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The Cost of Applying for Academic Jobs

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By Emily Peters

I just spent another $10 for two more copies of my transcripts. What was I thinking? How can I possibly throw any more money down the job drain? On a daily basis, I am confronted with this question. There is the inevitable clash between my desire for a permanent academic job and the reality of my bank balance.

In December and January, when everyone else is complaining about the expense of the holidays, I'm easy to spot. I'm the one ranting about the high cost of photocopying and the rising price of transcripts. So, I have decided once and for all to do what I have been threatening to do for years: cost it out.

Before I begin the accounting, let me set the record straight. I'm no cheapskate. I'm the kind of person who will splurge on a massage to relax me before interviews. I order room service without remorse. And I have no problem paying $6 for an airport latté. So the fact that I'm starting to complain about the cost of being on the job market ought to tell you something.

Here's a very conservative estimate -- and I do mean conservative -- of the expenses I've incurred in four years on the job market. The only expense that requires explanation is the Career File Service, a company that stores and copies your letters of reference and sends them (after you provide stamped, self-addressed envelopes) to the departments where you've applied for jobs.

Printing and photocopying ....$ 274.00

Transcripts ..................  258.00

Career File Service. .........  599.00

Postage ......................  230.00

Telephone bills ..............   35.00

Airfare ...................... 1300.00

Hotel ........................ 1060.00

Conference registration fees .  250.00

Meals ........................  500.00

Interview clothes.............  400.00

Total ....................... $4906.00

To tell you the truth, the total strikes me as too low. In my first years on the market, I was spending this kind of cash as a teaching assistant, making only $14,000 a year. With such a small income to begin with, it was a really big deal to spend almost 10 percent of it on a job search. This is especially true if, as in my case, the expense continues year after year.

And there are, of course, hidden costs I couldn't possibly begin to calculate. There's the gas money that gets eaten up driving to a "local" interview 100 miles away. There are the extra dry-cleaning bills and the organizational memberships renewed just to get access to job listings.

When you consider the applicants together, the expenditure becomes even more obscene. During my job hunt, I've applied for about 160 jobs; at a total cost of $4,906, that's about $31 a job. So if a university receives 150 applications for every job announcement (and that's not an exaggeration in my field in the humanities), the applicants altogether will have spent around $4,650 applying for that one position. Last year in my discipline, about 950 positions were advertised. That means folks in my field spent upwards of $4-million just applying for jobs.

Of course, institutions spend a lot on job searches, too. But who cares? I sure don't, and I'll tell you why. In my experience, colleges have displayed a wanton disregard for my pocketbook. Sure, when it's time for them to foot the bill, they're frugal. Take on-campus interviews. I can't remember a single instance when I wasn't asked to stay over on a Saturday night in order to secure a cheaper airfare. And I wouldn't mind, really, except that when it's my money being spent, colleges seem to throw caution to the wind.

My biggest beef is the money I am forced to spend on transcripts. Some colleges request official undergraduate and graduate transcripts, which cost $5 to $6 apiece, or as much as $15 if you need them in a hurry. Who knew that my freshman grade in environmental science would figure so prominently in my future success? And why do the transcripts have to be official in any case? Is it to verify that I have truly received my degree? If that's the case, I have two questions: Is there really a slew of candidates applying for academic positions who haven't even completed a B.A.? And why can't departments wait until they have narrowed the search down to 15 or 20 applicants before this verification becomes necessary? All I know is that if more colleges had stipulated in their ads that unofficial transcripts would be fine, I could have saved $258. That's the equivalent of two months of groceries. Or a really cool Kate Spade bag.

The experience of one of my close friends confirms my suspicion that departments just don't think about how their requests eat away at a job seeker's often measly income. When my friend made the first cut at a prestigious public university, the chairwoman of the search committee requested a copy of his completed dissertation. No problem. He shelled out the $35 for copying and binding, and $15 to send it via express mail so the committee could have it ASAP, as requested. About two weeks later, the chairwoman called again. She admitted that somebody had lost the first copy of his dissertation and sheepishly requested that he send another. No mention of the additional $50 expense this would entail. "No problem," my friend cheerfully replied. "I'll send it out right now." What else could he say?

And then there's the whole reimbursement issue. Those lucky enough to get campus interviews often have to shell out money for airfare and hotel bills that colleges promise to reimburse them for later -- usually much later. For many applicants, this means reaching for a credit card and floating the balance at 18-percent interest.

During my third year on the job market, I interviewed at a college on the other side of the country. As requested, I made my reservations and charged a $450 plane ticket (which, by the way, was a phenomenal fare that I spent considerable time, and my Saturday night, to get). A few weeks after I got back from the interview, I received a rejection letter. Somebody else had accepted the position. When I called to inquire about my reimbursement check one month later, the department secretary was unsympathetic: "You're just going to have to be patient, dear," she said, hanging up. A good three months later, I finally received my money. Let's see, at 17.9-percent interest that comes out to -- well, you get the idea.

In the scheme of things, these are small complaints. Undoubtedly, if I get a job this year, I will say it was all worth it. I guess. But in the meantime, all I can think about are the other ways I could have spent my $4,906. A donation to a homeless shelter? A trip to Rio de Janeiro? A shopping spree at Barney's? A down payment on a new convertible? Stock in a dot-com startup? Almost anything would be better than blowing it on transcripts.