I was on the job market 6 and 5 years ago (twice) and since then I haven’t seen the job list. This year I decided to take a look in search of blogging material.
As I scrolled through the list of tenure- track positions, I realized that not only had I seen a huge percentage of these positions but I had actually applied to them.
There are two possibilities here and both are disturbing. Either these schools haven’t been able (or have chosen not to) hire anybody (which means these are, for all effects and purposes, fake searches) or people were hired 5 and 6 years ago and have not been given tenure. So now that tenure cycle is over and the new one begins.
I’m not talking about 2 or 3 jobs here. I’m talking about a really large percentage.
Clarissa's Blog 
Perhaps TT positions are being turned into glorified adjuncts?
Simply hiring someone, showing them the door after enough time has passed to keep the delusion going (no matter how they peformed) and then hiring the next cog. And the bonus is it can all be justified by “raising standards”.
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This is standard practice or Yale and Co. But less chic schools see it as an absolute disaster when a TT doesn’t get tenure.
In general, the number of tenure and TT jobs in the country has not changed in any direction for decades. It’s a myth that they are being destroyed. New ones are not being created, that’s the problem.
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“New ones are not being created, that’s the problem”
With increasing population (and student body size) not creating new lines is the same as reducing them.
I do think that an institution should see not granting tenure as an insitutional failure (in many or most cases). But that’s not how large organizations work.
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It’s considered a failure because searches, training and adapting new hires and startup money are expensive.
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“It’s considered a failure because searches, training and adapting new hires and startup money are expensive”
In other words, for all the wrong reasons….
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What would be the right reasons?
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“What would be the right reasons?”
That depends on the insitution in question.
warning: I tend to personify instiutions because in my experience that’s how they work and it provides me with the best way of dealing with them (I realize you may perceive things differently). Anyhoo, regretting denial of tenure solely or primarily on financial grounds is like a person getting their third divorce mainly complaining about the paperwork involved – they’re missing the larger point that their decision making process is screwed up and should address that first before heading into marriage number four.
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As for standards, they do need to be raised. When a person who has published exactly one article in their entire career and teaches nothing but intro courses but has tenure and makes $70,000 a year, we can all agree that this is not normal. It makes every sense to start walking away from that model.
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I was actually thinking back to a comment (from some time ago) about an administrator who always voted against granting tenure apparently because he thought it gave the insitution more prestige or some such nonsense.
And “raising standards” IME is used as a good cover for all sorts of low fuckery.
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Actually, I had the same experience, seeing a lot of jobs posted that I had applied for 5-7 years ago. I don’t know if these schools would take on another Shakespearean or if the person they hired way back when was not tenured, or alternately, got a different (better?) job. It was a surprise, though.
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In response to: MLA Job List 2014-15
Unsuccessful searches do happen surprisingly often. A department can decide that no one is exactly the person they want. So, they make do with adjuncts for another year.
However, retirements in a department could easily have the effect of identical-seeming jobs being advertised several years later. It could easily be that someone was hired and now they need someone else.
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That’s true, it could be retirements.
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Yes, I see this all the time. The MLA search never works for schools or candidates in the long term. A lot of professors quit or get a better job. The JIL is only useful to ivy grads seeking their first job and ABDs looking for a dissertation topic; the ads do indicate upcoming trends in the field which will eventually trickle down the rankings.
Otherwise, don’t even bother with the JIL. It’s all a song and dance to show admin that the department tried to do a search but only found losers with red flags (blue suit, wrong cv font, etc). Then they have to hire the guy who they happened to meet casually at the bird watching club — the guy who has a PhD and already lives in the town. I hate networking but that is the only way to get a t-t job for non-ivy R1 phds. So sad to see helpless job seekers who don’t know that the real JIL is the In Memoriam page in the back of the PMLA. Listen to your obnoxious cousin. Get the phone number of chairs in departments you’d like to work. Start calling.
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I hope this is true. I recently networked with some people from local(ish) colleges where I’d rather work. One person I had lunch with. He was a great man, and I would love his job. Since he’s in his 70s, I might have a shot at it in the next few years.
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“Get the phone number of chairs in departments you’d like to work. Start calling.”
– I don’t think you really have tenure anywhere because then you’d know all of the reasons why it cannot possibly work like that.
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I’m not sure what “the real jil” is talking about. My job is at small non Ivy institution and I applied to an ad posted on the JIL. I have since served on several hiring committees and we have always advertised on the JIL and interviewed and hired people who responded to that ad. Honestly if someone called me to ask about a job that was advertised, I think I would be so flabbergasted I wouldn’t know what to say. I feel sure that my department chair feels the same way. I honestly think that sort of aggressiveness would send someone to the bottom of the job list.
Honestly, the best thing one can do to get a job is to be tenacious. Apply apply apply apply. The one anomaly about my job is that it came up really late in the year (April) because an unexpected funding line opened up. Since it was so late and wasn’t the traditional “job season” any longer, lots of people missed the ad and applicant pool was much much smaller than it would have been otherwise. It also took me three years to find a tenure track job and I applied to hundreds of jobs in those years. But it was all worth it. Today, I am tenured and I love my work and my colleagues. So happy endings do happen. But I think tenacity is key.
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“Honestly if someone called me to ask about a job that was advertised, I think I would be so flabbergasted I wouldn’t know what to say. I feel sure that my department chair feels the same way. I honestly think that sort of aggressiveness would send someone to the bottom of the job list.”
– I agree. And I also can’t imagine how any chair would be able to sneak a buddy by the search committee and the Dean’s office. Why would it even be worth it for the Chair?
For the most part, I see academics who are very honest and immediately declare it when they have the slightest conflict of interest. Last year, I declared that I had a conflict of interest when time came to discuss a grant proposal of a friend. I don’t really appreciate this vision of academics as dishonest evil-doers. Of course, there are nasty people, as in every profession but the idea that everybody is completely corrupt is just wrong.
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P.S. One more thing. I am not an anomaly here. I know several people who have landed tenure track jobs over the years–none of them were from “Ivies” and ALL of them found their positions because they responded to ads posted on either the MLA job list or the Chronicle of Higher Ed. I don’t mean to belabor this point. But I know this is a very stressful time for job seekers and I don’t want misinformation to be out there. I honestly have never heard of ANYONE getting an Assistant Level Professorship in the way “the real jil” described.
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” I honestly have never heard of ANYONE getting an Assistant Level Professorship in the way “the real jil” described.”
– That’s why I’m saying that “real jil’s” description is not even realistic. A job search in academia is a very formalized process. No administration would let anybody just bring in tennis partners over the head of everybody else involved in the process. I’ve been on several search committees, they were all advertised, we interviewed, arranged campus visits, and nobody suggested “Hey, I got a friend. . .” The idea is just bizarre.
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Two people in my department (but not in my field) were hired under very shady circumstances. The chair wrote the ads to specifically match the expertise of two people he wanted to hire. Then, he put the ads out at the latest possible moment so he would get minimal applications. Then, he only interviewed two people for the first position, and rejected the recommendations of the search committee and hired the person he wanted. The second hire was the fiancé of the first hire, and the chair didn’t even bother to interview anyone else. These searches took place two years apart. It was so shady. This instance was the first time I’d ever heard of this sort of nepotism in academia. But two times in a row made me wonder if it wasn’t more common than I thought. Then again, this could just be an instance of my chair’s utterly shameless control freakery. Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me to know that there’s corruption in searches. They’re run by human beings after all.
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I have substantial experience on these kinds of “searches.” People who have used the JIL successfully for their first job are not going to work at institutions that rely on these alternative means. But to clarify: Inside Higher Ed and Chronicle are still very good sources for jobs, but find the jobs listed there but not cross listed on JIL usually in off-season. These schools will receive a much smaller applicant pool — I know as a SC member on multiple searches across disciplines. About 40 apps come in but only 1, 2, 3 fit the job ad. As for alternative searches, dept chairs are often desperate for someone in Aug and Dec to drop in their laps to teach courses. Depending on personality, credentials, and negotiating skills, you can get a lecturer position (health care, decent pay, an office) or even t-t. People can keep wishing and hoping (apply, apply, apply) or be assertive and proactive. In my case, I see the second one working for a broader pool of people. So what if a dept chair is such a precious vessel that he can’t have anyone call him. Call the next one on the list. Use your judgment. The story I told above is true re: bird watching club hobby that led to a t-t job. (The school tried to make the guy an adjunct, but he refused.) In my case, the job ad for my t-t position was hidden on a remote internet site to count as following the “national search” rule.) Timing is everything. Just make sure you are there when someone is needed. How many deans care whom faculty want to hire? They are only too happy save search costs. Usually, though, the SC prefers this method because they hire someone likely to stay rather then repeat the search every three years (they are lazy). In another case, I know a world languages SC that hired a candidate who only held a BA; to get the t-t prof job she had to enroll in a EdD program; the admins let the SC get away with this because the candidate was the daughter of a professor in another department so they assumed she would stay and could earn her doctorate along the way. (Btw, my dept was not happy about it, but it wasn’t our decision or dept.) Candidates who find their job through JIL are most likely to leave: hence the revolving job ads from the same school that appear every three years.
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It could also possibly reflect some people leaving the profession? I know that two people in my graduate cohort left their tenure track positions (and the profession more largely) so they could live in a part of the country they preferred. I think that many times young faculty–particularly at high teaching/high service institutions– decide that the profession isn’t what they wanted and that they would prefer to leave the profession and live in region of the country they prefer.
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How do you know that these are the same positions? From my natural science perspective, we hired “condensed matter physicist focused on nanoscience” six years ago and then 2 years ago. The first one is happily tenured. Are jobs in humanities defined much narrower than that?
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How many peninsularists can a university afford? Even Yale has a single one which is the reason why you can’t switch your thesis advisor and remain in the same field.
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