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[totoro]

Or embarrassingly short. Oh, wait, we're talking about PhDs, aren't we? Forget I said that.

I think that anyone who is truly the Candidate A type has mistaken "finishing the degree" with "being ready to get a job." There is more to being employable than having PhD in hand, as demonstrated not only by the many PhDs who don't end up with jobs but also by the ABDs who do.

VP

After 3 years of doing my PhD I got a post-doc position. But then my first academic article went into print in the first semester I was doing my PhD. After the post-doc I did a VAP for a year and half and then a research assistant professor position for 5 years. After that a tenure track associate prof. I'm now a full prof. So I was obviously ready to get a job, because I got them. Some candidates will progress faster and others slower. And it will depend on field too.

[watermarkup]

Wondering whether to hire candidate A or B is OK, but then the article took a bizarre turn when it started worrying that some universities were even hiring assistant professors with experience:

In fact, many departments take it even further and hire assistant professors who have been out for two or three years or even longer. Some of these more experienced Ph.D.'s have had postdoctoral fellowships.

Um, what?

[cranefly]

I finished quickly. Then I wrote and worked as an adjunct--in other words, I brought in money those extra years! Why would I continue going into debt as a PhD student when I could get the same qualifications as B and earn money?

[rebelgirl]

It may depend somewhat on how the candidates spent any "extra" years.  I finished my doctorate 9 years after starting the program, but I "stopped the clock" to work full time in an outside job for 4 of those years, earning $$ to continue in a field with very, very little fellowship funding.  Of the other 5 years, I taught for 3, and finished with 2 articles published.  Search committees seemed understanding of the choices I made - and I avoided the massive debt loads that others struggled under. Then again, I aimed my search at colleges where teaching rather than research was top priority, so YMMV.

[totoro]

I finished quickly. Then I wrote and worked as an adjunct--in other words, I brought in money those extra years! Why would I continue going into debt as a PhD student when I could get the same qualifications as B and earn money?

Presumably B is earning money as a PhD student. I was a full time post-doc for my final PhD year (and got a tuition waiver). The candidate we interviewed did a lot of consulting work while doing the PhD. My wife got paid good money to work as an RA write through her PhD which extended the time but gave her a lot of varied research experience. None of these are in the humanities of course.

[polly_mer]

(Can you get a PhD without teaching? That would be pretty rare in my field.).

I had exactly one semester as a TA prior to finishing my PhD and that's only because I changed programs.  My original program required zero teaching to graduate.  On the other hand, I was required to have submitted at least one paper to a peer-reviewed journal as part of my graduation requirements.  My program cared about research, not teaching.

Wondering whether to hire candidate A or B is OK, but then the article took a bizarre turn when it started worrying that some universities were even hiring assistant professors with experience:

In fact, many departments take it even further and hire assistant professors who have been out for two or three years or even longer. Some of these more experienced Ph.D.'s have had postdoctoral fellowships.

Um, what?

I'm not sure what the bizarre turn is here.  Most ads in my fields at research schools specify a preference for postdoctoral experience.  Most of the ads at teaching schools specify at least one (if not two) years of full-time college-level teaching.

Practically no one gets hired right out of graduate school into an assistant professor position in my fields; you postdoc for a few years and then apply for positions when you have some experience doing something.

[lasquires]

I think that was the point of the comment, polly_mer, that the pearl-clutching over SC's preferring candidates with some experience was a little odd. As in, why would experience be a bad thing?

Of course, I could be reading that wrong.

And in my field, PhDs who make it out of grad school without any teaching can be in for serious trouble and will usually wind up doing VAPs and postdocs (which are rare) in order to make up for the deficit. Most grad students leave my specific program with at least three independently designed courses in two different subfields. I have five.

And no one really makes much money. You just flounder along on your stipend, doing your damndest to avoid debt. Even VAP jobs with sub-par salaries are preferable to our stipends.

[eddyman]

We had a version of this in a recent search where someone had graduated from an Ivy League program in record time.  We were very impressed with their time to degree but ultimately found their research to lack the depth that was displayed in the research of other candidates.  Also while the candidate was polished in their on campus interview we found that they lacked the experience in the classroom that other candidates had.  In this case, I think that extra time in the Ph.D. would have helped the candidate become a more polished scholar and teacher. 

So this wasn't a false dilemma for our SC but I generally agree that really ambitious students who finish up early tend also to produce more publications. 

[aprilmay]

Generally no one notices how long you took-- unless it's embarrassingly long.

Chime. If someone's dissertation took an unusually long time, it had better be unusually good. Otherwise, I do not care.

[ex_mo]

N=1, etc.

I finished a combined MS/PhD program in 5 years.  I was the first in my cohort to defend and graduate.  Most of the others who finished at all did so in ~6 years, which is basically the norm in my field and from my program.  Of course, I had one article in press and one under review, so my pub record wasn't stellar, but I had taught the dreaded Survey 101 several times, as well as two upper division courses.  I also adjuncted at a for-profit-online-institution-that-shall-not-be-named for a year and that was actually cited as a positive for the places I interviewed. 

[glowdart]

Wondering whether to hire candidate A or B is OK, but then the article took a bizarre turn when it started worrying that some universities were even hiring assistant professors with experience:

In fact, many departments take it even further and hire assistant professors who have been out for two or three years or even longer. Some of these more experienced Ph.D.'s have had postdoctoral fellowships.

Um, what?

I think the concern is that new PhDs who took a short or normal amount of time to finish but aren't as fully polished, published and classroom experienced as people who took N+3 years to finish are ALSO at a disadvantage because more and more search committees are hiring advanced assistant professors instead of new PhDs. 

I know that many of the cushier jobs in my discipline have been going to advanced assistants or people with rare humanities post-docs or people with 2-5 years in VAP lines in the past few years. 

So, the problem then becomes: how does a PhD who finishes in a short or normal amount of time compete?  Or, does a search committee take a chance on someone unproven?  In this economy, can a SC afford to take a chance on someone who is unproven?  And so on...

[totoro]

I think that was the point of the comment, polly_mer, that the pearl-clutching over SC's preferring candidates with some experience was a little odd. As in, why would experience be a bad thing?

Of course, I could be reading that wrong.

And in my field, PhDs who make it out of grad school without any teaching can be in for serious trouble and will usually wind up doing VAPs and postdocs (which are rare) in order to make up for the deficit. Most grad students leave my specific program with at least three independently designed courses in two different subfields. I have five.

And no one really makes much money. You just flounder along on your stipend, doing your damndest to avoid debt. Even VAP jobs with sub-par salaries are preferable to our stipends.

At the US R1 university where I was a TT faculty the administration would not let grad students teach in the classroom in their own course. I thought this was a bit short-sighted... Some of our grads ended up being adjuncts/VAPs in our own department on graduating to make up the deficit. Others who were stronger researchers went straight to post-docs elsewhere. And a lot weren't interested in academic positions anyway. Some going back to their industry/government job.

We don't have grad students teaching their own courses at my department here in Australia either. Just leading problem/discussion sections. Though that isn't the case elsewhere in the university.

[sciencegrad]

I think that was the point of the comment, polly_mer, that the pearl-clutching over SC's preferring candidates with some experience was a little odd. As in, why would experience be a bad thing?

Of course, I could be reading that wrong.

And in my field, PhDs who make it out of grad school without any teaching can be in for serious trouble and will usually wind up doing VAPs and postdocs (which are rare) in order to make up for the deficit. Most grad students leave my specific program with at least three independently designed courses in two different subfields. I have five.

And no one really makes much money. You just flounder along on your stipend, doing your damndest to avoid debt. Even VAP jobs with sub-par salaries are preferable to our stipends.

At the US R1 university where I was a TT faculty the administration would not let grad students teach in the classroom in their own course. I thought this was a bit short-sighted... Some of our grads ended up being adjuncts/VAPs in our own department on graduating to make up the deficit. Others who were stronger researchers went straight to post-docs elsewhere. And a lot weren't interested in academic positions anyway. Some going back to their industry/government job.

We don't have grad students teaching their own courses at my department here in Australia either. Just leading problem/discussion sections. Though that isn't the case elsewhere in the university.

My graduate college also doesn't allow graduate students to teach any courses.  The most we can do is typical TA work, and even that is heavily discouraged if an RA position is available.  My adviser tells me that every student she's graduated that wanted to work in academia got a TT position quickly after graduation without much trouble, so I hope that my lack of any teaching experience won't be a problem.

I was aiming to complete the MS/PhD program in 4 years, but this article now has me second guessing.  Then again, my adviser is strict about completing no later than 5 years and with no fewer than 3 publications.

[totoro]

Our problem was that the university was highly ranked in its core disciplines in STEM where there are also a lot of post-docs and ranked about 40 nationally. But we were about the 100th ranked economics department in the country. And so it wasn't realistic that our students were going to get TT positions at research universities in the US. The one size fits all model didn't make sense (Several of our students did get TT positions at research universities outside the US). Some of our students also got adjunct experience at other local colleges which helped them get jobs at SLACs.