A recent thread in The Chronicle’s Forums discusses whether or not an institution conducting on-campus visits should pay for candidates’ expenses for interviewing.
I know it’s an uncommon practice for community colleges; until recently, such institutions hired almost entirely locally. (That is changing, though, with the oversupply of Ph.D.’s in many disciplines and the increasing aspirations of community colleges.) I am explicitly not talking about such colleges here.
That leaves four-year colleges and universities, from the fanciest liberal-arts colleges and research universities, public and private, to the dustiest, remotest, smallest regional institutions. For any of them, there is no reasonable justification for declining to pay expenses for campus interviews.
If a college cannot afford such interviews, it cannot afford to hire tenure-track faculty members. An expensive campus interview might cost in the neighborhood of $1,500: bringing three candidates to the campus can be done for under $5,000. Compare that to the cost of a tenure-track faculty member: even at a very low salary (say, $40,000 plus benefits), one year of a full-time hire’s work is going to cost more than 10 times as much as those interviews. It is foolish to scrimp on a process that, despite its flaws, can show a great deal about a candidate’s character and skills.
Furthermore, not paying for candidates’ campus interviews may raise a red flag about the way an institution views faculty members. An institution that can’t pay for interviews should, as I’ve already suggested, probably not be hiring at all; one that can pay but won’t is showing that it does not place a high priority on treating faculty members well. Many job candidates are financially strapped graduate students, already facing piles of debt, serious time constraints, and unreliable cars. Asking them to bear the costs of a campus interview, for a very uncertain shot at a job they may not turn out to really want, indicates a disregard for basic decency on the part of the hiring institution that does not bode at all well for faculty life once a candidate is actually hired.
The job market is full of exploitation and asymmetrical power relationships. While it’s true that many or most colleges are, these days, seriously hurting financially, a few thousand dollars is a drop in the bucket of even an impecunious institution’s budget.
I’ve worked at four colleges, none of which has been in any way rich, and all of them have had little pots of money lying around that could be used for things they really cared about. Spending that money on hiring shows that the institution cares about hiring the best possible candidates and will invest in doing so. The inverse message is also plenty clear.
No doubt, a lot of administrators would like to hire on the cheap. No doubt, money is short all over the country. But there is also no doubt that to avoid beginning its relationships with prospective faculty members by exploiting them inexcusably, a college should pay for their campus interviews.
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28 Responses to Who Pays for Campus Interviews?
poos5115 - January 22, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Here’s a related question. I’m a dean, mid sized research institution. We ALWAYS pay full expenses for on campus shortlist interviews (we try to keep costs reasonable but I always say, don’t look chintzy).A couple of years ago we invited shortlist candidates for a position. One dropped out of the search (got a position elsewhere) but wanted me to reimburse his/her costs incurred by making plane reservations to come to interview on our campus. My response was, you didn’t come to the interview by your own choice — we agreed to cover your costs for coming to interview with us, but you chose not to come — and why should we pay for the costs you incurred?This got an extremely hostile and unprofessional response from the candidate. Was I reasonable or unreasonable in not reimbursing?
11272784 - January 22, 2010 at 3:44 pm
You were reasonable and it showed you that you dodged a bullet by not hiring someone who’s a jerk. If they don’t follow up on their obligation, you are released from yours.
ksledge - January 22, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Agreed, both with the article and the person who denied reimbursement to someone who didn’t attend the interview. When I applied to grad school I chose not to attend some interviews so that the institution could give my spot to someone else. I also chose to eat the costs of plane tickets, etc, because I thought it was rude to ask when I wasn’t even going on the visit.
drangie - January 22, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Dean poos,You were absolutely correct.Related thought: is this really news? Is there anyone out there who didn’t know that expenses must be paid for on-campus interviews? This seems like a completely unnecessary use of time/space.
dr_redrum - January 22, 2010 at 4:04 pm
drangie, you are the ass of the week.
jbarman - January 22, 2010 at 4:10 pm
In better economic times, I might consider a discussion about paying such expenses. Currently, with so many institutions scratching for resources, I’d be hard-pressed to justify this expense. If not paying interview expenses sends the wrong message to faculty at the beginning of a “relationship”, would it not also send the same message to individuals in the IT department, in the admissions office, and to individuals in other functional areas? Should an institution pay interview expenses for a short list in every hiring decision, or just for certain positions?I’m a faculty member and an administrator with a budget. I occasionally have hiring needs, but I don’t have pots of money.
david_r_evans - January 22, 2010 at 4:15 pm
jbarman, we pay for campus interviews for every position for which we don’t hire locally. I think that’s the right thing to do.Somebody above you in the chain of command has a pot of money. It should be used to treat candidates right.
zviszafran - January 22, 2010 at 5:10 pm
How common is not paying for interviews at four-year colleges? I’ve never run into this situation…
11272784 - January 22, 2010 at 5:29 pm
If an institution can’t pay my interview expenses, they neither can afford me nor do they deserve me. Top talent does NOT pursue an institution that is existing on crackers and peanut butter. I know all public institutions are on limited budgets, but when they give clear notice that they are going to take it out on their faculty members, RUN AWAY.
shstear1 - January 22, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Years ago I interviewed at a small private college and a regional public university. The private paid all of my expenses. The public paid half. Their policy was that if the job was offered, only half of the expenses would be paid, whether or not you took the job. This was to prevent people from coming just to see the area (something not at all likely). If you were not selected, full reimbursement was given. I was not told this before the interview. I took the public job anyway and successfully lobbied to change the policy for future applicants. I didn’t think anyone still did this.
willynilly - January 22, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Mr. Evans, Thank God you decided not to talk about Community Colleges because you don’t have a clue about their operating practices. I was employed as one of the founding administrators at a moderate sized community college in 1968. Yes, 1968. From the outset we recruited our faculty and staff nationwide – utilizing The Chronicle as one of the mediums to get our message out. We paid ALL the candidates campus visit expenses for everyone, and were very successful in recruiring excellent faculty and staff. That practice continued, without exception, except in those occasional periods of sharp economic downturn. In those instances, we asked candidates to fully cover their campus visit expenses. The successful candidate was fully reimbursed for all his/her campus visit expenses, plus was given a moving allowance. Please remove yourself from that long list of ill informed four year college and university professionals who either insult or demean community colleges solely on the basis of their utter ignorance of the standard operating practices of the mainstream two year college system.
cordelia - January 22, 2010 at 6:27 pm
I went to one such interview at a state university, and it certainly provided a lot of stories for hiring and interview discussions. I had to pay for my own flight, and while they did pay for lodging, they booked me into a lousy hotel that was in the middle of nowhere off a six-lane highway because it was on the way in to campus for the department chair. They were not paying for food, which was bad enough: there were no restaurants or even markets within walking distance (and I would have been taking my life in my hands trying to cross that highway, in any case). The day of the interview, they made me drag my luggage around with me from place to place.At some point during the day, I found a pay phone and was able to check voicemail messages. Thankfully, another institution had called me for a campus interview–and I got the job.Since then, I’ve been part of a group fighting the administration’s “suggestions” that we not attend MLA to interview candidates and use phone interviews instead. We go to MLA; we pay for campus interview expenses; and we have made many excellent hires in the 10+ years that I have been here.
roro1618 - January 22, 2010 at 7:54 pm
As a doctoral student, we were specifically warned by our professors and administrators to NOT interview at schools that did not pay for all of a candidate’s expenses. As a faculty member, I still believe that this is correct behavior. If a school won’t pay/”can’t afford” the candidate’s travel expenses, they cannot afford to hire the candidate, either.
raymond_j_ritchie - January 23, 2010 at 12:29 am
Dear Roro1618 – you should thank your PhD supervisor for giving you sound advice. It is not unusual in Australia to get no travel or accomodation expenses for interviews. It leaves a very bad taste in the mouth and gives a very good indication of the standard of treatment you will get if they hire you. Never accept a telephone interview – they are shams just to be be able to say “We interviewed 6 candidates” when they actually only gave a face-to-face interview to an internal candidate. Worth knowing that most universities have rules which state that they can offer a telephone interview but they are obliged to give you a face-to-face if you do not take the “Cheap Charlie” bait.
david_r_evans - January 23, 2010 at 9:51 am
Willynilly, I’d recommend that you read the ads for community college jobs in Iowa, Georgia, California, and Oklahoma, the four states with which I have DIRECT experience with community college hiring practices, and get back to me. The great majority of these institutions–even in Georgia, where they are part of the Regents institutions and thus are linked in with the four-year universities in the state–don’t pay interview expenses for candidates.Then, why don’t you read the “On Hiring” section of the Chronicle Forums, and see the hundreds of discussions of CC hiring practices for 2-year institutions that don’t pay on-campus interview expenses?Then, come to Iowa and talk to the 15 CC locations where we have operations, where we hire adjunct faculty from the ranks of the CC faculty, with whom I meet with with some regularity about their work and how they got to it. Meet with the three or four people who report directly to me who have been deans at Iowa CCs before they came to work for BVU.After that, get back to me about how much I don’t know about CC hiring practices.
willynilly - January 25, 2010 at 10:03 am
Mr. Evans, You gave me an assignment, now I will give you one. Write another researched based report on any topic you choose, dealing with any key operational practice/s/. Limit your research solely to four year colleges and universiies. Publicly report on your broad systemic conclusions and recommendations for corrective action. However, place the same restraint on yourself that you placed on me. Limit the research on your report to only those institutions in Iowa, Georgia, California and Oklahoma. Then make a token perusal of related reports/articles in several editions of The Chronicle. Then go ahead and publish your report. I will sit back and read, with unrestrained humor, your colleagues in the other 46 states cut you to pieces. But take solice, Mr Evans. You can always go to Iowa and find an audience who will warmly agree with your findings. Some elitists never get it Mr Evans. One size never fits all.
kmessina - January 25, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Willynilly,I am a dean at a large CA Community College, and have worked at several CCC in the last 20 years. The CA Community College system is the largest system of higher education in the world. And, in my experience, it is very rare for us to pay interview expenses. Our college will give a small stipend for people who are traveling from out of state, but that is all. So, although I do not claim to represent the practices of all community colleges, I do believe that California’s 110 community colleges play a large role in this discussion.
pennyu - January 25, 2010 at 12:22 pm
A related question is whether current faculty members’ expenses should be reimbursed for helping to recruit candidates who come for campus interviews. My university pays candidate expenses, always. It also regularly calls upon faculty to dine at a local restaurant as part of the hospitality we offer to candidates who make the short list. It’s important for the candidates to meet colleagues and get a feel for the community over dinner at the end of a long day of interview meetings and talks. But sometimes, if the dean has opted not to pay, the search committee members are each expected to shell out hundreds of dollars to take multiple candidates to dinner. In addition to giving up our family and personal time for several evenings, we must show how much we want the position to be filled by subsidizing university expenses. I wonder how common this practice is.
willynilly - January 25, 2010 at 1:06 pm
kmessina,I don’t doubt at all that there are states and districts that do not (nor ever have) paid expenses for job candidates. At the same time I know for a fact that many have and still do. Evans admitted that he used California as one of the four states he used to draw his conclusions. My beef with Mr. Evans is that his commentary (based on limited research) on community college involvement, in paying candidate expenses, was immediately dismissive of the sector as a whole. In doing so, I also felt that he came across as snobbish. Examining practices in four states and reading some job ads in The Chronicle don’t meet my criteria for thorough research, especially for one who is planning on asserting a national conclusion about an entire sector. That is why I reacted in the manner I did. Re-read his second paragraph. Also insulting, was his assertion that “until recently such institutions (meaning community colleges) hired almost entirely locally”. That statement is preposterous. A broader research cut would have eliminated that entire sentence from his report.
mmcknight - January 25, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Willynilly–can you give us some examples of community colleges that do pay for expenses? My partner teaches at one, and hasn’t had any expenses paid in her several job searches in different parts of the country. No, I haven’t done extensive research, and don’t care to, but your insults of Mr. Evans do nothing to prove that you have either. I didn’t find his second paragraph snobbish (though I agree that folks from 4-year schools sometimes are dismissive of community college issues)–it seemed to me that he was limiting his discussion to his own realm of expertise, and the one that’s most relevant to this discussion.
david_r_evans - January 25, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Willynilly, I had no intention of being “snobbish” or “elitist” about community colleges. They are extremely important. I work with them all the time on a variety of issues, and one of the reasons my institution is healthy is because we have great relationships with a number of the CCs in the area. We have nearly 1,800 students in our Professional and Online Studies division (about twice as many as we have in our traditional, on-campus program), nearly all of whom have an A.A., A.S., or A.A.S. from a community college. You presumed that I know “nothing” about the operations of CCs, when, in fact, I know quite a lot about them, work with many of them, and have done so for years. While I have never worked at a CC, I haven’t exactly spent my academic career avoiding or disdaining them, either. There’s nothing wrong with “hiring locally” anyway. Certainly, an institution with gigantic national aspirations won’t do it, but the word “community” in the term Community College implies a service mission to the local area that can be served excellently well from within many communities, without a need to go beyond them. They serve the particular educational and job-training needs of a local area, and in that context, in a lot of cases, it’s actually probably a positive virtue to have a large local group of faculty who know the market, the culture, and the best ways to help students who are place-bound and/or planning to stay in the area.Moreover, a tremendous number of community colleges are located in metropolitan areas–I think here of the majority of them in California, the entire New England area (how many are there within the NYC metropolitan area?), the four or five within an hour’s drive of Oklahoma City, the Miami-Dade system, the two-year colleges run by the University of Houston, the seven or eight within a hour of Atlanta, and many others–where the local talent pool for faculty hiring is extremely deep and broad. Other community colleges, like those I mostly work with here in Iowa, hire locally because it’s pretty hard to attract people to Iowa at the salaries they pay and due to Iowa’s lack of compelling features to bring non-Iowans to the state. This too is OK–there are a lot of great faculty members at Iowa community colleges who are outstanding faculty members by any measure, and frankly, if I thought they weren’t, we wouldn’t be using them for our programs as well.What’s really interesting to me here is the intense tone of defensiveness implied in your posts. I’ll grant that my first response to you was also defensive, because, 1) I wasn’t talking about CC hiring practices, and if I’d not mentioned CCs at all, you would probably be here complaining that I snobbishly and with elitism ignoring them because I didn’t think they were worth considering; and 2) because, no matter what you say, it’s pretty clear that the industry standard for campus intervies at CCs is not nearly so clearly established as it is, or at least has been until the current economic crisis, at four-year institutions. Given that a huge number of community colleges (I’ll adduce the example of mmcknight, in addition to my own knowledge derived from both first- and second-hand experience) don’t pay for interview expenses, the worst I’m guilty of is a sloppy overgeneralization, and one that is, frankly, no less sloppy than yours when you assert both that I know “nothing” about CC hiring practices and in your implication that it’s standard practice for CCs to pay for campus interviews, which is plainly not the case. I’m very glad your system does pay for them when it can. On balance, it’s probably a good investment of resources. But the fact that your system does does not make doing so the standard practice for community colleges around the country. If you’re going to criticize me for making an inductive error (albeit one based on a pretty large number of data points), I’d respectfully caution you against making an equally or more serious deductive error, particularly if, as it appears from your comments, you are basing on an n of one.
tac3017874742 - January 25, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Rather than comment on the ‘pissing contest’ going on between two of the commenters I’ll just comment on my own professional experience as an interviewee with several community colleges, 4-year institutions and doctoral institutions.Recently I interviewed for a position at El Paso CC and was treated to the most pleasant interview experience of my career. They paid for travel and lodging but also provided a senior staff member to give me a tour of their 5 campuses and to take me to lunch at the gourment dining room of the college which was operated by the college chef training program.I did make a trip to Honolulu CC where I paid my own transportation and lodging expenses but was hosted at a very pleasant lunch which was also an interview. I was offered the position at Honolulu CC and I accepted it. The people at this college were very professional and I never felt I was jilted just because they didn’t pay travel and lodging expenses.I have had at least 8 interviews in California for positions at both CC’s and four year institutions including UC Berkeley, Mission CC, DeVry Institute and others and I don’t recall any of these institutions, with the exception of UC Berkely, covering expenses. I have also found that the Califonria CC’s do not seem to have any grasp of the value of treating candidates well as an investment for the future. I can only imagine that the local pool is so strong that they have no serious interest in candidates from out of state. I do know of the financial plight of the California CC system and see this as a real reason for not paying for travel and lodging but this does not excuse the less than professional behaviour of all of the screening committees I met with, with the exception of UC Berkeley.By the way, I did submit to a telephone interview with Honolulu CC and Al Ain Men’s College and I did end up working at both of these fine institutions.I have also served on many interview committees in at least 6 higher education institutions in three countries (USA, Canada, and The UAE) and I am very aware of the position the ‘suspects’ are in as candidates and I sympathize/empathize with them no matter what the reimbursement policies of these institutions were at the time. The fact that a candidate has arrived prepared to be grilled, sometimes by large committees, in a hurried fashion (i.e., the committees are always short of time for some reason) always amazes me and impresses me. We should treat the candidates with respect, care and enthusiasm. I feel as a professional educator that we shouldn’t invite candiates to interview with us unless we can afford to pay their expenses.
willynilly - January 26, 2010 at 11:28 am
Mr. Evans – Thank you for your thoughtful and understanding sentiments reflected in your last post. You are correct. I was very defensive. I joined the community college sector in its inaugural era – 1967. From the outset we were put down, insulted and in some cases there were attempts to destroy us because of the enrollment threat we seemed to pose to other institutions. Slowly, but surely we won respect, position and meaningful collaboration with all of higher education. Now retired, I expected that those experiences of the early days, and the invective they fostetred was long gone – forever. However, still today there are those who take cheap shots at the CC sector. So please understand that my personal antenna is very high aa is my sensitivity level to anything I perceive as an insult or a condescending comment. The wording of your opening paragraphs triggered a response from me. I apologize. I now believe that I pulled the trigger to fast in your case. Your kind post (above) convinced me that you are not what I suspected and that you have had meaningful collaborations and relationships with community colleges and have benefited from them. It appears that, at best, the issue of who pays for campus is a mixed bag – and is likely to stay that was as long as our national and state/s/ economy remain threatened.
david_r_evans - January 26, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Willynilly, thank you very much for your thoughtful response.Best, David Evans
mhkirsch - January 28, 2010 at 1:05 pm
I certainly agree with #9. In my case, they did pay for the interview, and I assumed they would pay for moving expenses. A flippant associate dean, however, informed me at the last minute, after hiring arrangements had been made, that they did not pay for moving expenses as it was not allowed by the State. I informed her that I was not a newbie and was aware that University Foundations covered those expenses when the State would not (if that was even true– I suspect it was not). I suggested that they hire locally, and in the end they did pay. It left a very bad taste in my mouth, and one that I should have paid attention to, as it turned out the administration had a long-standing disregard for its faculty. It still does. It pays to pay attention to these kinds of red-flags. They can make a world of difference in knowing what one is getting into.
alwayslooking - January 28, 2010 at 3:24 pm
One experience that occurred to me while traveling to an interview was a lost reciept for the largest item my flight…..I tried to secure anotherone but was not successful…..the school would not reimburstment for my flight….I had the information that I printed from my expedia when I made the reservation but the wanted the reciept from the airline…..I would think if you were there for the interview and had an airline ticket and seat assignment along with the print-out from expedia date a week earlier then that would do…..My lesson learned from this….was keep up with your reciepts and I do not take interview unless they are paid for in advance….By the way I paid everything up front on this one.
jruiz - January 28, 2010 at 3:34 pm
“I do not take interview unless they are paid for in advance….”Of all the campus visits I’ve had only one paid up front. Ironically it was BVU, which sent me the plane ticket, had the motel and rental car bills sent to them, and had someone accompany me to every meal.
12022055 - February 2, 2010 at 2:18 pm
@willynilly, comment 11. I have interviewed and been hired at several community colleges in the MnSCU system. It is their policy that interview expensed are paid by the candidate. It turns out that they typically have a very short list of applicants. I have also interviewed and been hired at a 4 year institution in Minnesota. It reimbursed all the interview expenses, with a fully disclosed “cap” on the expenses.Prior to your comment, I have not been aware of any community college that did pay any portion of interview expenses.