In just the past fortnight I've read two complaints about the whining dressed us as an essay that makes up the Chronicle of Higher Education's First Person section.
It's true. The academic job market has some interesting features. But really, is it any worse than what doctors or other young professionals go through? The "match" process that doctors go through seems cruel and capricious. At least young academics get some choice in where they end up!
That said, in the humanities especially, there is a perception that supply of new PhDs is perpetually ahead of demand for assistant professors. Given that
(1) the lag between graduate school admission and job search is at least 5 years, and
(2) that demand and supply are subject to periodic booms and busts instigated by state government funding decisions
the job market for assistant professors actually seems reasonably functional.
But I'll know more in a few years ...
Posted by robe0419 at March 11, 2005 10:02 AM | TrackBackI actually don't think that young academics get much choice about where they end up...their choices are constrained by the randomness of 1) who's hiring when they're on the market and 2) who of that group wants to hire them (in my own case, this has never translated into a job in the part of the country I where I would most like to live). In fact, this is one of the most common complaints about the academic job market that I've encountered - that if you want to ensure a reasonable shot at the market, you have to be willing to go ANYWHERE. Moreover, doctors' "match" process is for a temporary position - it seems to me much less likely that those doctors will end up staying in the same place where they match long-term. Which is also unlike the academic market (where many people who think they will write their way out of a location end up staying there for 30 years). And this is leaving aside the whole issue of differences between length-of-time-to-degree and salaries.
Now, I actually completely agree with the complaints about the CHE First Person columns - many of them are not very good, presenting the obvious as if it were new or mired in self-congratulations. But because the First Person columns are frequently pity parties *doesn't* mean, in my opinion, that the problems they point to in the academic job market don't exist. (Invisible Adjunct did what the First Person columns try to do sooooo much better...).
Posted by: New Kid on the Hallway at March 11, 2005 02:53 PMAh, the perils of composing quickly _and_ trying to be slightly provocative.
I think the important thing is that young academics potentially get _some_ choice in where they end up after the offers are revealed. Doctors put in their preferences, and then it's out of their hands.
As NKotH points out, doctors first jobs are frequently temporary. They train somewhere, and move on. Anecdotally, at least, there's more movement between different institutions in medicine than in academia. This is bizarre.
Why isn't there more movement between institutions at the associate and full professor level?
Academic departments often look for someone who will be around for thirty years. It's odd, because I'd expect the training costs for young doctors to be higher than for young academics, and high training costs are often a basis for institutions trying to keep people around for a long time.
My broader point is that labor markets for specialized professional workers are always going to be somewhat strange, compared with markets for 'common' labor. When you have a relatively small market, 4-10 year training periods, regulation of the product being made (health and education), and lots of government involvement on both sides of the market, it's hard to see how we wouldn't end up with weird hiring practices.
Posted by: Evan at March 11, 2005 03:34 PM