Grim Numbers

[lollardfish]

Academic Job Market.

The reality of radically differing job markets may be especially clear as 2011 begins with disciplinary associations gathering for job interviews at annual meetings and releasing data on the number of available positions. During the 2009-10 academic year, the number of positions listed with the American Historical Association dropped by 29.4 percent, according to a study the group will release today. That follows a 23.8 percent drop the year before. Last year, the association announced that the number of listings it received -- 806 -- was the smallest in a decade; this year's total of 569 marks the smallest number in 25 years.

Comments

[rani23.livejournal.com]

Huh. Are there less students going to school? Do they give any analysis for the numbers?

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

No, there are more students going to school. It's a shift in a lot of things that have been building for three decades (maybe four - the first real crisis was in the early 70s).

The current academic finance model relies on adjunct instruction at the undergrad-only dept, and grad instruction at the bigger schools. So there's no real incentive to hire full-time faculty, while there is an incentive to admit promising grad students.

There's a lot of "doesn't apply to /us/, but others should admit fewer phd candidates," going on in major grad programs, I think.

There was a rush of jobs in the early part of this decade due to retirements, but that wave crested. Now people are holding off retiring as long as possible, due to economic uncertainty.

Economic uncertainty makes HR timid about hiring at the university level, just as anywhere else.

State funding for universities has diminished significantly.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head! But I'm sure there are studies.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who has a tenure-track job at an institution she hates in a city she hates. And she's looking at it going, "Well, shit." Because so many of her classmates are completely out in the cold, either scraping by as adjuncts or not getting work at all, and there she is with the tenure-track plum--and she would love to be anywhere else at all--and the numbers are just horrifying.

Bleh.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

I wonder if we have the same friend. And yeah.

There were jobs which would have merited going into another field rather than moving my family for something awful, but instead I fortunately have a job I deeply love. So there's that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I know the person in question through very different circles than the ones through which I know you, so sadly I think there are just multiple people staring at the job that's supposedly what they worked through so many years of education for and going, "Really? For this?"

I'm glad yours is better. Because that's exactly the choice my friend is looking at; even worse, her spouse's field is even lower on jobs than academia, if you'd credit it, so hers is the only income they have.

It sucks, lo, mightily.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Ick. And it's important stuff. I suspect we're currently under-investing in real liberal-arts programs (not necessarily in "higher education" as a class; that includes community colleges and law and medical programs too).

Lots of private universities rely heavily on their endowments, which may have been heavily hit by recent stock market messes. So public and private are in financial trouble at the same time, and support for students isn't any too good.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

The stock market has rebounded mightily, so that's not the issue in most cases (our modest endowment is higher than it was before the crash). It does, however, provide a good excuse for people who do not want to invest their money in tenure-track lines.

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

Add to that being spouses, both with PhDs in history, trying to both find tenure-track jobs, ideally at least within commuting distance of one another, and you have my brother and sister-in-law and their impossible situation.