Famae Restitutae 2024/25
After a long absence, a new interactive website devoted to the Classics, Ancient History, & Archaeology job market. "Because there is no "hire" in "Higher Education"
...Be kind and maintain professional decorum.
After a long absence, a new interactive website devoted to the Classics, Ancient History, & Archaeology job market. "Because there is no "hire" in "Higher Education"
...Be kind and maintain professional decorum.
How the fuck are so many jobs in this day and age asking for letters of rec up front? Booo. Go back to your sleazy hotel room interviews, O Search Committees of Days Gone By.
ReplyDeleteI found similar testimonies helpful when I first entered the job market, so now that I finally landed a tenure-track job, I feel that it may help others to have the sorts of numbers for my journey.
ReplyDeletePhD from an elite non-Ivy. Maintained VAP appointments at 3 different universities, the last being a top R1.
On the job market for 6 years, applied to a total of 102 T-T jobs, had 36 first-round interviews, invited for a campus visit four times, one T-T job offer this year after the first choice turned it down.
It’s brutal out there. Every year I felt more and more defeated and and less confident despite gaining much experience as a lecturer (with many teaching awards), publishing articles, being invited to contribute chapters to edited volumes, and landing a contract with a major academic press. Serious and real depression loomed overhead at all times as I pondered 50 times a day for 6+ years if I made an enormous mistake in life. At the end of the day, I didn’t land the job due to being “the best” out of 150+ applicants, as surely 90% would be phenomenal choices, but luck. It’s so hard to feel joy or elation at landing a T-T job knowing so many peers and friends of mine who are far better scholars than I am, remain in VAP/adjunct purgatory and some for more than a decade. It’s bizarre that when you finally get something you’ve wanted for so long, you feel overwhelmed with guilt like you don’t deserve it and that you’ve landed a spot on a lifeboat while you watch too many others sink with the Titanic in front of you.
…sorry. Didn’t mean to make it such a somber thing, but I wanted to share some numbers of my experience that might (as noted above, it did for me) provide some hope for those out there to put your own into some perspective.
On the plus side, it appears that there are already a good number of jobs that came out in July (!?), so hopefully this is a year of enormous growth for the job market!
Best of luck to all of you, wherever you are on your journey.
@4:55, I'm late to the party but I think this is a great idea. My PhD is in classics from a top public R1 and I spent three years fully on the market (post-defense) before getting my current TT position.
DeleteExcluding postdocs and other short-term positions, I submitted 36 TT applications, had 9 TT 1st-round interviews, was invited to 2 TT 2nd-round interviews, and got one TT job offer. On the way I held a postdoc (public R1) and 2 VAPs (regional R2 and non-elite SLAC), neither of the latter in a classics department. I was offered my current position after the top choice withdrew.
I am especially lucky to have my job not just because TT positions are so rare but also because my position is a classics-adjacent one with an uncommon combination of competencies that makes good use of my skills beyond my formal graduate training and degree. It is also in a region in which many people would not want to live but one where I am closer to family than I could have hoped for.
Like others, I didn't get this position because my research was the best or because my CV was the most impressive. It had much more to do with my life experiences and the peculiarities of my career path. The demoralizing conclusion I have drawn is that there is no actionable advice that I can give to people on the market based on my own experience.
@4:55,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the numbers, approaching my 3rd year on the market this season, it’s a small consolation that my numbers are, for what it’s worth, right about where yours would be if you had a generally even distribution of interviews over your six years. I’ve also been told by advisors that they had roughly 5-7 years on the market and said that they put in for 100-200 jobs, had 30-40 1st round, 2-3 2nd round, and then a TT offer.
These numbers don’t translate, I think it’s safe to assume, for Ivy PhDs as much as they do for the rest of us. They tend to be those that land the TT job at top R1s while ABD despite no teaching experience and little to no proof of scholarly viability. I don’t mean to sound bitter, but this really is the case more than not, especially when many SCs are comprised of Ivy folks who landed their job the same way.
Lastly, and sorry for not leading with this, but congrats on the job! The self loathing and imposter syndrome stuff is all, very much I think, just embedded in the DNA of those in academia.
@4:55 Great idea to give context for those out on the market. PhD non-Ivy R1 ~60 TT applications over 6 years; 8 first round; 3 on campus (including my current position). This masks ~30 non-TT applications and ~10 post-doc/fellowship applications that kept me afloat in the meantime.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't really important, but I have a point of curiosity reading a couple of the above posts. When people here talk about "Ivy" PhDs, what do you really mean? I assume Harvard, Yale, Penn, Princeton, and probably Columbia. But do Brown and Cornell count? And what about Berkeley and Stanford? And are there any other technically non-Ivies in that top tier? Chicago?
ReplyDeleteThe Ivy League is a college athletic conference whose membership consists of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale. These eight schools are what people mean by the "Ivy PhDs" (although Dartmouth is not a PhD-granting institution) and none other.
DeleteI got my PhD at an Ivy, was on the market for 4 years, applied to 43 TT jobs (and 29 non-TT jobs), had 13 first-round TT interviews, 8 campus visits, and one offer. There was nothing to apply to for a few years and I was geographically selective. Applications zapped so much time and productivity.
ReplyDelete@9:10,
ReplyDeleteIt means any of the seven Ivy League Universities that offer PhDs (Dartmouth is Ivy League number 8/8, but aside from an MBA and maybe one or two other graduate degrees, it is essentially a 4-yr college).
So, the Ivies that offer PhDs are, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, UPenn, Cornell, and Columbia.
When people speak of a “par-Ivy” or speak of “an elite non-Ivy” they are referring to a generally acknowledged—yet very unspecified—list of ca. six schools that while not in the Ivy League are relatively equal to Ivies regarding the quality of faculty, quality of programs, prestige of having their degree, and overall quality of the institution.
Forgive me, but if I were to propose what likely are these “par-Ivies” it would likely be (in no specific order):
University of Chicago
Duke University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Stanford University
University of California, Berkeley
University of Michigan
and maybe also:
NYU-ISAW
University of Texas-Austin
University of Cincinnati
As a follow-up, take a look at the Wiki. Most TT jobs and even VAPs/PostDocs go to folks with an Ivy PhD most of the time, with the list of the six Par-Ivies making up almost all of the remaining jobs. PhDs from the tertiary schools above are a very narrow margin of the totality of jobs and often go years without seeing a single alum getting a job.
DeleteThis is why it is so true, and yes it is unfair, to say that if you don’t get into a top 10-12 PhD program (an Ivy or Par-Ivy), don’t go to grad school. There are, on any given year, 150-200 PhDs from the Ivies and Par-Ivies at various stages in their career from ABD to being a 10-year VAP veteran putting in the for the few dozen jobs every year.
In short, T-T is only achieved by around 1-2% of PhDs in our discipline, so it’s awful for all of us with no sign of getting any better (especially with the demographic cliff hitting for jobs posting this year until, at least, 2030).
Increasingly (esp. last year) we see grads from non-US departments landing jobs in the US. So in addition to the above US depts, I would count Oxford, Cambridge, and maybe St. Andrews, TCD, Toronto.
DeleteThe above comments are dead on. For further verification of things, go to any college/university Classics Department webpage and look at from where their current Assistant Professors received their PhD, as the Wiki may not show all jobs (there are always 2-3 a year that aren’t published but are new lines—spousal hires the most typical but also I often see a few otherwise inexplicable new T-T faculty at some schools yet no job was posted via SCS nor is anything on the Wiki).
DeleteIn fact, a friend of mine wanted to look at community college jobs, which also are now PhD only (this is a trend from about 2005-on) and from shockingly good schools (i.e., CUNY Queensborough as two Harvard PhDs in their history dept). Private boarding schools also take on elite PhDs and if you’re wanting to teach small classes to absolutely brilliant high schoolers who will be at Harvard, Yale, etc. in a year or two, look for jobs at Philips Exeter, Deerfield, etc. TABS is a site that lists boarding school jobs, and these, too, almost only go to Ivy (at least if you did your BA at one) PhDs.
9:10 again. My question wasn't about the formal defintion of the term, but about actual usage. When people on here complain (rightly) about bias towards "Ivy" schools, I'm pretty sure they mean to include at least some of what have been described above as "par-Ivy" (by the way, that was a very generous list).
Delete@9:10 Why wouldn’t Brown and Cornell count as ivies?
DeleteNot OP, but I have a lot of people talk poorly about Cornell’s classics department, at least from the ancient history side. You have the Greek historian who doesn’t publish anything, refuses to take grad students, and just writes ‘Barnes and Noble’ books, while the Roman historian there couldn’t be any more lackluster.
DeleteThey also don’t place PhDs nearly as often as other Ivies or even the Par-Ivies noted above (look at UNC over the last two years alone!), so maybe 9:10 thinks they haven’t lived up to their reputation lately? I don’t know.
Brown is good for archaeology, but nothing to jump and shout about for anything else really.
Harvard is horrible for ancient history and has been for last 10-12 years (Jones was a joke and Dench, while very nice, is not a strong scholar).
The best ancient historians are at the par-Ivies (e.g., Noreña at Berkeley; Ando at Chicago). This all may color 9:10’s thoughts.
I… what…? Oh diva *no*
Delete@10:01pm you may want to rethink some of your thoughts... at least on ancient history. Harvard has a pretty good placement record in terms of ancient historians––not to mention other subgroups in Classics, but you seem like an ancient historian, so I'll only address that. Dench is actually a very good scholar (though mostly in the 90s and early 2000s), but she's been Dean for many years and that usually stymies people's scholarship. You are also forgetting Kosmin--a rising star--and Coleman, who has actually been one of the best placement people for them over the last few decades.
DeleteI'd actually say that Cliff Ando is more frequently than not...a terrible scholar. His work doesn't actually make any sense half of the time. And can also be a terrible person, depending on whether he likes you/your work.
Noreña is a great person and a very good scholar. Berkeley also has MacRae (a Dench product!).
At Brown, you completely passed over Bodel and Russell. Both are stellar in their own ways (but be careful with Bodel for many reasons...).
The best concentration of quality ancient historians in the US is currently, imho, at Princeton, possibly Yale too (Lenski and Johnston).
Columbia has John Ma, but that's it. Ancient history is basically dead there now.
Stanford is a bit meh, except for Ober, unless you like Scheidel's approach and can put up with an absentee advisor.
Michigan: some good people, especially Romanists.
UNC, Duke, Cinci, UCLA --all non-entities in ancient history right now.
Other good ones to consider:
UW has a great concentration of social/cultural historians (Levin-Richardson and Kamen are a dynamic team).
UCSB: Morstein-Marx and Maclean.
UT Austin: they've cleared out a lot of the bad elements, and with some young folks combined with Riggsby and Taylor, for instance, you have a strong department.
This discussion is veering into uncomfortably personalized territory, but just to note: for at least the past decade, Harvard ancient historians have, to my knowledge, done much better on the job market than history PhDs from any other department. Harvard Classics has an excellent placement record across the board, much better than the department's reputation in the field would merit. For that reason, I tend to think people complaining about Ivies are primarily complaining about the (in their view) undeserved success of students from Harvard, and maybe a couple of other departments that also punch above their weight (such as Stanford, a "par-Ivy" I suppose). If the complaint is just that most faculty in the field got their degree from a top-10 or top-12 department, that's silly; other programs (like OSU, Boulder, even Washington) face an uphill battle for high-prestige placements, but also have very few PhD students in Classics relative to the Ivies and bigger publics like UNC, Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, etc.
Delete@10:01 get fucked.
DeleteAt Columbia, most people working on historical topics in Greece/Rome choose to go into the interdepartmental program in Classical Studies instead of the History PhD because that program offers more flexibility (you can get experience teaching the languages, for example, which you can't do in the history department). So there's a ton of people doing history there, and working with people in history, but not listed on the history department's web page.
DeleteThe conversation has indeed taken a startingly personalized turn. But I want to respond to something that @9:44 said a while back. As someone who has a PhD from an Ivy and taught for 3.5 years during grad school (including 5 courses where I was fully responsible for all course design, teaching, grading, etc.): we absolutely DO have teaching experience.
ReplyDeleteAt least at my institution we all do.
I know several Ivy ABDs who got TT jobs last year and all of them absolutely deserved it (teaching experience, cool research, etc.). That's not to say other candidates didn't deserve it, too. I'm just tired of people assuming that Ivy grads have no qualifications other than name recognition.
lol
DeleteWow, 10:19, very articulate and convincing comeback there
Delete/s if it wasn’t clear lol
Seriously, though: it’s not helping anyone to bash other candidates (unless they legitimately did something inappropriate, illegal, etc.). We should blame the system that exploits grad student labor and then forces PhDs to take on low-paying adjunct work to get by. I was horrified by the low salary on a lot of these 4-4 lectureships and VAPs last year. Why aren’t we mad at the institutions who think they can make you teach 8 courses for 40K? Let’s stop attacking other candidates who worked hard to get their degrees.
@11:16: Hear, hear! I know people in TT jobs with degrees from higher- and lower-prestige institutions, longer and shorter publication records, more and less teaching experience, but all with CVs that show a record of hard work and qualifications appropriate to their career stages. I hear a lot of complaints about Ivy-league PhDs who waltz into TT jobs that they don't deserve, but I've never actually met one. I suspect they're mythical.
DeleteExactly what the Ivies need, some white knight to sail in and do some Quisling dickriding. Jesus, this is pathetic.
DeleteAs a complete change of direction here, I have to say that the jobs posted thus far seem to indicate exactly what many folks have been fearing for years as the demographic cliff hits first for this job year cycle: 3rd and 2nd tier schools essentially have hiring freezes for the Humanities; small non super elite private schools can barely manage to keep the lights on not being attached to state budgets or massive endowments making them also practice a de facto hiring freeze; only the Ivies and other nearly unattainable R1s can manage to get lines approved for the next year.
ReplyDeleteThe result, so it seems at this point anyway, is that unless one is somehow capable of landing a T-T job at the Chicagos, Harvards, and Princetons, it will be very slim pickings (and certainly hyper competitive and a record-breaking number of applicants putting in for anything T-T even if it’s for a community college in Alaska) for the other 99.9%
To echo the above comment’s spirit, let’s not attack one another but share distaste and anger at admins, deans, and such who all rightly deserve venom spat in their faces for tanking university budgets (e.g., look at the huge debt and mismanagement at the University of Arizona and the University of Oklahoma, for instance, who have gigantic enrollments, state funding, are huge R1s, yet together are nearly $1Billion in debt and, at least as UofA is concerned, has had serious talks of firing TT/tenured profs, and closing unimportant [read: those in the Humanities] departments) during their 2-3 years as presidents and chancellors somehow.
Let’s all brace for what’s doubtless going to be one of leanest and harsh job years in a generation and that which will be standard for the next 4-5 years (best estimates as to the length of impact for the demographic cliff) with a very slow return to normal—if any return every happens, since admins will likely only continue to exploit VAPs/adjuncts and see TT as something of a bygone era for most of the professorate.
I think that this was always the direction things were going to go, regardless of the demographic cliff. Classics and adjacent fields will continue to be slashed and eliminated at directional campuses of public university systems along with smaller, less wealthy private universities and SLACS. It will continue on at (most) R1 flagships, the Ivies, par-Ivies, and other rich private universities, and the very rich SLACS.
DeleteAlso good to remember that in states ruled by the world's vilest people, Classics will potentially be collateral damage in the push to go after the "woke" liberal arts and humanities at public institutions. The demographic cliff will be an excuse to expand this project. If Classics survives in those places it will probably end up being some edgelord "muh heritage" retvrn version.
yes, it's now September and the number of jobs is looking abysmal... much worse than last year.
Deleteso did the Stanford search fail last year?
ReplyDeleteThat tracks. I have a friend that rejected a TT offer a few years back as well. I taught in another dept. at Stanford and can say from personal experience that it's hard to justify the cost of living in the south Bay these days. Stanford is incredible, but not worth the sacrifices to quality of life.
DeleteAny idea what Stanford's average starting salary for a TT asst prof in Humanities is?
DeleteIt's in the job ad. (Read the syllabus!)
DeleteThe number is rather eye-popping for an assistant prof. job until you calculate taxes/health insurance/retirement and all that jazz. What you're left with is...not much considering what it costs to live in that part of the country! Although it appears that Stanford has a robust range of faculty housing options.
DeleteFWIW, I happen to know someone who started a entry-level position in the business school there last year, and she's in the low 300's.
Delete9:10 above continuing. So obviously vastly more than the Classics position.
DeleteWell, that's just a reminder that there is obscene salary inequity within universities. It's like that everywhere, if on a smaller scale. Humanities at the bottom but people at the business schools, law schools, etc. get comparatively big bucks, and even STEM people get significantly more. I know the excuse is that those people have options outside of academia in "industry" and so the salaries have to be higher in order to be attractive when combined with the perks of a tenure-track position over a standard job. But it nevertheless remains both stupid and insulting, given that many of these universities can pay higher salaries for all faculty but won't, just as they can but won't hire more t-t when they can pay shit wages to adjuncts. There's always money, though, for things like building a new house for the president (looking at you, Boulder) or assorted grifting (See: Sasse, Ben at UFlorida).
DeleteNot sure how representative this is more broadly, but I and others I know have gotten offers (including for TT jobs) from schools that point-blank refuse to negotiate on salary. Other parts of the offer, maybe, but not salary. If there's a line of other qualified applicants behind you and you don't have other offers, and that's most of the time, you don't have any leverage.
Delete@11:30 that was also my experience at my current institution, where they wouldn't budge at all on salary (started at 90k at a SLAC). At least we're paid the exact same as other departments (confirmed by friends in econ and bio), so the pay parity is good.
DeleteIt varies from place to place, but often there is a salary range that is approved by the dean's office, and the game is to basically see how much they'll give you, and their goal is to not give you the upper limit. I negotiated up my t-t offer by several thousand dollars. NEVER just accept the initial offer. Even if it ends up being a no after you ask, and you're stuck with it, it's better to have done that than missed out on a higher salary in our already poorly compensated field.
DeleteOne small caveat to 3:26. As a matter of contract law, asking for a higher salary counts as a rejection of the initial offer, so the university is no longer bound by that original offer. That used to be a pure technicality, but we've seen a couple of cases on this list in recent years where the candidate asked for more money and the school just went to the next person on their list. Still very rare, but it does happen.
Delete@8:04am curious to know where this happened.
DeleteThat is horrifying -- I didn't realize institutions could use that as a tactic to withdraw an offer!
Delete3:26pm here. I have not heard of what 8:04am describes happening, but I am absolutely not shocked. The administration at many of these institutions is populated by increasingly nasty people whose only concern is how not to waste money on things that they consider frivolous like...faculty compensation. In my case, the department chair told me flat-out that there was a salary range and that once I received the official offer from the dean's office that I should absolutely negotiate up. So, I will amend my original statement and say that if you get a t-t offer then you should absolutely negotiate IF you can confirm that it is expected. With all that said, any institution that responds to a potential hire asking, "may I have more salary/start up money/moving expenses" by withdrawing the offer altogether sounds like a place with shitty administration where you wouldn't want to work long-term anyway.
DeleteUh...so I think that whoever is in the know should probably name and shame the places that withdrew an offer after the person who received the offer tried to negotiate. While it may be technically legal, it is incredibly sleazy and unethical given how high the stakes are for candidates on the market.
Delete@8:54PM New TT hires at Stanford in the humanities tend to get offered something between $110-120,000. This is way higher than most places, but really doesn't get you very far at all in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Menlo Park, etc.
DeleteFor those who have experience on the market, what are your deal-breakers in a job ad, i.e., application requirements or job descriptions that prevent you from applying for a position you'd otherwise be interested in? Just curious.
ReplyDeleteThe vast majority of cases, application requirements shouldn't weigh heavily on your decision to apply. Few jobs depart substantially from relatively standard documents (CV, LoRs, cover letter, writing sample are the most standard; then in no particular order research statement, DEI statement, teaching statement/teaching portfolio/evidence of teaching effectiveness). Once you have those documents, it doesn't take that long to sometimes modify them for specific job asks. Importantly also: other than the first four, the vast majority of the time not much time is going to spent reading all of those extra documents, and frequently they're just central HR requirements, so it to pays to just phone those in if you really aren't feeling that committed to the job. Ain't nobody got time for all that extra reading. In my 50 or whatever interviews, I've only been asked about something not in the CV, cover letter, writing sample a grand total of once. I'm sure there are crazy stories out there of interviews that did go south over something in the extra documents, but I doubt my experience is too far out of the norm.
DeleteThe biggest determiner for me is if there is any hook at all that I can hang my hat on to make myself attractive according to the job description. I once applied for a T-T job that asked for someone who "can teach Latin"; I'm a Hellenist and there's nothing I can do about my CV to mask that, but I can teach Latin, so I still applied. I got an interview for that job (though unsurprisingly I did not get an offer). Point being, job ad asks can vary significantly from what a good candidate looks like to the committee. The next big question then is location. Is it a place I think I could live in addition to whether I can even vaguely sell myself to the committee? Then I apply. Most job ads don't initially post salaries (though they're getting an eensy bit better about this), so that is usually something I don't worry about until further down the road. But if a stated job ad salary isn't enough (especially when taking into consideration location), then I don't apply. Some people balk at a 4-4, I do not, but that depends whether you can see yourself as being almost solely a teacher and not a researcher.
Forgot to mention as well because this doesn't come up as often: I also won't apply to whackadoo private religious institutions like Baylor or BYU. Nor these new private right wing colleges like UATX. Nothing is worth the hell that those institutions will rain down on you.
DeleteWhen I could afford to be choosy (like if I was on a multi-year contract) I skipped applications that required student evaluations. There's so much evidence that they're flawed measures of teaching quality that it felt like an indication that the school was either out of touch or just okay with the flaws. But I see evaluations required less and less these days, so maybe that part of the application package is already falling out of use.
DeleteI've never been on the hiring side of things, but from what I've been told asking for student evaluations is generally a central HR requirement, search committees know that they're useless, and most search committees will not look at them beyond maybe skimming to see if anything crazy jumps out.
DeleteI've been on a lot of hiring committees, and 5:28 is right that this is at least commonly a central administration requirement.
DeleteIn my experience, some interviewers will certainly read your student evaluations and take them into consideration. A few people have mentioned them to me, and I’ve heard them discussed at my current institution. I suspect they matter only for teaching-heavy positions, and I don’t know if cases where they lost or gained someone a position, but they’re not always irrelevant.
DeleteDidn't U of Oregon have a similar job ad last year? Did the search fail?
ReplyDeleteThey made a hire, this is for a second position
DeleteAnyone know what happened with the Latin position at Yale last season?
ReplyDeleteThey hired someone senior, but I'm not sure when they start. I think next academic year.
DeleteI have it on good authority that the Ohio State search committee is primarilly interested in a religion person - the Race Gender and Ethnicity stuff was inserted by the administration
ReplyDeleteIt seemed suspicious from the outset, given that they have already just hired two people who work on race in the last couple years. Good to have further confirmation.
DeleteDoes anyone know when the AIA will accept/reject abstracts for the January annual meeting?
ReplyDeleteDamn, the SCS notified us in June. Fingers crossed the AIA gets in touch ASAP so you can plan accordingly!
DeleteI checked old emails--I've received this info at late as 9/28, so perhaps soon (ish...)
DeleteSame - I received the email on 9/25 one year and on 9/30 another year! They promise by the end of September, but I assume it will be closer to the end of September...
DeleteJust heard from a friend who reports receiving an acceptance this morning.
Deletetracks with what I have heard from previous people who left there...
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Rhode Island and I’ve known a few folks that taught at PC. Their stance on religion is not window dressing whatsoever. Some SCs may try to make it out that their requirement to state how an applicant meshes with the school’s religious doctrine and mission statement is just an HR formality, but is absolutely is not. To some profs, they may see it that way, but HR, admins, and Deans 100% do not.
ReplyDeletePC is not a school you should apply to unless you legitimately are a practicing Christian (and preferably Catholic or at least Lutheran or Episcopal if of the Protestant variety) and unless you are also comfortable with having your lectures treat Christianity in a favorable light (their ad does make much of teaching the Western Civ courses—which, you all should also take note that for a school to still have that class AND still have it labeled as such in 2024 is beyond wild!).
I would add to this, “unless you are a practicing Christian/ Catholic with conservative social values and/or comfortable working at an institution with very conservative social values that WILL lean on you to make your teaching reflect those values.” There are liberal Catholic institutions and there are conservative Catholic institutions. PC is the latter.
DeleteSo it’s like a normal American university, except it’s Catholic values rather than secular progressive values that you’ll have to promote or at least not contradict.
DeletePart of me suspects that y’all are just trying to talk your would-be competition out of competing with you, but no doubt it would be a truly horrific prospect for some.
I wondered this too! Less so the devious intent (though how fun to speculate, with apologies to the OP) and more thinking that this is what many of us are dealing with from our state legislatures.
DeleteIf PC were in fact particularly conservative (and it isn't), they wouldn't hire anyone who wasn't already on board with that anyway. Most institutions can be assumed to know their own ideological leanings and to hire accordingly, although of course sometimes there's a clash between the department (or some other group) and the university as a whole, and a misguided hiring committee might prefer to try to recruit another to their own side rather than be honest with the candidates about the situation. If they reject you, however, you have good reason to conclude that it wasn't a good fit. If they hire you, it probably is. This is missed by the warnings above about applying to places like PC or Baylor or BYU on account of the "hell" that employment there would involve. But it's comforting, I know, to think that I'm the one refusing them before they've asked me out on a date (and even though they never would...).
Delete@5:19: Not sure what you consider "particularly conservative,” but PC's former DEI director is suing the school for anti-LGBTQ discrimination and pride flags are illegal on campus. This was mentioned in news articles linked in an earlier post that has mysteriously disappeared.
DeleteI, for one, am glad to know what kind of institutions are currently hiring. More information, more power, whatever you decide as an individual applicant.
PC is also in a very different position than other schools people are talking about here (like Baylor and BYU), because it's in *Providence.* I've interviewed with that school and know some of the classicists there--the department isn't particularly right-wing. As a queer person myself, "working with people who are okay with that, under an administration that isn't particularly, in a city with thriving gay culture" seems different in kind from a job at a place like Baylor. I wouldn't lump them together.
Deletere: Brown, someone below said "be careful with Bodel for many reasons"... what does this mean?
ReplyDeleteI have also heard something to that effect but don't know details. I know generally which demography should be worried but don't want to say more than that without more substantiated evidence.
DeleteUhhh...anyone recall how many t-t jobs had been posted by around this time last year? They've already slowed to a trickle this cycle, so these numbers seem...not good!
ReplyDeleteIf you go to the SCS page, there are about 24 (TT Assistant Prof.) jobs so far. (I have excluded postdocs, ICCS, lectureships, non-US/Canada jobs, and jobs with tenuous connections to Classics, e.g. UCLA genetics). You could expand that to a few more "open" TT-/assoc. prof. positions.
DeleteLast year there were 35 positions by the same metric by this date (Sept. 26).
Last year, the latest TT job was advertised on January 15, but really, all other TT postings were up by November 9 at the latest.
Between now and November 9, last year, there were still another 20 TT positions advertised, for a total of 55 for 2023-24. So, yes, there is still hope for more positions, but the question is whether the same number of schools will advertise as last year. I suspect not--schools are advertising earlier and earlier these days, and some schools that advertised last year, have advertised even earlier this year. So we may have already seen two thirds or so of the ads go up. (Just a hunch).
In any case, we all know the market has cratered since Covid (now lucky to have something in the realm of ~50 TT positions a year), even as it was already in serious decline even before then (anywhere from 45 to 85 positions, the latter depending on how you count, e.g. including UK and other non-US/Canada permanent jobs).
also a few other things to add: a lot of mid-sized and small not-so-rich private colleges, as well as some of satellites of R1s, either due to dwindling enrollments or higher debt burdens (esp. with the interest rates -- even look at U of Chicago's debt service cost via Cliff Ando's analysis), or both, are experiencing cuts (or even closures) and zero hiring. That lower-to-middle employer basically no longer exists, cutting out about 15-25 jobs a year that would have been there every year. Faculty are also retiring later at most places, as salaries fail to keep up with inflation (and retirement accounts).
DeleteA sincere thank you to the person (@3:17) who collected and compiled the numbers. This is very helpful (and depressing) to be able to quantify where we are this cycle and how that might compare to previous ones. Good luck to everyone else who's hoping this will be their year.
DeleteAlong these lines, we can probably assume that the Appalachian State position is not going to move forward this year. Probably best case scenario is that they can readvertise next year. So that's even one less position available this year.
DeleteDoes anyone have intel on the UT Austin job? The description is super vague/broad and it's the first TT application I've seen in years that only asks for a cover letter and CV.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing! I guess I did see this when it went out on the listservs but didn't absorb it. I appreciate you!
DeleteThere is no secret, narrower agenda. WYSIWYG.
Delete(Potentially dumb) question about the UToronto late antiquity job -- it's a senior hire, yes? The ad says it's a "tenure-stream" (which to me suggests a junior) hire but "at the rank of Professor" (which would be a senior post). Any insights?
ReplyDeleteYep, it's senior. The language is confusing. In Canada you have "teaching-stream" faculty (primarily teaching) and "tenure-stream" faculty (research heavy).
DeleteOP here: thanks for that clarification. That's what I thought might be the case, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something
DeleteHi everyone—tangential job market-related question—is it common practice to mention to journal editors that an article you’re submitting contains material revised from your own thesis? Or is it so expected that you’ll publish from your thesis that it’s redundant to say so? I’m not really sure if this practice constitutes “self-plagiarism” in classics/ancient history.
ReplyDeleteYou're meant to publish articles / book from you dissertation... that is not self-plagiarism. It's why you write a dissertation in the first place! It's publishing something that is not actually a publication. A dissertation is *not* publication per se for these purposes--even though you can cite someone else's dissertation.
DeleteMore worryingly, why did you have to come here to ask that? Do you not have any mentors to ask?
Nothing wrong with asking a lot of people! Sure, you should ask a wide variety of sources including some who are non-anonymous. But there’s nothing wrong with the wisdom of crowds.
DeleteDefinitely no need to tell the editor, but I personally would recommend against just Sending A Chapter. Journal articles are written very different from the average dissertation/thesis, and you’ll have better luck if you think about making the argument more self-contained/confident, and a little less ‘I will cite EVERYTHING.’ The issue isn’t academic dishonesty, it’s that self-plagiarism will make for a submission that reads weirdly. If you have the time, rewrite the ideas in a form that’s more generically apt (and for more on what that means, yeah: talk to a mentor who knows your work)
There's certainly no reason to go out of your way to mention it.
DeleteNo need to mention that you adapted the manuscript from your dissertation. The only thing I'll note is that if you want to revise your diss. for publication as a monograph, you will be asked how much of it you have published elsewhere in journals / edited volumes. Some editors won't offer a contract if too much of the manuscript has already been published in pieces. Not a big deal for most everyone, but worth keeping in mind.
DeleteSo, I am guessing that there isn't anyone here who is a Roman archaeologist AND has advanced in the Princeton search? Although I never expected them to consider me, I did apply, so I'm just curious. I assume they've moved to the next phase of the search by now, but I guess no one knows about any updates...?
ReplyDeleteI'm a Roman archaeologist and I've had no luck over the years with searches that are hosted in art history departments (or joint art and archaeology programs). I feel like they usually end up with art / architectural historians. But sorry, no updates on that search.
DeleteThank you, this is good to know (for me, 11:23 here). I actually am an art historian by training but consider myself interdisciplinary; and I've had absolutely no luck when applying to classical studies/archaeology positions. I never expected Princeton to consider me because I'm somewhat of a nobody and I doubt my record is impressive/prestigious enough for them. But I will keep what you said in mind when it comes to choosing which positions are worth my time to apply for...
DeleteI'm not an archaeologist or Romanist, and I don't have inside info. But it hasn't even been a month yet since the closing date - seems a bit early to be assuming that they've already sent out requests.
DeleteAlso: you can't get jobs that you don't apply to. Apply to any job you think you'd want. Not even being longlisted is no worse than not having applied.
I agree: apply to everything you can. You simply never know. I consider myself an utter nobody (I come from a "par-Ivy" which did way more damage to my mental health than benefit to my CV, tbh), don't have an impressive record (published a couple of elegant translations into my native language, and a 20k-word article in a top journal, but that's it given the precariousness of contingent faculty and the horrible visa-system for foreigners)...and YET, I managed to get a campus visit in 2023 (my second year on the market). So you never know. Just now, I almost threw up before applying to a job at Harvard (and not because I'm still with the flu)...I know it will be pointless, but not applying would make me feel incredibly shitty. So hold your nose, and just do it!
DeleteAnother question about the advice to apply everywhere...If you're, say, a Hellenist, are you also expected to apply for Latin literature jobs?
Delete(12:20 here) Oh no...By applying to everything you can I mean *what lies within your orbit*. I am a Hellenist as well, and my first year I applied to Latin lit jobs for contingent faculty --with zero luck. My impression is that search committees are a tiny bit more flexible as far as concerns VAPs, etc., but I would advise against applying to Latinist jobs for TTs. You will be losing your time. But, for instance, if you find a VAP that requires teaching Latin, I'd go for it, since basically that is a Generalist job (unless the ad specifically says that you are expected to teach / research in Latin lit).
DeleteGenerally speaking what 6:25 said is good, but it can also be useful to pay attention to what an ad says. Several years ago, UVA advertised for a TT position focused on democracy with also a preference for someone who works on Archaic or Classical Greek poetry. The person who got that job is a Latinist who seems to work on the Roman Empire primarily. (to be clear, I am not criticizing the junior scholar that got the job) Point being, if you have a creative way that you can make yourself sound appealing to the committee, there's no harm in trying, it might just work. That being said, I wouldn't apply to every single job listed, that's going to be a lot of work for nothing in most cases, so pick your battles strategically.
DeleteThe UVA person is not a Latinist. She's a Hellenist and actually works on Second Sophistic Greek mostly. So, sure, the time period is different, but the Greek aspect is still there.
Deletehttps://classics.as.virginia.edu/jacqueline-arthur-montagne
Weird, I wonder how I misremembered that so egregiously. In any case, point still stands that there's no harm in stretches, sometimes it can pay dividends (even if not as extreme as I had remembered).
DeleteThere are Roman Archaeologists on the Princeton long list.
DeleteWell, are you talking about the Roman art and archaeology position or the Greek history position? I find it doubtful there is yet a long list for the Greek history position since it just closed on the 15th.
Delete@12:33 the whole thread is about the Roman art/arch job, not the Greek history one. Pay attention and read the thread.
DeleteHow do people deal with a rejection of a book manuscript?
ReplyDeleteIt depends. Did you get reviewers' comments? Or was it a desk reject?
Deletecautiously optimistic reviews. so it also took approximately twenty years (or what felt like) before they got back to me.
DeleteIncorporate the feedback that seems useful to you – if you are not sure ask a friend or mentor to read the reviews too, and discuss it with them – and resubmit somewhere else! My book got rejected by series editors after a forever amount of time and with mostly useless, mean spirited comments. I made some changes on the basis of the feedback, and sent it do a different press where it got very positive peer reviews, and was published soon-ish after. The rejection was definitely hard to take, don't get me wrong, but it was also a chance to make the book better, and, if anything, it made me more determined to get it published. Don't let it get you down, and good luck with the next steps!
Delete@4:36: congrats! Out of curiosity: does that mean you got comments from the editors of the series but not from referees? How long did it take for the series editors to make their decision?
DeleteCorrect, nothing from referees. It was a drawn out process spanning a few years: first they reviewed the proposal, then two sample chapters, then the whole manuscript.
DeleteOh geez, I'm sorry to hear that. That seems kind of irresponsible on the part of the editors. Having your manuscript sit there for years without even being sent to referees sounds painful. I hope it's not the same series I sent my book to!
DeleteI heard that CUP is famous for stringing people along like that. First, they are interested, then they reject the manuscript after a very long time before even sending it out to reviewers.
DeleteI've also heard that about CUP from three different people--about the Classics editor, not the Archaeology one. Series editors are different too. But Michael Sharp is to be avoided apparently, unless you have a very strong connection to Cambridge.
DeleteInteresting. I have heard from multiple colleagues that Sharp is considered to be one of the most trusted Classics editors out there and who reads everything really carefully. But I've never submitted through them, so all anecdotal.
DeleteConsensus I am familiar with is that working with CUP is not usually great. But the claim that Sharp is to be avoided or that you need a strong connection to Cambridge to work with him/them is simply silly. CUP almost certainly publishes more first books by US-born, -trained, and -employed Classicists than every American UP combined.
DeleteGoing through the process with Michael Sharp now, my impression is that he is enthusiastic and cares and is supportive, but he is overwhelmed with a lot of work and a lot may fall through the cracks if you don't look out for yourself. I don't have any insights into the publishing world, so I'm not sure if this is a problem because he is a disorganized person or because he is doing an amount of work that should ideally be split between more people. For what it's worth, I'm American and American trained and don't have any connections to the UK in general or Cambridge/CUP in particular. As always: YMMV.
Delete@10:02. Also going through the process now. When you say "looking out for yourself" do you mean something like making sure yourself that the editing is done correctly? Or do you mean people should follow up from time to time if the review process is dragging on?
DeleteThe latter.
DeleteIf you update the wiki, no matter how small a thing--like demographics, a jeer, a cheer, participants--can you please log what you've done in the history section? It's very helpful.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone actually gotten word from the Joukowsky? Curious about this word of mouth comment
ReplyDeleteYes.
DeleteDo you mind sharing what materials they asked for?
DeleteThey asked for a writing sample, letters of recommendation, and three course descriptions
DeleteAnyone else getting kind of irked that the SCS hasn't yet posted the full academic program for the annual meeting, with paper titles, speakers, etc.? AIA gets a pass, since they do everything later in the year (although they should still post it soon, IMO). The discounted registration ends in less than a month, and the program still isn't posted. I imagine that many people's decision to attend or not depends on what is actually in the program. So, this really isn't right, in my opinion...just venting...
ReplyDeleteAs someone who now on the AIA side has recently ended up on one of the committees where some of the sausage gets made (not the program committee), the flagship events of big professional organizations involve a bunch of moving parts and multiple people to manage various aspects of them. You have to remember that while SCS and AIA do have actual employees who work on organizing the meeting, a lot of it involves labor from your academic colleagues for whom it is "service" and only one part of their job description as a scholar.
DeleteI've been on the SCS program committee, and I'd confirm what 11:48 says here.
DeleteTo whoever added the "rec letter request" under the OSU job, do you mean the generic HR email that went out to all qualified applicants about uploading references' contact info? Recommendation letters were listed under up-front application materials, so this is hardly an update unless they in fact only solicited letters for select applicants. Could you (or anyone else) clarify?
ReplyDeleteSeems clear the update is referring to the generic email that applicants received after someone at OSU decided they were "qualified."
DeleteThoughts on the rumored split between the SCS and the AIA re: the annual meeting?
ReplyDeleteSo firmly against it! There are so many of us that do interdisciplinary work, not to mention all the interest groups and minority groups that work on both sides of the divide. They need to talk to each other and come up with conference solutions rather than try to pull away from one another.
DeleteAlso against it! And there are so many important workshops, meetings, gatherings, and interest groups that span both sides, so it would be hard to replicate at both meetings. Plus, it's nice to see so many members of the field who wouldn't (be able or want to) attend two major conferences.
DeleteReminds me of the ASOR-SBL split, which IMO has not been good for either organization but especially not for the smaller one (ASOR).
DeleteWhat's the rumor?
DeleteI will share my inside knowledge from the AIA side, which is that AIA has little interest in splitting--this is an idea from the SCS side that was covered in the report on the future of the annual meeting. It also seems that while the suggestion was raised in that report, that not much has come of it and it is unclear how realistic a split likely is.
DeleteWait. People still go to the annual meeting ? I’ve not been in years (pre-Covid) and I can’t think of any colleagues, present or former, that bother with it at all any more. The quality of presented papers, for one, has fallen to horrible lows over the last 10-15 years and it’s now little more than folks trying to puff up their CV with conference papers and those at/from the Ivies patting each other on the back.
DeleteThe SCS tries too often to rebrand and change itself, often for little good reason. Let them split off and (finally) die alone.
Amen! Also, the SBL-ASOR splint was due to SBL being lousy with evangelicals. ASOR is much more intellectually robust now as a result. I don't go to AIA meeting anymore, but I still go to ASOR when I can.
Deleteok boomer, 6:20
Delete6:20 here.
DeleteNot a boomer, but in my mid-30s. Boomers, just to be clear, are the demographic still linked to dinosaurs like the annual conference. Younger generations see little to no value in these things, which is why (mixed with the fact that [thank God!] interviews are now not at all linked to the meeting) younger Millennials and Gen Z run from this shit like its wall-to-wall carpeting.
I dunno, it seems like the subjective, blanket assertion that the quality of the papers at the annual meeting has "fallen to horrible lows" says more about you than the actual quality of said papers. Are there some stinkers? A few snoozefests? Grad students who aren't quite ready for primetime? Sure. But at every meeting I've gone to--and I've been going since 2013, missing only the disaster in Boston some years ago--in general the papers are fine and I've always heard a good number that were excellent on both sides of the meeting. Additionally, I know that like myself a lot of people go because most of us don't end up living close to the friends we've made in grad school or in previous jobs, so there's a huge social aspect to it as well. For me it's equally important to the papers. Also, since we're going all in with the anecdata, I am just into my 30s too as are most of my friends who attend...so not a boomer, and not in line with "younger generations see[ing] little to no value in these things."
DeleteI'm with 11:34. The papers I've seen since 2012 have been pretty good (all on the AIA side), and it's such a good chance to catch up with grad school friends, see people from different places, go to the receptions, etc. I'm glad there are no interviews there -- it takes away so much stress.
DeleteSpeaking from the SCS side, I've also seen good papers at SCS in the last five years (and bad ones, sure, but that's always going to happen). I think the general feeling of the meeting post-Covid has become much more welcoming and enjoyable - not as much obvious glancing at name tags, less grandiose posturing to impress search committees, more real conversation during Q&A, etc. Now I look forward to the meeting as a place to catch up with old friends. Could it be held in more affordable cities and hotels? Sure. But if SCS dies, there won't be any comparable opportunity for a general gathering of classicists from across North America (and some from overseas, too). Don't put that on CAMWS.
DeleteI think the main impetus for the split coming from SCS side is that for AIA the meeting issue is largely settled; going forward it will continue but it will be hybrid format. One of the big reasons for the annual meeting continuing is that unlike SCS, AIA's draws attendees from membership that is not just professors and grad students--it also has a range of professional archaeologists and other specialists from outside the academy in CRM, museums, government, etc. as well as interested non-specialists who are often donors and important for obvious reasons.
DeleteDiscussion of a split from the AIA in that report was at least partly linked to the suggestion that we meet at a different time of the year. I'd be sorry to lose the opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, but with a heavy regular teaching load, I find January a prohibitively difficult time to meet. Most of late November and early December are dedicated to final papers and projects, I'm going to pick winter holidays with family over writiing a paper in mid-late December every time, and come early January, there's course prep. A late-summer/mid-autumn meeting would be more feasible under these circumstances (not to mention the regular winter weather issues). I actually liked the idea of alternating years between joint meetings and independent meetings so that the SCS could branch out to other formats and scheduling.
Delete@6:20 it hardly seems reasonable to say that the quality of papers "has fallen to horrible lows" when you are also saying that you've "not been in years". How would you know? For contingent faculty/early career academics, conferences are one of the ONLY major networking opportunities available. The social component is crucial, as others have mentioned, and it's genuinely a great way to get to talk about scholarship ideas with folks who share your interests--again, NOT a regular opportunity afforded to anyone out of grad school or in a contingent position. Here is an opportunity to approach anyone at any level and pitch collaboration, discuss scholarship, learn about resources, and also learn more about the field in general. For grad students/early career academics in particular the large conference model is an opportunity to learn about the field on a deeper level; most graduate students and/or contingent faculty are not afforded a super encouraging support network that prioritizes making sure they know all of the intricate and complicated sociopolitical working realities of their niche in academia.
DeleteYour comment about people from the Ivies patting each other on the back and/or using conference papers to boost CV seems in extremely bad faith. First, because presenting papers and conducting new research is crucial for early career academics, and it seems bizarre to knock anyone on the current market for taking any steps to further their scholarship/improve their CV credentials. Second, because it does not seem disproportionately dominated by ivy-league scholarship whatsoever. Abstracts are accepted on an anonymous submission basis. If your issue is that your abstracts don't get chosen, perhaps you should ask someone to edit your abstract.
I am contingent faculty, and I am in my early 30s. The best opportunities I've had for collaboration have been from attending CAMWS and AIA/SCS. This type of dismissal is not helpful. If you have suggestions for how to improve the annual meeting or the SCS, I urge you to find a proactive way to get involved rather than dismissing what is, for many, both an exciting and important annual opportunity to stay involved in a world that otherwise makes it extremely difficult for non-tenured-scholars to pursue scholastic passions.
nicely said, 3:54
DeleteAgree with @6:20. I will also add that since the job interview element at the meeting has gone, this has drastically changed the overall vibes. You don't have a bunch of people there stressed out about their interview(s) or lack thereof while trying to network, and give or attend papers.
DeleteOops, that last post should say agree with 3:54, not 6:20.
Delete@6:38 > "Also, the SBL-ASOR splint was due to SBL being lousy with evangelicals. ASOR is much more intellectually robust now as a result. I don't go to AIA meeting anymore, but I still go to ASOR when I can."
Delete...do you think there are no evangelicals in ASOR now? A scholarly organization founded by William F. Albright and funded in large part by an evangelical mega-donor who sits on the its board of trustees?
Oh yes, there are plenty of evangelicals in ASOR too, which only goes to show just how bad SBL had become.
DeleteDoes anyone know who evaluates for the Loeb fellowships? Is there a committee at HUP who does this, or in conjunction with faculty from Harvard? Maybe I overlooked something but I didn't see anything mentioned on the website.
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly not on the website. I got one a few year back and I thought I remembered that there was some cc-ing in the correspondence that might have given clues, but looking back through my email, I can't find anything.
DeleteCorrection to my preceding comment. The award letter named the trustees (Richard Thomas, Adriaan Lanni, and a Boston-area businessman), but said that the actual jurors reported to the trustees. Not super-informative it itself, but that makes me suspect it's actually done by a Harvard faculty committee.
DeleteThank you!
DeleteDoes anyone know what UChicago history department is looking for? What sort of history are we talking about? I hear that there was an internal candidate for this position, but you know those gossips.
ReplyDeleteI don't know and may be way off base, but I would guess a hellenistic historian
DeleteHi everyone! I noticed that on my Interfolio delivery for the UT-Austin job a number of new documents are shown as required. Does anyone who applied for that job NOT see it? I suspect it's just something insignificant because I didn't receive an email about it but I was just curious.
ReplyDeleteI also see them, and I also haven't received any emails. Most likely whoever is in charge of it just isn't savvy enough with Interfolio.
DeleteInteresting situation! I once applied for a job that similarly asked for documents from select candidates, via Interfolio, after an initial review. Even though I didn't make that cut, I believe I had access to upload the new documents. With UT, I see the new document categories, but they don't seem to be active for me. If they're active for you, then you are probably getting good news from them soon. Otherwise, if you can't upload things to those categories either, I would bet they just haven't "opened" the next phase of the search on Interfolio quite yet.
DeleteI just got a request for more documents from them via email.
DeleteWith Republicans controlling all levels of government, what does this mean for higher ed (and Classics) in the US? They managed to pressure two Ivy league presidents to step down just with the house. Kinda wishing now I had applied to some of those Canadian/UK jobs...
ReplyDeleteHonestly maybe bad for higher ed, but good for Classics...
DeleteI see what you mean. So get rid of all the DEI/theory stuff but preserve the "traditional" fields?
DeleteWhen Republicans control state legislatures and therefore public universities, they clean house on fields that do not have a direct line to a job, i.e., turn universities into vocational schools. This notably even happens in the natural sciences, but not to the same extent as in the humanities and social sciences. I don't see why it would be any different at a federal level. There seems to be a delusion among internet Classics that Classics is far more important ideologically on the right than it actually is.
Deleteyes, they will start coming for the humanities and try to gut public institutions even more than has already happened
DeleteIt will be a disaster, but how disastrous remains to be seen. It is unclear that Republicans retain the House of Representatives. If they lose it, then we are spared the worst of what would have been coming legislatively at the Federal level, at least for the next couple years. That said, there's all kinds of bullshit that can be accomplished via executive order and through the Department of Education--they want to get rid of it, but again, this can only be done through legislation--which they will weaponize. Also, the supposed conservative love of Classics is in many respects superficial. It's lip service because they see it as Tradition and Western Heritage and the greatness of Dead White Men. Ultimately, though, they only care about it is another wedge weapon against wokeness or whatever. If given the opportunity to smash higher education, especially public higher education, these authoritarian thugs will do it. They'll trash the humanities including Classics in favor of STEM and business and the like.
Deletewell the job market is already a disaster... this year is *really* bad, if you see that virtually no jobs have been advertised since late September. And now it will only get worse....
DeleteYeah, it’s not the case either that progressives (I won’t say liberals) have dedicated themselves to saving the field. I know that administration and enrollment numbers are also to blame, but there you go: university administrators are not typically conservative (politically speaking).
DeleteAnd yes, the market this year is shockingly terrifying. Even in 2021 (my first year on the market) there were more jobs. Perhaps the only year that competes with 2024 is 2020 (*the* pandemic year)? Classics Departments should start limiting their PhD cohorts, if they haven't done so already (which I won't believe till I see the numbers). If they haven't, they are also responsible for this disaster.
Delete@6:04 I hear you. The academic job market has gotten worse and will only get worse. I was told this explicitly when I entered the program and accepted it as a reality. I never began the program expecting to enter academia as a profession. I was really happy in my program all six years, felt lucky to be fully funded, and do not regret one bit getting a doctorate in Classics. I'm currently beginning my job search in the non-academic market and am really happy to do so. Luckily my department has guided most of their PhDs on the alt ac market. So perhaps it's less of a disaster if we don't expect that most Classics PhDs will lead directly into a Classics job. It's certainly not the mentality in Europe (where I am originally from) and have never understood why so many North American PhD programs perceive themselves as preparing students only for Classics professorships.
Delete@12:57 I think you're very right. In the US, though, there was, for a long time, a much larger job market--far more universities and just a larger Higher Ed economy, due to the existence of private universities, than in Europe or the UK (but esp. continental Europe) where there really aren't any private universities. It's just smaller by default. I know many people who went and got a DPhil at Oxbridge with the full intention of simply going on to law school after or management consultancy or some kind of government job. Some (privileged) people also described a Classics DPhil as the pinnacle of their elite education that would open doors for them among certain political and finance circles--the cultural cache. A glorified finishing school. I think even that kind of calculus is changing a bit though in the UK, since the undergraduate and graduate degrees are becoming more expensive.
DeleteThe notion of US PhD = good chances at a job in the US has been shattered. The illusion should've been shattered after 2008, but only really in the last 5 years has the field finally started to recognize that the end is nigh, or some sort of end of the good times.
@12:57. The US culture on jobs is different from the UK/European mentality is why most people think they will get a TT job, which is made worse by a 5-7 year degree versus a 3-4 year degree. Finishing a PhD at 24-26 (assuming a 3 year degree in the UK) and then going off and doing something else looks very different than finishing at 28-30 (4 year degree plus PhD) in terms of career earnings and prospects. If you then throw 2-3 years as a VAP or whatever on top of that, you are looking to get out only in your early 30s.
DeleteThe market does look worse, so I would be interested if someone would be willing to update to the 2020 job market report: Ehrlich, Simeon D. "The Health of the Classics Job Market during the Pandemic: A Long-Term Perspective." Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada, vol. 61 no. 3, 2020, p. 561-582. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/802078.
I was curious after @6:04's comment how this year stacks up to the last half decade or so on the market. Using the version history from previous years' wikis I counted the number of TT posts listed as of Nov 10th (not temporary jobs, not senior hires). Offering the the results of my quick and dirty number crunching here in case anyone else was curious of just how bad (or not) things currently stand:
ReplyDelete2024: 49
2023: 67
2022: 62
2021: 48
2020: 19
2019: 68
2018: 52
In the earlier years, the Wiki didn't distinguish between Classics and Classics-adjacent. So which jobs did you count? I ask, because I wouldn't count about 10 or 11 of the jobs posted in 2018-19 for instance (all of the Poli Sci and Anc Phil ones---in Phil depts). And are you counting jobs from the UK? Because those usually don't get posted until late in the cycle--and so our current year doesn't reflect those positions.
DeleteThere is always a problem of counting gross numbers is what I would say, so what was included or not are subjective choices. Most people cannot apply to every position, so the top lines numbers (as @10:47 did) are great. Parsing them becomes a matter of choice or how you want to cut them. You would have to go back and check who got the Poli Sci or Anc Phil jobs to be sure they weren't classics people (and also have to know the finalists probably too).
DeleteWhatever the case, these numbers largely track with what Ben Schmidt has shown for history that the field has dropped overall: https://benschmidt.org/post/2023-12-26-history-hiring/. In the end, you're looking at 50-70 jobs per year (this year will probably see 5-10 late jobs to get into that number but probably in the lower range now as Schmidt has shown for history).
To clarify (10:47 here): these are not the total number of jobs for these years, merely the number of jobs that had been posted by November the 10th. Of course UK jobs, late postings, differences in how many posts for adjacent fields (which until the last few years were often just posted alongside the rest of the jobs) all have an impact. It's a rough metric tallied on a post-it, not intended as a comprehensive state of hiring for the discipline. A better figure might be counting the jobs at the end of a cycle, but that doesn't do much to speak to how this current year stacks up.
Delete(Thanks to @12:16 for the useful link to Ben Schmidt's work, which I hadn't come across before)
9:40 here--thanks to you both for the clarifications/links. I had done a tally earlier (Sept. 26, 3:17) using the SCS placement page data. And yes, the trend I saw coming held: basically this is a leaner year, I think. But I may be proven wrong. In any case, as you say, the trend line is... down, down, down.
DeleteAnyone hear/know anything about the Davidson position? It feels like they have been taking a while compared with a lot of the other schools with similar application due dates
ReplyDeleteI’m also wondering about Davidson.
Deleteany word on the two Greek jobs at Toronto? has anyone heard back about their application?
ReplyDeleteno, and my wishful thinking is that they have more applications than usual to go through due to the double search.
DeleteThis is not an abnormally long wait. Typical time for contact for first round interviews after due date for TT is generally about 1-1.5 months.
DeleteWhat is the longest you have waited between a first round zoom interview and notification about advancement to the next stage? If it's been a couple of weeks past the last day of interviews, should I assume they have moved on? Obviously it depends etc. etc., but speaking generally?
ReplyDeleteLongest? Phone interview in November, notification about campus visit in March, campus visit in May. I then had to withdraw to take another job because they were clearly going to run the decisions to the week before classes started or something. This was for a TT. In most cases you can assume things have moved on without you once you're at the 2-week mark, but it's not uncommon for things to come back from the dead.
Delete:(
DeleteI've heard back a month later, but I was in the first week of first round interviews - some of the wait depends on where you are in the order.
DeleteHas anyone heard from Wash U?
ReplyDeleteI've been wanting to ask the same. I get the impression that fewer people are reporting this year.
DeleteI don't have definitive inside information, but I have reason to believe (that I'm not willing to share how I know) that they're still in the review stage.
DeleteThanks for the little bit of encouragement!
DeleteGuys...it's true that fewer people use the wiki than five years ago, so there are going to be gaps and delays. This was especially clear last year as searches moved to the on-campus stage.
DeleteBut it also feels like people are being impatient and unrealistic about timelines. It's only been a month and a half since the WashU deadline. You have to remember that first-round interviews used to be done in person at the SCS in early January. Many institutions are now rushing to run fast searches, but many others are planning to do Zoom interviews after their semesters are over or in January. Thanksgiving has been a common target for interview notifications for early/mid October application deadlines, so it's really just not worth worrying about no news at this point.
That is even more helpful. Thank you.
DeleteThanks for saying this, @4:53.
DeleteHere's a sense of timelines at my university (regional state school), which may or may not be of comfort. It will easily take a couple of weeks--if we are extremely lucky and have a search chair with their shit together--after the application deadline for the committee to come up with a list. This includes a mandatory HR meeting, each committee member filling out a matrix to determine who the top candidates are (this takes a LONG time, as it should), finding time to meet as a group--scheduling this is usually the hardest part, especially as some claim Zoom fatigue--and spending several hours in that meeting negotiating for our top picks to get nods. We then submit this first-round list to HR and wait for a response, which can take time, as HR works a 9-5 schedule and does not give a shit about easing applicant nervousness. Then--and here's one of the many times where a competent search chair matters--the chair has to find time to email everyone, hopefully all in the same chunk of time. This can absolutely and quite easily stretch out over a month, perhaps more, depending on the time demands imposed on the committee members and all the administrative overlords who may be involved.
For the first round itself we try to schedule interviews over 1-2 weeks. It will take us at minimum a week after that to formalize a list and hammer out who our top 3-4 candidates are. This, again, can--and often does--take longer, as most of us have just put many of our other responsibilities on hold in order to conduct interviews and need to catch up. We try to start this process right as the final interview ends. This process can drag on, and usually involves a meeting scheduled several days to a week after that last interview. Then it will take a week-plus to get this list up to the department head, to the dean, perhaps the provost (ugh...long story), and then back down again.
I don't know if this is of help. I hope it is. In my experience from being on about 5 hiring committees, almost 100% of the people I've worked with have been eager to ease the burden on the applicant (younger scholars take this more seriously, in my opinion) and make the process go as quickly as possible, while still recognizing that there are many other hydra heads that are part of the job that have to be dealt with. This percentage, oddly, is at odds with my experience on the market, where I ran into a tremendous share of assholes. Go figure.
This is great information, @10:37. Thanks for sharing. I'll also add that while search committees should of course not be working to make applicants' experiences worse, it's also just not within the scope of the role to ease their anxiety. From my own experience, anything that the SC can do on that front will make, at best, a small difference compared to what you, as an applicant, can do (e.g., practice good self-care, seek mental health care if accessible to you, etc.).
DeleteThanks to @4:06 for the information that Wash U is still in the review phase. Granting everything that's been said above, I don't think it's unreasonable to politely ask if anyone's heard anything around the six-week mark, especially given how patchy blog updates have been recently, and how quickly many (not all!) searches are moving these days. Doing so should not be construed as a complaint about the speed of the search, just as a request for information.
DeleteI'm 4:06. Be careful, I didn't say that they were definitely still reviewing, I said I had strong reason to believe that.
DeleteBut otherwise, I don't think anyone understands all of the questions about hearing news as complaints. There seems to be a particularly high proportion of people asking about news and assuming the worst well before typical time-lines for hearing back. I assume @10:37 is just trying to help to give the presumably large number of inexperienced people here perspective so that they're not freaking out before it is even time to freak out.
10:37 here. Yup, that's exactly it, and thanks for saying that--I thought one school's rough internal timeline might help ease nerves, as I have seen many people get quite nervous well before the typical deadlines for one when should.
DeleteAbsolutely, and thanks to 10:37 for the helpful perspective on the process. I was responding, rather, to the earlier suggestion (4:56) that asking was "impatient and unrealistic."
Delete4:56 here. I didn't mean to suggest annoyance with the questions either. But note that we had had three similar queries in the span of a few days, none of which generated any news that wasn't already on the wiki (no news is, itself, news). Given that, and given the number of questions in general that people have been asking here and on the wiki, I thought it would be helpful to explain that searches don't often run so quickly that one should expect news within a month, or even six weeks (even if it does often arrive around then). Rather than impatient, I should have said that it's just not helpful for one's mental health to expect a particular search to operate in any particular way.
DeleteI'm surprised Toronto "only" had 100 applicants.
ReplyDeleteDid you get a personal message from the head of the search or an automated message?
DeleteA curiously round number, no? The rejection email (which I assume was a form letter) amused me otherwise, especially these sentences: "I am very sorry to have to tell you that we were not able to include you on our shortlist. You have the privilege, which is also the misfortune, of being part of an exceptionally strong and vital field."
DeleteI can confirm a similar number of applicants for another TT job at a peer university last year (sorry to be vague, can't reveal my sources). But the number checks out to me. Makes me wonder how many are still on the market / who's left the field after years of limited job openings...
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