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[mouseman]

I think that somebody brought this up earlier, but it bears repeating.  For all of you who are hiring in Computer Science, especially in Theory, in many cases Conference Presentation = Publication.  Journal publications are notoriously slow:  it can take more than two years between submission and publication, and this is in a field which changes on a monthly, or even weekly, basis.  Of course, we're talking about conference presentations that come with a ~9 page proceedings paper, not a single paragraph, and we're also talking about conferences with lower acceptance rates than most journals in the field.

[quasihumanist]

If you knew me and looked at my CV, you might notice that all of my published research has grown out of the side project I did during grad school, and none from my dissertation.

[mleok]

If you knew me and looked at my CV, you might notice that all of my published research has grown out of the side project I did during grad school, and none from my dissertation.

A search committee is not trying to establish whether you have any chance at all of achieving the tenure requirements, but rather whether you are likely to achieve tenure based on the standard paths to this. If one deviates substantially from established norms, then one runs the risk of being viewed as being a poor risk. This is not to say that you could not achieve research success via your chosen route, but rather that you are unlikely to be given the opportunity to find out.

Also, most of the discussion seems to be focused on "book" fields, where a monograph published by an established university press is the main criterion for tenure.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Did you also walk uphill both ways in the snow with bare feet?

That it used to be possible to do this or that doesn't really help me here and now.

I don't understand.  it used to be possible for graduate students to pay their own way if they went to a conference, but now it isn't?  Why not?

As for the other thing, I think I was pretty unambiguous in saying that grad student participation in conferences is a good thing.  However, I'm looking at applications right now, and the ones with many conferences and no papers are not being ranked as highly as the ones with a few conferences and a few refereed papers.  It might be different in your field. - DvF

[quasihumanist]

Did you also walk uphill both ways in the snow with bare feet?

That it used to be possible to do this or that doesn't really help me here and now.

I don't understand.  it used to be possible for graduate students to pay their own way if they went to a conference, but now it isn't?  Why not?

In a few very expensive cities (all of which have major universities with large graduate programs), it is impossible to rent a room in a shared apartment for less than 2/3 of a monthly grad student stipend.

The vast majority of grad students are not in this situation, but there are a few for whom paying their own way to a conference is simply financially impossible.

The days when a Berkeley grad student could survive on one or two quarters of TA pay and nothing else are long long gone, along with the days when someone could pay tuition and feed and house themselves by being waitstaff summers and weekends at a Denny's.

[erzuliefreda]

Cue someone to appear with tales from their graduate school conference scrapbook, when they slept 6 to a bed and explored then new areas of their sexuality... wait, I'm confusing CHE with a movie on Logo. Never mind.

[glowdart]

Did you also walk uphill both ways in the snow with bare feet?

That it used to be possible to do this or that doesn't really help me here and now.

I don't understand.  it used to be possible for graduate students to pay their own way if they went to a conference, but now it isn't?  Why not?

In a few very expensive cities (all of which have major universities with large graduate programs), it is impossible to rent a room in a shared apartment for less than 2/3 of a monthly grad student stipend.

The vast majority of grad students are not in this situation, but there are a few for whom paying their own way to a conference is simply financially impossible.

The days when a Berkeley grad student could survive on one or two quarters of TA pay and nothing else are long long gone, along with the days when someone could pay tuition and feed and house themselves by being waitstaff summers and weekends at a Denny's.

And remember that many of us are in the humanities.  I went to grad school with some people who were making $7,000 a year or less at a time when the scientists on the same campus were making over $20,000 a year.  This was in a town where the usual rent in a shared apartment or a studio was $3,600 - $4,800 a year, plus utilities. 

[daniel_von_flanagan]

In a few very expensive cities (all of which have major universities with large graduate programs), it is impossible to rent a room in a shared apartment for less than 2/3 of a monthly grad student stipend.

Good!  That limits the number of conferences you go to, which means more time to write stuff up.

It is possible that there are fields where, if a student doesn't go to 3 or more conferences a year, they will look inadequate to a hiring committee.  If this really is the case for such fields, and the departments in those fields do not make provision for funding for students to go, then they (possible the departments, but more likely the fields) are broken and need fixing.  As many students in my own field do attend this many conferences nowadays,  they might well believe that this is the case, but they would be wrong.  For many old farts like me, who are often to be found on hiring committees, the main currency of research is peer-reviewed publications.

The reason deans do not approve funding for non-presenters - even for faculty travel at my institution - is because it is not a very defensible use of money.  In my state university it is all that the administration can do to convince the legislature that use of state funds for graduate students in any way, even for funding GAs, is not just burning money.  Imagine a dean trying to explain to a legislator why taxpayers should subsidize conference travel for students in a field like Religion or Philosophy (or any field that legislators traditionally view with suspicion),  especially in expensive or touristy cities.

Grad school life is hard; it might have been better or worse when I was a student than it is now, but it has always been hard.  However, the complaints about not getting paid to go to conferences seem a little lacking in perspective. - DvF

[merce]

...
The reason deans do not approve funding for non-presenters - even for faculty travel at my institution - is because it is not a very defensible use of money.  In my state university it is all that the administration can do to convince the legislature that use of state funds for graduate students in any way, even for funding GAs, is not just burning money.  Imagine a dean trying to explain to a legislator why taxpayers should subsidize conference travel for students in a field like Religion or Philosophy (or any field that legislators traditionally view with suspicion),  especially in expensive or touristy cities.
...

This is a bit unrelated to the thread...but, it drives me nutso that people don't value listening and learning. Why can't learning from people be considered of value?  So why do they want people to have a diploma, a paper that says that listened and learned.

[smokeythebear]

...
The reason deans do not approve funding for non-presenters - even for faculty travel at my institution - is because it is not a very defensible use of money.  In my state university it is all that the administration can do to convince the legislature that use of state funds for graduate students in any way, even for funding GAs, is not just burning money.  Imagine a dean trying to explain to a legislator why taxpayers should subsidize conference travel for students in a field like Religion or Philosophy (or any field that legislators traditionally view with suspicion),  especially in expensive or touristy cities.
...

This is a bit unrelated to the thread...but, it drives me nutso that people don't value listening and learning. Why can't learning from people be considered of value?  So why do they want people to have a diploma, a paper that says that listened and learned.

To respond to this hijack: I'm with you merce, but I get the other side. It's less not valuing listening and learning, but more that they have to pay for someone else to do it. They see life, especially areas such as education and finance, as zero-sum -- and it's a double loss if someone else listens and learns on their dime.

On topic: By flipping through a few recent CVs in my field (physical sciences), I see about a 3-4:1 ratio of conferences to pubs. This isn't a book field, and from my own experience and looking at the titles on the CVs, the pubs are preceded by the conferences. I suggest that TF should have specified her general field, since her posts suggest a general rule, that like much in academic research, is actually heavily influenced by discipline and institution. Obvious, of course, but in general that type of sign posting is valuable in this type of discussion.

[polly_mer]

...
The reason deans do not approve funding for non-presenters - even for faculty travel at my institution - is because it is not a very defensible use of money.  In my state university it is all that the administration can do to convince the legislature that use of state funds for graduate students in any way, even for funding GAs, is not just burning money.  Imagine a dean trying to explain to a legislator why taxpayers should subsidize conference travel for students in a field like Religion or Philosophy (or any field that legislators traditionally view with suspicion),  especially in expensive or touristy cities.
...

This is a bit unrelated to the thread...but, it drives me nutso that people don't value listening and learning. Why can't learning from people be considered of value?  So why do they want people to have a diploma, a paper that says that listened and learned.

The point is that someone somewhere has to defend the use of the money.  The easiest way to defend the use of the money is to point to a product or service that benefits a large number of people, not just the person listening and possibly learning, even if the person actually goes to some conference sessions.  Thus, funding me to go to a workshop on how to teach science is going to be more highly ranked than sending someone to a conference in, say, Hawaii on some topic that is esoteric to even people in the broad field of philosophy and where people are unlikely to be going to any conference sessions beyond the one at which they present.

[science_expat]

Quite the hijack!

Anyway, a few comments on funding. In science, I would imagine that most of us have external grants that pay for conferences; I certainly do. And as someone who sits on funding panels, I've never heard anyone question the value per se of conference attendance although sometimes the number requested is criticized. Also, as an adminstrator with a reasonable budget to support research, I encourage (and fund) early career researchers to attend national / international conferences for networking purposes. (Senior folks should be able to fund themselves.)

With respect to grad students, I encourage ours to attend at least one and encourage them to budget their discretionary funds to support this. I've also been known to find a few pounds to help out. And often research supervisors have a bit of spare grant money that can be used for this purpose.

[merce]

Well I think that is a crock!

It gets my blood boiling but I'll bite my tongue on this thread.

/End hijack.

[tenured_feminist]

On topic: By flipping through a few recent CVs in my field (physical sciences), I see about a 3-4:1 ratio of conferences to pubs. This isn't a book field, and from my own experience and looking at the titles on the CVs, the pubs are preceded by the conferences. I suggest that TF should have specified her general field, since her posts suggest a general rule, that like much in academic research, is actually heavily influenced by discipline and institution. Obvious, of course, but in general that type of sign posting is valuable in this type of discussion.

There may be more flexibility in disciplines like econ that are primarily article-based, but even there, the CV of an ABD or newly minted candidate should read like a Broadway musical sounds: most of the different songs should have some kind of unifying theme. Is this a rigid, universal rule with absolutely no exceptions? No. That's why I said it was a rule of thumb. But get real here. Most ABD/newly minted people on the market in the humanities and social sciences are not going on with a finished or nearly finished dissertation in hand with only five years on the clock and four or five good publications from unrelated pre-dissertation research that they developed through conferences.

For disciplines where books matter, I really do not want to see an ABD or newly minted with an average time to degree who has a substantial (say >30%) of the conference presentations and pubs addressing themes that clearly are unrelated to the dissertation. . . .

[usukprof]

[snip]

There is not a presumption of confidentiality. If you apply for a job at a US public university, just about anyone can file a freedom of information request and see your application. Almost nothing is truly confidential if you are working for a public institution.

Thank you Octoprof for this information.  That's interesting. 

Is this lack of confidentiality directly related to the Freedom of Information Act?  I mean, it seems to me that requests made under this act must not be the main source of leaks/gossip about applicants, because how often would people bother?  I know I wouldn't have time.  So is it just a general attitude that results because everyone knows about this Act - in other words SC members don't always feel an obligation to maintain confidentiality?

I'm still really surprised.  I take the word of everyone who responded, I'm not questioning that that's the situation, but it still kinda shocks me.

Yes. Like all the documents here; it appears that the only documents not released were the reference letters, fortunately.  Discussion about this sad event is in another thread .