Category Archives: Job market

The Hindu: 40% of SC/ST faculty posts in Central universities vacant

Representation of SC/ST lecturers only 12.8%, way below 22.5% mark

Bureaucratic apathy, absence of clear deadlines

Mumbai: Even after four decades of reservation, over 40 per cent of SC/ST lecturer posts are still lying vacant in 19 Central universities. Out of the total number of 4,887 posts sanctioned by the University Grants Commission, there are only 629 SC/ST lecturers belonging to the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes. This leaves a backlog of 471 as per the 2007-08 data sourced from the UGC under the Right to Information Act.

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Inside Higher Ed: Early Decision — for Faculty Jobs

The blog PhD in History, which devotes attention to the history job market, recently noted a shift in the job postings for history faculty that have turned up this summer. In the past, summer postings tended to be last minute attempts to locate help for a semester or year. The coveted tenure-track positions wouldn’t appear until the fall, setting a pace for interviews at the American Historical Association’s January meeting, and for offers in the spring.

This summer, the blog noted, many of the positions being announced are tenure-track jobs that start in the fall of 2009. The deadlines for many of these positions suggest that interviews will take place well before the AHA meeting, in some cases early enough so offers might be made before the meeting, too. Sterling Fluharty, the blog author and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oklahoma, asked: “Does it seem to you that more and more search committees are trying to jump the gun and hire new history faculty before their job candidates have a chance to interview at the AHA convention?”

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Baltimore Sun: No jobs, no problem

By William J. Evitts
August 3, 2008

Published in 1995, William Bridges’ JobShift lingers today around No. 400,000 on Amazon’s sales list. The book’s central idea deserves more attention than that.

Mr. Bridges argues that the “job” – a defined set of responsibilities that remains constant and is fulfilled by one or more people over time – is disappearing right in front of us. Work is being reorganized without jobs. Employees are being let go, then engaged as consultants. A major bank projects that only 19 percent of its work force will be considered permanent full-time employees. Software companies hire smart people not for a defined position but to get them on project teams that constantly form and reform. A frazzled executive complains that he can’t shuffle job boxes on his organizational chart fast enough to keep up with change. Quick-response supply chains are being matched by on-demand staffing. Work is increasingly getting done as movies are made, by fluid bands of specialists who do not have traditional jobs.

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Inside Higher Ed: Healthy but Mismatched History Job Market

The overall numbers look good for historians on the job market this year, but the total figures hide the surpluses of would-be professors in some fields, shortages in others and a decrease in the percentage of new Ph.D.’s going to women.

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Inside Higher Ed: More Jobs, Fewer New Ph.D.’s

Arnita A. Jones almost gushed when she told historians about how many new Ph.D.’s she was chatting up at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Atlanta who were telling her, “I have four interviews tomorrow,” or “I’ve got three interviews today.”

Just a few years ago, one didn’t hear so many positive reports from job seekers. But if the mood was generally upbeat about the job market, there was also a clear realization that historians don’t have it easy when it comes to finding a job. Jones immediately followed her statement by imploring graduate programs not to increase their enrollments. It’s better to have a glut of positions than a glut of historians, she said.

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