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[thehighking]

This is not to say it was easy or required no effort. It was hard. Now it's insane. At least in my field. Maybe it was always insane in the humanities.

Mine too. (I'm in philosophy).

I don't see how one could plausibly dispute that the pool of candidates now is deeper, more intense, and just all around better (sorry, but it's true). I'm not saying they're smarter or better philosophers or whatever, they've just done a lot more...mostly because they've had to do a lot more just to get a phone interview.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

You must be looking at a different graph, because the one I mentioned (5-18, not 5-17) shows the proportion of people with tenure track 4 to 7 years out at around 65% in 1991, and hovering around 60% in 1995, dipping below 50% for the first time in 2000.

What I cannot find is the graph that shows that the fraction of people with PhDs from good departments who want a tt job but do not eventually get one is higher now than it was in 1980.  Possibly you are mentally relabeling graph 5-18 so that this is what it says in your head

You could dramatically raise the upper line in this graph by simply firing all postdocs and non-tt faculty.  Would that make it a better market?  (Alternately, you could just eliminate life science research, as the report quite explicitly and repeatedly ascribes many of these shifts to the increase of the life sciences as a proportion of S&E positions.) 

The problem is that you are trying to coopt a statistic which is not about the state of the job market.  NSF uses these reports to argue for a larger slice of the government budget, not to try to increase the number of tt jobs; they want to be able to point to data that says "government science dollars are well spent" and "we need more government science dollars."

BTW, according to the report, "the number of tenured full-time faculty in all [science] fields increased from 90,700 in 1979 to 122,500 in 2006".  I read that as a 30% improvement. - DvF

[totoro]

In my fields (environmental science and economics), most people who have wanted academic jobs and were any good have been getting them from my anecdotal experience. Most people I saw getting PhDs ended up not wanting to go into academia as far as I could see. Recently in the recession in North America and Europe (no recession in Asia) that has changed to some degree from what people say. Back when I started my PhD I checked my advisors CVs who were on the tenure track and only got PhDs a year or two before I showed up to study with them and decided I needed to have a CV as strong as theirs when they got their jobs when I graduated (in geography). So I knew what to aim for, which was 4-5 publications. I got a post-doc before I finished my PhD, then a VAP back at the alma mater then I another research position for 5 years. After that I was unemployed for a year and then a year later I got a TT associate prof position and tenure 3 years after that. So 20 years ago (when I started my PhD) I realized you needed publications to get a job (if you came from a "middling R1") and you didn't walk straight into a TT position either. What I am seeing recently is that people coming out of the elite programs in economics now often have publications when that wasn't the case a decade ago. So there is some shift but not so dramatic.

[joelp]

You must be looking at a different graph, because the one I mentioned (5-18, not 5-17) shows the proportion of people with tenure track 4 to 7 years out at around 65% in 1991, and hovering around 60% in 1995, dipping below 50% for the first time in 2000.

What I cannot find is the graph that shows that the fraction of people with PhDs from good departments who want a tt job but do not eventually get one is higher now than it was in 1980.  Possibly you are mentally relabeling graph 5-18 so that this is what it says in your head

You could dramatically raise the upper line in this graph by simply firing all postdocs and non-tt faculty.  Would that make it a better market?  (Alternately, you could just eliminate life science research, as the report quite explicitly and repeatedly ascribes many of these shifts to the increase of the life sciences as a proportion of S&E positions.) 

The problem is that you are trying to coopt a statistic which is not about the state of the job market.  NSF uses these reports to argue for a larger slice of the government budget, not to try to increase the number of tt jobs; they want to be able to point to data that says "government science dollars are well spent" and "we need more government science dollars."

BTW, according to the report, "the number of tenured full-time faculty in all [science] fields increased from 90,700 in 1979 to 122,500 in 2006".  I read that as a 30% improvement. - DvF

Compare that to the number of PhDs granted, in the same report.

I have no idea how one can read either of the links I provided or the citations they use and come to any conclusion other than that the number of PhDs able to get tenure track positions is much smaller than previously.

In any case, I think that the burden of providing evidence to the contrary is on you, and I am really not going to lower myself to some psychoanalyzing of the NSF's or my motivations.

[mleok]

I'm in mathematics, and the only anecdotal evidence I have that the market has gotten progressively more competitive over the years is the increasingly impressive publication records of new tenure-track hires, and even new postdoc hires, as well as the number of new faculty who received NSF grants while they were postdocs.

It's hard to say if the numbers have gotten worse, since mathematics, at least applied and computational mathematics, has a pressure-release valve in the form of industrial positions, but certainly the expectations for what constitute a competitive tenure-track applicant seem to have crept up consistently over the years. And anyone who is unwilling to admit that the last few years have just been even more horrendous for most fields, with a substantial backlog of highly qualified candidates, is just being delusional.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Compare that to the number of PhDs granted, in the same report.

I have no idea how one can read either of the links I provided or the citations they use and come to any conclusion other than that the number of PhDs able to get tenure track positions is much smaller than previously.

Because some of us understand that "number" and "proportion" are different words with different meanings, and that 50% of 122,500 is a bigger number than 65% of 90,700.

Honestly, I don't have a whole lot of time for people who like to complain about how much easier people had it who came before them or who came after them.  - DvF

[lyndonparker]

Compare that to the number of PhDs granted, in the same report.

I have no idea how one can read either of the links I provided or the citations they use and come to any conclusion other than that the number of PhDs able to get tenure track positions is much smaller than previously.

Because some of us understand that "number" and "proportion" are different words with different meanings, and that 50% of 122,500 is a bigger number than 65% of 90,700.

Honestly, I don't have a whole lot of time for people who like to complain about how much easier people had it who came before them or who came after them.  - DvF

Joelp, as an older junior person, I happen to agree with DvF, as the market in most fields has been terrible since about 1970. But even if he and I are wrong, so what? How does trumpeting a difficult market improve your position or make it more likely for you to get a job?

[joelp]

Because some of us understand that "number" and "proportion" are different words with different meanings, and that 50% of 122,500 is a bigger number than 65% of 90,700.

I would think it is obvious to anyone that how difficult or easy to get a job in any given field is a matter of the proportion of the number of candidates to the number of jobs, not of the number of jobs alone.


Now, for the last two posts, if either of you would like to point out where I complained about anything, please feel free to do so. In fact, my first entrance into this thread was precisely pointing out that PhDs, for all the recent problems, still have it much better than most other people in the current economy.

I was merely pointing out the rather uncontroversial obvious, while providing some of the existing data to prove it. I just thought that the increasing reliance on adjuncts, the increasing number of candidates per TT positions, the increasing publication requirements were all common knowledge, given the endless data available (and I can provide several more citations if you want).  But hey, if the notion that the job market was just as tough whenever you graduated as it currently is in the worst economic climate since the great depression is so important to you, feel free to disregard those. I have no time to play "forum bully" with anyone, especially people who respond to data with cheap psychoanalysis.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

the increasingly impressive publication records of new tenure-track hires, and even new postdoc hires

The increased publications-on-graduation thing is a bit of a conundrum for SCs; if candidate A has few or no pubs on graduation, but got their PhD in 4-5 years (as was the norm 30 years ago), and candidate B has 4 or 5 pubs, but took 7 years, who is more likely to be productive?  We increasingly solve the issue from our end by not considering applicants fresh out of school, so we can more easily compare like-with-like.

mleok, if you are friendly with any older ex-chairs in your department, you might ask them how many applicants you had for assistant professor positions at various times.  In my department it dropped by a factor of 4 between 1990 and 2007, but now it is back up to 1990 levels.

I would think it is obvious to anyone that how difficult or easy to get a job in any given field is a matter of the proportion of the number of candidates to the number of jobs, not of the number of jobs alone.

Not at all.  If a large number of third-tier departments started new PhD programs (as happened in my field in the late 70s), their students would never really be in competition for a large number of the jobs out there, certainly not at the RU/VH or RU/H institutions.

if either of you would like to point out where I complained about anything

Never said you did, but I brought up this point exactly because someone was repeating the common suggestion that the senior professors where they were had a relatively easy career, and that their advisors were oblivious to the job market issues.  This might have been the case many years ago - after all, it was common in the early 60s for grad students to be solicited for jobs, and never have to formally apply - but it won't apply to most current faculty, even the senior ones.

The increasing use of adjuncts is certainly a reality, but somewhat irrelevant in that the existence of an adjunct position in a department does not necessarily have an effect on the competition for tt positions.  On my campus the two types of positions are funded by different pots of money, and eliminating all adjunct positions would not result in additional tt lines, only in increased class size/teaching loads or class closures. - DvF

[penultimate24]

Ethical grounds:

1. Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, etc.
2. Lied on application or plagiarized articles/diss.
3. Making inappropriate comments during interviews or other communication (i.e. a recent hire at SillyPants U just told me "their dog was an offshoot of their dick," so if any of this comes out in advance...run!)
4. As far as the career decisions, go with your gut. I want committed folks...not stringers or greener pastures. But that is harder to argue (as thread indicates). Personally, it would piss me off.

[janewales]

But hey, if the notion that the job market was just as tough whenever you graduated as it currently is in the worst economic climate since the great depression is so important to you, feel free to disregard those. I have no time to play "forum bully" with anyone, especially people who respond to data with cheap psychoanalysis.

Joelp, that's not fair. Some of us who've responded with stories (and hard data) about what things were like for us are just trying to make clear that we do understand, and it's counter-productive to caricature us the way that the grand narrative seems to demand.

I will say this as clearly as I can: I know that the current job market is absolutely appalling. I know that it makes people despairing, and angry, and frustrated. I tell my own students the truth about this market. When I ran our grad program, I controlled admission so we accepted only a few, fully-funded students. I told them the truth, too.

I do these things in part because things were hard for me too; no, not as hard as now, but plenty hard enough to give me some perspective, to help me understand. I know how families reacted to our weird careers; how high school friends viewed us with bemusement, as they compared their material attainments in their late 20s to ours; how we couldn't even think of buying a home on our meager salaries; how we had to figure out where kids might fit, if we wanted them; how so much depended on getting that article accepted, and the acceptance didn't come; how we had to imagine moving across the country to a place we'd never been, because that's where the job was, but only for one of us in a two-body situation-- ALL of it is something that many of us in the senior ranks have experienced, too.

There's nothing to be gained by arguing who had it worst. If we're going to turn things around, it's going to take concerted effort from everyone, and an alliance between groups that might seem disparate. That's where our focus should be.

[fiona]

Janewales, thank you for saying clearly what needs to be stated, probably again and again.

The Fiona

[joelp]

Joelp, that's not fair. Some of us who've responded with stories (and hard data) about what things were like for us are just trying to make clear that we do understand, and it's counter-productive to caricature us the way that the grand narrative seems to demand.

I will say this as clearly as I can: I know that the current job market is absolutely appalling. I know that it makes people despairing, and angry, and frustrated. I tell my own students the truth about this market. When I ran our grad program, I controlled admission so we accepted only a few, fully-funded students. I told them the truth, too.

I do these things in part because things were hard for me too; no, not as hard as now, but plenty hard enough to give me some perspective, to help me understand. I know how families reacted to our weird careers; how high school friends viewed us with bemusement, as they compared their material attainments in their late 20s to ours; how we couldn't even think of buying a home on our meager salaries; how we had to figure out where kids might fit, if we wanted them; how so much depended on getting that article accepted, and the acceptance didn't come; how we had to imagine moving across the country to a place we'd never been, because that's where the job was, but only for one of us in a two-body situation-- ALL of it is something that many of us in the senior ranks have experienced, too.

There's nothing to be gained by arguing who had it worst. If we're going to turn things around, it's going to take concerted effort from everyone, and an alliance between groups that might seem disparate. That's where our focus should be.

You are still under some notion that I entered this thread in order to do some "woe is me" complaining. I didn't. I am comfortable in my own skin and with my opportunities. I was simply pointing out that saying that this market is indeed worse than before, from a candidate's perspective. From a university perspective, or even a society perspective, it may be great that things are so tough. It may indeed be a society wide plus that ultra competitive candidates have to take jobs at the random directional state university. Not saying that it is the case, but it is always something that must be considered. And I did it not to satisfy my ego or, as implied,  as some way to satisfy my current condition in the market. Again, I am doing just fine. But one of the things that I do, and one of the things that I am paid to do, is study and write about the academic labor market. On issues like diversity, quality of mentoring, graduate program evaluation, bibliometric data analysis and the like. So I felt that some data could inform the discussion and disprove some claims being made. I can provide a ton more if necessary. What I have no patience for is cheap psychoanalysis of market narratives. Which is why I am bowing out of this thread. I know I said it before, but since your post addressed me directly I wanted to clarify my intentions, once and for all.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

What I have no patience for is cheap psychoanalysis of market narratives.

Nobody is psychoanalyzing.  Your data simply did not support your assertion.  - DvF