally impossible for the person who was conductor of a musical ensemble to get tenure at that institution–the others on the music faculty saw to that, so it was a poisonous situation out of the chute for anyone who dared to try. For a while, there was even a de facto national boycott against anyone in my field even applying for that job. And this was long before the information age explosion of resources. Just good old fashioned networking.
tuxthepenguin - September 13, 2010 at 9:41 am
I interviewed for a position, and then withdrew my name from further consideration, after reading a story about ugly things happening within the department.In selecting jobs to apply for after landing my first TT job, I’ve always done research on financial problems at places where I might apply. Sometimes a school will have a hiring freeze, but they are replacing a retiring faculty member, so an exception is made for the replacement. Great, but who wants to move to a place experiencing hardship?There’s no point in lying to candidates. You don’t want to tell them to run away from your institution, but you should be honest with them, if they ask.
walkerst - September 14, 2010 at 3:03 pm
I think there’s a big difference between a place experiencing some financial hardship, and a place where the atmosphere is truly poisonous and shows no sign of positive change. If a job candidate was to turn down any place showing financial hardship these days, I’d suggest they’d have a difficult time finding employment. A place experiencing some budget cuts, but dealing with them in a fair and open manner, with strategies for addressing the cuts and possibly alleviating the worst, and doing its best to preserve both essential services and staff morale, may be a great work environment that will only get better if and when the fiscal situation improves. But a place with a poisonous, malicious atmosphere, especially one where no significant changes or improvements are in the wind, is better avoided if you can do so without starving to death.