From 2008 to 2015 - or in other words, post-crash - there were, on average, 29.5 tenure-track German job ads posted to the ADFL job information list each year. Looking at more recent history, from 2012 to 2015, the average of 27.5 is nearly the same.
Last year was different: 17 tenure track jobs. After 7 weeks of job-list postings, 2017 is running just barely ahead of the pinnacle of awfulness that was 2016: we have 16 TT jobs this year compared to 15 last year at this point. Perhaps we'll see a few more. The opening-day number predicted 15 total, while the 6-week number predicted 19 total - but the 6-week number is, historically, not any more accurate than the opening-day prediction.
But wait, you say, what about 2015? We're running just barely behind where we were after 7 weeks in 2015 (17 TT jobs), and 2015 turned out close to the recent average (26). Maybe we'll see a bunch of jobs turn up in December and January!
It's not impossible, but I suspect not. As you look around the country, do you get the feeling that university budgets are improving, the humanities are more valued, and the importance of foreign languages is more broadly accepted?
I think instead what we'll see is a couple more jobs trickle onto the list by spring, and the new normal will be 15-20 TT jobs in German each year rather than 25-30. Or 1 job for every 4-5 new Ph.D.s rather than 1 for every 3, since the number of Ph.D.s isn't declining.
The market is now small enough that it's hard to tell the difference between a normal level of year-to-year volatility, and an extinction event.
(For you emeriti out there, this makes the job market half the size it was at the absolute bottom of the 70's crash [37 in 1970; average of 71 from 1968-73] and the brief 80's crash [34 in 1982; average of 50 from 1980-84]. Every decade prior to this one enjoyed average numbers between 50 and 70, while the average for the post-crash decade is 27. No, the job market has not always been this bad, and repeating that myth is making things worse.)
Showing posts with label job market history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label job market history. Show all posts
Friday, October 27, 2017
Friday, September 8, 2017
The Others
They’re coming to our discipline and taking away our jobs!
Well, not really. OK, maybe a little bit.
One of the exciting things about German Studies as a discipline is that we’re in conversation with historians, linguists, and scholars with many other disciplinary backgrounds. We talk to our neighbors down the hall in comparative literature and we maintain conversations with our colleagues in Germany.
One of the less exciting consequences is that the hiring pool for faculty in German Studies can be drawn very broadly. If there are 17 tenure-track jobs available this year, not all of the people hired will have Ph.D.s in German from North American doctoral programs. Some will hold doctorates from European universities, some will come from outside of German Studies, and some won’t hold a Ph.D. at all. Basically, think of the three alternate sources of German faculty as doctoral programs in Germany, comparative literature and other disciplines, and people with MA degrees. In the best case, this keeps our discipline vital. In the worst case, the dean can undercut any salary demand by simply offering a job to any native speaker he can find, qualified or not.
For the hiring cycles 2006/7-2015/16, a total of 91 searches selected candidates who did not hold doctorates from North American German programs (out of 814 total hires, or 11.2%). This was approximately equally split between tenure-track and non-tenure track positions (12.5% of all tenure-track hires and 10.2% of NTT hires).
In a few cases, no academic background can be determined. For tenure-track hires (42), just above half are from European doctoral programs, mostly from Germany, and just under half are from American doctoral programs, chiefly comparative literature. Only 2 of the TT hires were from the pool of MA holders, in both instances the rare case of TT hires by a community college. For NTT hires (41), around a third are MAs, a third are from other disciplines, and a third hold Ph.D.s from European programs. (The VAP numbers include 4 faculty members who were hired for multiple positions, while the TT numbers include a number of VAP-to-TT inside hires).
The largest single donor of faculty to German Studies is by far the program in comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania (4 TT hires). Princeton comp lit and the Humboldt Universität each had 2 TT hires.
The North American programs that hire outside of North American German Studies most prolifically include Harvard, NYU, the University of British Columbia, and Notre Dame, all with two TT hires from outside North American doctoral programs in German. The outstanding champion in the field, however, is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with 3 system-external tenure-track hires (and 2 non-tenure-track hires) during the previous decade.
Finally, has there been any change in hiring over time? In a word, yes. From 2006/7 to 2015/16, the percentage of hires from outside North American German Studies for jobs in North American German Studies has risen from around 5% to around 20% of all hires, even as the number of tenure-track jobs in the field has declined profoundly—by around 70%—during the same time. That suggests an amazing commitment to interdisciplinary exchange and intellectual vitality for a discipline that can’t currently provide stable jobs for 75% of its own doctorates. Or maybe it suggests a lack of confidence in its own product and a desperate search for relevance.
Well, not really. OK, maybe a little bit.
One of the exciting things about German Studies as a discipline is that we’re in conversation with historians, linguists, and scholars with many other disciplinary backgrounds. We talk to our neighbors down the hall in comparative literature and we maintain conversations with our colleagues in Germany.
One of the less exciting consequences is that the hiring pool for faculty in German Studies can be drawn very broadly. If there are 17 tenure-track jobs available this year, not all of the people hired will have Ph.D.s in German from North American doctoral programs. Some will hold doctorates from European universities, some will come from outside of German Studies, and some won’t hold a Ph.D. at all. Basically, think of the three alternate sources of German faculty as doctoral programs in Germany, comparative literature and other disciplines, and people with MA degrees. In the best case, this keeps our discipline vital. In the worst case, the dean can undercut any salary demand by simply offering a job to any native speaker he can find, qualified or not.
For the hiring cycles 2006/7-2015/16, a total of 91 searches selected candidates who did not hold doctorates from North American German programs (out of 814 total hires, or 11.2%). This was approximately equally split between tenure-track and non-tenure track positions (12.5% of all tenure-track hires and 10.2% of NTT hires).
In a few cases, no academic background can be determined. For tenure-track hires (42), just above half are from European doctoral programs, mostly from Germany, and just under half are from American doctoral programs, chiefly comparative literature. Only 2 of the TT hires were from the pool of MA holders, in both instances the rare case of TT hires by a community college. For NTT hires (41), around a third are MAs, a third are from other disciplines, and a third hold Ph.D.s from European programs. (The VAP numbers include 4 faculty members who were hired for multiple positions, while the TT numbers include a number of VAP-to-TT inside hires).
The largest single donor of faculty to German Studies is by far the program in comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania (4 TT hires). Princeton comp lit and the Humboldt Universität each had 2 TT hires.
The North American programs that hire outside of North American German Studies most prolifically include Harvard, NYU, the University of British Columbia, and Notre Dame, all with two TT hires from outside North American doctoral programs in German. The outstanding champion in the field, however, is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with 3 system-external tenure-track hires (and 2 non-tenure-track hires) during the previous decade.
Finally, has there been any change in hiring over time? In a word, yes. From 2006/7 to 2015/16, the percentage of hires from outside North American German Studies for jobs in North American German Studies has risen from around 5% to around 20% of all hires, even as the number of tenure-track jobs in the field has declined profoundly—by around 70%—during the same time. That suggests an amazing commitment to interdisciplinary exchange and intellectual vitality for a discipline that can’t currently provide stable jobs for 75% of its own doctorates. Or maybe it suggests a lack of confidence in its own product and a desperate search for relevance.
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| Figure 1: Hires in North American German Studies of those not earning terminal degrees in German Studies or from North American doctoral programs, 2006/7-2015/16 |
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Closing the books on 2016-17
For tenure-track academic hiring in German, 2016-17 marks a new absolute low. To find a year where fewer positions were advertised, you would have to look back at least sixty years to the 1950s or earlier. The record low number of TT jobs advertised on opening day (7) was matched by the lowest number of TT jobs advertised all year (17), and by the earliest posting of the season's last TT job ad (in week 11, surpassing the previous record of week 15 in 2013). This year will also mark a new absolute low in the number of TT hires, as one of the 17 searches (Hamilton College) was downgraded to a VAP search; the maximum possible number of TT hires, 16, is lower than the previous low of 19 hires set in 2009-10.
That's just looking at the MLA/ADFL job information list. If you look at listings from all sources as reflected in the German jobs wiki (with 11 years of data going back to 2006), the situation is worse. The previous low, 27 TT jobs from all sources (from last year, 2015-2016), was in line with the number of TT searches from 2009-2015 (average of 33). So the current year marks a drop of 37% drop compared to the previous all-time low in the space of one year. One more time: a 37% drop compared to the previous all-time low in the space of one year.
For non-tenure-track hiring, it was another solid year: 41 positions advertised in the ADFL/MLA JIL before it closed, fifth highest and just a few places out of third (43 in 2007) and even on pace to set an all-time record just a few months back. But the VAP market went flat unexpectedly early this year. As far as NTT positions from all sources, 2016-17 is another solid year: 55 advertised NTT searches, just above average (54 for the years 2006-17).
The lack of late VAP hiring is something of a danger signal, as it suggests that late-spring/early-summer language department budgets are under pressure and the advertising of TT positions in the fall may be impacted.
Our profession is not in good health.
That's just looking at the MLA/ADFL job information list. If you look at listings from all sources as reflected in the German jobs wiki (with 11 years of data going back to 2006), the situation is worse. The previous low, 27 TT jobs from all sources (from last year, 2015-2016), was in line with the number of TT searches from 2009-2015 (average of 33). So the current year marks a drop of 37% drop compared to the previous all-time low in the space of one year. One more time: a 37% drop compared to the previous all-time low in the space of one year.
For non-tenure-track hiring, it was another solid year: 41 positions advertised in the ADFL/MLA JIL before it closed, fifth highest and just a few places out of third (43 in 2007) and even on pace to set an all-time record just a few months back. But the VAP market went flat unexpectedly early this year. As far as NTT positions from all sources, 2016-17 is another solid year: 55 advertised NTT searches, just above average (54 for the years 2006-17).
The lack of late VAP hiring is something of a danger signal, as it suggests that late-spring/early-summer language department budgets are under pressure and the advertising of TT positions in the fall may be impacted.
Our profession is not in good health.
Friday, April 28, 2017
2016-17
Unless something drastic happens - and it's almost May, so nothing drastic is going to happen - this year will mark a new absolute low in the number of tenure-track jobs in German Studies on the MLA job list: 17. That's two positions less than even 2009, the previous record for all-time miserable job markets. Of those 17 searches, one was canceled and converted into a NTT search.
Speaking of which: 2016-17 has been another banner year for non-tenure track jobs, with the number of ads near or at record levels all year. We're already at 39, with several more weeks still to go in a NTT hiring calendar that drags on into June and July. We'll likely end up in the range of such overheated NTT hiring years like 2005-2007, and beating the absolute record of 2014 is still a possibility.
So to recap: The economic recovery since 2008 has not led to a recovery in tenure-track hiring in German (or in any of the languages, actually). The job market in German is not going to make a comeback. There are, however, quite a few opportunities for you to stay in academia by moving every 1-3 years until you either strike out on the market or find yourself no longer geographically mobile (as long as you can live on $36-42,000 per year, including unreimbursed moving expenses).
Speaking of which: 2016-17 has been another banner year for non-tenure track jobs, with the number of ads near or at record levels all year. We're already at 39, with several more weeks still to go in a NTT hiring calendar that drags on into June and July. We'll likely end up in the range of such overheated NTT hiring years like 2005-2007, and beating the absolute record of 2014 is still a possibility.
So to recap: The economic recovery since 2008 has not led to a recovery in tenure-track hiring in German (or in any of the languages, actually). The job market in German is not going to make a comeback. There are, however, quite a few opportunities for you to stay in academia by moving every 1-3 years until you either strike out on the market or find yourself no longer geographically mobile (as long as you can live on $36-42,000 per year, including unreimbursed moving expenses).
Friday, September 11, 2015
Job Market Opening Day 2015
How many full-time tenure-track or open-rank jobs in German Studies will be posted to the MLA Job Information List in 2015-16? Take your pick. Seeing how 2014 went, your pick is probably as good as mine.
18. The historical average since 2003 is that 54.4% of all TT jobs show up on opening day. As of today, there are 10 such jobs. 10 / .544 = just over 18.
24. Ten jobs isn't the absolute worst we've ever seen on opening day, but it's close. Other similar years include 2009 (10), 2010 (11), and 2014 (9). The average result from those years is 24 jobs by the time the list closes.
25. The percentage posted on opening day has been declining. If the trend since 2008 (see graph) continues, we're only seeing 40.6% of the jobs today. 10 / .406 = almost 25.
30. Going back to 2008, there have been on average around 30 jobs each year. The last two years saw 28 and 29 jobs, respectively. If this is an average year, then we'll get around 30 jobs by the end, maybe a few less.
32. Last year, only 31% of the jobs showed up on opening day. If the same thing happens this year, we'll get up to 32 jobs.
My pick: 25. We'll see a reversion to the mean, and 15 more jobs will appear before the list closes, most likely before the end of February. With a bit of optimism and wishful thinking, 2015 will end up in a tie for the second-worst year in German job market history. I would love to be wrong and to see many more jobs appear, but even an outlandish fantasy like 35 jobs would only move this year into sixth-worst in job market history.
18. The historical average since 2003 is that 54.4% of all TT jobs show up on opening day. As of today, there are 10 such jobs. 10 / .544 = just over 18.
24. Ten jobs isn't the absolute worst we've ever seen on opening day, but it's close. Other similar years include 2009 (10), 2010 (11), and 2014 (9). The average result from those years is 24 jobs by the time the list closes.
25. The percentage posted on opening day has been declining. If the trend since 2008 (see graph) continues, we're only seeing 40.6% of the jobs today. 10 / .406 = almost 25.
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| Percentage of TT jobs posted on opening day, 2008-2014, showing declining trend |
32. Last year, only 31% of the jobs showed up on opening day. If the same thing happens this year, we'll get up to 32 jobs.
My pick: 25. We'll see a reversion to the mean, and 15 more jobs will appear before the list closes, most likely before the end of February. With a bit of optimism and wishful thinking, 2015 will end up in a tie for the second-worst year in German job market history. I would love to be wrong and to see many more jobs appear, but even an outlandish fantasy like 35 jobs would only move this year into sixth-worst in job market history.
Friday, June 5, 2015
2014-15 a Record-Breaking Year for Exit-Level Jobs
A boom in non-tenure track jobs promises full pre-unemployment for new Ph.D.s in German Studies
With the appearance today of an ad for a full-time adjunct instructor at the College of Charleston in the MLA job information list, the discipline of German Studies is rewriting its records for non-tenure-track hiring. Charleston’s ad pushes the total to 46 NTT jobs advertised so far—with five weeks left before the JIL closes—breaking the previous record of 45 NTT jobs set in 2005, and surpassing every prior year in nearly a half century since the first MLA job list appeared in 1966 (see graph). Never before have so many hopeful Ph.D.s in Germanistik been able to look forward to extending their professional identities and academic careers for nine more months before their cutting-edge research agendas become obscure footnotes in the MLA bibliography.
While the number of new Ph.D.s granted during the 2014-15 academic year is not yet known, it is likely close to the 70 Ph.D.s awarded the previous year. That may suggest poor odds for new Ph.D.s seeking their first and last academic job, but the official numbers represent only a fraction of the market. With Charleston’s announcement, the German jobs wiki, which includes several jobs not advertised in the JIL, hit 70 advertised positions. Added to the 30 advertised tenure-track positions (at 29 TT positions in the JIL, 2014-15 is the 45th best year for TT job ads out of the 49 years since 1966), department heads are starting to worry that American colleges and universities may be facing an impending shortage of new Ph.D.s who are willing to shoulder high teaching loads for low pay for a couple years before their dreams of academic careers are snuffed out forever.
Long-standing traditions at many colleges of hiring new Ph.D.s as visiting assistant professors each year to put a young, research-active face on departments whose last TT hire was during the Nixon administration are in doubt. Departments who weren’t able to advertise their VAP slots until the late spring are facing several unpalatable options: hiring ABDs, canceling classes, or even canceling sabbaticals. Thus far, few departments have taken the drastic step of hiring stale Ph.D.s, or “experienced teachers with distinguished publishing records,” as they are euphemistically known, as it would be a tacit admission that a department’s teaching methods and research portfolio were stuck in 2013, or even earlier.
One group of faculty, though, is reacting to the latest figures with a mixture of relief and self-congratulation: Ph.D. advisors. Many of them will be able to pat themselves on the back this year for having placed all of their recent Ph.D.s in full-time academic jobs (what happens to the ungrateful little snots after that first job is their own problem). With such clear evidence that the jobs-with-training-wheels crisis in the humanities is receding, graduate faculty are looking forward to admitting larger graduate cohorts again so that no undergraduate German program in need of throwaway faculty members will be left wanting.
With the appearance today of an ad for a full-time adjunct instructor at the College of Charleston in the MLA job information list, the discipline of German Studies is rewriting its records for non-tenure-track hiring. Charleston’s ad pushes the total to 46 NTT jobs advertised so far—with five weeks left before the JIL closes—breaking the previous record of 45 NTT jobs set in 2005, and surpassing every prior year in nearly a half century since the first MLA job list appeared in 1966 (see graph). Never before have so many hopeful Ph.D.s in Germanistik been able to look forward to extending their professional identities and academic careers for nine more months before their cutting-edge research agendas become obscure footnotes in the MLA bibliography.
2014 sets an NTT record: German tenure-track and non-tenure-track jobs advertised in the MLA job information list, 1966-2014
While the number of new Ph.D.s granted during the 2014-15 academic year is not yet known, it is likely close to the 70 Ph.D.s awarded the previous year. That may suggest poor odds for new Ph.D.s seeking their first and last academic job, but the official numbers represent only a fraction of the market. With Charleston’s announcement, the German jobs wiki, which includes several jobs not advertised in the JIL, hit 70 advertised positions. Added to the 30 advertised tenure-track positions (at 29 TT positions in the JIL, 2014-15 is the 45th best year for TT job ads out of the 49 years since 1966), department heads are starting to worry that American colleges and universities may be facing an impending shortage of new Ph.D.s who are willing to shoulder high teaching loads for low pay for a couple years before their dreams of academic careers are snuffed out forever.
Long-standing traditions at many colleges of hiring new Ph.D.s as visiting assistant professors each year to put a young, research-active face on departments whose last TT hire was during the Nixon administration are in doubt. Departments who weren’t able to advertise their VAP slots until the late spring are facing several unpalatable options: hiring ABDs, canceling classes, or even canceling sabbaticals. Thus far, few departments have taken the drastic step of hiring stale Ph.D.s, or “experienced teachers with distinguished publishing records,” as they are euphemistically known, as it would be a tacit admission that a department’s teaching methods and research portfolio were stuck in 2013, or even earlier.
One group of faculty, though, is reacting to the latest figures with a mixture of relief and self-congratulation: Ph.D. advisors. Many of them will be able to pat themselves on the back this year for having placed all of their recent Ph.D.s in full-time academic jobs (what happens to the ungrateful little snots after that first job is their own problem). With such clear evidence that the jobs-with-training-wheels crisis in the humanities is receding, graduate faculty are looking forward to admitting larger graduate cohorts again so that no undergraduate German program in need of throwaway faculty members will be left wanting.
Friday, March 6, 2015
The job market crash in one chart
Over at Vitae, Brock Read has an article summarizing a recent report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that investigates the evidence that the academic job market in the humanities got worse in 2008. (You've got to love the AAAS headline: "Danger Signs for the Academic Job Market in Humanities?" Seriously? Having the number of tenure-track jobs drop by 50% in one year is not a danger sign. It's whole disciplines and the chance at an academic career being snuffed out overnight. The question mark should be replaced by an exclamation mark. But I digress.)
The Vitae post includes a nice graph that sums up the findings, which are based on job lists similar to the MLA's Job Information List (click over to Vitae to see a nicer version):
The Vitae post includes a nice graph that sums up the findings, which are based on job lists similar to the MLA's Job Information List (click over to Vitae to see a nicer version):
Jobs advertised in humanities disciplines, 2000-2013 (from Vitae)
The Vitae article and the AAAS post are careful to point out that sometimes one job ad results in multiple hires, or in no hire, and they may have missed job ads not advertised in the usual places. Those are all good points, but caution is misplaced when action is long overdue. The obvious solution to those concerns is to look at the last several years of disciplinary job wikis and see what percentage of job ads they might be missing. (And the report doesn't say if it looks only at TT jobs or at anything that shows up in a job list. As we all know, these are not at all the same things!)
So to help out the AAAS, I've included the graph below - nothing that I haven't already published here - that compares TT job ads in the MLA JIL and new TT appointments (according to "Personalia") in German for the same time frame.
TT job ads (in the MLA JIL) and new TT appointments in German, 2000-2013
I've looked closely at the data and compared it to job ads posted anywhere jobs for German professors get posted, and, as it turns out, the AAAS is right on target: the job market really did crash in 2008, and it shows no signs of recovery.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Slow years and job predictions: a graduate seminar in advanced straw-clutching
Today is the sixth week of the 2014-15 job market in German Studies. Some new jobs have appeared. Based on the new data, should I revise the number of jobs to be expected? Maybe.
To review: My previous estimate of the number of TT jobs to appear this year was 16, based on 9 TT jobs on opening day * 1.75. The basis for this was in history. The assumption is that a similar number of departments have their acts together enough to get a job ad into the opening JIL, and that's generally true. Since 2003, an average of 57% of all TT jobs have appeared on opening day, so 9 / .57 yields 15.8 jobs. Grim.
But wait! Now we have more data to go on. As of today, we're at 17 TT jobs, already ahead of the projection. Are more jobs coming? Since 2005, an average of 81% of all TT jobs have been advertised by week 6, so 17 / .81 yields 21 jobs. That's four more jobs, but still grim.
But wait! Maybe it's a slow year and lots more jobs are on the way!
No. No charge of the MLA job list stampeding in over the horizon is going to save you.
It's possible, however, that there has been an increase in the number of universities and departments whose budget situation is so screwed up that they can't get a job posted by Halloween. And in fact there's some evidence for this. Between 2005 and 2008 - "the good old days, except we thought 2008 was just a down year and not the new dismal" - an average of 58% of TT jobs were posted on the first day, and 87% by week 6. Since then, it's been 51% on the first day, and 77% by week 6. If we use the more more recent averages from the dismal years since 2009 - the years most like 2014, in other words - we would project 18-22 jobs (using the first day/week 6 averages, respectively).
Which one is more accurate? Since 2009, the first-day projection as proved to be more accurate twice (in 2009 and 2011), while the week 6 projection has proved to be more accurate twice (in 2010 and 2013); they were tied (and dead-on accurate) in 2012. Taking the more recent years as a guide would suggest that the week 6 projection might be more accurate for this year: 22 jobs. Another way to look at it is that the lower projection was more accurate in 2005-2008, while the higher project proved more accurate in 2009-2013, again suggesting that the higher projection will be more accurate this year.
So I'm revising the projection upward by 6 jobs from 16 to 22. There might just be 5 more TT jobs out there waiting to be advertised. There's historical precedent for this: Since 2009, an average of 6.2 TT jobs have appeared on the JIL after week 6. The rule of thumb for next year might even become the number of TT jobs on opening day times two.
In other news, the number of non-TT jobs now advertised (11) is tied with 2005 and 2007 for the highest at this point in the last decade. Yay?
To review: My previous estimate of the number of TT jobs to appear this year was 16, based on 9 TT jobs on opening day * 1.75. The basis for this was in history. The assumption is that a similar number of departments have their acts together enough to get a job ad into the opening JIL, and that's generally true. Since 2003, an average of 57% of all TT jobs have appeared on opening day, so 9 / .57 yields 15.8 jobs. Grim.
But wait! Now we have more data to go on. As of today, we're at 17 TT jobs, already ahead of the projection. Are more jobs coming? Since 2005, an average of 81% of all TT jobs have been advertised by week 6, so 17 / .81 yields 21 jobs. That's four more jobs, but still grim.
But wait! Maybe it's a slow year and lots more jobs are on the way!
No. No charge of the MLA job list stampeding in over the horizon is going to save you.
It's possible, however, that there has been an increase in the number of universities and departments whose budget situation is so screwed up that they can't get a job posted by Halloween. And in fact there's some evidence for this. Between 2005 and 2008 - "the good old days, except we thought 2008 was just a down year and not the new dismal" - an average of 58% of TT jobs were posted on the first day, and 87% by week 6. Since then, it's been 51% on the first day, and 77% by week 6. If we use the more more recent averages from the dismal years since 2009 - the years most like 2014, in other words - we would project 18-22 jobs (using the first day/week 6 averages, respectively).
Which one is more accurate? Since 2009, the first-day projection as proved to be more accurate twice (in 2009 and 2011), while the week 6 projection has proved to be more accurate twice (in 2010 and 2013); they were tied (and dead-on accurate) in 2012. Taking the more recent years as a guide would suggest that the week 6 projection might be more accurate for this year: 22 jobs. Another way to look at it is that the lower projection was more accurate in 2005-2008, while the higher project proved more accurate in 2009-2013, again suggesting that the higher projection will be more accurate this year.
So I'm revising the projection upward by 6 jobs from 16 to 22. There might just be 5 more TT jobs out there waiting to be advertised. There's historical precedent for this: Since 2009, an average of 6.2 TT jobs have appeared on the JIL after week 6. The rule of thumb for next year might even become the number of TT jobs on opening day times two.
In other news, the number of non-TT jobs now advertised (11) is tied with 2005 and 2007 for the highest at this point in the last decade. Yay?
Friday, September 12, 2014
The jobpocalypse of 2014
On the opening day of the 2014-15 MLA/ADFL job information list for German, there were a total of nine ads for tenure-track (9) or open-rank (0) jobs. This is a new record for the least number of TT jobs advertised on opening day, beating out such lackluster years as 2009 (11), 2010 (11), 2013 (14), and 2012 (15).
Between 2003 and 2013, an average of 57% of all TT jobs that would appear on the ADFL job list appeared on opening day. The average for 2008-2013, at 52%, is little different.
Based on those numbers, we can expect a total of 16 or 17 TT jobs to be advertised in the JIL by the end of AY 2014-15. The last TT job ad may not appear until February or March, or even later.
If the predicted total of 17 jobs appearing in the MLA/ADFL job information list holds, 2014 will be the worst year on the job market for German in generations, somewhat worse even than 2009 and a level not seen since 1955, when "Personalia" recorded a total of 11 new tenure-track appointments. Your advisor, your advisor's advisor, and perhaps your advisor's advisors' advisor never saw a job market this bad.
From 2006-2013, an average of 90% of all positions were advertised in the JIL. We might therefore expect one or two additional TT jobs to be advertised outside of the JIL.
There were also four non-TT jobs advertised, but there is no way to predict the number of ads that will eventually appear, as they tend to show up at a steady but irregular rate through the summer.
Between 2003 and 2013, an average of 57% of all TT jobs that would appear on the ADFL job list appeared on opening day. The average for 2008-2013, at 52%, is little different.
Based on those numbers, we can expect a total of 16 or 17 TT jobs to be advertised in the JIL by the end of AY 2014-15. The last TT job ad may not appear until February or March, or even later.
If the predicted total of 17 jobs appearing in the MLA/ADFL job information list holds, 2014 will be the worst year on the job market for German in generations, somewhat worse even than 2009 and a level not seen since 1955, when "Personalia" recorded a total of 11 new tenure-track appointments. Your advisor, your advisor's advisor, and perhaps your advisor's advisors' advisor never saw a job market this bad.
From 2006-2013, an average of 90% of all positions were advertised in the JIL. We might therefore expect one or two additional TT jobs to be advertised outside of the JIL.
There were also four non-TT jobs advertised, but there is no way to predict the number of ads that will eventually appear, as they tend to show up at a steady but irregular rate through the summer.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
How to shrink the Ph.D. in German Studies. Part 1
This post is getting long, so I am splitting it into two parts. In the second part, I will offer a concrete plan for reducing the number of Ph.D.s in German Studies, including specific programs that should maintain their present size, others that should shrink or form partnerships with other programs, and some that should close entirely. In order to explain how I arrived at this proposal, I’ll lay out my assumptions in this post.
1. The job market in German is not ever going to recover. Since the crash of ’08, we have seen six ADFL job lists and six job wikis appear with no sign that our discipline will ever return to the same rate of tenure-track hiring that it enjoyed in the 80s, 90s, or early 2000s. Both grad students and grad departments should plan on a future no rosier than the present.
2. People earn Ph.D.s in German in order to become German professors. Completing three or four years of coursework, writing a dissertation on Heinrich Heine, and gaining foreign language teaching expertise is a terribly inefficient way to prepare for a career in anything else. There’s nothing wrong with people choosing to pursue other careers, but the number of grad students for whom alt-ac is their first choice is quite low.
3. German Ph.D. programs in North American exist to serve the North American market. Teaching German language and literature at colleges and universities in the U.S. requires an odd mix of preparation in SLA, literature, and culture that isn’t well met by graduates in literature or DaF from German universities. In the same way, American Ph.D.s face handicaps outside the U.S., where their language-teaching background is not as strong as a German in DaF, but what they do have is a liability compared to those who have focused strictly on literature.
4. Good graduate programs should continue their work. Poor graduate programs should shrink or close. Existing prestige hierarchies have always poorly served the needs of hiring institutions and should not be reflexively reproduced in the future of German Studies. Instead, programs that have been effective in placing their students into tenure-track jobs should continue to do so. Programs that place their graduates into teaching-focused jobs should be preferred to programs that prepare their students for research-focused jobs that they can’t get.
5. There are too many Ph.D.s in German. To restore some balance to the market, the ratio of new Ph.D.s to advertised tenure-track jobs needs to drop from where it is today (well over 2 to 1) to where it was during the 1980s and 1990s (less than 1.5 to 1). That doesn’t mean that everyone will find a job, but it will improve the situation for job-seekers. (Reducing the number of M.A. degrees awarded is a separate but related issue.)
6. Reducing the number of new Ph.D.s will improve the situation for job seekers within a few years. There is not a massive backlog of underemployed Ph.D.-holders that a reform of doctoral programs in German would need to work through. My evidence for this lies in the facts of who gets hired, where Ph.D.-holders more than three years past their date of Ph.D. conferral who have not previously held a tenure-track position comprise a tiny fraction of those who are hired. With a few exceptions, people who have not found a tenure-track position after three or four years move on to other career options, or develop ties to a location that preclude seeking a TT job outside their immediate vicinity.
7. Programs can be too small or too large. Some small programs should close rather than continue investing in a graduate program that does not offer its students a broad range of faculty research interests and seminar topics. For a relatively efficient program, I estimate the lower limit at around one Ph.D. per year. Other programs admit more students than they can support. With the academic job market as out of sync as it is, graduate programs should only accept students for whom they can provide full funding (and a stipend of $8,000 for teaching three or four classes a year is not an acceptable substitute for full funding). Even programs that can fund all their students may need to replace TAs with full-time lecturers as their programs shrink.
8. Diversity of graduate faculty and programs is healthy and should be preserved as much as possible. While programs need a certain size to be viable, it’s also important to maintain as far as possible the diversity of faculty expertise, geographic distribution, and program emphasis. Ph.D.s should be produced approximately in line with the hiring of tenure-track professors in their regions. It would be a loss to our discipline if reducing the number of Ph.D.s awarded came at the cost of eliminating entire subfields or geographic regions. To put it another way, the pre-1750 subfields are already so small that the intellectual impoverishment of eliminating all of them would have very little effect on the number of Ph.D.s produced each year. To have a noticeable effect, the cuts will have to come out of the larger programs and the center of our discipline.
9. Denying opportunities to people causes less unhappiness the sooner it occurs. It’s less painful to not get into grad school than it is to fail out of a program. It’s less painful to make a career change right after getting a Ph.D. than it is after several years of working on a contingent basis in the field. Like reducing the number of part-time adjunct positions by hiring fewer full-time people instead, improving the chances at a tenure-track job by reducing the number of grad students leaves everybody better off in the long run.
With that in mind, let’s look at the cold equations of the academic job market in German and see where we need to go. Between 1981 and 2007, there were 57.3 tenure-track positions advertised on average each year in the ADFL job list, and 82 Ph.D.s awarded on average, or a ratio of 1.43 TT jobs/Ph.D. Since 2008, there have been on average 30.2 TT jobs advertised and 82.7 Ph.D.s awarded (according to my records, higher than the average of 77.6/year according to “Personalia”), or a ratio of almost three Ph.D.s per TT job. In order to restore balance to the job market, bringing it back to the conditions that prevailed between 1981 and 2007, the discipline of German Studies needs to shrink the size of doctoral education by over half, to around 43 Ph.D.s per year.
But first, we'll saw off Canada. Hiring of Germanists in Canada seems to be different enough from the U.S. that it’s hard to know what to say about it. Not many Ph.D.s from Canadian universities are being hired there or in the U.S. Either a radical restructuring of the Canadian programs is needed, or I just don’t understand their system. For now, we’ll remove Canada from the equation by eliminating Canadian Ph.D. programs from further consideration, and reducing our target by 4.4%, the percentage of jobs advertised each year that lie in Canada. Our new goal is to bring the number of Ph.D.s down to around 41.3 per year—a level not seen since 1961.
Regional alignment. The table below compares Ph.D. production by region (as used for Carnegie classifications) to the number of jobs advertised in the same region, and it says a lot about the misery of German studies today.
In most regions, graduate programs have produced wildly more Ph.D.s in German than the number of tenure-track jobs in that region. The only exceptions are some of the smallest regions, including the Rocky Mountains (where the closing of Utah’s program is about to be replaced by the opening of Colorado’s) and the Southwest (where Texas is the only Ph.D. program, soon to have competition from Arizona). One relatively bright spot has been the Southeast, where a small number of programs (Florida, the fusioning North Carolina and Duke programs, Vanderbilt, Virginia, and Tennessee) have benefited from a significant number of tenure-track searches. Programs in the Plains region (Iowa’s closing leaves only Kansas, Minnesota, and Washington University) also face limited competition, but haven’t benefited from as many TT searches.
After that, the picture becomes much grimmer, with multiple large programs chasing few TT searches. In the Great Lakes region, there are six graduate programs within a few hours’ drive of each other (Illinois, Illinois-Chicago, Chicago, Northwestern, Indiana, and Purdue), with Washington University just over the border. Perhaps Chicago and Northwestern aren’t training students for the same kinds of jobs as Indiana and Illinois (although Illinois and Indiana might dispute that), but there’s not enough room for Chicago and Northwestern in the same city, or for the four public schools within a short drive of each other. The worst case is the Far West, where five UC schools, Stanford, and Washington produce together the third-highest number of Ph.D.s in a region that has offered the second-lowest number of jobs.
This can’t go on. Some programs have to shrink. Others have to close. In the next post, I’ll show one way that it might be done.
1. The job market in German is not ever going to recover. Since the crash of ’08, we have seen six ADFL job lists and six job wikis appear with no sign that our discipline will ever return to the same rate of tenure-track hiring that it enjoyed in the 80s, 90s, or early 2000s. Both grad students and grad departments should plan on a future no rosier than the present.
2. People earn Ph.D.s in German in order to become German professors. Completing three or four years of coursework, writing a dissertation on Heinrich Heine, and gaining foreign language teaching expertise is a terribly inefficient way to prepare for a career in anything else. There’s nothing wrong with people choosing to pursue other careers, but the number of grad students for whom alt-ac is their first choice is quite low.
3. German Ph.D. programs in North American exist to serve the North American market. Teaching German language and literature at colleges and universities in the U.S. requires an odd mix of preparation in SLA, literature, and culture that isn’t well met by graduates in literature or DaF from German universities. In the same way, American Ph.D.s face handicaps outside the U.S., where their language-teaching background is not as strong as a German in DaF, but what they do have is a liability compared to those who have focused strictly on literature.
4. Good graduate programs should continue their work. Poor graduate programs should shrink or close. Existing prestige hierarchies have always poorly served the needs of hiring institutions and should not be reflexively reproduced in the future of German Studies. Instead, programs that have been effective in placing their students into tenure-track jobs should continue to do so. Programs that place their graduates into teaching-focused jobs should be preferred to programs that prepare their students for research-focused jobs that they can’t get.
5. There are too many Ph.D.s in German. To restore some balance to the market, the ratio of new Ph.D.s to advertised tenure-track jobs needs to drop from where it is today (well over 2 to 1) to where it was during the 1980s and 1990s (less than 1.5 to 1). That doesn’t mean that everyone will find a job, but it will improve the situation for job-seekers. (Reducing the number of M.A. degrees awarded is a separate but related issue.)
6. Reducing the number of new Ph.D.s will improve the situation for job seekers within a few years. There is not a massive backlog of underemployed Ph.D.-holders that a reform of doctoral programs in German would need to work through. My evidence for this lies in the facts of who gets hired, where Ph.D.-holders more than three years past their date of Ph.D. conferral who have not previously held a tenure-track position comprise a tiny fraction of those who are hired. With a few exceptions, people who have not found a tenure-track position after three or four years move on to other career options, or develop ties to a location that preclude seeking a TT job outside their immediate vicinity.
7. Programs can be too small or too large. Some small programs should close rather than continue investing in a graduate program that does not offer its students a broad range of faculty research interests and seminar topics. For a relatively efficient program, I estimate the lower limit at around one Ph.D. per year. Other programs admit more students than they can support. With the academic job market as out of sync as it is, graduate programs should only accept students for whom they can provide full funding (and a stipend of $8,000 for teaching three or four classes a year is not an acceptable substitute for full funding). Even programs that can fund all their students may need to replace TAs with full-time lecturers as their programs shrink.
8. Diversity of graduate faculty and programs is healthy and should be preserved as much as possible. While programs need a certain size to be viable, it’s also important to maintain as far as possible the diversity of faculty expertise, geographic distribution, and program emphasis. Ph.D.s should be produced approximately in line with the hiring of tenure-track professors in their regions. It would be a loss to our discipline if reducing the number of Ph.D.s awarded came at the cost of eliminating entire subfields or geographic regions. To put it another way, the pre-1750 subfields are already so small that the intellectual impoverishment of eliminating all of them would have very little effect on the number of Ph.D.s produced each year. To have a noticeable effect, the cuts will have to come out of the larger programs and the center of our discipline.
9. Denying opportunities to people causes less unhappiness the sooner it occurs. It’s less painful to not get into grad school than it is to fail out of a program. It’s less painful to make a career change right after getting a Ph.D. than it is after several years of working on a contingent basis in the field. Like reducing the number of part-time adjunct positions by hiring fewer full-time people instead, improving the chances at a tenure-track job by reducing the number of grad students leaves everybody better off in the long run.
With that in mind, let’s look at the cold equations of the academic job market in German and see where we need to go. Between 1981 and 2007, there were 57.3 tenure-track positions advertised on average each year in the ADFL job list, and 82 Ph.D.s awarded on average, or a ratio of 1.43 TT jobs/Ph.D. Since 2008, there have been on average 30.2 TT jobs advertised and 82.7 Ph.D.s awarded (according to my records, higher than the average of 77.6/year according to “Personalia”), or a ratio of almost three Ph.D.s per TT job. In order to restore balance to the job market, bringing it back to the conditions that prevailed between 1981 and 2007, the discipline of German Studies needs to shrink the size of doctoral education by over half, to around 43 Ph.D.s per year.
But first, we'll saw off Canada. Hiring of Germanists in Canada seems to be different enough from the U.S. that it’s hard to know what to say about it. Not many Ph.D.s from Canadian universities are being hired there or in the U.S. Either a radical restructuring of the Canadian programs is needed, or I just don’t understand their system. For now, we’ll remove Canada from the equation by eliminating Canadian Ph.D. programs from further consideration, and reducing our target by 4.4%, the percentage of jobs advertised each year that lie in Canada. Our new goal is to bring the number of Ph.D.s down to around 41.3 per year—a level not seen since 1961.
Regional alignment. The table below compares Ph.D. production by region (as used for Carnegie classifications) to the number of jobs advertised in the same region, and it says a lot about the misery of German studies today.
In most regions, graduate programs have produced wildly more Ph.D.s in German than the number of tenure-track jobs in that region. The only exceptions are some of the smallest regions, including the Rocky Mountains (where the closing of Utah’s program is about to be replaced by the opening of Colorado’s) and the Southwest (where Texas is the only Ph.D. program, soon to have competition from Arizona). One relatively bright spot has been the Southeast, where a small number of programs (Florida, the fusioning North Carolina and Duke programs, Vanderbilt, Virginia, and Tennessee) have benefited from a significant number of tenure-track searches. Programs in the Plains region (Iowa’s closing leaves only Kansas, Minnesota, and Washington University) also face limited competition, but haven’t benefited from as many TT searches.
After that, the picture becomes much grimmer, with multiple large programs chasing few TT searches. In the Great Lakes region, there are six graduate programs within a few hours’ drive of each other (Illinois, Illinois-Chicago, Chicago, Northwestern, Indiana, and Purdue), with Washington University just over the border. Perhaps Chicago and Northwestern aren’t training students for the same kinds of jobs as Indiana and Illinois (although Illinois and Indiana might dispute that), but there’s not enough room for Chicago and Northwestern in the same city, or for the four public schools within a short drive of each other. The worst case is the Far West, where five UC schools, Stanford, and Washington produce together the third-highest number of Ph.D.s in a region that has offered the second-lowest number of jobs.
This can’t go on. Some programs have to shrink. Others have to close. In the next post, I’ll show one way that it might be done.
Friday, April 4, 2014
MLA job information list classics #8: Meet the old MOOC
From the February 1972 MLA Job Information List, Foreign Language Edition:
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, Waukesha Campus, Waukesha, Wis. 53186
Jan. 19, 1972 Opening for one French or Spanish instructor at the Baraboo Campus. Must be experienced in the use of electronic teaching media (telephone, television, cassette programs etc.) For fall semester of '72.
Sara Toenes, Chairman, Departments of Fr. & Sp.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, Waukesha Campus, Waukesha, Wis. 53186
Jan. 19, 1972 Opening for one French or Spanish instructor at the Baraboo Campus. Must be experienced in the use of electronic teaching media (telephone, television, cassette programs etc.) For fall semester of '72.
Sara Toenes, Chairman, Departments of Fr. & Sp.
Friday, March 28, 2014
They're coming to our field and taking all our jobs! (Well, not really.)
A commenter asked: How many jobs advertised in German studies end up going to people outside of the field?
The answers is: not many. Graduates of American German Studies grad programs have a lock on the tenure-track German Studies jobs in the U.S.
In the sample of 148 people who earned Ph.D.s in 2007 or later and were hired into assistant professor-level tenure-track jobs advertised in 2006 or later, only ten (6.8%) did not hold a Ph.D. from a German Studies Ph.D. program located in North America. Two held Ph.D.s granted by German universities, while the other eight had degrees in comparative literature.
On the other hand, four of those comp lit degrees came out of one program: the University of Pennsylvania. Only twelve German Studies programs had more total tenure-track placements.
The answers is: not many. Graduates of American German Studies grad programs have a lock on the tenure-track German Studies jobs in the U.S.
In the sample of 148 people who earned Ph.D.s in 2007 or later and were hired into assistant professor-level tenure-track jobs advertised in 2006 or later, only ten (6.8%) did not hold a Ph.D. from a German Studies Ph.D. program located in North America. Two held Ph.D.s granted by German universities, while the other eight had degrees in comparative literature.
On the other hand, four of those comp lit degrees came out of one program: the University of Pennsylvania. Only twelve German Studies programs had more total tenure-track placements.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
MLA job information list classics #7: Old-school agism
From the December 1973 MLA Job Information List, Foreign Language Edition:
EAST TENNESSEE SU JOHNSON CITY TN 37601
LANGUAGES
6 November 1973. Asst. prof. of German for Fall 1974. Must have completed Ph. D., have native speaking ability and be under thirty-five. Will teach 5 courses (intermediate and upper division). Should be enthusiastic and imaginative, and willing to work diligently toward building up the department. Will direct summer programs in Germany. Salary $10,500-$13,000. Applications not meeting these requirements will not be acknowledged.
Eduardo Zayas-Bazán, Chariman, Languages
EAST TENNESSEE SU JOHNSON CITY TN 37601
LANGUAGES
6 November 1973. Asst. prof. of German for Fall 1974. Must have completed Ph. D., have native speaking ability and be under thirty-five. Will teach 5 courses (intermediate and upper division). Should be enthusiastic and imaginative, and willing to work diligently toward building up the department. Will direct summer programs in Germany. Salary $10,500-$13,000. Applications not meeting these requirements will not be acknowledged.
Eduardo Zayas-Bazán, Chariman, Languages
Friday, March 14, 2014
MLA job information list classics #6: Fortunately sexism is a thing of the past
GETTYSBURG COLLEGE, Gettysburg, Henry Schneider III, Chm, German & Russian
Assoc. Prof or Asst. Prof., PhD or ABD, German lang. & lit., $8000-$11,000. Exp. required, pub., prof. test scores desired. 2 semesters, 12-14 hrs: German lang. & lit. incl. civ. & cult. & knowledge of audio-lingual method & use of lab. Poss. summer work, about 10% of annual salary. Benefits: 1234, family tuition plan. Prefer male between 25 & 45. Should have abil. to communicate in spoken lang. in classroom & some residence in Germany.
Assoc. Prof or Asst. Prof., PhD or ABD, German lang. & lit., $8000-$11,000. Exp. required, pub., prof. test scores desired. 2 semesters, 12-14 hrs: German lang. & lit. incl. civ. & cult. & knowledge of audio-lingual method & use of lab. Poss. summer work, about 10% of annual salary. Benefits: 1234, family tuition plan. Prefer male between 25 & 45. Should have abil. to communicate in spoken lang. in classroom & some residence in Germany.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
How the job market in German really works. Part three: The dirty secrets of NTT hiring
What’s wrong with these pictures?
Figure 1: MLA/ADFL advertised TT and NTT positions in German, 1975-2012
This graph shows the number of tenure-track (green line) and non-tenure-track positions (blue line) in German advertised in the MLA/ADFL Job Information List for the last 38 years. (As with the TT ads, the NTT positions are only counted if they are full-time, full-year positions asking specifically for German and only German; “either German or Spanish” and “both German and Spanish”-type positions aren’t counted). In three of the last four years, the number of NTT jobs advertised has been above the number of TT jobs. In fact, in the middle of the third-worst year for TT hiring since at least 1957, we experienced our fourth-best year for NTT hiring. The situation is even worse than this graph indicates, as 90% of all the TT jobs that appeared on the wiki since 2006 were published in the JIL, but only 72% of the NTT jobs; the graph understates the total number of NTT jobs much more than we’re understating the TT jobs.
This illustrates an important but little-noticed way that academic careers are being undermined: rather than just in the initial phase, uncertainty, a lack of professional autonomy, and the impossibility of promotion now characterize the entirety of many academic careers. If you care about research or teaching in German Studies, or about preventing the spread of working conditions usually associated with the fast food industry, this is a bad thing.
Figure 2: ADFL advertised NTT positions vs. “Personalia” placements, 1975-2012
This next graph compares the number of JIL NTT ads (blue line again) and the subsequent new NTT appointments (green line) recorded in the “Personalia” section of Monatshefte. Unlike tenure-track hiring, where the number of ads closely tracks the number of new appointments, the numbers of NTT ads and NTT hires have almost no relationship with each other. Worse yet, there are far more new appointments than job ads.
Why is this a problem? Because that means that for decades, NTT hiring has been indifferently recorded. No one knows what’s being counted as an NTT appointment: part time? long-term lecturer? everything in between? At the same time, NTT jobs have long comprised the largest segment of annual hiring in German. Since 2000, there have been on average 90% more new NTT than TT appointments in “Personalia” each year. The job market and the working conditions that matter to most Germanists being hired today are not those associated with tenure-track appointments, because that is not where the majority are being hired. Worst of all, most NTT hiring is not advertised or based on a national search: since 1975, the number of new NTT appointments has surpassed the number of job ads by 57% on average. Not only are TT jobs disappearing, but the majority of the hiring for the remaining NTT jobs takes place out of sight of the MLA or any other professional institution.
If you’re interested in the prehistory, the chart back to 1957 looks like this:
Figure 3: MLA/ADFL advertised NTT positions in German vs. “Personalia” placements, 1957-2012
NTT appointments peaked and started declining in 1963, nearly disappearing by 1971. These instructor-rank appointments typically required only an MA and were often convertible to TT assistant professor appointments upon earning a Ph.D. (The last list of promotions to assistant professor appeared in “Personalia” in 1979.) Beginning in the early 1970s, the advertised NTT jobs morphed into a much different beast: temporary positions that came with an expiration date. From 2006 to 2012 (the latest complete job list), only 26% of the NTT positions were renewable appointments; the rest were limited to either one year (43%) or a few years at most (31%).
Who benefits from this system where TT jobs are scarce, but NTT jobs are relatively plentiful?
The systematic reliance on contingent faculty might be in some way defensible if the additional years of experience earned by VAPs made them more competitive candidates for tenure-track positions. But they don’t. Teaching experience and publications are good, but not as good as “promise” (which is to say, pedigree, freshness, and an aura of unblemished success). Every year of full-time professional experience gained as a VAP is before long outweighed by the stench that comes from failure to get a TT job. No amount of publishing and teaching makes up for the lack of a TT position when top departments evaluate the applications of candidates who have been out for a few years or more.
* * *
The department head just called. She reports that the search committee members were impressed by your credentials and your answers to their interview questions, and you are their unanimous choice for the position of Visiting Assistant Professor. The salary’s a bit on the low side, sorry, but it comes with full benefits.* No chance of renewal, unfortunately, as Professor Grossperücke returns from sabbatical in a year.
*Actually, the university won’t start contributing to your retirement until the second year of employment, and the position is limited to one year.
Do you accept the position? Maybe you do. This is what you’ve spent over a decade training for, ever since you declared a German major as an undergrad. It’s certainly easier to say yes to an adult salary than to choose unemployment and a career change you want to avoid—all of which might come soon enough anyway, so why rush? So you say yes.
Congratulations. You have bought yourself 10 months of an academic career, and one more spin of the wheel known as the academic job market. Better get to work. You don’t have much time. The next job list will come out before your new 101 students take their first chapter test.
Figure 1: MLA/ADFL advertised TT and NTT positions in German, 1975-2012
This graph shows the number of tenure-track (green line) and non-tenure-track positions (blue line) in German advertised in the MLA/ADFL Job Information List for the last 38 years. (As with the TT ads, the NTT positions are only counted if they are full-time, full-year positions asking specifically for German and only German; “either German or Spanish” and “both German and Spanish”-type positions aren’t counted). In three of the last four years, the number of NTT jobs advertised has been above the number of TT jobs. In fact, in the middle of the third-worst year for TT hiring since at least 1957, we experienced our fourth-best year for NTT hiring. The situation is even worse than this graph indicates, as 90% of all the TT jobs that appeared on the wiki since 2006 were published in the JIL, but only 72% of the NTT jobs; the graph understates the total number of NTT jobs much more than we’re understating the TT jobs.
This illustrates an important but little-noticed way that academic careers are being undermined: rather than just in the initial phase, uncertainty, a lack of professional autonomy, and the impossibility of promotion now characterize the entirety of many academic careers. If you care about research or teaching in German Studies, or about preventing the spread of working conditions usually associated with the fast food industry, this is a bad thing.
Figure 2: ADFL advertised NTT positions vs. “Personalia” placements, 1975-2012
This next graph compares the number of JIL NTT ads (blue line again) and the subsequent new NTT appointments (green line) recorded in the “Personalia” section of Monatshefte. Unlike tenure-track hiring, where the number of ads closely tracks the number of new appointments, the numbers of NTT ads and NTT hires have almost no relationship with each other. Worse yet, there are far more new appointments than job ads.
Why is this a problem? Because that means that for decades, NTT hiring has been indifferently recorded. No one knows what’s being counted as an NTT appointment: part time? long-term lecturer? everything in between? At the same time, NTT jobs have long comprised the largest segment of annual hiring in German. Since 2000, there have been on average 90% more new NTT than TT appointments in “Personalia” each year. The job market and the working conditions that matter to most Germanists being hired today are not those associated with tenure-track appointments, because that is not where the majority are being hired. Worst of all, most NTT hiring is not advertised or based on a national search: since 1975, the number of new NTT appointments has surpassed the number of job ads by 57% on average. Not only are TT jobs disappearing, but the majority of the hiring for the remaining NTT jobs takes place out of sight of the MLA or any other professional institution.
If you’re interested in the prehistory, the chart back to 1957 looks like this:
NTT appointments peaked and started declining in 1963, nearly disappearing by 1971. These instructor-rank appointments typically required only an MA and were often convertible to TT assistant professor appointments upon earning a Ph.D. (The last list of promotions to assistant professor appeared in “Personalia” in 1979.) Beginning in the early 1970s, the advertised NTT jobs morphed into a much different beast: temporary positions that came with an expiration date. From 2006 to 2012 (the latest complete job list), only 26% of the NTT positions were renewable appointments; the rest were limited to either one year (43%) or a few years at most (31%).
Who benefits from this system where TT jobs are scarce, but NTT jobs are relatively plentiful?
- The employers. Universities can hire qualified Ph.D. holders for full-time positions and boast about it in rankings and promotional materials (we have full time faculty with terminal degrees!), but never have to worry about giving their language instructors a raise or paying their pensions. The risks of enrollment volatility can be entirely offloaded from the university onto the NTT faculty members. Just hire and fire as often as necessary. Teaching and research awards, not to mention more expensive enticements like travel funding, research leaves, or sabbaticals, can be restricted to the shrinking cadre of tenure-track faculty.
- The Ph.D. programs. Your grad program can claim with a straight face that every one of their Ph.D.s who went on the market found a full-time academic teaching job upon graduation. (What happens to you after your first job is your own problem, not the department’s, in this view.)
- The research mill. As a NTT faculty member, your only chance to stay employed longer than 10 months is to keep your CV fresh, so you publish at break-neck pace so that you’ll have new publications to show the next search committee who will look at your applications.
- You. You showed the world that you’re good enough after all. You got a real job in your field that pays over twice as much your grad student stipend!
- The students. In a term appointment, your incentives are not aligned with your department’s or your university’s, because they are not going to hire you the next time you need a job. By necessity, you focus on the things that will get you your next job. You don’t develop a course that the students may need, because a) you likely have no say in course development, and b) you have no idea if you’ll be there next fall. You may have already emptied your office by the time your spring-semester teaching evaluations come in.
- Your colleagues. Administrative responsibilities become more concentrated on the few remaining tenure-track faculty. Departmental democracies become tenure-based oligarchies or pedagogical dictatorships. With all their administrative demands, the tenure-track faculty have less time for research or teaching. Research and teaching instead become the domain of transient instructors, while tenure becomes increasingly restricted to a managerial administrative class.
- Research in German Studies. Even as you’re madly researching and publishing on a ten-month contract, you know what you don’t do? You don’t make a five- or ten-year plan, because everything you do must be completed by the end of the academic year. The important contributions to our field will not be made by people who can only plan ten months ahead at most.
- You. While you’re teaching as much, or 50% more, or twice as much as your TT colleagues, and publishing just as much (not because it’s in your contract, but because you need to in order to find your next job), you will be earning significantly less than you would have as a beginning assistant professor (and maybe receiving no employer’s match on your retirement contributions), all while enjoying less research support and being ineligible for the teaching rewards that would help your CV. Instead of the job market as a one-time life event that lasts four to six months, the job market will become your life, all year, every year. Instead of leaving academia after earning a Ph.D. because you couldn’t find a job, you’ll leave several years later, after you’ve discovered that you actually enjoy and are good at teaching and research, so much so that you’d do almost anything not to leave the field. If you pour your heart into building up a program, you will only prove to administrators that they don’t need to offer tenure to keep their programs running. You will never buy a home. You can choose between having no spouse, living apart from your spouse, or imposing a 100% portable career on your spouse. You can choose between having no children, or having children who will never spend longer than three years in any one place—children that you may not see much in any case while you’re teaching 4-4 or more, and publishing madly to keep your CV fresh, and applying for every job that will keep your career going for one more year. You will receive less moving support than TT faculty or none at all, even as you move across the country every other summer.
The systematic reliance on contingent faculty might be in some way defensible if the additional years of experience earned by VAPs made them more competitive candidates for tenure-track positions. But they don’t. Teaching experience and publications are good, but not as good as “promise” (which is to say, pedigree, freshness, and an aura of unblemished success). Every year of full-time professional experience gained as a VAP is before long outweighed by the stench that comes from failure to get a TT job. No amount of publishing and teaching makes up for the lack of a TT position when top departments evaluate the applications of candidates who have been out for a few years or more.
* * *
The department head just called. She reports that the search committee members were impressed by your credentials and your answers to their interview questions, and you are their unanimous choice for the position of Visiting Assistant Professor. The salary’s a bit on the low side, sorry, but it comes with full benefits.* No chance of renewal, unfortunately, as Professor Grossperücke returns from sabbatical in a year.
*Actually, the university won’t start contributing to your retirement until the second year of employment, and the position is limited to one year.
Do you accept the position? Maybe you do. This is what you’ve spent over a decade training for, ever since you declared a German major as an undergrad. It’s certainly easier to say yes to an adult salary than to choose unemployment and a career change you want to avoid—all of which might come soon enough anyway, so why rush? So you say yes.
Congratulations. You have bought yourself 10 months of an academic career, and one more spin of the wheel known as the academic job market. Better get to work. You don’t have much time. The next job list will come out before your new 101 students take their first chapter test.
Friday, February 14, 2014
The job market hasn't always been bad: The case of Penn State
From the Chronicle of Higher Education this week:
The story of our 485 humanities Ph.D.’s is more complicated and considerably less encouraging. In the 2002-7 cohort, 52 percent found tenure-track positions right out of graduate school, either at a research university (17 percent) or elsewhere (35 percent). By contrast, only 27 percent of the 2008-13 group landed tenure-track jobs immediately after graduation, at a research university (6 percent) or other types of institutions (21 percent).That's a drop in TT placement rates of nearly 50%. Things changed in 2008 in a way that "well, the job market has always been bad" completely overlooks.
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