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?

[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.

[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.

[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.