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Who's Hiring in Mathematics?

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By Jennifer Jacobson

In better economic times, the wave of faculty retirements under way in mathematics departments would be good news for new Ph.D.'s looking to fill those vacancies.

Instead, many departments are holding off on hiring new tenure-track blood.

Although the American Mathematical Society has yet to collect data on hiring for the 2002-3 academic year, its job statistics for the previous two academic years show a slowdown in hiring. For fall 2001, departments hired about 960 Ph.D.'s into tenured or tenure-track positions, says James W. Maxwell, the group's associate executive director. By the fall of 2002, that number had fallen 19 percent, with only 780 Ph.D.'s hired into such jobs.

When the society collects new data on the market this fall, Mr. Maxwell says he expects another 8- to 10-percent drop in hiring, a decline he attributes to a weak economy and not to a lack of retirements. "Three percent of the total full-time faculty in math departments are retiring every year," he says. "Fifteen years ago it was just under two percent."

The graying of the mathematics faculty at Vanderbilt University is typical in the field. Of its 34 tenured and tenure-track faculty members, 14 will be over the age of 66 in seven years, and will probably retire by then, says Mike Mihalik, the department's chairman. The numbers prompt him to think that now "must be one of the best times to begin grad school in math." But it is one of the worst times to be on the academic job market, he says, because "everyone's cutting back."

As a private institution that does not have to rely on shrinking state appropriations, Vanderbilt is one of the few still hiring. "Our chief financial officer did a tremendous job of getting us out of the stock market at the right time," Mr. Mihalik says. "We're in a predatory position. It's an excellent time for us to hire the very best people." For example, this year his department hired Alain Connes, a recipient of the prestigious Fields Medal, as a full professor of noncommutative geometry.

Mr. Mihalik says it was the only hire he requested this past year because his department actually is three or four professors over its limit. That's because "if we have someone who is within earshot of retirement, what the dean's office has allowed us to do is hire someone" who will eventually fill the position when that older professor retires, he says.

While he does not know at what ranks and in what subfields he plans to conduct searches for next year, he does plan to recruit some high-profile people. "We are already marking our targets," he says.

Other departments are simply hoping to be able to hire at all next year.

Jay A. Wood, the chairman of the mathematics department at Western Michigan University had requested permission to conduct five searches this past academic year and was allowed to advertise only two of those -- an assistant professorship in math education and another in partial differential equations. Then when budget cuts started to hit the university last December and January, the dean gave the 29-member department the go-ahead to search only in math education.

Unfortunately for the department, its top candidate turned down the offer, so Mr. Wood will seek to conduct the search again next year. In addition, he plans to ask the university for permission to hire assistant professors in differential equations, applied mathematics, and numerical analysis.

At the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, meanwhile, the hiring situation turned out better than the chairman of the mathematics department, Trevor D. Wooley, had expected. "Because of budget conditions, the college was supposed to be granted one position per department, independent of size," says Mr. Wooley. But thanks to a number of special programs under way at the university, such as efforts to increase the number of senior women on the science and mathematics faculty and expand the number of endowed chairs, Mr. Wooley's 59-member department ended up making four new appointments.

The department hired a full professor who is an actuarial mathematician, a full professor of computer science, a full professor of partial differential equations, and an associate professor of algebraic geometry. Mr. Wooley says his department is still negotiating with two assistant professors in computer science and harmonic analysis, which is one field.

"We actually benefited from the tight job market," he says, and saw a higher-than-usual acceptance rate. Job candidates, he says, did not have as many offers from other institutions as they normally would have in a better economy. Mr. Wooley made six offers in order to hire its four new faculty members, since two candidates turned him down. "Normally we expect to get one out of three people," he says.

Even though his hiring needs won't let up in the near future (over the next 10 years, his department will lose 30 percent of its faculty to retirements), the hiring outlook for next year is "completely uncertain," he says. "Usually what happens in a normal budget year is we're allowed to search in most positions we can justify." But "we've just been advised not to advertise for any positions." The department's budget of $10.5-million has been cut by at least 6 percent, he says.

Still, Mr. Wooley hopes to hire in geometry/topology, applied mathematics, interdisciplinary mathematics, and mathematical biology. He says he is also likely to request a replacement for a full professor in representation theory who was recruited away by another institution as well as a replacement for a full professor in mathematics education who retired this past academic year.

Like Michigan, the Georgia Institute of Technology's mathematics department was able to make several hires, but unlike its northern counterpart, it did not have to rely on initiatives to do so. William T. Trotter, the chairman, says his department hired four assistant professors -- one each in partial differential equations, computational math, number theory, and analysis. The department also hired an associate professor of geometry, and is still negotiating with someone to fill a full professorship in topology.

"We've been through a period in which there was considerable personnel turnover," Mr. Trotter says. That's because the department hires new people, and then "somebody else wants them, too," he says. "We're knocking heads against the leading universities."

The department does not advertise for individual positions. Rather, it uses a group ad, in which the university announces that it is seeking top people at all ranks and levels and in a variety of fields, Mr. Trotter says.

Although Georgia Tech, as a state institution, has seen its share of budget woes, "the administrative officers here have been very creative in moving money around in ways that key appointments can be made and to sustain the rapid advance of the institute," he says. But he does not expect to hire as many people next year because the department will focus on particular needs such as probability, and will continue "to look for people who can connect us with the life sciences."

Several department chairmen say that one of the hottest subfields lately is math biology. Math education and financial mathematics are also popular. "A good Ph.D. in any area is going to be hired," says David C. Manderscheid, the chairman of the mathematics department at the University of Iowa. His department produces 9 or 10 Ph.D.'s a year. Two or three of those land postdocs and the rest usually land tenure-track jobs at colleges and master's institutions focused on teaching more than research, he says.

But even with a postdoc or two under your belt, it can still be difficult to land a tenure-track job.

After Maia N. Martcheva earned her Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Purdue University at West Lafayette in 1998, she spent a semester at the University of Minnesota as a postdoc and then took a job as an instructor at the Polytechnic University in New York for nearly four years. Since September she's been a National Science Foundation fellow at Cornell University.

She first went on the academic job market two years ago and applied to 60 institutions. She received no offers. This year, her second time on the market, she again applied to 60 places, and received two offers.

"I was in a little bit better position," she says. "I had more published papers, and I have a book contract."

She has accepted an assistant professorship in math biology at the University of Florida and will start in the fall.

THE HIRING REPORT

How have the tough financial times in academe affected faculty hiring? In a series of articles, we look at the job market in English, physics, history, and mathematics.