MOVING TO FRONT GIVEN IMPORTANCE OF DISCUSSION
Philosopher Elizabeth Harman (Princeton) writes with a timely message, which I hope all departments will heed:
Please take note that academicjobsonline.org is a great service that makes things *much* easier for job candidates and departments that are trying to place their students. This service is free for job applicants and only requires applicants and letter-writers to upload all their materials once. Then to apply to each of the hiring departments using the service, applicants merely need to tick a few boxes. Several philosophy hiring departments did use the service last year (Duke, Tufts, Yale, Stanford, Tulane, Oregon, and Washington Tacoma), and hopefully more will this year. (All mathematics hiring uses this service. It is much more humane for job candidates.)
There's more here (we linked to this previously, but please read it again!). The APA, to its credit, has waived the membership fee for Interfolio for APA members, but not (as I understand it) the cost per application, which can still add up to hundreds of dollars (more than a thousand even). Faculty: ask yourself how you would feel about having to spend 5-10% of your gross income in a given year on job applications? And given the diminishing marginal utility of income to middle- and upper-class income earner, that percentage is not really adequate to describe the financial hardship for job seekers.
UPDATE: Christopher Morris (Maryland) writes: "It might be helpful were you to open your posting to comments and invite those who have used the new service to say something about its reliability. Like most depts we are setting up our placement system for the fall and have only a little time to reorganize it. Hearing something from Duke, et al. would be very helpful to most doctoral programs."
Comments are now open; faculty, please sign your comments; students who have used the service can simply include a valid e-mail address (which won't appear), but need not sign their full name.
