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[airball]

I'm actually going to put my money on "better." (This is not to say "good." In ten years, I've never seen "good.")

I think the timing of the economic collapse meant that a lot of schools had an "Oh, s***, how bad is this going to get" moment. When a school watches their endowment go from $1.3 billion to $900 million in a few months they are going to slam on the brakes. Now they know that they (probably) aren't looking at another $300 million in losses, so they can move ahead.

State schools are a more varied bunch. It will depend on where stimulus money goes, how much the kleptocrats in state office siphon off, whether your state tries to secede, etc.

airball

[ruralguy]

Aristotelian has it right. Budgets are trailing indicators. They tend to get very very bad about 1 year after the bad news starts rolling in.
So, the budgets on the books for the next fiscal year are probably very austere for most schools, and I would think that includes hires.

I guess the good news is that if the economy continues to show some signs of life, particularly if there is a quick recovery soon (not
likely), there could be some positive mid-year budget revisions at some schools. Also, you would get a nice year rolled into the 3 year average that Aristotelian brought up.

So, I am afraid I don't expect this year to be very good, but there may be some decent chances for the year after that.
 

[quoog]

I think next year will be better. This reason the market was bad this year wasn't just the economy, but the uncertainty about the future. Even if next year's economic situation is miserable, people will understand better how bad things are and a lot of the departments which didn't want to hire until they had a better idea of what is going on, will start to hire again. It of course won't be back to normal, but I predict a noticeable improvement over this year.

[tenured_feminist]

This year was bad here and next year will be worse. I am guessing that if you ask most people in the Cal publics, they would say the same thing. The rumors I've heard predicting a medium soft to rock hard freeze from San Diego to Seattle are a terrible harbinger for next year's market.

However I do think things will look up in 10-11.

[rk2009]

I am sorry to hear that next year is might be bad.  I skipped search for this year, and planned to search for next year hoping things will get better.  Meanwhile I am looking for industry job, though they too seem to be scarce.

I am in STEM.  I left academia some time ago, with thoughts of returning.  I got laid off earlier this year.  I had hoped to return to academia, but it seems more and more likely that it would never happen.  Sad.
rk

[madhatter]

I mostly agree with Quoog. I do think the uncertainty made this a particularly bad year. For job-seekers, the numerous hiring freezes and position cancellations were frustrating and nerve-wracking. For institutions, constantly or suddenly changing budgetary projections and rules led to searches being postponed or cancelled, and planning was nearly impossible.

Next year, I don't expect the budgetary situation, overall, to be much better, but I think institutions will have more confidence about what hires they can make. In some cases, this will be good news, as some institutions overreacted this year and will find themselves in better situations than they expected. In others, stimulus money will make up for losses. However, there will be many, many institutions where the impact of state spending cuts and/or endowment losses will be more fully felt, and they won't be doing much if any hiring.

[sibyl]

No idea.

No one knows what enrollments will really look like in the fall.  No one knows whether the elite high school students now finishing up their junior year will be sufficiently frightened to stop looking at Williams and Holyoke and start looking at their state universities and CCs; this year's seniors didn't change their aims much.  No one knows whether our state will use stimulus money to cover gaps for 09-10 as well as 08-09.  No one knows whether the hiring freeze of 08-09 was enough to solve the problems, or whether we'll have new ones.

I think this tends to fall in the category of "things that can't be controlled so why worry."  All we can do is to do our best.

[wild_rose]

I agree with normative - more and more adjuncts are going to be hired to cover teaching and tenure-track positions are going to be few and far between. It's cheaper that way.

My department chair said as much.

Our conversation made that VAP with possibility of renewal in Outer Mongolia look a lot better than it did when I first applied.

I don't have a crystal ball to see what the economy is going to do, or how long it will be bad (I wish I did), but it seems that those of us who are on the market are going to have to make ourselves look really, really good to get the few positions that are available, especially in the humanities and social sciences. If I am out of the loop this next year, I plan to spend the time writing and publishing, and if finances allow, getting another guerrilla documentary on my vita.

[conjugate]

Just by observation, and focused more on public than private universities, there's a time lag between the recovery of the economy and univerisities hiring and holding regular staff. They get by with higher adjunct-to-T/T staff ratios. At least in the humanities and social sciences.

The lag was long after the 1990-91 recession, taking until the end of the decade to fully recover. In that case, it was retiring profs who weren't being replaced. In the public sector, that freeze on replacement was compounded by the new emphasis on reducing budget deficits at the time. I have the impression that in the private sector, volatility was much higher (stronger and quicker reactions in hiring and terminating staff).

This recession is a lot deeper, and it will take longer to get out of it. The availability of adjuncts means that the universities can cope with the increased demand for educational services that typifies a recession (Out of work? Get a degree!) without hiring the proper way:

Another factor in the '90–'91 slow hiring time was (at least in my field, as well as related fields) a big influx of faculty from the former Soviet Union looking for jobs that paid in something better than rubles.  Perhaps the lack of collapsing Empires will lessen the job market's downturn time?

I agree there will be a lag; it may take a while for state budgets to recover, and a while after that to persuade legislators to spend that money on education.  Your concern over a possible increase in adjunct labor is very well taken, however.  That's a furor that other threads have explored in greater detail without finding a consensus, if I recall correctly.

[aristotelian]

Perhaps the lack of collapsing Empires will lessen the job market's downturn time?

Helllloooo!!!  This recession is the collapse of an empire--the empire of the United States.

[normative_]

Just by observation, and focused more on public than private universities, there's a time lag between the recovery of the economy and univerisities hiring and holding regular staff. They get by with higher adjunct-to-T/T staff ratios. At least in the humanities and social sciences.

The lag was long after the 1990-91 recession, taking until the end of the decade to fully recover. In that case, it was retiring profs who weren't being replaced. In the public sector, that freeze on replacement was compounded by the new emphasis on reducing budget deficits at the time. I have the impression that in the private sector, volatility was much higher (stronger and quicker reactions in hiring and terminating staff).

This recession is a lot deeper, and it will take longer to get out of it. The availability of adjuncts means that the universities can cope with the increased demand for educational services that typifies a recession (Out of work? Get a degree!) without hiring the proper way:

Another factor in the '90–'91 slow hiring time was (at least in my field, as well as related fields) a big influx of faculty from the former Soviet Union looking for jobs that paid in something better than rubles. Perhaps the lack of collapsing Empires will lessen the job market's downturn time?

Collapsing economies are what we have to deal with this time. The emerging markets of eastern Europe are generating a lot of high-quality academics who are competing head-to-head with their western colleagues for the same jobs, even more so now that some of Europe's most dynamic economic growth has reversed. And most of them are in the European Union, so they've got easy job mobility within that market, at least. But even they are finding that jobs are being shut down, not renewed, or in the case of one university in Ireland, that salaries are being reduced by thousands of euros per year, unilaterally.

One way to get a handle on raw numbers is to look to the ILO (International Labour Organization)'s database of labour statistics. It provides figures for college and university employment by country. The hard copy works best. The online figures don't seem to be formatted too well.

[sirkdn]

Our Univ (Public, SE US) froze/canceled some searches this year (my college went from 15 initially approved searches to just 7), but so far the plan is to get back up to last years level of expected searches. 

...so we should be hiring more than last year.

[conjugate]

Perhaps the lack of collapsing Empires will lessen the job market's downturn time?

Helllloooo!!!  This recession is the collapse of an empire--the empire of the United States.

Yes, but look at my point.  My point was that some of the problems with the job market in academia were due to the influx of academics from the former Soviet Union to the USA.  Are you seriously going to argue now that there will be fewer jobs for academics in the USA because those jobs are being taken by immigrants from the USA?  If so, please think very carefully about that statement.  :-)  On the other hand:

Collapsing economies are what we have to deal with this time. The emerging markets of eastern Europe are generating a lot of high-quality academics who are competing head-to-head with their western colleagues for the same jobs, even more so now that some of Europe's most dynamic economic growth has reversed. And most of them are in the European Union, so they've got easy job mobility within that market, at least. But even they are finding that jobs are being shut down, not renewed, or in the case of one university in Ireland, that salaries are being reduced by thousands of euros per year, unilaterally.

This is a serious consideration.  How many of these high-quality academics might come here to compete for what few US academic jobs there might be?  It's an unnerving thought.

[kamiakin]

Our provost has told us to go ahead and prepare justifications for TT line replacements for next year.

[aristotelian]

Helllloooo!!!  This recession is the collapse of an empire--the empire of the United States.

Yes, but look at my point.  My point was that some of the problems with the job market in academia were due to the influx of academics from the former Soviet Union to the USA.  Are you seriously going to argue now that there will be fewer jobs for academics in the USA because those jobs are being taken by immigrants from the USA?
[/quote]

You're right, I should have been clearer.  My larger point was that the underlying economics for this recession are much worse than the early 90s.  I know there were some bad years in the academic job market during that time, but my impression is that the market has gotten progressively worse over time, especially the replacement of TT lines with temporary and adjunct positions.