Disappearing Academic Jobs

Over at Acephalous, Scott Eric Kauffman writes:

"Three of the jobs I already applied for disappeared last week.

Two of the jobs I was about to mail applications to went poof today.

[Insert something witty here.]

[Try to think of something witty. We'll wait.]

[Surely there's something more to this than rank despair.]

[Or not.]

[Can't anyone save us?]"

Wow.  Scary.  As if it isn't already hard enough to get a tenure-track job....

None of the people I coach who are on the academic job market this year have reported that positions have disappeared.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they won't have Scott's experience.  Perhaps he's seeing even more jobs dry up because he's in California.

However, the dissertation advisor of one of my coaching clients told her that "no one would be hiring for at least a couple of years" and that she should focus on turning her dissertation into a book so she'd be marketable when jobs reappeared.  I thought this was good advice, if terribly depressing.

Comments

[Rebecca]

I've heard two things: First, that many places aren't hiring new grads because it generally takes a few years for them to get some grant funding lined up and schools don't want anyone who doesn't come in with external funding. Second, that if you have the wherewithal (ie income) to "take your time" and not finish up so soon this would be a good time to drag your feet a bit.

Personally, I have a good job in another field and am reconsidering whether I will write my dissertation at all. All those classes seem kind of wasted now, but if I won't be able to find a job, why bother.

[Susan]

I see a few high paying acedemic jobs posted on popular job sites -

www.monster.com (keyword job search)
www.linkedin.com (professional networking)
www.realmatch.com (matches jobs based on skills)

I think the media is trying to scare the US workforce.

[Dissertation Coach and Faculty Consultant]

In response to Rebecca:

In the sciences, at least at Research I Universities, tenure-track jobs have typically been reserved for academics who have their own funding. The way forward after the Ph.D. has been via post-docs to work on the grant of a funded scientist. This path hasn't changed, but funding from the NIH and other agencies is getting increasingly difficult to get. We'll see if granting agencies get cut soon under Obama.
This path is quite different from the humanities and social sciences. In those fields, universities have typically footed the bill for their tenure track professors. We'll see how much State budget cuts and shrinking endowments will affect jobs. It seems to me that many places, especially State Universities, are already announcing hiring freezes.

[Dissertation Coach and Faculty Consultant]

Susan,

I never knew that academics were looking for jobs on monster.com. linkedin.com or realmatch.com.
Wow. Are these for tenure-track positions?

[Dr. Davis]

I know you are probably talking about Tier 1 schools. I teach in a community college system with 53,000 students. The president of my college said they would go ahead and publish the jobs they would like filled, but that they have no idea whether the money will show up. Those jobs might easily go poof.

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[Career Search]

I learned that if you hate your job or employment situation, you will lose it. So either learn to like it and keep it, or find something else before they find someone else.

[MSC Dissertation]

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