The posting on the academic job market in philosophy has already generated a lot of positive and interesting feedback, some of which I've secured permission to share.
Keith DeRose (Philosophy, Yale) writes:
"I liked your weblog post on job prospects in philosophy. Overly pessimistic misinformation on the topic is perhaps not as harmful as overly optimistic misinfo, but, especially when it gets wildly off the mark, the pessimistic is also awful.
"One comment, though: You link to your '98 piece in the Chron., but without noting how that's become outdated. It's worth noting that things seem to have improved in the intervening 6 years. At least according to the APA's stats: the ratio [of candidates to jobs advertised] has gone down to 1.4 for both 01-02 and 02-03 (the two most recent years they have stats posted on) -- which is lower than any of the ratios they have posted for a year in the 80's. My impression is that these APA stats are quite helpful -- when viewed in the right way. What numbers they end up with for the ratios are hostage to many vagaries of how they collect and handle their data. I'd find the number for any given year to be pretty worthless for that reason. But they seem to have been pretty consistent in how they do things, so what I do find valuable is the sense you can get of how the job market is changing over time. From years when I myself was on the market, or grad school friends of mine, or when I was intimately involved in placement as a faculty advisor, I have something of a sense for how tough the market has been in certain years, and the numbers do a good job of reflecting that sense I have: the years that seemed particularly brutal are years for which the ratio is higher, etc. Based on this sense, 1.4 is still a tough market, but not so very bad."
Jason D'Cruz (a grad student in philosophy at Brown University) remarks:
"I think that you're right that the Village Voice article is somewhat inflammatory. But the worst part of the article is how dreary it makes grad school seem. What student advisers need to impress upon undergrads thinking of doing a PhD is that they must regard grad school as an end in itself, not merely as a means. It is most certainly not a long and arduous apprenticeship that naturally terminates in one's being admitted to the guild. If living off $15000/year and doing some of the most intellectually stimulating work of your life for five to seven years does not sound intrinsically appealing, then a PhD in philosophy is not for you."
Finally, a philosopher in the U.K. at a quite strong, but not very top, British department wrote:
"I got my PhD from [a top 30ish U.S. department--hereafter 'PhD school']. I have a permanent and fantastic job at [a top 15ish UK department-hereafter 'current school']. It's a dream job, with plenty of time for research and great colleagues to talk to. Every once in a while we have a PhD student get a great job.... But for the most part my current school is like my PhD school: almost no PhD students get jobs that involve any research. And of course most of us really want to do some research even though we enjoy teaching too.
"I've always been quite troubled with the idea of being part of a PhD program that rarely gets its students good jobs. My PhD school is the same as my current school in that respect. The only reason I got a job [at the current school]...is that I had several publications in [very good journals]. As you put it, if the bottom third of the PhD granting depts stopped granting PhDs the profession would probably not suffer horribly. My current school and my PhD school are roughly in the low part of the top third, and I have real qualms about taking on PhD students at my current school. I won't accept them unless they get a solid first at the MA level. And I tell them that there are just three ways to get a job in the UK: outstanding letters from people like [Timothy] Williamson [at Oxford] and [Crispin] Wright [at St. Andrews], publications, or a reputation as an outstanding conference philosopher (the latter coming from outstanding performances at most UK conferences, possible here but not in US). So I do my best to lay it on the line about their chances in landing a good job (one that includes a not insignificant amount of research)."
UPDATE: Paul Noordhof (Philosophy, Nottingham) reports a more optimistic story about job prospects from his program:
"I noticed your post about the job market and the commentator about the UK market and I just thought I'd add my voice because the UK person seemed overly pessimistic. In the past four years we've had three people pass their PhD with us (that makes us small I admit but..). Two of them have gone to permanent jobs in research universities (Massey (the individual also received a permanent job offer from Kent but wanted to emmigrate to New Zealand) and Aberdeen). The third one is still on the market but has publications and I'm hopeful they'll succeed.... Take the worst case scenario, then our rate is 66 2/3% in permanent posts. Both candidates had only people from Nottingham writing in support."
Recent Comments