<p>After getting the long-awaited Ph.D. and fresh to the academic market, given a choice of taking up a post-doctorate position at a well-funded prestigious university that does amazing research versus immediately having the opportunity to be on a tenure-track position (aka assistant professorship) albeit in a lesser known college that does not really have a research culture, which is the better option?</p>
<p>What are the pros and cons? Does disciplinary differences play a part in this?</p>
<p>tenure track is better than a post-doc. by no research culture, if we’re talking a 5/5 teaching load, that’s rough. in that instance, i might go with the post-doc instead.</p>
<p>i’m in history, so really, any job with tenure at any school sounds good. the market is rough. not so much for my subfield (latin america/caribbean), but even then, you take what you can get. i’d say that having time to conduct my own research matters most (a 3/3 teaching load would be cool, more than that might be difficult), then the location, and then the college reputation. i don’t really care if i’m at a tiny liberal arts college provided i have the time to do my own research and i live in a part of the world i like.</p>
<p>i can’t really see myself turning down anything tenure-track for a post-doc, but who knows. if the tenure-track job was in some place i hated (geographically), i’d probably try to move on after a couple years rather than, say, turning down the assistant professorship in a bad location in favour of a post-doc in a good one.</p>
<p>It depends on what you want to do-- in the sciences its hard to move from a teaching college to an R1 university, especially a top-tier one. So if your goal is to be a professor at a top school, then the post-doc gives you a better chance. If you would be happy at a more teaching-focused school then its probably better to take the TT position.</p>
<p>This is a very field dependent question. In the humanities, the priority is to get a tenure track position immediately. In the sciences, this would sabotage your career. You need a period of time as a post-doc to build a substantial body of research. Tenure track positions in research universities are looking to hire into tenure track positions individuals that look like they will easily be able to compete successfull for research grant funding. Thus, your post-doctoral research will be essential to obtain the preliminary data for your subsequent grant applications when you are an independent PI!</p>
<p>at least in my field (engineering), you want to get the post-doc experience at a top school (in prepare for later get into a good research university to boost your own research)</p>
<p>but like other people said, if your main interest is teaching, it doesn’t matter that much</p>