anon
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Post by anon on Oct 25, 2011 19:30:37 GMT -5
I move that this job market officially change its name to the year of the assistant professor. I mean, good kudos for getting back out there, but sheesh -- how about saving a little for the rest of us
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Post by guest321 on Oct 25, 2011 22:28:46 GMT -5
They had some pretty weak job markets when they were coming out, so I don't begrudge assistant professors the chance to make progress. Of course, I wish that I was competing only against newly-minted PhDs, but if I do what I need to do wherever I go, I should be in good position to take another shot.
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Post by cuiros on Oct 26, 2011 7:47:23 GMT -5
Who's interviewing assistants?
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Post by mousey on Oct 26, 2011 8:20:14 GMT -5
I'm at an R1 and out of the roughly 17 people on a long-list for our position, only 2 (TWO!) were ABDs. And we didn't even realize it until we were deliberating on finalists. Most were postdocs, though, not asst profs (although we had those too).
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Post by noshot on Oct 26, 2011 9:15:04 GMT -5
Not a single ABD on my school's short list. A couple names made it to the table for discussion, but then, "well, they're just not as good as these others..." (well, of course they're not. They're ABD. But it's hard to argue with.)
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anon
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Post by anon on Oct 26, 2011 9:21:58 GMT -5
ABDs are still competitive at teaching-oriented universities and LACs, right? I wouldn't think that APs and postdocs are going over those as much, right?
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Post by guest321 on Oct 26, 2011 9:49:15 GMT -5
Indeed, it is quite flawed thinking to compare ABDs to postdocs or assistants and conclude, based solely on a more extensive CV, that the postdocs or assistants are actually better scholars. This is especially true because productivity is not a direct function of time spent, such that we could compare what a grad student has accomplished in the last two years of grad school to what a 2nd-year postdoc has produced during that time.
My understanding is that departments know that limited resources are available for tenure lines and don't want to risk choosing based on potential that never turns into anything, only to watch the selected candidate fall short at 3-year review. This lends itself to going with the candidates who have proven that they can stand on their own in a post-grad setting unless someone's level of achievement at the grad level is so elite that it cannot be dismissed as merely being the work of a good research assistant.
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Post by another thing on Oct 26, 2011 10:33:10 GMT -5
Another thing to keep in mind is that when an assistant moves, they often start the tenure clock over again. So they essentially get more time before having to go up for tenure, thus giving them more time to leap over that bar. This is appealing to departments because they have a better chance of tenuring them and not losing their investment. Of course if they are ready to go up for tenure "early", that's also often okay too. It gives the department more flexibility and more options. It's often just a better bet. If you are ABD you may just have to resign yourself to getting a "temporary job" and moving up in a few years.
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Post by aaaaa on Oct 26, 2011 11:27:27 GMT -5
Another thing to keep in mind is that when an assistant moves, they often start the tenure clock over again. So they essentially get more time before having to go up for tenure, thus giving them more time to leap over that bar. This is appealing to departments because they have a better chance of tenuring them and not losing their investment. Of course if they are ready to go up for tenure "early", that's also often okay too. It gives the department more flexibility and more options. It's often just a better bet. If you are ABD you may just have to resign yourself to getting a "temporary job" and moving up in a few years. But there is also the flip side, where if an assistant is advanced enough the department may be suspicious that the assistant is only applying to get leverage to renegotiate salary/early decision on tenure/etc.
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Post by chiming in on Oct 26, 2011 11:50:04 GMT -5
I usually don't chime in on these discussions, but feel compelled to here. I'm on the market again as someone who was lucky enough to get a two-year postdoc during the horrible job market that was the 2009-2010 cycle (when there were few if any jobs to be had). There are many great people I know personally in this same boat, who moved across the country to take short-term positions (without having TT positions lined up for afterward, the way some luckies go at their postdocs) with the hope that the market - and their candidacy - would improve. It's been a stressful year-and-a-half, wondering if the extra bit of time, extra rec letter, extra line on the CV will pay off with a job, or if it was just postponing having to look for a new line of work.
I'm not saying that I think search committees shouldn't consider ABD's - I do think that they should and should do so within the parameters of being ABD and not compared postdocs or assistant professors. But I feel like this thread is being accusatory of those of us who have actually been in a stressful state of professional limbo and whose current positions have a definitive and upcoming end-date. We took these positions with the high hopes that they might make a difference for us.
Thanks for letting me rant.
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Post by fosho on Oct 26, 2011 12:16:17 GMT -5
to chiming in: I certainly don't begrudge people who already have jobs and degrees in hand moving around. In the case of post-docs, they obviously have to since those are short-lived, and many of us realize that we might want to move before tenure as well. So it's cool. No hard feelings. It's just another sign of how rough academic can be these days for us newbies. Nobody's happy to find that even though they busted their buns during grad school, they have to compete with post-docs and current Assistants for jobs. Not like that' a big secret, but when the market is tight, it's more noticeable. Basically, it's way number 32 in which the job market sucks.
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Post by slack on Oct 26, 2011 12:35:18 GMT -5
Not like that' a big secret, but when the market is tight, it's more noticeable. Slack. The market is slack, not tight - more workers than jobs.
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Post by unclekarl on Oct 28, 2011 12:52:06 GMT -5
Generally, hiring a postdoc is more about reducing risk [better certainty of quality of work for pubs & teaching] and hiring someone with 'more qualifications' [Ph.D. in hand, experience in Academy as at least nominal faculty, & the extra pubs/teaching]. If you compare a postdoc vs. an ABD from similar quality schools, those are two factors that I believe give the postdoc an edge. Its not always fair [the ABDs can have HUGE potential], but the market is at a place now where there are an unusually large number of postdocs on the market. Schools and individual cases obviously differ, but that's my read of the general trend.
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