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Post by no anecdotal on Sept 13, 2011 20:32:43 GMT -5
Seriously, have none of you ever looked at faculty pages at any top 10 programs? Top 20? Top 30? Any list? Some of you need to wake up and smell the roses (and step away from the comfort of your anecdotal evidence). Prestige matters. Academic endogamy not only exists, it is the name of the game. We are sociologists! That this is shocking news to anybody in this forum is beyond ridiculous.
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Post by Searcher on Sept 13, 2011 21:19:41 GMT -5
When I said "overqualified" I meant "poor match for a position that is less prestigious, involves more teaching and less research, and provides fewer resources than you may have had even as a graduate student at your top-20 university." "Overqualified" is correct though in the non-academic job sense that a person's training and work expectations may be far higher than required or available in the application position. For example, if you saw your star graduate mentors teaching maybe 1-2 elite seminars per semester, how will you feel about teaching four courses packed with undergrads and general education students?
And how should a department feel about hiring someone whose impressive preparation appears unsuited for the local day-to-day life if appointed? You may ingratiatingly say, "I'd love to teach here.." but we know the job market is desperate and makes liars. We don't want to go through another search after you leave soon for any better opportunity, nor do we want to cope with a disgruntled, disillusioned colleague for years.
This is just a search committee viewpoint but it may help prepare position applicants from top programs who find themselves thinking, "Where exactly is this school that wants me to visit?"
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Post by depends not on Sept 14, 2011 0:14:52 GMT -5
I'm going to have to disagree with the poster "depends". Well, not entirely.
I teach at a prestigious SLAC (and the S stands for selective, not small). And we could hire from a non top 10 department but we would have to make a special case to the Dean for it. Thus, we consider prestige of program actively. That wouldn't rule out the candidate with a good record of achievement who's the perfect fit at all. But it would help to rule out less impressive records and less good fits without that prestigious PhD program name.
Less prestigious liberal arts schools might be different, though.
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Post by yes and no on Sept 14, 2011 8:23:53 GMT -5
I'm an assistant professor at program ranked around 50. Here the thing we care the most about is publications. We throw anyone out of the pile who doesn't have a solo authored ASR, AJS or SF. That's the first round - we don't pay attention to institution at that point. Then we start looking at the applications more closely. If you are from say, Madison, you probably only need one of the above. We know you should have gotten well-trained. If you are from a lower ranking institution you need more than just a solo authored ASR/AJS/SF.
So being from a lower ranking institution doesn't rule you out. But you have to leap a higher hurdle. If that makes sense.
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Post by screwed on Sept 14, 2011 8:50:06 GMT -5
We throw anyone out of the pile who doesn't have a solo authored ASR, AJS or SF. Is that basically the norm at R1 departments? What about less than R1? If so, aren't a lot of us just f**ed? Even if we have good publications elsewhere, and a strong dissertation?
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Post by yes and no on Sept 14, 2011 9:01:27 GMT -5
Well, I think this dept is pretty ridiculous, honestly. I hope other departments care about other stuff more than we seem to. My PhD program - ranked around 10 - wasn't so limiting in their selection. But I honestly don't know about other places.
We just had so many applications (not this year, we're not hiring this year) from people who had multiple solo authored ASR/AJS/SF that we could do that.
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Post by really on Sept 14, 2011 11:03:33 GMT -5
I'm an assistant professor at program ranked around 50. Here the thing we care the most about is publications. We throw anyone out of the pile who doesn't have a solo authored ASR, AJS or SF. That's the first round - we don't pay attention to institution at that point. I find this incredibly hard to believe. How many applicants at the assistant prof level even have a solo-authored ASR, AJS, or SF that are applying to a school ranked near 50?
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learn about the market
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Post by learn about the market on Sept 14, 2011 11:53:39 GMT -5
Probably a lot. People need jobs, and if you restrict yourself to top-20 schools, you're applying to about 10. Also, there are a bajillion people on the market who failed in the last two years. Also... people want more than just prestige, so they may apply for location, personal reasons, or just because it's a good fit.
Get real - the market sucks, and is full of people with fantastic resumes.
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Post by i call bs on Sept 14, 2011 12:02:32 GMT -5
I'm an assistant professor at program ranked around 50. Here the thing we care the most about is publications. We throw anyone out of the pile who doesn't have a solo authored ASR, AJS or SF. That's the first round - we don't pay attention to institution at that point. Then we start looking at the applications more closely. If you are from say, Madison, you probably only need one of the above. We know you should have gotten well-trained. If you are from a lower ranking institution you need more than just a solo authored ASR/AJS/SF. So being from a lower ranking institution doesn't rule you out. But you have to leap a higher hurdle. If that makes sense. If that were the case, then you wouldn't be ranked 50, LOL. I'm at a significantly better ranked school than 50, and I can assure you that we don't do that. That said, it doesn't hurt to have a pub in ASR or AJS. SF, well that is a different story. Not sure if it helps relative to pubs in top specialty journals.
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Post by depends on Sept 14, 2011 12:12:16 GMT -5
I think that it probably depends a lot on departmental culture and goals. It is not impossible that some 50 ranked departments toss aplications without solo authored whatevers. Some departments are just more status conscious than others and worry a lot about rankings, which is probably a sub-optimal strategy in the long-term.
Just to give one example, I've heard that there is one 20/30 department that looks for faculty who are going to get the "tripple crown" (solo AJS/ASR/SF). A lot of past ASA presidents would not make that cut-off! My sense is that most places are not so mercenary and look at a range of factors.
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Post by Uhh on Sept 14, 2011 12:18:56 GMT -5
Probably a lot. People need jobs, and if you restrict yourself to top-20 schools, you're applying to about 10. Also, there are a bajillion people on the market who failed in the last two years. Also... people want more than just prestige, so they may apply for location, personal reasons, or just because it's a good fit. Get real - the market sucks, and is full of people with fantastic resumes. I gotta call BS on this notion that there is a mess of people with solo authored AJS/ASR/SF stuff out there. Sure there's certainly a few each year but not many. Solo authored in the top three is tough, much less as a grad student. Not everyone is doing it. My department is top ten and there have been two grad students to do this in the past 6 years. Looking at Wisconsin's on-the-job-market list shows that none of them have done it.
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Post by annnooonnnn on Sept 14, 2011 12:25:18 GMT -5
I'm an assistant professor at program ranked around 50. Here the thing we care the most about is publications. We throw anyone out of the pile who doesn't have a solo authored ASR, AJS or SF. That's the first round - we don't pay attention to institution at that point. Then we start looking at the applications more closely. If you are from say, Madison, you probably only need one of the above. We know you should have gotten well-trained. If you are from a lower ranking institution you need more than just a solo authored ASR/AJS/SF. So being from a lower ranking institution doesn't rule you out. But you have to leap a higher hurdle. If that makes sense. While I agree with the substantive point, let me question the specifics. Unless you are talking about an open search, and a first round that leaves some 20 people at most, this is nonsense. There simply aren't enough single authored papers by graduate students and early assistants in the past 5 years to make this true. So, again, unless this is an open search where the "first round" is also the short list, there simply aren't enough people out there that satisfy the criteria. The market may be bad and all that, but there are still just so many possible big 3 single authored papers in recent history. Finally, what is with all the anecdotal evidence when there is actual research on the topic.
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yep
Junior Member
Posts: 64
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Post by yep on Sept 14, 2011 12:27:36 GMT -5
Gosh, if only there were someone, like a social scientist, who could run numbers to see whether this hypothesis about candidates on the market with sole authored articles was true or not.... (Snark aside, I don't have time to do it, but I'd certainly be interested in seeing it.)
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Post by anny on Sept 14, 2011 12:34:08 GMT -5
Or you could just look at the market the last couple of years, which most people say is worse than the one this year.
Lots of people without solo ajs/asr/sf got great jobs. Some people with solo ajs/asr/sf got no jobs at all and are back this year. Does that not settle the debate?
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Post by examples on Sept 14, 2011 12:47:16 GMT -5
^ Actual examples of this could help. Otherwise we are bound to see the thread delve into more (less than useful) anecdotal evidence.
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