MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY TO ENCOURAGE MORE COMMENTS
A tenure-track faculty member at a good department recently wrote to me, reporting that a tenured colleague elsewhere thought "it was standard to go on the job market the year that one was up for tenure whatever one thought of one's chances":
His reasons [for saying this]: the unpleasantness of hanging around and the advantages of giving oneself more shots at the market if one gets denied tenure, the potential pressure on one's home institution created by an outside offer, and the general increase in visibility. He also claimed that one should apply only to roughly peer institutions to avoid indicating a lack of confidence. I have heard similar things from others. But I did just want to get your opinion. Does all the above sound right to you? One further question: should one only apply for tenured positions because applying for tenure-track positions also gives the wrong signal that one is not confident?
I am curious what philosophers with experience think about this. My impression is that junior faculty up for tenure, especially though not exclusively at departments where tenure is often denied, do usually make a selective search that same year, applying for both tenure-track and tenured posts at "peer" departments in a very capacious sense of peer (e.g., someone up for tenure at one of the very top departments might apply for tenure-track jobs at any of the top 20-30 PhD-granting departments). But I am not really confident that my impression is accurate. Input from others would no doubt be helpful to many junior faculty who face this question. Non-anonymous posts will be be preferred, as usual, though substantive and well-informed anonymous posts may also be approved. Please post only once, as comments may take awhile to appear. (As readers may have inferred from the dearth of postings lately, things are a bit hectic currently.)