finding the legendary tenure-track job

[supportive bystander]

First, I must confess I am not a professor searching for a job. What I am is a friend & family member of adjunct professors who continue to apply...year after year...with no results. As a non-academic I cannot understand the fact that a potential candidate cannot call to check on the status and that the application must be twisted to match the research agendas of others. Not to mention that what is always posted is not necessarily what is desired by the hiring committee and/or the department. I am frustrated as I watch my friends and family members who continue to adjunct because they love this level of teaching but continue to be under paid and still struggle to find the job. It seems, from on outsiders perspective, like a great big beaucratic game. I am looking for guidance on how to support my friends...as they again begin this search thatvsaps them of their self-esteem and keaves them feelibg useless. I need to know how to support without offering wrong advice. Any help will be valued.

[Cosmic Shame]

The most limiting factor for many candidates is geography so I would encourage your loved one to apply nationally. However, without knowing any specifics on the candidate, I would also say that there needs to be a point where s/he considers alternate career paths. In my opinion there are many jobs that people with a PhD don’t even consider because the job doesn’t come with the same level of status and autonomy that they’ve become acclimated to.

[ditto]

I would also encourage your friends to apply nationally. Pretty much everyone I know who has been stuck adjuncting long term are people who for one reason or another is only willing to live in a handful of specific places.

But, more importantly, I would start to work on getting them to see leaving academia differently. A lot of people think that leaving academia is admitting defeat, when it is not. Encourage them to check places like the versatile PhD for alternative careers.

Because the bottom line is that they way US higher education is organized, there will always be someone in that position. Changing the "bureaucratic game" without addressing that may change who is adjuncting, but just that. The model right now is of a professor "producing" several PhDs during his or her career. When the system is expanding, all is well and good. When it stops growing, or even starts declining, you are simply going to have too many PhDs.

[Cosmic Shame]

One other piece of advice: look outside of Sociology.

[supportive bystander]

Thank you. We have considered looking outside academia. The sad part...at least for one...is he/she is awesome at teaching and really challenging the kids. What other jobs besides academia is there? Or recommendations. Both my frien and the other family member are willingvto travel...anywhere.

[4/4]

If all you are looking for is teaching, you should only apply to 4/4 and 5/5 jobs, or be perfectly happy with a non-TT lecturer position. The TT jobs with smaller teaching loads are really research, not teaching jobs.

[politics]

Sept 11, 2016 16:54:09 GMT -5 supportive bystander said:

First, I must confess I am not a professor searching for a job. What I am is a friend & family member of adjunct professors who continue to apply...year after year...with no results. As a non-academic I cannot understand the fact that a potential candidate cannot call to check on the status and that the application must be twisted to match the research agendas of others. Not to mention that what is always posted is not necessarily what is desired by the hiring committee and/or the department. I am frustrated as I watch my friends and family members who continue to adjunct because they love this level of teaching but continue to be under paid and still struggle to find the job. It seems, from on outsiders perspective, like a great big beaucratic game. I am looking for guidance on how to support my friends...as they again begin this search thatvsaps them of their self-esteem and keaves them feelibg useless. I need to know how to support without offering wrong advice. Any help will be valued.

its not just bureaucracy, its B.S. academic politics that foreordain outcomes and essentially render the application process moot for most people --abstruse theoretical quibbles that people in power get huffy over, what topics non-experts like university administration determine are desirable (this is increasingly only those that are "mercantilist" btw), people getting hooked up behind the scenes which leads to a "farce job searches", how the eye-test reputation of where you got your phd basically freezes this game into a caste system in a lot of instances (substance seriously doesnt matter much), and how even adjuncting in the first place itself "stains" an individual to such a point where some quite literally won't ever consider them worthy of a tenure track job under any circumstances.

there is really nothing morally ok about any of this, but I think a lot of us wandered in assuming nothing so awful could ever be the reality of the situation.  Applying nationally can help, but Ive applied nationally several times myself, and haven't even gotten one real interview.

Nothing wrong with just leaving.  Outside folks seem to be able to get jobs without that much trouble, I will probably just join them soon.

[Guesterino]

The system is brutal. Nobody should make excuses for it. But its not going to change in any time frame that will matter to your loved ones. The advice already given is good. A willingness to work anywhere will greatly improve your odds. In the popular mind the thing that professors do that is most important is teach, but in reality the best paying and most prestigious jobs involve mainly research. The job market is built around them. Its made worse because of the overproduction of PhDs. This enables mainly teaching-oriented institutions to demand strong publication records which they imagine will improve their prestige but often means that they hire people who don't really prioritize teaching and who hope to publish their way into a better job somewhere. You don't give many details about your friends so it is hard to know what their actual prospects are. Having a PhD from a prestigious institution is, unfortunately, the single most important factor. Publications matter too. Again journal prestige matters, but the most important thing is evidence of productivity. If your friend has had their PhD for too long (over 3 years) without getting a TT job, some places will take that as evidence that they are "stale."

The system as described sounds terrible and its easy to think that those who administer it are malicious. But most of the bad qualities are effects of larger structural features of the market. When you get 100 or 200 applications for a single job, as a practical matter hiring committees have to use some criteria to pare that down to a more manageable number. Typically different members emphasize different things in making such judgements, but a lot comes down to the judgements of others -- of editors, of letter writers, of other employers.

The suggestion that people consider non-academic jobs is a good one, but often hard to hear because of the massive psychological investment in becoming a professor. Look at this: www.careereducation.columbia.edu/resources/tipsheets/non-academic-career-options-phds-and-mas

Another possibility is teaching in a business school. Business schools are often willing to pay much higher salaries and competition for those positions tends to be much lower. There is a one-year program for folks with social science PhDs that prepares them to teach in MBA programs. I don't recall what its called, but apparently it works and folks get jobs.