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Who's Hiring in Physics?

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By Jennifer Jacobson

A wave of faculty retirements in physics departments at American universities could not have come at a worse time.

The sluggish national economy has strained university budgets, so while some departments have managed to replace retirees with tenure-track hires, others have had to leave those slots open or fill them with temporary instructors.

The American Institute of Physics publishes a biennial report on the academic job market, but since this is an off year, it has no current information on job openings in the field for the 2002-3 academic year. Its report last year, however, revealed a disturbing trend: While the number of full-time-equivalent faculty members in physics departments had increased by nearly 5 percent to 8,800 from 2000 to 2002, much of that increase came from the hiring of adjunct and non-tenure-track faculty members. Many physicists fear that trend is continuing, although institute officials won't know for sure until next year.

The physics department at Indiana University at Bloomington has been among the fortunate ones. The department has been able to replace all four of the professors who retired this year. It has hired a full professor in biophysics and three assistant professors -- two in biophysics and one in high-energy physics. From 100 to 150 candidates applied for each of the three tenure-track positions, says James A. Musser, the department chairman.

"In general, hiring is down just because of the state budget situation nationally," he says. His department was able to replace the four professors because Indiana is in the midst of a faculty hiring drive in select areas like the applied sciences, which include biophysics.

"There are budget cuts," he adds, "but they did not affect hiring in any academic departments. The cuts were all absorbed in the higher levels of administration." For example, he says, "building renovations were put on hold."

Retirements in his department, however, are not on hold. Mr. Musser expects an average of two or three professors to retire each year for the next five years. So he has requested permission to hire faculty members next year in accelerator physics, high-energy physics, and high-energy theory.

The physics and astronomy department at Michigan State University also did an unusual amount of recruiting this year. Wolfgang Bauer, the department's chairman, says it hired two assistant professors -- one in nuclear physics and one in particle physics -- and two associate professors in astronomy. The department, made up of nearly 55 tenured and tenure-track faculty members wanted to hire even more. It conducted searches for three condensed-matter specialists -- two at the assistant-professor rank and one full professor -- and made offers that were turned down, he says.

The department is also wrapping up three more offers, he says, to two full professors in particle theory and one assistant professor in nuclear astrophysics. The positions in the department were open mainly because of retirements, Mr. Bauer says, and the administration gave him the go-ahead to hire because "at our university, physics is important and is one of the best-funded departments."

The same goes for the physics department at the College of William and Mary. William E. Cooke, the chairman, says his 28-member department hired an assistant professor in nuclear haydron theory and is still negotiating with an assistant professor in neutrino experimental physics. He expects at least one faculty retirement in his department in each of the next five to six years and acknowledges that his department was lucky to hire this year, given the sour economy. Across the college, he says, "almost all our searches were delayed, with the threat of being canceled, because of the budget crisis. Only about a third of the original authorized searches were carried out."

Like William and Mary, the University of Maryland at College Park also allowed its 75-member physics department to hire new faculty members this year -- two full professors in the field of atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Jordan A. Goodman, the chairman, says his department will average two to three retirements each year for the next few years. His concern is that competition to hire the best people will be stiff, mainly because of the ever-inflating cost of start-up packages to set up the laboratories of new hires. He calls those costs "the bane of physics chairs." The typical start-up cost for a new assistant professor is around $600,000. For full professors, the price tag rises to $1-million. "It's like sports teams," he says, and the high salaries they have to pay star players. There's "overall escalation."

Other physics departments have bigger problems than bidding wars.

At the University of Washington at Seattle, for instance, the chairman, David G. Boulware, was unable to search for any new faculty members this year for his 40-member department because of budget cuts. And although he would like to hire in subfields such as atomic experimental physics and astrophysics, he is uncertain whether next year's hiring situation will look any different. "In Washington, the State Legislature has still not passed a budget for the next biennium," he says. "I expect hiring to be extremely slow for the next year and perhaps the year after that."

Hiring was also nonexistent this year in the physics department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Thanks to budget cuts, Johnathan Machta, who heads the 28-member department, was unable to hire in areas like condensed matter, nanoscience, biophysics, and high-energy physics this year, but he will be allowed to search next year, possibly at the full-professor rank, for a biophysicist.

His department, he says, usually produces five or six Ph.D.'s each year, half of whom end up with postdoctoral positions in academe, while the other half land jobs in industry. Some observers say condensed-matter physics and biophysics are the hot fields in academe this year, but Mr. Machta says, "the good students have success in lining up postdocs in all areas." The vast majority of Ph.D.'s in physics spend a few years as postdocs before landing their first tenure-track jobs.

Francis W. Starr, who earned a Ph.D. in physics from Boston University in 1999, went on the academic job market for the first time this year. He applied to 23 colleges and universities and landed one offer, which he has accepted. This fall, he will become an assistant professor of condensed-matter physics at Wesleyan University.

Mr. Starr worked as a postdoc for two years at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and then spent an additional two years there on a contract. While a lot of job opportunities are available in his subfield, he says, the competition for them is tough. "I know of several positions for which I was one of several hundred who applied," he says. At the University of Pennsylvania, for example, he says, he was told that he was one of approximately 300 applicants.

Erica W. Carlson applied to nearly 25 positions in condensed-matter theory this year. Ms. Carlson earned her Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles in 2000 and has been a postdoc at Boston University since then. She declines to say how many offers she received this year but will start this fall as an assistant professor at Purdue University.

She's happy to have her search over, but says, "I certainly know good, bright people who did not get a job this year who are still postdocs."

THE HIRING REPORT

It's been a tough year financially for academe. So, how has that affected faculty hiring? We begin a series of articles on the subject, starting with the job market in English and in physics.