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When tenure never comes

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Re: When tenure never comes

#41

Post by alasdair_ »

smallnamespace wrote: post #27

My experience in finance was that 50% of quants (especially physics PhDs from the 90s, when all the Cold War-era funding dried up) were failed academics. Most of the rest were PhDs jumping straight to industry to avoid chasing tenure for years.

It depends on how you define "failed". Even the best academics may think it rational to make millions of dollars as a quant over a more conventional salary as an academic.

I am not a "failed mcdonalds cashier" if I choose to quit and something that pays more, even if I started out in that particular field.

Re: When tenure never comes

#42

Post by fsck--off »

mjevans wrote: post #3

I hate having to enable JavaScript just to read a website. It was worth it for this one though, just one main thing; still I almost didn't click it, I often don't. - I see that same mentality reflected in far too many places, no one wants to hire for a career anymore; and that's what 'tenure' is at a college. The 'contract' in society between the working class and those who employee them is beyond broken.

You can read the site with JavaScript disabled if you also disable CSS.

Re: When tenure never comes

#43

Post by danso »

I'm just an adjunct and will likely never break into the tenure track (not having a master's degree being one of many factors against me), but I was sad to see that even this purportedly slow and deliberate process be affected to some degree by ageism. A good friend of mine entered grad school (in the humanities) around 2004, when most folks he knew were easily finding tenure-track jobs after their PhDs. He found himself the runner-up for highly-contested jobs, and family events took him out of the hunt for a bit, but as the years went on and he was content to be hired by not top-tier schools, he ran into the "We'd love to hire you but your resumé is too prestigious for us and you might just use us as a stepping stone" and "If you haven't been snapped up despite such a great pedigree, then something must be wrong with you". He eventually got a tenure-track offer which he happily accepted, but he was close to giving up on his decade-long career path.

I think these struggles are endemic to nearly all professions but it seems to me that in academia, there's fewer opportunities to get tenure-track (or non-tenure, but decently-paying) positions once you've deviated from the usual path, even before you factor in the scarcity.

Re: When tenure never comes

#44

Post by throw_away_777 »

gohrt wrote: post #39
coldtea wrote: post #36

> I don’t need to start building a life from scratch in my late thirties. I definitely don’t need to do it for a nine—or three-month contract without benefits, or costs of moving. Well, it's not like the academic world, even when it was much better itself, has done much to protest and assist with the same and much worse situation in blue collar (and even office) jobs. First they came for the McDonalds burger flippers…

Does McDonald's lay off staff every 9 months?

McDonald's turnover is at least 44%, so basically yes. http://fistfuloftalent.com/2008/05/can-this-turnov.html

Re: When tenure never comes

#45

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

schoen wrote: post #25
scott_s wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the author is from the humanities, which have starkly different funding realities than what you and I are used to. (Your profile says you are a computational scientist, and while I work in industry, I still publish in computer science academic conferences.)

> I still publish in computer science academic conferences Having just recently attended an academic conference as a non-academic (but not submitted anything this time), I was wondering whether non-academics do, or should, feel guilty about publishing at these venues. It was very apparent how other people there were looking for jobs and using their publications and presentations as a part of that process. If non-acad…

I don't think you should feel bad about that at all. The amount of jobs available is not going to decrease due to you publishing papers. If you "take away a spot" for someone's paper it might mean that that person doesn't get a job, but some other academic will get it instead (and none of them will know).

In fact I'd say non-academics publishing in conferences and journals can be good for academics even from an egoistic standpoint, as it can help break the popular perception of science/academia as an ivory tower of self-absorbing smartasses out of touch with reality. And better popular perception of science indirectly means more funding. So as an academic I would definitely see an increase of submissions by non-academics as good news for my interests.

Re: When tenure never comes

#46

Post by yeukhon »

throw_away_777 wrote: post #9

Every student considering going to graduate school should read this article. Professors are very misinformed about how likely someone is to get tenure (most of them got it > 20 years ago, in a much better academic job market). This misinformation trickles down to students. The simple fact is that right now the average professor is graduating more than 10 phd students, only 1 of which can become a tenured professor at…

Yes. The market is very narrow for academia. I live in NYC. there are a handful of universes and colleges. If the large institutions are not hiring, you are left with the small fish normally just looking for teachers not professors. Also, to grow your career a healthy environment is collaboration. If you end up being a Professor at a small pond, your bet is external collaboration. If you don't like the small ponds, you have to find jobs somewhere else, that means moving to another state. Since there are thousands of post doc actively looking to join a good research institutions, the job market is so competitive.

For engineers, say you got rejected by Google, there are still hundreds of engineering teams you can apply to.

Should there be a policy to force retirement? Is it fair?

Re: When tenure never comes

#47

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

Hermel wrote: post #4

An academic career should never be your only option. Make sure you study something that is useful in the real economy.

Can you define "the real economy"? I hope it doesn't involve law, finance, consulting, etc. as these look far less "real" than academic work to me.

Re: When tenure never comes

#48

Post by Fej »

Just an anecdote... a professor whose classes I've taken, which were fantastic, recently got tenured. In the liberal arts, too!

I like to think that tenure isn't quite dead yet. Depends on the college, naturally. (I deliberately use the word "college" instead of "university"; I find that the liberal arts college at my university is more organized than the computer science department.)

Eventually the college loan bubble will burst, and universities will no longer be able to be run like businesses.

Re: When tenure never comes

#49

Post by twblalock »

danso wrote: post #43

I'm just an adjunct and will likely never break into the tenure track (not having a master's degree being one of many factors against me), but I was sad to see that even this purportedly slow and deliberate process be affected to some degree by ageism. A good friend of mine entered grad school (in the humanities) around 2004, when most folks he knew were easily finding tenure-track jobs after their PhDs. He found him…

It's commonly assumed in humanities disciplines that if you don't get a tenure-track job within a few years of graduation, you probably never will. It's also common for advisers to tell their students not to adjunct under any circumstances, because it makes you "damaged goods" on the job market. A lot of professors advise their students to take non-academic jobs and keep applying to tenure-track positions, rather than take adjunct jobs.

Many older professors who have tenure, and who have great influence in their departments, entered academia when it was the case that "there are always jobs for good people." That's their worldview, and it's just not true anymore. But because they think that way, when they see a candidate who has been looking for a job for several years, they assume that candidate is not one of the good ones.

It seems to me that the sciences are different, because postdoc positions seem to be a normal part of one's career progression after a PhD. But in the humanities, that's not the case.

Re: When tenure never comes

#50

Post by twblalock »

pmiller2 wrote: post #19

I consider myself fortunate that I realized most of what was talked about in this article was true while I was about halfway through grad school. The fundamental realization that given the size of my classes, where my peers were competition for any academic job, combined with the fact that I would literally have to wait for someone to die before I could get one of those jobs, was enough to knock me right off of the a…

Same here. Leaving grad school was the best decision I ever made. The year I left, there were only 2 or 3 positions in my field in the entire United States, and one of them went unfilled because the university didn't like any of the candidates.
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