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[passing_through]

  I'm over fifty and still looking for my first assistant professor job (big gap between my master's and my Ph.D., not by my choice).  Since the odds are so low of being hired at my age (given I'm not in any special minority group), I am wondering if I should try to address this somehow in a cover letter, e.g., "While I am not the typical candidate for an assistant professor position, my life experience3 outside of academia enables me to speak to a broad range of students with majors outside of my doctorate."  Or, should I just stop looking because white males over fifty, from what I can tell from Chronicle articles on age, do not get hired for their first position, period, end of story?

[hegemony]

I say don't mention it.  If someone's prejudiced against an older candidate, I doubt if anything you can say in a cover letter will change their mind.  And I wouldn't be all that discouraged.  I know of several people over 50 who've been hired to the tenure track.  I also know of one man who was turned down at a certain university and was sure it was because he was older.  But I knew someone on the search committee, and they turned him down for a completely different reason (they thought his writing sample was weak).  He went around embittered against age prejudice for a while, and then he got a job elsewhere.  Remember that the job market is tough for everybody.  Be as professional and productive as possible, and see what happens. 

[pinkmouse]

"While I am not the typical candidate for an assistant professor position, my life experience outside of academia enables me to speak to a broad range of students with majors outside of my doctorate." 

The experience outside academia could help, probably more at schools catering to non-traditional students.

But don't put anything that sounds like an excuse or a justification in a cover letter. As for your age, there is no need to mention it at all.

[barred_owl]

I agree completely with hegemony and pinkmouse.  IF you were to address the issue, it might be in terms of something like, "I returned to academia to complete a doctorate in XYZ because..."  Then talk about your academic accomplishments and such, and include a reference to your life experience, if you wish, as long as you are very specific about how that life experience contributes to your success as a teacher and/or scholar.  The statement you've suggested is a little too broad, in my opinion; I'm not sure why being able to speak to majors outside of your doctoral specialty would be a good thing to highlight, unless you know that you would be teaching non-majors' classes.  If you can cite specific examples that refer to your real-world experience and how these relate to your academic aspirations, so much the better.

Best of luck to you, meanderer!

[larryc]

No no no. Write a standard letter. Only refer to your years in the real world if you can do so in a way that reinforces your application.

[voxprincipalis]

I agree with larryc. This:

"While I am not the typical candidate for an assistant professor position, my life experience3 outside of academia enables me to speak to a broad range of students with majors outside of my doctorate."

... sounds like you feel like you have something to be embarrassed about and are trying to apply fluff and glitter to spin it into something the SC will feel is an asset. Everyone feels they have life experiences that enable them to speak to a broad range of students. You might as well try to claim credit for putting your pants on in the morning.

Note that I am not saying that you should be embarrassed about it. I don't think that at all. Rather, I'm saying that if you address it in this way, you have pre-emptively put the idea in the SC's mind that you are embarrassed about it, which is not the impression you want to create. Don't put any disclaimers on your awesomeness.

VP

[snowbound]

Chime with everyone else.  Don't mention it, unless it's a very definite positive.  A brief reference to your stunning success on Broadway if you're applying to a drama dept. Or your brilliant success as an entrepreneur if you're applying to a business school.  But ANYTHING that could be construed as a weakness that you feel you have to apologize for is likely to instantly consign your application to the Reject pile (unless you're in one of those rare disciplines that are short of qualified applicants). 

Since you have a long gap between Masters and PhD, I would leave the years when you received your lesser degrees off of the CV too.  They do nothing except broadcast your age.  You are not withholding relevant information, because your age is NOT relevant (or shouldn't be).  If you have a freshly minted PhD, then you deserve to be treated as a freshly minted PhD, regardless of a few gray hairs.

Of course, if you get an interview your age will be apparent.  But you will at least have a chance to impress them with your brilliance, likability, experience, and whatnot.  At the reading apps stage, the SC is desperately looking for reasons to reject people, in order to pare down a giant stack of applications to a more manageable number.  But at the conference interview stage, they are looking for reasons to WANT people.  They've invested a lot of time and effort into this process and they want to find that their shortlist has quite a few strong possibilities on it, so that the whole search doesn't become a trainwreck.  Also seeing you as a real flesh-and-blood person, rather than than as a few sheets of paper, makes it much harder to to make unjust, prejudiced, knee-jerk assumptions.  Even if they are a little surprised that you are older than they expected, most will try (with varying success perhaps) to not let that influence them too much.

If you are an outstanding candidate, you CAN get hired in your fifties.  Good luck!

[charybdis]

This last two hires in my smallish department at a SLAC have both been white men over 45. As a person of color who has taught at three different schools (two large state schools before the SLAC), I have been surrounded by middle-aged white male colleagues.  Is this a discipline specific issue?  Because if you are in my field (History), you would fit the "profile" of the majority of the department and your age wouldn't raise any red flags.  The credentials gap would work against you more than either race or age.