Marcus Arvan (Tampa) has put together his annual analysis of the areas in which jobs were advertised this hiring year; particularly striking is the distribution of AOS for the 228 tenure-track jobs that were advertised:
Breakdown by AOS - Tenure-Track Jobs Only (228 jobs)
- Aesthetics: 1 job (.04%)
- Continental: 9.2 jobs (4%)
- Core: 28.8 jobs (12.6%)
- History/Traditions: 36.2 jobs (15.9%)
- Open AOS: 40.5 jobs (17.8%) – many at small schools (~60%)
- Religion: 5.25 jobs (2.3%)
- Social identity (race, gender, etc.): 11.7 jobs (5.1%)
- Science: 14.8 jobs (6.5%)
- Value theory (ethics, political): 79.2 jobs (34.7%)
A few observations of my own. As noted earlier, this was indeed a good year for Continental job seekers. And the early signs that the "core" is dying do seem borne out by these statistics: how "core" are areas that account for only 12.6% of all jobs advertised? On the other hand, some parts of the so-called "core" (language, mind, metaphysics, epistemology) spill over into parts of philosophy of religion, philosophy of race, philosophy of gender and, sometimes, value theory, so perhaps the statistics aren't as bleak as they look--and some of the "open" jobs will, of course, go to those working in "core" areas. That 5.1% of the jobs had an AOS for philosophy of race and gender is stunning (that's more than for Continental or philosophy of religion, let alone aesthetics), though one suspects some of these may really be "hidden criteria" searches. Value theory continues to have the most job ads, but probably also the most job seekers.
Comments from readers on this data welcome.
