job market
TagJob Market Mentoring for Women Philosophers
A group of women philosophers — Amanda Greene (University of Chicago), Corinne Gartner (Wellesley College), Sarah-Jane Leslie (Princeton University), Tamar Schapiro (Stanford University), Kristin Primus (New York University), Jennifer Frey (University of South Carolina), Daniela Dover (UCLA), and Sara Bernstein (Duke University) — have created Market Boost, “a n..
Are Terminal MA’s Part of the Solution?
My proposal, if I had a magic wand to make it happen, would be to not to make PhD admissions out of college. Turn a lot of PhD programs that aren’t serving their graduates well into MA programs, and have PhD programs accept students from the MA programs. Then the PhD programs would be evaluating applicants who’d spent a couple of years doing graduate-level work. The..
Professors in Poverty
A few weeks ago Salon published “Professors on Food Stamps: The Shocking True Story of Academia in 2014.” The article shares the plight of adjunct instructors, a lot of whom teach many courses at multiple institutions for minimal compensation.
“The most shocking thing is that many of us don’t even earn the federal minimum wage,” said Miranda Merklein, an adjunct ..
Advertising Exploitative Positions
Derek Bowman, a recent philosophy PhD who is currently employed as a part-time lecturer, writes in with a suggestion for addressing the increasingly prevalent practice of hiring part-time or adjunct faculty to meet teaching needs. I present it here for your consideration and discussion.
In recent years, the philosophy blogosphere has done an admirable job mak..
How Much Should Graduate Students Publish?
A current graduate student writes in with this sense of what is expected nowadays:
I’m under the general impression that I need to get as many publications in top journals as I can before I go on the job market. Considering how slow this process can be, and the fact that you can’t concurrently submit the same paper to more than one journal, it follows that I need t..
An Advisor’s Extra Help on the Job Market
Placement practices at different graduate programs in philosophy vary, and one difference concerns what advisors do to help their students land jobs. There is, of course, the advising. And also, of course, the letter writing. But then there is a range of activities that go beyond these regular responsibilities—such as calling or emailing members of search committe..
1st Round Interview Data
Jaded, Ph.D. one of the hosts of the Philosophy Smoker, is gathering data about first-round interviews in the philosophy job market. There is a short, two-question form here that job candidates and people on search committees can complete.
Why Not Skype Interview?
Over the past few years more and more philosophy departments are moving to a model of hiring that ditches the interviewing of candidates at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association and replaces them with interviews over Skype or other video-conferencing technology. The case for doing so seems quite strong. It is less expensive for candi..
Indie Film by Philosopher about Job Market
Shahin Izadi, who received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, must have decided that the academic job market was too easy and so decided to go for a sure thing — indie film-making. He is currently making a movie called Ironwood, about two candidates for an academic job who take a roadtrip to do their interviews and go camping. You can learn mor..
Job Market Analyses – UPDATED (yet again)
Update (7/14/14): Last week, Leiter replied to Jennings’ comparisons with some data. Jennings responds with newer data, arguing that “recency and time frame” matter.
Update (6/30/14): The Philosophical Gourmet versus Jennings’ Placement Data.
Update (6/25/14): Jennings tells us which departments have relatively high placement rates.
Update (6/20/14): In a new pos..
How to Reject
The job-seeking process in philosophy is, to put it politely, generally long and drawn out and tiring and discouraging and costly and anxiety-ridden, a perfect storm of stress, self-doubt, and probably a bunch of other things that start with ‘s’ (no suggestions in the comments about that, please). What can those on the hiring side of the table do to make things bett..