text:
(Thanks to my colleague Amanda Greene for the pointer.)
Brian Leiter: Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Nietzsche on Morality (Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks)
Brian Leiter: Naturalizing Jurisprudence: Essays on American Legal Realism and Naturalism in Legal Philosophy
The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy (Oxford Handbooks)
(Thanks to my colleague Amanda Greene for the pointer.)
Posted by Brian Leiter on November 18, 2014 at 03:41 PM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink
Useful information, courtesy of Marcus Arvan.
UPDATE: Interesting observations by Eric Schliesser (Ghent) on the jobs data.
Posted by Brian Leiter on November 17, 2014 at 06:53 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Philosophical Gourmet Report, Philosophy in the News | Permalink
A philosophy PhD student writes:
My spouse and I are on the market together this year, and I have heard quite a bit about "line-sharing" (spouses sharing a position) without any details about how common the practice is. I was wondering if readers could weigh in on whether their department would be open to this, if so, when might be a good time to bring it up, if it is even possible given institutional constraints, how this works with tenure decisions, etc
My spouse and I work in different areas and so it might be beneficial for a department, a small department especially, as they would get two philosophers (with non-overlapping areas of expertise) for the price of one, so to speak. But we aren't applying to the same jobs, unless they are open/open.
Faculty or job seekers with pertinent experience or knowledge, please weigh in.
Posted by Brian Leiter on November 14, 2014 at 01:49 PM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers | Permalink | Comments (8)
If you've studied philosophy at the undergraduate or graduate level, and are thinking about law school, I would like to urge you to consider the University of Chicago Law School. The Law School trails only Yale in per capita placement in law teaching, and graduates are also hugely successful in the private firm market, and in clerkships. Although we have a relatively small faculty (35 full-time academic faculty), we have two philosophers full-time in the Law School (myself and Martha Nussbaum), and a large number of colleagues with philosophical interests. This year, we have three philosophically-minded visiting professors in the Law School as well, Corey Brettschneider from Brown University, Alon Harel from the Hebrew University and Robert Simpson from Monash University, as well as our Law and Philosophy Fellow for this year, Amanda Greene; we expect to have other philosophical visitors in coming years, including Derrick Darby from Michigan.
There is an annual Law & Philosophy Workshop that meets throughout the year, and which students may take for credit: last year's theme (when Martha Nusssbaum ran it with our Law & Philosophy Fellow Sarah Conly ) was "Life and Death," with speakers including Dan Brock, Jeff McMahan, Julian Savulescu, Daniel Wikler, and others and others; the year before (when I ran it with our Law & Philosophy Fellow Justin Coates) the theme was "Freedom and Responsibility," and speakers included Derk Pereboom, Gary Watson, Pamela Hieryonmi, Hanna Pickard, and others. This year's topic is "Free Speech and Its Critics," and speakers will include Joshua Cohen, Seana Shiffrin, Susan Brison, Jason Stanley, and Mary Kate McGowan, among others. We also have regular offerings in the Law School in jurisprudence, feminist philosophy, political philosophy and other areas. Each year we have both a Law & Philosophy Fellow in residence, and a week-long Visiting Political Philosopher in residence (last year it was T.M. Scanlon, the year before David Estlund). The annual Dewey Lecture in Law & Philosophy has recently brought Barbara Herman, Philip Pettit and Elizabeth Anderson to the Law School; Axel Honneth is this year's Dewey Lecturer. In addition, there are usually one or more conferences each year in the Law School related to philosophical topics; last Spring, for example, I organized a conference on "Skepticism about Freedom and Responsibility," with main papers by Conly, Jesse Prinz, Paul Russell, Saul Smilansky, and Gideon Yaffe, with JD and PhD students serving as commentators. There is now a large and lively group of philosophically-minded students here. (More than 10% of the first-year class last year came to us with a philosophy major or advanced degree--that's the highest since I've been here, and probably one of the highest percentage of philosophy students at any law school in the U.S. That doesn't count one JD/PhD in philosophy student, who started in philosophy last year.) Of all the law schools in the U.S., the Chicago experience is also probably most like that of a graduate program in a PhD field, in terms of the intellectual engagement of both faculty and students.
Chicago currently has substantial merit aid to offer to very strong students (the best-known are the Rubenstein Scholarships, but there are other sources of aid, including for students interested in a JD/PhD). Philosophy students, both those with undergraduate majors and those with advanced degrees, have been very successful in getting this aid, and have performed very well at the Law School; as a result philosophy students receive favorable consideration here. Excellent numerical credentials are very important, of course, but even within that pool, applicants with philosophy backgrounds stand out. Students with philosophy backgrounds have recently turned down Yale, Harvard, and other peer law schools to come to Chicago. If you have questions about law study at Chicago, feel free to e-mail me at bleiter-at-uchicago-dot-edu.
Posted by Brian Leiter on October 28, 2014 at 08:36 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Law School Updates, Legal Philosophy | Permalink
Posted by Brian Leiter on October 22, 2014 at 10:20 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophy in the News | Permalink
Joshua Smart, a PhD student at the University of Missouri, invited me to share with readers this interesting new service he created:
While advisors and committees are important, it can be incredibly helpful to discuss one's work with peers in a lower-stakes environment, and it can be particularly enlightening to do so with those who take a different approach or have a different focus. Not only that, but there is evidence from psychological research that thinking about problems in relation to persons who are geographically distant can increase creativity. Virtual Dissertation Groups are a way to capture some of these benefits.
Here's the basic setup. Interested students can fill out the contact form below, and at the beginning of each semester participants will receive the information for their three-membered group. Each full month of the semester, one member of the group will submit some of their in-progress dissertation work to the others. Those other members will then email comments in response, hopefully generating some fun exchanges in the process. I'll send out email reminders when it's time to circulate work and return comments.
You can sign up to participate here. Fall Semester sign-ups are open through September 5th.
Posted by Brian Leiter on August 18, 2014 at 12:03 PM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophy in the News | Permalink
A prospective PhD student writes:
I'm applying to doctorate programs this year and before all its controversy Boulder had a lot of appeal given its areas of strength and location. I've read anything I could find and have reached out to people there to try and create as informed an opinion as possible on what it would be like to study there amidst so much drama, but what concerns me now is that even if I am able to find upstanding people to study with there (something I'm sure I can do), I will be associated with its bad reputation afterwards. More than one adviser cringed after seeing Boulder on my list of potential schools, and I worry that one might wonder why I (a male) chose to go there given its reputation. I'm curious if your readers feel it's worth the risk and if they would be suspicious of someone who would go there given its current climate.
I should note, to start, that it's not clear yet whether Colorado will be accepting new PhD students this fall. But assuming the Department is, any new students will be finishing five to seven years hence. All indications are that the University and the Department are moving aggressively to rectify whatever problems there were--the fact that the female PhD student who recently settled a retaliation claim with the university will continue her PhD studies at Colorado is one indication of that. So my inclination is to think that prospective students should consider Colorado on the merits; and that if they are admitted, they should visit with current students and faculty about the current mood of the program and their feelings about the future.
What do readers think?
Posted by Brian Leiter on August 11, 2014 at 06:08 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophical Gourmet Report | Permalink | Comments (14)
Two sobering charts. Assuming philosophy isn't an outlier among humanities fields (in either direction), this would suggest that a program placing about 65% of its graduates in tenure-track jobs is about average (recall the earlier chart).
(Thanks to John Doris for the pointer.)
UPDATE: An alert reader points out that the employed figure (roughly 65%) is not necessarily all tenure-stream employment, so the data is sobering indeed.
Posted by Brian Leiter on July 15, 2014 at 08:40 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, The Academy | Permalink
Interesting e-mail from a senior philosopher who earned a PhD at a top 50 department:
One thing that bothers me about the analysis that CDJ [Carolyn Dicey Jennings] presents, and I agree with you that it doesn't make a lot of sense, is that unlike the PGR which is just about faculty quality as it guides placement, placement itself is about candidate quality. Sometimes well trained candidates are just bad interviews. Sometimes people decide they don't want to do philosophy after graduate school. Sometimes people get married and don't want to live in another region of the country. Some people don't want to risk a wandering life on the job market. Lots of things happen that are beyond the control of the program. And after doing an adjunct search this year, those are not unreasonable things to think as a candidate (from a marginal program at least). The pool of candidates for our shitty 4/4 low paying job in the middle of nowhere was amazing.
When I was a graduate student at [school name omitted], we hired a Ph.D. [from a top five department] and she told me once there that you aren't allowed to drop out of the program. She said that they will give you every opportunity to get your life together and to get the degree done. I'll never forget what she said: "Quitting and not completing the program reflects poorly on their judgment, and for that reason they want everyone to stay and finish."
CDJ is well meaning, but her analysis leaves a lot to be desired. People from great programs have great training and get jobs. People from less great programs have adequate training and often get jobs, but often they don't. And for good reasons. Programs at the bottom of the PGR have poor placement for lots of reasons (the lower you go, the more likely other things will push you out of the profession). But the kind of correlation CDJ is trying to force really isn't useful in any way. Ultimately it doesn't take into account candidate factors when trying to correlate with PGR quality rankings. And that's one thing that no one in this business wants to tell people. Sometimes it's the candidate and not the program.
These are interesting points, and, of course, given the small numbers, a couple of people who fall into some of these categories could make a significant difference. As longtime readers know, I have occasionally linked to other efforts to aggregate placement data that were more sensible than CDJ's, though in one case the underlying data turned out to be sufficiently unsound that I withdrew that link. I think the model I provided yesterday is a good one to follow for anyone who wants to pursue this. But I also think it is very important to emphasize that, as with mutual funds, past performance is no guarantee of future success, and prospective students should scrutinize with care not just the on-line placement data at each program, but also the results for individual faculty. Unfortunately, there is no substitute for doing this as part of the search process for a graduate program (assuming your goal is academic employment); even rankings of placement that aren't nonsensical are no substitute for doing this.
UPDATE: [The misrepresentations to which I had responded have been removed, so I am removing the original update.]
Posted by Brian Leiter on July 11, 2014 at 01:59 PM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophical Gourmet Report | Permalink
Following up on the data from the other day, I've expanded it a bit, and also noted the 2002 PGR rank and the 2011 PGR rank. Total number of graduates during the period follows the school name.
2002 PGR Rank
2011 PGR Rank
% in TT jobs
% in TT jobs at ranked PhD programs
% in TT jobs at top 20 programs
% in TT jobs at research universities and SLACs
New York University (23)
Rutgers University, New Brunswick (36)
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (31)
UC Los Angeles (21)
Yale University (16)
University of Notre Dame (36)
University of Chicago (30)
UC Riverside (23)
Northwestern University (21)
Boston University (35)
I knew from the past (though I had not posted about this) that there would be a very strong correlation between overall PGR rank and placement in ranked programs, research universities, and SLACs (this is true in every academic field, not just philosophy); what surprised me in this little exercise was how much correlation there was between PGR rank and overall tenure-track placement. Of course, the numbers are small, and if two or three people made different decisions (to accept the tenure-track job rather than the post-doc; not to be the trailing spouse for the other's academic career; etc.) the results would be different; so, too, if I had used a different window. (Just after this window, one UC Riverside graduate got a permanent post in a ranked PhD program, while another got a tenure-track position in a research oriented MA-granting program. I treated the ranked terminal MA programs as research university appointments, and I used U.S. News rankings of liberal arts colleges as a rough cut-off for SLACs.)
At the end of the day, bear in mind that even within department, placement success often tracks which faculty you work with. That's why it pays for students to scrutinize placement records carefully. Years ago, as longtime readers will know, I "bullied" departments into posting detailed placement records (by threatening to call them out in the PGR if they didn't). (I put "bullied' in quotes for the obvious reasons: it's now a meaningless term, but it was hurled about then, and at least it was true that I did threaten a real consequence if departments did not produce information.)
One other takeaway, that I expect will be confirmed by a more extensive study along these lines: all else being more or less equal, "brand name" universities still enjoy a slight advantage in job placement. But more on that once we have more information.
UPDATE: U.S. Research universities, for purposes here, were AAU universities, universities with PhD programs (ranked or not), and ranked terminal MA programs; outside the US, it gets a bit trickier, but in general any places more or less analagous to these was so counted.
Posted by Brian Leiter on July 10, 2014 at 06:51 PM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Philosophical Gourmet Report, Philosophy in the News | Permalink
I picked three departments which provide good information on-line and which had fairly stable PGR ranks over the last dozen years or so. One, NYU, I singled out, recently and correctly, for having an excellent placement record; NYU has also been ranked #1 in the PGR for over a decade now. The second, at my university, has been solidly top 20, though not top 15, during this period. The third, Boston University, has had a PhD program for a long time and has been in the top 50 of the PGR (but not the top 40) for over a decade as well. Let's look at graduates from 2005-2010: this will get out of the mix those who haven't yet been on the academic market, or who have only been on once or twice and so might still be in temporary positions and may yet secure TT positions. In short, this will give us an idea of how many graduates of these programs are getting tenure-track jobs and what kind of tenure-track jobs. (In a few cases, the information on-line turned out to be out-of-date, so I updated it for purposes of the below.)
Let's start with NYU. During this time period we have 23 graduates. 20 of 23 have tenure-track jobs: 87%. 14 have tenure-track jobs at ranked PhD-granting programs (61%). 11 of 23 have tenure-track job at top 20 PhD programs (48%). 19 have tenure-track jobs at research universities (some in fields outside philosophy), and one is at a selective liberal arts college (83%). Of the three graduates not currently in tenure-track jobs, one went back to medical school (so may yet end up in academia), one took a non-academic job in the region where her spouse (also an NYU philosophy PhD) had a tenure-track job, and one graduate clearly had other events going on in her life, about which she has written. 83% placement at research universities and selective liberal arts colleges is remarkable.
Now let's look at the University of Chicago, another strong program but not as strong as NYU. Here we have 30 graduates, of which 23 have tenure-track jobs (77%). 5 of 30 have tenure-track jobs at ranked PhD-granting programs (17%). 2 of 30 have jobs at top 20 PhD programs (7%). 13 of 30 have jobs at research universities or selective liberal arts colleges (43%). Of the graduates not currently in tenure-track jobs, some have taken jobs outside academia, some are in adjunct positions or post-docs, and some are unaccounted for altogether.
And now Boston University. During this time period, 2005-2010, we have 35 graduates. 22 secured tenure-track positions (63%). 1 of 35 has a tenure-track job at a ranked PhD program (3%). None of have tenure-track jobs at top 20 PhD programs. 7 of 35 have tenure-track jobs at research universities or selective liberal arts colleges (20%). Of the graduates not currently in tenure-track jobs, some are in adjunct or non-tenure-stream positions, and some are unaccounted for altogether.
Here's a table summarizing the findings for graduates 2005-2010 from programs whose PGR rank has been fairly stable over the last dozen years:
2011 PGR Rank
% in TT jobs
% in TT jobs at ranked PhD programs
% in TT jobs at top 20 programs
% in TT jobs at research universities and SLACs
New York University
University of Chicago
Boston University
This little exercise took about one hour to compile. I have no doubt that anyone could replicate this data for more departments, if their intention was to provide helpful information to prospective students. I am sure someone will.
Posted by Brian Leiter on July 09, 2014 at 08:00 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophical Gourmet Report, Philosophy in the News | Permalink
I've corresponded periodically with Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced) about her interest in data on the job market, and I have no doubt her intention is to provide constructive information. But the road to hell is often paved with good intentions, and an alleged "comparison" like this is confusing and misleading for fairly obvious reasons:
First, by her own admission, the data is incomplete (indeed, woefully incomplete in some cases I know about).
Second, no one would expect a department's reputation in 2011 to have any correlation with its placement prior to 2011 (unless there had been no changes in the interim), but almost all the placements recorded by Prof. Jennings are from students who would have started graduate school between 2000 and 2005. I would think philosophers are smart enough to understood that past placement success is a backward-looking measure, and that current faculty reputation, as it correlates with job placement, is a forward-looking measure.
Third, her measure of placement success takes no account of the kinds of jobs graduates secure. 2/2 is the same as 4/4, research university is the same as a liberal arts college, a PhD-granting department is the same as a community college. I know philosophers happy in all kinds of positions, but it's not information, it's misinformation, to equate them all in purporting to measure job placement.
Fourth, the placement rate is calculated nonsensically: comparing average placement, as incompletely reported on blogs, between 2011-2014 to average yearly graduates between 2009-2013 is equivalent, in most cases, to comparing two randomly chosen numbers, since many (maybe most) of those placed in 2011-2014 will have completed their degrees well before 2009 and well after 2013. This is so obvious that I'm mystified why anyone would think this is a relevant comparison.
NYU ranks 26th in placement according to Professor Jennings. Here is NYU's actual placement record. It really takes some perverse ingenuity to represent a department with one of the best placement records in the world as having a mediocre placement record. Prof. Jennings really ought to withdraw this nonsense from the web, and wait until she has complete data and can organize it sensibly.
UPDATE: Rather than withdraw the nonsense ranking, Prof. Jennings digs in her heels. Alas. She could share information about job placement without the nonsense ranking/comparison. (I note that just by adding two tenure-track placements from NYU that had been missed, NYU jumped from #26 to #14, which tells you the worth of this measure. In addition, of course, some of those treated as unemployed in this measure are JD/PhDs who have not yet gone on the academic market. Examples like this could be multiplied at all the top departments.)
AND ANOTHER: Another blog says "everyone in the profession should be appreciative and supportive" of Professor Jennings's work and objects to my criticizing her. But this blogger and I have a substantive disagreement: I do not think "everyone in the profession should be appreciative and supportive" since I think what she has produced in this instance (though not only this one, she has done this before) is confusing and highly misleading. I know many others think this as well, I've heard from them. These folks don't blog and, understandably, they don't want to get into disputes in the bowels of cyberspace. That falls to me, alas. This blogger also implies, falsely, that I am particularly critical of junior philosophers. I am not. My criticism of Prof. Jennings is, shall we say, rather more mild than my criticism of Prof. Nagel, among many, many others. I am an egalitarian: if people say and do things in public, I respond to what they say and do, not who they are. If what they say and do suggests poor judgment, dishonesty, carelessness, ulterior motives, etc., I also say so. (Prof. Jennings took issue with some aspects of the criticism, and as a courtesy to her, I removed one part of it.)
SUR-REPLY: The author of the other blog (to which I will not link, since he has created a forum for anonymous insults and obnoxious remarks aimed at me) repeats his objection to my criticizing her the way I did; but I criticized her the way I did because the nature of what she did (and its potentially pernicious consequences) warranted that response. The author can try to redescribe this any way he likes, but the point stands that we disagree about the substance. If I shared his view of the substance, my criticism would have been different. The author also denies, implausibly, that he implied that I harshly criticize junior philosophers; indeed on his Facebook page, he described his blog posting as "how the powerful talk to the less powerful." But any reader of the blog knows this statement is false: I criticize all fools the same way, and always have, without regard to status.
On the substance, some readers suggest that my real mistake was to assume that Prof. Jennings had "good intentions," and that may be right. She may simply be trying to discredit the PGR, which would explain why she circulated in public the nonsense ranking/comparison, knowing full well that it was nonsense. I'm agnostic on whether that is the correct interpretation.
ANOTHER: From a colleague elsewhere, who aptly sums up the nonsense that has accompanied the nonsense rankings:
I've not seen every twist of the CDJ issues. I saw her latest attempt at an "analysis" of placement issues and quickly saw it was a mess.
I then saw her being promoted as a victim of injustice (or mistreatment of some other kind) followed by her embracing that role.
I continue to be amazed that there is a segment of professional philosophers who think that junior faculty are children and highly vulnerable if criticized in any way...etc. And that these people think that inferences from "here is a good deal of bad work" to "this person is not the sharpest tool in the shed" are problematic. I *hope* this segment is relatively small and appears large only because of distortion caused by frequent blogging and loud claims of victimhood.
I was treated like a child exactly once as a junior faculty member and on that occasion I firmly but politely told the person treating me that way that I was a 24 year old professional with a phd and not a high school kid.
The whole display is clearly an artifact of the selection effect of those who turn to blogs and blog comments to air their grievances. Having talked to a number of adults about CDJ, I've yet to see any sympathy for her posture in this matter.
Posted by Brian Leiter on July 01, 2014 at 07:04 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Philosophical Gourmet Report | Permalink
Here. If enough philososophers contribute, it could be useful. (Thanks to Kalle Grill for the pointer.)
Posted by Brian Leiter on June 10, 2014 at 05:24 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink
(Thanks to Robert McGarvey for the pointer.)
Posted by Brian Leiter on June 04, 2014 at 05:54 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, The Academy | Permalink
A philosophy PhD student writes:
I host a few of my papers on a personal website, mainly as a convenient way to share them with friends and colleagues. Lately, a few people have found my papers through search engines and emailed me for permission to cite them. I'm not sure how I should respond to this. None of these papers are currently published, although they are all pieces I would consider preparing for publication. Are there significant risks involved in allowing unpublished work to be cited? Given that these papers are evidently being read already, I worry that refusing permission now would just lead to my work being used without credit. Do others have experience with this kind of situation? What is the best thing to do at this stage?
I would appreciate your advice or that of your readers.
Posted by Brian Leiter on April 23, 2014 at 08:56 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (15)
Here. Mostly positive news. Note that the "top ten" lists for faculty salaries exclude medical school faculty, but include business school and law school faculty--very significant for a place like Chicago (and Rutgers-Newark and Maryland-Baltimore!), and makes the strong showing of Princeton, with neither, quite notable.
Posted by Brian Leiter on April 07, 2014 at 07:58 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, The Academy | Permalink
A recent job seeker writes:
Young people on the job market spend a lot of time worrying about their own behavior, their own performance, their own competitiveness and so on. Having recently come off the job market myself, I feel that there are aspects of the behavior of search committees that also need to be addressed. I recently heard back from a search committee that interviewed me at the APA. This was the first I had heard from them since I walked out of the interview in December. From December until mid-March, I did not hear a word. A second search committee wrote to me in late January with an email that struck me as so close to dishonest that I wasn't sure how I was supposed to reply - a friend received the same email and felt the same way. This particular search committee wrote to me to tell me that, as it turned out, it was all going to be more difficult than they anticipated and that they would not have *any* further information for me until later in the year. What they neglected to mention in that email was that they had, in fact, scheduled campus interviews, but they had not decided to give me one. With websites such as this one - http://phylo.info/jobs - Facebook, and the increasingly international nature of the discipline, it is not hard to find information on who has scheduled interviews and who hasn't.
In my case, I had other possibilities in the pipeline which meant I could just watch this strange behavior and smile. Had I not had other things in the pipeline, however, I would surely have been climbing the walls. I had several friends who were also party to less than transparent emails, or complete silence, throughout this process as well. And those people were climbing the walls because, as is so often the case, their hopes for any kind of academic future were pinned on the tiny number of places that they made it to the interview stage at. I even had one friend who wrote to a department out of desperation for news on the scheduling of campus interviews only to receive a waffly reply about not yet having made any decisions. He found out later that day that not only had that search committee scheduled campus interviews, they had offered the job to someone else.
I understand that the hiring process is complex, and that departments might need to hold their cards close to their chests, as it were, but this process is difficult for *everyone* involved. I don't think it is alright to leave people hanging for months. Nor do I think it is alright to send out emails that, perhaps even subtly, misrepresent the stage of the process a search committee is at. With a timely email to the effect that 'whilst your application is still active, we regret to inform you that you have not been selected for a campus interview', everyone can get on with their lives.
Thoughts from readers?
Posted by Brian Leiter on March 21, 2014 at 09:23 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (23)
Spiros recently touched on this, as did Philospohy Smoker, with a cautionary example (short version: candidate asked SLAC for a bunch of things, and the SLAC simply withdrew the offer). My own view is that if you have other offers, you can negotiate. Otherwise, all you can really do is get clear about policies, and ask about one or two things that might be especially important, in the spirit of "this would very nice, is it possible?" But "negotiation" and "bargaining" is only really a posture to adopt if one has another option in hand and one is prepared to walk away from the offer. Or so it seems to me. (If there's enough interest, I'll open a thread for comments on this next week when I have more regular computer access.)
Posted by Brian Leiter on March 13, 2014 at 05:57 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink
Philosopher Dan Frank (Purdue) writes:
With the proliferation of philosophy post-doc opportunities, I am curious how this is effecting tenure-track hiring negotiations from the side of the hiring department. Should departments grant/turn down requests for deferment to take up a tenure-track appointment in order to take up a post-doc?
Posted by Brian Leiter on March 10, 2014 at 07:15 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (16)
A colleague elsewhere showed me the response to a rejection letter from a candidate who basically wrote back to say, sarcastically, "I can understand why you hired John Smith, even though he has far fewer publications than me in the same area." In fact, people are not hired by counting up their total publications; responsible hiring committees actually read the publications and writing samples of their finalists. Someone who sends a response like this assumes, falsely, that quantity of publication is what should matter and implies, probably unfairly and obviously self-servingly, that the hiring committee was unable to make a qualitative evaluation of the work. Since word of these kinds of replies do get around, the candidate is not doing himself any favors.
Posted by Brian Leiter on March 04, 2014 at 06:52 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink
Who would have guessed? Not Spiros.
Posted by Brian Leiter on January 28, 2014 at 05:10 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Personal Ads of the Philosophers (and other humor), Philosophy in the News | Permalink
Posted by Brian Leiter on January 27, 2014 at 06:32 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophy in the News | Permalink
A junior faculty member writes:
I am an assistant professor, approaching tenure. When I was hired, I received multiple assurances that the university would assist me with a spousal accommodation. When my spouse's work situation changed, I approached my dean and department chair, who were receptive to helping. A suitable position was found, but there was no funding to make the hire. I have no doubt that my department wants to keep me here. I am now on the job market, and have some prospects, including upcoming campus visits. My question concerns the best strategy for proceeding. Should I receive a desirable offer, I am willing to give my current institution a chance to make me a better offer (although I have doubts that they can offer much). My question is whether I should tell them now that I am actively seeking another position, or wait to see if a better offer materializes. My fear is that if I do not get an offer elsewhere, I will have nothing with which to negotiate. On the other hand, I worry about tipping my hand too soon. Thoughts and advice from readers who have experience with this (from either side) would be appreciated.
My view is that if you have previously communicated your interest in some kind of spousal accomodation, all you can do is reiterate it. It would be a mistake to say anything about "looking around," precisely because you might come up empty-handed, and your colleagues might well hold it against you. If you get an offer, then it is quite appropriate to raise the pertinent issues; absent an offer, there is nothing to say, beyond mentioning, when appropriate, the spousal accomodation issue.
Posted by Brian Leiter on January 09, 2014 at 07:18 PM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (7)
A reader in his early 40s, who has retired, for health reasons, from another professional career (one in which some applied ethicists work), has been teaching some applied philosophy courses as an adjunct and "found that I absolutely love teaching amd mentoring students." He asks:
My undergraduate degree was in Philosophy which I obtained from a large state school notably not listed in the PGR where I was an average student in the subject. But, it has been awhile since I studied Philosophy, though I recently spent two years in graduate school for International Relations at a highly respected institution and did very well GPA-wise despite having to work...while attending school. So I applied to a PGR listed terminal MA program, and was accepted, looking to use the experience to build my academic credentials in philosophy in order to (hopefully) be accepted into a top PhD program. I love the subject and would love the opportunity to teach/conduct research it (I especially see myself at a SLAC as I would like the interaction with the students a SLAC offers). I also have no illusions regarding the nature of graduate school having spent two years in it already. Additionally, I have researched the job market and completely understand the risks I am taking.
Thus, my question is this: I will be in my early 50's when I hit the job market. Am I kidding myself that I could ever get a job, at such an old age, in the tight and competitive market that is academic Philosophy even if I am lucky enough to be accepted into a top program? And, would a top program even consider me? Let's face it, there is age discrimination out there no matter how much we might want it to not be. Financially, my MA is paid for.... I also have my pension coming in every month (which is substantially more than a PhD student stipend) as well as full medical and dental coverage for my family, so I do not see having to take out loans to supplement my income for living expenses, etc to attain my goal of a PhD (at least initially). Finally, being disabled, academia seems like am excellent place for me to build a second career as my mind is not injured/broken, only my body. Any thoughts/advice regarding the reality of my situation from your readers would be greatly appreciated, especially since I will be pursuing the MA no matter what they say.
Thoughts/advice from readers, including those in similar situations, faculty who have worked with older or non-traditional students, etc.?
Posted by Brian Leiter on January 06, 2014 at 08:14 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophical Gourmet Report | Permalink | Comments (24)
IHE has details on History and other academic job markets. I've never understood why the APA doesn't collect this data in as timely a way.
ADDENDUM: This chart, showing the number of jobs in a sub-field and the number of new PhDs in that sub-field is striking:
Entry-Level History Positions vs. Specialties of New Ph.D.s
|Number of Openings
|Number of New Ph.D.s
|North America
|Latin America
|Middle East
Is there any sub-field of philosophy where there are more jobs than new PhDs? I'm skeptical there is, but invite data from readers in the comments.
Posted by Brian Leiter on January 02, 2014 at 11:01 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, The Academy | Permalink | Comments (1)
A young philosopher writes:
I've been invited to contribute an article to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), and I am wondering whether it would be wise to accept the invitation. Several of my friends and colleagues have likewise been invited, and there has been a lot of disagreement on this question. More specifically, I would like to know:
1. Whether an IEP article is a good idea for tenure or job market purposes.
2. Independent of (1), whether contributing to IEP means doing a good thing for students or the general public.
3. How the IEP is regarded in the profession in general, on its own or compared to the SEP.
My own sense is that there is no comparison, in terms of both quality and visibility, between SEP and IEP. I never use IEP, whereas I use SEP a lot, and I expect I'm not atypical. What do philosophers think?
Posted by Brian Leiter on December 19, 2013 at 09:39 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (11)
A senior philosopher elsewhere writes:
I get the sense that things may be changing such that the old time-frame is not valid any more. But what is your sense? Do people hear still about skype interviews or campus visits roughly as they did before, i.e., before say Dec 23 or so, or is it spread out more? My students haven't heard much so far, and I'm wondering. I would have thought that people would be hearing about skype interviews by now, but I am not on top of this this year.
Posted by Brian Leiter on December 10, 2013 at 03:44 PM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (6)
It shows slight improvement from 2012 compared to 2011, though less than 60% of new Humanities PhDs are finding jobs.
Posted by Brian Leiter on December 09, 2013 at 09:33 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, The Academy | Permalink
Spiros wonders if this is a trend. My sense is that it is.
Posted by Brian Leiter on December 09, 2013 at 05:26 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink
A senior philosopher elsewhere writes:
Over the years dossiers for applicants for junior positions have gotten larger and larger. Some dossiers we have received for our current search number more than 80 pages, One thing that is particularly striking to me is the number of letters of recommendation that each dossier contains. Back in the dark ages, when I was in graduate school, dossiers included on average three letters. In this year's search not a single dossier that I have seen includes that few. Many include six, seven or even eight letters. I don't fully understand the reason why, though. I am tempted to attribute at least part of the ever increasing number of letters to understandable anxiety on the part of job seekers. There seems to be a view that the more people you can get to say good things about you, the better off you will be. I certainly understand and sympathize with the anxiety. On the other hand, I doubt that there is a single search committee that is eager to read an average of six or seven letters per file. Nor do I think that more letters means more information or a more honest assessment of the candidate. Just for comparison sake, a typical tenure file at my own university will generally include around eight outside letters. Do we really need the same number of letters for a junior appointment as for a tenure case? Personally, I don't think so. But I am sure reasonable people can disagree on this score and would like to know what others think.
To stir the pot just a little, let me add the following. In some number of cases -- though I'm not prepared to quantify whether it be many, most, or just a few -- the additional letters come from people not from the candidate's home institution. Sometimes this makes some sense and is helpful -- if, for example, the outside writer has taught, supervised, collaborated with, or been colleagues with the candidate. Outside PhD examiners are often asked to write, for example. And you would certainly expect people who have moved a bit from place to place to have letters reflecting that fact. Or, in another vein, if a candidate has worked in somebody's lab, say, as sort of the philosopher in residence. All that makes sense and I have no beef with it. On the other hand, many outside letters seem to be the result of proactive networking on the part of candidates. Perhaps the thought is that it is important to have letters from prominent people in other departments with whom one has had some degree of contact. The thought may be that this networking will help increase and demonstrate the reach and impact of one' s work. In a few rare cases, such letters may carry some tiny bit of weight. But that, I think, really is the exception rather than the rule. In my experience, most such letters are relatively bland and pointless. They are neither particularly helpful nor, thank goodness for the candidates, particular hurtful. I suspect that it's an issue of divided loyalties. Seldom have I seen a letter from prominent philosopher P from institution X writing for candidate C from institution Y that directly compares C to P's own students at P's own institution. Most of what such letters add is generic praise. But there's usually enough of that in the "core" letters to suffice.
I'm not sure anything can stop the momentum for more and more letters. And maybe I wrong to think the momentum needs to be stopped. Maybe I'm just tired from reading thousands of pages of files. But I thought this might make a good discussion point for your blog.
I generally recommend candidates have not more than five or six letters, on the assumption that the 5th and/or 6th letters really add something--e.g., a letter from someone outside the department who is expert in the candidate's area and can add something useful about the candidate's work. What do readers think? Signed comments preferred, though grad students and job seekers may post with a pseudonym (pick a distinctive one).
Posted by Brian Leiter on December 04, 2013 at 08:23 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (26)
He's reposted it, since it is timely again.
Posted by Brian Leiter on December 03, 2013 at 10:12 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers | Permalink
A graduate student writes:
What do people think of grad students making their work available online early in their careers? It seems pretty common for students still doing coursework to post paper drafts on Academia.edu, even when the drafts are far from publishable, and I'm not sure if the potential advantages outweigh the potential costs. Having your name known is probably good, as are generating interest in your research, starting conversations with people working in the same area, and maybe showcasing your potential; on the other hand giving people a preview of your immature work might cut the other way if rather than recognizing in it scholarly potential they just see bad grad student papers. Having early drafts online also means that reviewers for a journal can google the title of your paper and see who wrote it, thereby removing anonymity. I recently had a paper of mine show up in a collection of links on a blog I'd never heard of and suddenly Academia.edu was informing me of dozens of views per day. For a moment I was excited, but then I remembered that people were reading a hastily-composed workshop draft. I think the ideas and prose represent me well but there are sections missing and the argument needs substantial work (as I learned when certain parts of it got shredded at the workshop). I thought about taking the paper down and leaving just an abstract, or removing it altogether, but I never made it past worrying. Did I err in leaving it up for public scrutiny?
We did touch on aspects of this topic briefly once before, but these questions are more specific. I'll note that this is a major issue in academic law because of the substantial use of SSRN. The question there is when junior faculty or job seekers should put their work on-line; my advice is not to put anything on-line until they think it's ready to be submitted for publication. The reason is simple: first impressions are sticky, and if you put a half-baked piece of work on-line, you're unlikely to get a second chance with that reader. I think the same advice applies to grad students--great to put work on-line that's at a stage where you and the faculty you work with think it's ready (or very close to ready) for submission to a journal, otherwise not.
What do readers think? Faculty, please use your name; students may use a distinctive pseudonym, but must include a valid e-mail address, which will not appear.
Posted by Brian Leiter on November 25, 2013 at 05:44 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (12)
A job seeker writes:
I hope that you can find the time in the coming days to blog about the current state of the academic job market vis-a-vis the exorbitant rates that interfolio charges for uploading letters vs emailing them. This problem would seem to have a rather easy solution though a consensus on the problem itself would be needed before it could be implemented.
The problem, in short, is this. Interfolio charges 4$ per letter to upload letters to application websites. This means that a typical student who has 5 committee members and one teaching letter is paying 24$ to send out a single application in most cases. Multiply this by the 50 or so applications a student will send out and the price of uploading letters alone costs 1200$. Given that you have written about the high costs of traveling to the APA this issue would appear to be on par with that one.
Obviously there are issues of justice here as well. Those with deep pockets can afford to send out more applications and upload a greater number of letters than those without who must be more judicious. The result is two tiered system that favors the already fortunate.
Frankly, I don't see how Interfolio justifies charging 24$ and up for pressing 'send' but this issue has ben cropping up again and again on my FB feed and in conversation. Further there seems an easy solution. Job posters could use interfolio for the application procedure thus minimizing costs or they should be encouraged to include an email in the ad where letters can be sent for far less than the upload fee.
Thoughts from readers?
Posted by Brian Leiter on November 13, 2013 at 08:19 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (26)
...based on his or her on-line presence, including tweets. (Earlier foray into the topic.) Whether this generalizes beyond the case of college admissions is an unknown.
Posted by Brian Leiter on November 12, 2013 at 11:55 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Of Cultural Interest | Permalink
Mr. Carson, to his credit, has been fixing some of the errors in the original version of his post. He has limited the study to US and Canadian programs; he's corrected a number of errors in the original data, with help from philosophers at various departments; and he's revised the comparison of the placement results to the 2011 PGR rankings. Here's what he writes in the new version:
I had compared placement rankings based on data from 2000 to 2013 to faculty rankings from 2011 only. However, this was unfair. Either I needed to compare a school's overall placement ranking to a school's overall faculty ranking, or I needed to compare a school's placement rank by year to a school's faculty rank by year instead of mixing the two approaches together. I correct that mistake below by looking at the average overall faculty ranks compared with the average overall placement ranks.
The overall assumption of the Leiter Report seems to be that if you go to a school with well ranked faculty, you will get a better placement in both the short term and the long term, and hence, have a more successful philosophy career overall, than if you went to a school with lesser ranked faculty. I wish to test that assumption.
I calculated the average faculty rank for each school from 2004 -2013 and then compared this with the overall placement rank for each school (based on TT/T/permanent placements) from 2004-2013. If the overall assumption of the Leiter Report is correct, schools with overall faculty ranks that are great should, in general, have placement ranks that are great as well. Similarly, schools with overall faculty ranks that are poor should, in general, have overall placement ranks that are poor as well. Is this the case?
Looking at the initial placement ranks, it appears that this assumption is moderately supported. Looking at the chart below, one can see that there is a positive trend between overall faculty rank and overall placement rank. As a schools overall placement rank gets poorer (moves to the right), the overall faculty rank gets poorer as well (moves upwards). However, one can also see that there are many schools that do not follow this trend. In particular, there are several schools that rank very well in placement but do not rank well in faculty. Similarly, there are several schools that rank well in faculty but do not rank so well in placement.
How strong is this relationship? Using the correlation coefficient, the faculty rank explains (roughly) about 50% of the placement rank (Note: I am assuming faculty rank determines placement rank, not the other way around). However, that still leaves about 50% of the placement rank explained by other unknown factors.
He also found that specialty rankings had a slightly stronger correlation.
This is less ridiculous than what Mr. Carson did first time around, but it still does not make a lot of sense, since placement is backwards-looking and faculty quality is, at least as far as placement goes, forward-looking. If one is looking at placement from 2000-2013, it would be most meaningful to look at PGR ranking from, say, 1995 to 2008, since the students placed 2000-2013 would have been looking at schools during that period. My guess is the correlation would go up considerably, though it still wouldn't be anywhere close to 100% given all the other variables that go into placement success. (As a side-note, when I first ranked NYU highly in the late 1990s, I was lectured by various people that this wasn't reasonable, since the school didn't have a placement record yet. As I pointed out to those posing this objection, Ned Block, Kit Fine and others all had placed students in their prior jobs, it seemed a tad odd to think they wouldn't now. Now that Mr. Carson has fixed some of his data, guess who is #1 in his placement ranking?)
In addition, Mr. Carson still has no categorization of jobs other than tenure-track. But if he were to incorporate something like the widely used Carnegie Classifications, then I would be astonished if he didn't find an even stronger correlation between, say, PGR rank and placement at doctorate-granting institutions. Breaking out that information would be useful for students, since students have different preferences and aspirations for the kinds of jobs they hope to get.
UPDATE: It was just pointed out to me that while Mr. Carson, correctly, removed the UK and Australasian schools because he didn't understand what it meant to be placed into a job as a "Lecturer," it also turns out that he's not counting any North American graduates who get these jobs (which are typically better than tenure-track jobs, i.e., they are de facto permanent) in the placement results. So even for the North American programs, the "placement rankings" are undercounting significantly (especially, I should add, for the highest ranked PGR departments, whose graduates often head overseas [and often come from overseas]). I would urge the Philosophy News website to put a major WARNING on this data, something like, "Work in Progress--Not Yet Reliable."
Posted by Brian Leiter on October 09, 2013 at 11:43 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophical Gourmet Report | Permalink
Posted by Brian Leiter on October 07, 2013 at 10:02 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophy in the News | Permalink
Some useful data here. The presentation is a bit misleading in some respects, however, so I'll just repost here the comment I posted there:
You have put together some very interesting data, for which my thanks and no doubt the thanks of others. However, you need to reframe your presentation of this data in several respects to avoid grossly misleading students:
First, you should immediately remove the UK and Australasian schools from the lists, since you have grossly undercounted their placements. It's just irresponsible and unfair to those schools to list them given thtat, as you acknowledge, you didn't really know how to interpret their placements. [The author has since removed these schools.]
Second, many students interested in placement are interested in the quality of the jobs, as well as the tenure-stream status. Your way of 'ranking' the schools erases the distinction between placement at a 4/4 school with mediocre students and a placement at Princeton (not to mention all the gradations inbetween). You should make clear in each chart that the "Placement Rank" is really only "Percentage of PhDs Who Secured a Tenure-Track Job Somewhere." (If you were so inclined you might examine the placements in terms of the kinds of schools, perhaps using the Carnegie system for categorizing institutions of higher education.)
Third, of course there is no correlation between placement in tenure-track jobs over the last 15 years, roughly, and the quality of faculties in 2011! Why would the quality of the faculty in 2011 predict placement circa 2000, for a cotorie of students who started 5-8 years before that? As I note, including in the material you link to, placement records are backwards-looking measures, so only where faculties have not changed in the interim could past performance be thought a likely indicator of future success. So you should eliminate entirely the meaningless comparison between 2011 faculty quality rankings and tenure-track placement (without regard to kind of institution) going back some 15 years.
Fourth, the chart about the percentage of graduates currently in academic philosophy needs a caveat for the benefit of students. Schhools vary quite a bit in how many of the students that enroll end up getting the PhD. MIT, for example, has historically had very low attrition. Other schools have attrition on the order of 50% or more. So while the data you've collected tells us the percentage of *students who managed to complete the PhD* who got some tenure-track job, it doesn't given an incoming student a realistic picture of his or her prospects of getting the PhD. Schools that have high attrition may, in fact, be losing or forcing out precisely the students less likely to be competitive on the job market--we just don't know. It's why I've encouraged schools to post their attrition and completion rates, which many have now now done.
UPDATE: There are various errors in the data (besides the egregious one of undercounting placement from British and Australasian schools), including for Northwestern and CUNY. So students should approach this with caution. The errors identified so far do raise questions about the reliability of what is reported, quite apart from its correct interpretation.
Posted by Brian Leiter on October 04, 2013 at 01:39 PM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Philosophical Gourmet Report, Philosophy in the News | Permalink
Posted by Brian Leiter on October 01, 2013 at 06:31 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink
This horrifying story comes from philosopher Darren Hudson Hick, now a VAP at Texas Tech:
I started at Susquehanna University (Selinsgrove, PA) as a tenure-track assistant professor of philosophy specializing in aesthetics in the fall of 2011, having done three years of prior teaching elsewhere as a VAP. In June of last year, I met with the Dean of my college to discuss the possibility of going up for early tenure, taking three years off my tenure-track. She informed me that this had never been done successfully at Susquehanna, but given the strength of my research, teaching, and service, she advocated this move. So, I went ahead with the requisite administrative hoop-jumping,
which involved moving my mid-tenure review up to this past year with the presumption that I would be up for tenure the following year.
A month later, I got a call for a meeting from the Dean. I arrived at the meeting the next day also attended (to my surprise) by my department chair and the CFO for the university. In a nutshell, I was told that somebody in Human Resources had screwed up and missed the deadline for filing my green card application. At this point, it's worth pointing out that I'm Canadian, and so would ultimately need a green card for my job. Susquehanna took on the task of the green card application. If you're not familiar with this whole system, the applicant needs to apply for the green card within 18 months of the date of hire (being when I signed the contract—December of 2010), where the HR employee had been working towards an imaginary deadline of 18 months from the date I actually started the job (August, 2011). Nobody in HR, nor in their outside immigration firm, seemed to have noticed the error until it was too late to do anything about it.
The Dean and CFO apologized profusely for all of this, but I was told that what this ultimately, legally, meant was that the university had to go back to square one and re-advertise the job I had already had for a year, meaning (unless I wanted to be supremely confident) I had to go back on the market again. And so this is what I did. (In the meantime, the HR employee was let go.)
(Side-note: I was informed by a colleague at another school—who had been through an eerily similar situation—that there was another route to the green card which got around this issue. I brought this up with the administration at Susquehanna, and I was informed that they would pay for an initial consult with their immigration firm on the matter, but that if I wanted to go that route, I'd ultimately have to pay for it myself. The price tag was $7000—too rich for my blood.)
I did get an interview for my job—two in a series, actually—and it was all very casual. Everyone essentially said, well, we already know you, so what shall we talk about? I went out for dinner with the department, and a grand time was had by all. In the meantime, my mid-tenure review was still underway (these being two distinct processes).
In early December, I was informed by the Dean that the job had been offered to another candidate (actually, I had to e-mail her because nobody was telling me anything, and it took her three days to get back to me). I was not told why. The next week (again, after e-mailing her and waiting three days), I was informed by the Dean that the other candidate had accepted the job. (My mid-tenure review, as you might expect, had been cancelled.) I received an official letter that same week from the President of the university, stating that I was not being retained.
I appealed to the university's Faculty Affairs Committee—whose job is to deal with faculty grievances that fall outside the ordinary lines of complaint—who replied within hours to say that this was not their jurisdiction, case closed. I also appealed to the professional ethics committee of the American Philosophical Association, who investigated the case (declaring the matter "outrageously immoral"), though they ultimately felt that the administration's actions did not fall within their grounds for censure. And I had been dealing with the Pennsylvania branch of the AAUP, who felt that there were definite legal grounds for grievance here. (PA employment law is complicated, and an employer can effectively fire an employee for any reason, or no reason at all, unless it amounts to discrimination within the bounds of the law, or violates contract. The AAUP legal counsel argues that my case constitutes a violation of contract as a result of negligence.) However, their legal counsel isn't exactly the best at communication, and I haven't heard from him in months, and rather than spending several more months chasing him down, I decided it was in my better interest to simply let it go and get on with my life. My year, as you might imagine, had already been stressful enough.
In the end, bottom line, because someone in HR missed a deadline, my job was taken away. I was—and have been—given no further explanations, by anyone. From December (when it became clear that I wouldn't be staying at Susquehanna), up until I left this summer, no one in the department said so much as "hello" to me. The Dean apologized again several times and that was about it. As it turns out, this wasn't a good year for the market it aesthetics (is it ever?), and so I count myself very lucky that I was able to secure a VAP position at Texas Tech University, where I taught before taking the job at Susquehanna.
I wanted to write this little missive as something of an object lesson to non-American academics on the tenure-track (and those going on the market) here in the U.S. Almost without exception, everyone I have told this story to has responded either by saying that it is one of the worst academic horror stories they have heard, or by telling me about someone else that the same thing has happened to. I'm hoping that, in some small way, this will help to reduce the number of the latter.
Posted by Brian Leiter on September 24, 2013 at 07:12 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink
One job seeker writes:
I thought you might be interested in a posting on the effects of decentralization of job advertising on both job seekers and letter writers. Personally, I hate it. I most certainly appreciate that I no longer have to pay to see ads, but in terms of being able to plan your semesters has gone completely out the window, and I am sure it is even harder on letter writers. My first deadline this year is Sept 22, followed by on on Sept 25th. Might Philjobs consider scheduling the posting of jobs?
What do others think? As a letter writer (though the season is still early), I've not found this to be a problem, esp. because many candidates use Interfolio. But it may still make it more complicated for the candidates to manage the varying deadlines. Job seekers may, if they want, post without their name, but please include a real e-mail address (which will not appear).
Posted by Brian Leiter on September 18, 2013 at 08:56 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (8)
Here. From his conclusion:
Self-declared "pluralist" departments are not pluralist in any sense worth valuing. They are typically not open-minded diverse places where a vast variety of philosophical issues are worked on. They are more commonly enclave departments that impose on their students an especially narrow conception of what's going on in Philosophy, while also enlisting their unwitting students as pawns in a futile disciplinary crusade to invert existing norms and standards so that, conveniently, the things they do come out as the only kind of philosophy that really matters. Do not allow self-declared pluralists to use you and your professional prospects as chips in their play for disciplinary hegemony. Do philosophy instead. And the best places to do philosophy (of any kind) are the places that do not wrap themselves up in the ridiculous garb of "pluralism."
Posted by Brian Leiter on September 12, 2013 at 05:03 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Personal Ads of the Philosophers (and other humor), Philosophy in the News | Permalink
Interesting infographic, courtesy of Jack Kelle. One point to bear in mind is that the less well-regarded the PhD program you attend, the higher the probability of ending up an adjunct.
UPDATE: My colleage Michael Kremer writes:
The page to which you linked on the adjunct crisis overstates things by *a lot* in one crucial respect.
He reports over 140,000 doctorates awarded last year. That seemed incredibly suspicious, so I checked the link he gave for that datum.
The 140,000 figure "Includes Ph.D., Ed.D., and comparable degrees at the doctoral level. Includes most degrees formerly classified as first-professional, such as M.D., D.D.S., and law degrees." footnote 1 at http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72
The number of actual PhDs is actually closer to 50,000. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf10308/
So it is more like one "professorship" position (whatever that means; I didn't check further) for every three PhDs rather than one position for every 10 PhDs.
I don't want in any way to diminish the problem with adjuncts making up the majority of the teaching faculty, their poor working conditions, miserable pay,lack of benefits, etc. But I don't think falsehood in the service of laudable goals is a good strategy.
AND ANOTHER: Kathryn Norlock (Trent) writes:
I have heard from students, colleagues, and reporters here in Canada yesterday and today, who wanted me to confirm the number on the infographic to which you recently linked, that the "AVG." salary of tenure-track professors in the USA is $120,000.
I do not find any evidence that this is the case, and rather than continue fielding individual emails myself, I would ask that you clarify on your blog that the data from this table:
suggests that the infographic's "avg" comes closest to reflecting the average salary of Full Professors at doctoral institutions, that is, our most senior colleagues, and the smallest segment of "tenure-track" instructional faculty. I find it shockingly irresponsible of the infographic authors to suggest otherwise.
I agree this is misleading, though full professors are sometimes said to be "tenure-stream," and it may be that an adjunct of comparable seniority (I do not know) might indeed earn an average of 20K. In any case, these two examples suggest that the 'infographic' be approached with some caution.
Posted by Brian Leiter on September 11, 2013 at 07:13 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, The Academy | Permalink
Philosopher David Estlund (Brown) writes:
I've heard from some people that in the current market it's a significant advantage to have your PhD defended before the APA meetings in December. Traditionally, this would have meant being in your second round of applications. But candidates might feel pressure to finish up a semester early in their first round. I just don't know if there's any basis for the empirical claim. I can't see that making a significant difference to me if I were on a search committee, but that's a very small sample. This is just one way in which the market pressure is changing conventional wisdom, but there's a danger that some of the change is based more on conjecture and anxiety than on evidence. What do you think?
I am inclined to agree with David. Letters of reference typically discuss how far along the candidate is. To be sure, if someone has been in graduate school for eight or more years, then a set defense date is a good thing, but otherwise I would think it doesn't matter. What do others think? Signed comments strongly preferred, especially from faculty.
Posted by Brian Leiter on September 04, 2013 at 12:38 PM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (10)
Posted by Brian Leiter on August 18, 2013 at 05:25 PM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers | Permalink
A new graduate student writes:
As an incoming grad student, and reader of your blog, I am cognizant of the generally harsh reality of the academic job market. In light of that, I obviously do not want to do anything that would lessen my chances on the market. I am wondering what the general consensus is -- if there is one -- regarding social media accounts and academic hiring. To use Twitter as an example, there does seem to be a benefit to having a public Twitter account in order to a) control your online presence (whatever that means), and b) participate in public conversations with the philosophical community. A positive instance of the latter that comes to mind is simply a public appeal for resources in a specific area (i.e. "Does anybody know of any articles discussing narrative identity and Nussbaum's capabilities?").
The concern, however, would be that any number of Twitter gaffes could lead to a negative perception of the job candidate by the hiring committee. A candidate might Tweet in support of an unpopular political movement, or express an opinion that they later come to regret, or indicate that they have questionable work/study habits. Ignoring the more obvious of the possible kinds of poor Twitter etiquette -- swearing, racism/sexism, illegal behavior -- is it better to just hide Twitter activity altogether? Or do hiring committees not even look at such things? I would hate to lose out on a great job opportunity because I wrote a tweet three years prior in support of an unpopular/divisive issue (i.e. for/against gay marriage, government surveillance, or a particular Presidential candidate). Still,neither do I like the idea of losing out on the sorts of personal/professional relationships that Twitter might help to foster by making my profile publicly accessible. Any guidance from you or your readers would be fantastic!
My own advice would be to steer clear of any public social media: the evidence is that first impressions are "sticky," and there is way too much risk that a bad first impression will be created by unfortunate or out-of-context remarks on social media, rather than a student's work.
I've opened this for comments from readers; graduate students may post without their name (but use a distinctive handle), but must include a valid e-mail address, which will not appear.
UPDATE: The responses on Twitter, or at least the few I've seen, inadvertently make the point about the potential for that medium, perhaps in particular, for embarrassment. One philosopher (who I shall not name, to protect the foolish) reads the preceding and then glosses it, bizarrely, as "Brian Leiter outs himself as a fan of cowardly conformity and surrender to group think, for others anywT telling." Yes, my whole career has been about "cowardly conformity," and that was precisely the question my student correspondent was asking: "Dear Prof Leiter, how can I be more cowardly and conformist?" Even more amusingly, someone who tweets pseudonymously (!) declares: "The discipline's archetype Socrates saw no qualms with being held accountable for his opinions and we commend him for it." So why does this guy hide his identity? You decide. In any case, most commentators and correspondents understood that this was not about whether you should defend controversial views in your philosophical work, but whether you should risk making an ass of yourself in superficial ways on public social media...the way, say, the preceding tweeters have done.
AND FOR A DIFFERENT VIEW: This philosopher sings the praises of Twitter. (Thanks to Andy M. for the pointer.)
AND ONE MORE: Even famous faculty can go down in flames on Twitter!
Posted by Brian Leiter on August 08, 2013 at 06:05 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, The Academy | Permalink | Comments (44)
A graduate student writes:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing a PhD 'by published/publishable papers'? An obvious answer might be: "The crucial advantage is having published articles, or articles that are immediately ready to submit to journals." But someone who completes a traditional PhD dissertation can publish during candidature as well. So, I'm curious if there are any further advantages or disadvantages of the 'by publication' route? It might be most helpful to know what people on hiring committees think (even if there may be considerations that members of a hiring committee wouldn't consider relevant when evaluating a job candidate).
Thoughts from readers? Signed comments preferred.
Posted by Brian Leiter on July 30, 2013 at 06:07 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophical Gourmet Report | Permalink | Comments (14)
Posted by Brian Leiter on July 09, 2013 at 08:00 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession, Philosophical Gourmet Report | Permalink | Comments (24)
A young philosopher on the job market writes, regarding the recently announced merger:
I worry that, since PhilJobs is already pretty much perfect, the joint venture can only make it worse. First, since they're going to charge for ads, some jobs that would otherwise be posted to PhilJobs will probably not be. Second, one of the worst things about JFP is that job ads vanish after 30 days if departments don't shell out extra. Sometimes they vanish even before the deadline, which creates obvious problems. But sometimes it's helpful to be able to look up job ads months after the application if, say, one unexpectedly gets an interview.
I suspect a number of your readers (anyone on the job market) might have similar worries.
I have no information, but hopefully knowledgeable individuals will respond!
UPDATE: David Chalmers, who is co-director of the PhilPapers Foundation (which hosts PhilJobs) writes:
I'm glad your correspondent thinks so well of PhilJobs! The new service will use the PhilJobs software and so will keep most of the old service's virtues. We certainly expect to keep ads available until deadline and at least for a while after deadline. It's true that because we'll be charging advertisers where the old PhilJobs was free, we may lose some ads. But we'll make a proactive effort to reach out to such advertisers in these cases to ensure that the service is as comprehensive as possible. In any case, it was inevitable that PhilJobs would have charged advertisers eventually in order to survive, so the merger shouldn't be blamed for this development. The new service will be more comprehensive than either JFP or PhilJobs on their own would have been.
If one compares the new service to the situation just a couple of years ago, we think the new arrangement is great for all parties. For the APA, it provides a much better job service with which to serve the profession. For the PhilPapers Foundation, it provides desperately needed income that will support many new services to the profession.
For job seekers, it provides a definitive high-tech job service that is now free to job seekers around the world, with features that are far beyond the old JFP already, and with many new features to come in future years. We're grateful to the APA for being forward-looking enough to help make all this possible.
Posted by Brian Leiter on July 01, 2013 at 05:45 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (4)
Posted by Brian Leiter on May 23, 2013 at 10:27 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Personal Ads of the Philosophers (and other humor), The Academy | Permalink
A reader writes with a useful question:
What are the criteria for co-authorship in philosophy? What level of contribution to a philosophy paper merits being named co-author,and what level of contribution do you assume named authors on philosophical papers to have made?
Posted by Brian Leiter on February 28, 2013 at 09:01 AM in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Issues in the Profession | Permalink | Comments (33)


text:
MODUK DEF STAN 80-129: Issue 5: 05/2010
Publication Date:
DOD Adopted ANSI Approved Approved
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This Standard specifies requirements for an air-drying, electrical insulating varnish for use on coils, armature windings, electrical and radio apparatus.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- Release Date: Dec 3, 2013
- Also On: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
- Summary: Fight for dominance across the vast and majestic Chinese mainland in 4 massive maps, using all-new vehicles and high-tech military equipment.
- Developer: EA DICE
- Genre(s): Modern
- Cheats: On GameFAQs
- More Details and Credits »
Score distribution:
Positive: 0 out of 2
Mixed: 2 out of 2
Negative: 0 out of 2
Dec 23, 2013China Rising is a competent DLC for Battlefield 4, but we were expecting more from DICE than a normal compilation of four scenarios that we could have played in Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2. No Levolution, no party!
Score distribution:
Positive: 2 out of 4
Mixed: 1 out of 4
Negative: 1 out of 4
Feb 15, 2014More of the same, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, if you don't have Premium or pre-ordered, don't bother wasting 15 bucks. Do not be swayed by the new bomber, as its presence on the battlefield is almost never felt, and frankly isn't even fun to use. There just isn't anything new here besides 4 mediocre maps and 5 mediocre guns.… Expand
Dec 3, 2013Well, they weren't kidding about massive.
Battlefield 4: China Rising adds 4 enormous maps into the game, bringing you an all out vehicle warfare madness. These maps, in my opinion, seem to be nothing special, but are very well full of detail and life by the moment you start playing. This is basically an "Armored Kill" kind of thing going on here. The only levolution I've actually seen (if I can even call it that) is blowing up those EOD bombs in the giant desert map called "Silk Road", so that was quite a bummer. The smallest map from what I've seen is Guilin peaks, thou it's also the most detailed, sprawling with large caves and detailed foliage everywhere. I favor "Dragon Pass" for its level design. You'll often hear a loud siren, signifying that a "bomber" has been deployed. Thou I'm not sure how it works, he'll shoot out some uh... bombs and obliterate anything it impacts on. The final map I didn't mention is Altai Range, which is basically a "Alborz Mountains", having an identical level design in Battlefield's 4 style. It's sprawling with mountains and a large dome on the center of the map that can get pretty heavy on fights.
Maybe I was expecting more, but in any case, these maps are.... very.... strange and.... massive, not bad, just... strange.… Collapse
Dec 3, 2013I have been waiting for this for like a month. I am sorta disappointed. Some maps are HUGE and finally some space for proper dog fighting between mountains. But the problem is these maps are unbalanced. And where is my cover? after less then 10 minutes all the buildings are gone and you are a sitting duck for snipers and tanks. this makes it feel to an extend that its rushed and annoying. There is nothing new either, Its like battlefield Vietnam all over again. I expected a decent jungle/desert feel but its not giving me that.
One thing I miss the most is Levolution.. where is it? what do I need to shoot? Can this mountain collapse on our heads? nope.
I give this 5 out of 10 for the return of motorbikes (god I love those things)
The Details in the map are OK.
Teamwork feels more forced.. which is good.
One map for decent and fun dogfights (Beginner friendly as well).
I can't be really positive or negative about the rest.… Expand
Dec 3, 2013I'm giving this a few points, because I am really glad they added the RPK, L85, and Tavor (though they could have been in there from the start. That said, the maps in this expansion are absolute trash. Why did they think what we wanted was more maps for tanks and snipers? I've never seen a Battlefield expansion include such bad maps.… Expand
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Four men were arrested during an Operation Ceasefire sweep on Wednesday. Among those four was Jeremy Meeks, 30, the person in the mugshot that has been labeled as countless girls' crushes on today's first-ever #FelonCrushFriday (and let's hope it's the last). Since Meeks' mugshot was released on social media by Stockton Police, it has received … Continue reading
It's a scary thing to be a law abiding citizen when those who are supposed to "serve and protect" don't have your best interests at heart. Here are a few headlining stories from earlier this week: 1.) Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed a new gun law. On Wednesday, April 23, 2014, Gov. Deal signed legislation that … Continue reading
So today, for some reason, I decided to stay an extra hour at work. I had no real reason for staying other than a "feeling" that I should have. Plus, I was tired, and I didn't feel like leaving my desk, but anywho… Just as I was getting ready to leave, in walks a white, … Continue reading
Okay, so I'm chilling with my family when my aunt announces that a 24-year-old boy from Chicago had his mother killed. This took place more than a year ago and Chicago police are just now arresting this fool. The motive hasn't been made clear as of yet; however, with this dummy purchasing new cars, furs … Continue reading
Being in love sucks. Don't get me wrong; the feeling itself is beautiful, but all of the emotions that accompany that feeling? Tuh! Once you acknowledge that you deeply care about someone other than yourself, you lose control. Your heart is officially in their hands and they have the power to break you and ruin your … Continue reading
It's true: guys really do go hard for who/what they want. Persistence is good, yes. However, if a woman rejects you, just stop. They're not interested, so move on. As a woman, I can tell you that you'll be doing more harm than good by continuing to pursue "the girl of your dreams" long after … Continue reading
So last night, I was watching Rachel Jeantel's first interview (since the trial) with Piers Morgan, and during her interview, clips from Juror B37's interview with Anderson Cooper were shown. Later on in the evening, CNN replayed Juror B37's entire interview and I have never felt more disgusted in my life. Not only did she … Continue reading


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November 28, 2014
Traffic fatalities on state highways across Virginia hit an all time low in 2004.
That's according to Virginia State Police. They say fewer people died in car accidents on the highway last year, than in the past four years.
There were 900 traffic fatalities reported in 2004, that's 42 less than in 2003.
Police attribute the drop to their own unrelenting efforts and more responsible driving by motorists.
Of last year's accident–related deaths, 13 happened over Christmas and New Year's.
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