Notes on the Academic Job Market

 "Stop Admitting Ph.D. Students"

By, Monica J. Harris, August 18, 2010

"I have served as chair or co-chair of 13 Ph.D. students in my career, a number I’m guessing is typical of most research faculty. Population growth of that magnitude is a Malthusian melt-down in the making and simply isn’t sustainable. We’re not creating enough academic jobs to absorb all those Ph.D.s, and in today’s economy, applied jobs are disappearing as well.

Of course, it is possible, as my coffee buddy assures me, that the market will start improving in a couple of years and we will need all the Ph.D.s we’re churning out. Maybe so, and if it does, I can always start accepting students again. But I’m no longer willing to pin my students’ prospects for their futures on an ephemeral job market that shines in the distance like a mirage."

http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/08/18/harris

"The Long-Haul Degree," The New York Times, April 16, 2010

By PATRICIA COHEN

"Law students get a diploma in three years. Medical students receive an M.D. in four. But for graduate students in the humanities, it takes, on average, more than nine years to complete a degree. What some of those Ph.D. recipients may not realize is that they could spend another nine years, or more, looking for a tenure-track teaching job at a college or university — without ever finding one."

Adam Kotsko, "The ritual satisfaction of stating the Grim Facts about the job market"

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 —

My approach has been that the job market is apparently very random. We can follow all the best advice in the world, but it still comes down to the preferences of a handful of people at some randomly-chosen department and the outcome of a power struggle that probably no one outside the situation could ever fully understand or predict. So aside from broad guidelines (try to publish in good journals! present at conferences! get teaching experience! finish!) that 95% of PhD candidates are following anyway, there’s essentially no way of tailoring yourself to the job market. 

http://itself.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/the-ritual-satisfaction-of-stating-the-grim-facts-about-the-job-market/