Tag Archives: Job market

SO YOU WANT TO GET A PHD IN THE HUMANITIES

American Colleges Lag in Meeting Labor Needs

The Chronicle: American Colleges Lag in Meeting Labor Needs

Despite calls to more closely link higher education with job needs in the United States, American colleges are only “moderately responsive” to changes in the labor markets, according to a new working paper by three economists.

The study, whose preliminary results were presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, found that some academic programs, such as computer science, appear to be highly responsive to labor-market trends, while others, like medicine and dentistry, are largely unaffected by changes in employment opportunities.

Australia facing academic exodus: study

ABC News: Australia facing academic exodus: study
Australia could be starved of academics, with claims our boffins are overworked and underpaid.

A study by Melbourne University reveals a quarter of the country’s senior academics will retire over the next five years, and 5,000 academics over the next decade.

Georgia colleges can hire more lecturers

Atlanta Journal Constitution: Georgia colleges can hire more lecturers
State raises cap to 20% of faculty to help schools deal with recession

Students at Georgia’s public colleges may have more lecturers teaching their classes this coming academic year under a change approved by the state Board of Regents.

The board changed its policy last month to raise the cap on lecturers from 10 percent to 20 percent of a college’s faculty. The amended rule allows all colleges to use lecturers, not just research institutions.

The Disappearing Tenure-Track Job

Inside Higher Ed: The Disappearing Tenure-Track Job

Year by year, various federal data sets are released, and document the steady growth of adjunct positions and decline of tenure-track jobs in the academic work force.

In an attempt to draw more attention to these shifts over time, the American Federation of Teachers is today releasing a 10-year analysis of the data, showing just how much the tenure-track professor has disappeared. The overall number of faculty and instructor slots grew from 1997 to 2007, but nearly two-thirds of that growth was in “contingent” positions — meaning those off of the tenure track. Over all, those jobs increased from two-thirds to nearly three-quarters of instructional positions.

More Drivel From the New York Times

howtheuniversityworks.com: More Drivel From the New York Times

Today the Grey Lady lent the op-ed page to yet another Columbia prof with the same old faux “analysis” of graduate education.

Why golly, the problem with the university is that there aren’t enough teaching positions out there to employ all of our excess doctorates Mark C. Taylor says: “Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist).” Because there are just too many folks with Ph.D.’s out there, “there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.”

Globe and Mail: Tuition attrition? Reposition

At Guelph, students are protesting because the university has cut women’s studies and ecology. At the University of Toronto, they’re outraged because the downtown campus is about to charge full-time fees for lighter course loads. York University has just survived a brutal strike by teaching assistants and contract faculty. And as everyone freezes hiring, PhDs have become a glut on the market.

This is just a taste of things to come. As endowment and pension funds shrivel up, Canada’s universities are facing a challenge they haven’t had since the mid-1990s: budget cuts. “It’s a perfect storm,” says education consultant Alex Usher, who figures that endowment funds alone have taken a $2-billion hit.

For the past few years, the postsecondary sector has enjoyed automatic funding increases of 5 per cent to 10 per cent a year. Now, some places will have to cut back 15 per cent over the next three years.

After the Crash, Scholars Say, Higher Education Must Refocus on Its Public Mission

The Chronicle: After the Crash, Scholars Say, Higher Education Must Refocus on Its Public Mission

The economic crisis weighed on the minds of the 200 scholars who gathered here last week for a national conference of the Network for Academic Renewal, a project of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. But even as the federal government announced that 660,000 more jobs had been lost in March, several of the speakers here saw—or perhaps grasped for—reasons for hope.

They’re Hiring in Hong Kong

The Chronicle: They’re Hiring in Hong Kong

Universities recruit professors worldwide in ambitious overhaul

Andrej Bogdanov would have been a great catch for any American university. Arriving in the United States from Macedonia in 1996, he succeeded at the top computer-science programs in the country: bachelor’s of science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ph.D. from Berkeley, postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Graduate students hoping for tenure-track positions face bleak prospects as universities cut budgets and freeze hiring

Globe and Mail: Black days for those dreaming of the ivory tower

Graduate students hoping for tenure-track positions face bleak prospects as universities cut budgets and freeze hiring

McGill graduate student Ashley Burgoyne has one word to sum up the outlook this spring for freshly minted PhDs with dreams of getting on the tenure track. Scary.
McGill graduate student Ashley Burgoyne, an expert in music technology, worries that he won’t find full-time work at a university. (John Morstad for The Globe and Mail)

McGill graduate student Ashley Burgoyne, an expert in music technology, worries that he won’t find full-time work at a university.

The economic crisis that has gripped the globe is hitting campuses across the country. Universities are cutting budgets, and for many schools that means putting hiring plans into deep freeze. Add to that federal cuts to research funding, a new reluctance by senior faculty to retire, and dwindling endowment funds to support scholars, and the picture grows grim.

Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times

The New York Times: Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times

Chris Pieper began looking for an academic job in sociology about six months ago, sending off about two dozen application packets. The results so far? Two telephone interviews, and no employment offers.

Employment for Spouses Gets Harder to Find

The Chronicle: Employment for Spouses Gets Harder to Find

Last summer, Chidori Boeheim and her husband, Chuck, had a quintessential dual-career moment.

Mr. Boeheim, who at the time was assistant director of computing at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, in California, had just received an offer for a better job from Cornell University, in upstate New York.

Report: Storm brews for Canadian universities

The Globe and Mail: Storm brews over universities

Canadian universities and colleges are facing a “perfect storm,” as they are battered by ailing endowments and pension funds, rising student demand and cuts in government funding, a new study warns.

Economic hardships will hit campuses across the country if provincial governments follow the pattern of past recessions and cut support to postsecondary institutions, the study predicted. At the same time, the deteriorating job market will prompt many workers to return to school, pushing up demand, especially in college and masters programs that can be completed in one or two years, it said.

French Government Backs Down Amid Protests Over Higher-Education Proposals

The Chronicle News Blog: French Government Backs Down Amid Protests Over Higher-Education Proposals

The French government has yielded to pressure following weeks of protests and disruptions at universities across the country and announced that a controversial decree governing the hiring and promotion of researchers engaged in teaching would be “entirely rewritten on the basis of discussions conducted by Valérie Pécresse [the higher-education minister] with the organizations in question.”

Johns Hopkins Freezes Hiring and Salaries, and Will Cut Top Administrators’ Pay

The Chronicle News Blog: Johns Hopkins Freezes Hiring and Salaries, and Will Cut Top Administrators’ Pay

The Johns Hopkins University announced today that it would freeze all hiring and most salary increases, and would reduce top administrators’ pay by 5 percent, in response to the economic crisis.

The university’s endowment lost 20 percent of its value in the first six months of the fiscal year beginning last July, and revenue for the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years will be $100-million short of previous estimates, the university’s president, William R. Brody, wrote in a grim e-mail message sent today to faculty members, staff members, and students.

Job Market for Economists Turns … Dismal

Wall Street Journal: Job Market for Economists Turns … Dismal

The dismal economy has claimed yet another victim: jobs for the economists who study it.

Columbia University’s economics department, for example, isn’t making any new hires this year. That’s in stark contrast to last year, when Columbia poached eight economics professors from other schools, and hired one economist out of graduate school. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Amherst College and the University of Minnesota all have suspended their searches for economics professors. And Harvard University has gotten permission to hire just one person — only after “many rounds of negotiation,” according to Harvard economist Lawrence Katz, who is handling recruiting this year. Typically, Harvard hires two or three economics professors out of graduate school.