<p>Schools that haven't been hurt quite as badly by the economic bust are going to be making a move to poach faculty from those that have.</p>
<p>What schools will be hardest hit (that is, with the best faculty and the worst budgets) and what schools have the most to gain (that is, with the most ambition and most intact budgets)?</p>
<p>Big loser: Berkeley? Harvard (but who would really want to leave)?</p>
<p>Big gainer: Penn? Columbia?</p>
<p>*Big loser: Berkeley? Harvard (but who would really want to leave)?
*</p>
<p>Uhhh…someone who wants a salary??? </p>
<p>Faculty poaching is in full-swing now. As profs at top 30 schools are being cut-back, other schools are luring them with more money, cheaper housing, other bennies.</p>
<p>I recently met a former Berkeley prof who is now at Bama. He told me that Bama just hired 2 MIT profs and 2 other Berkeley profs and more were being flown in for interviews. Why, you might think? Because they need jobs, they’ll still get paid, and housing is far less…they can live in very nice homes with a river view for a few hundred thousand. Perhaps some/all have been promised the tenure track and other bennies. </p>
<p>The schools with cash are going to take advantage of this…just like any business would. A school would be stupid not to realize that this is the best time to get profs from top schools. There’s nothing unethical about it; people need jobs and those who can provide them are offering.</p>
<p>Some might be shocked, surprised, whatever…but these people have families and they have to have jobs. Hanging around a top 30 institution with no job won’t put meals on the table.</p>
<p>Well, Penn just lost one of its top economists to Wisconsin and several others are looking so…</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about Penn’s econ department. It would take years of determined mismanagement to kill it. Losing one or 2 economists isn’t the end of the world for penn econ. If there’s something seriously wrong, do tell us so it can be put out in the open…</p>
<p>I agree that losing 1 or 2 or 3 from a dept isn’t the end of the world for these schools. And, perhaps the schools are happy that these people have found new jobs to lessen any financial crises that might be going on within their own depts.</p>
<p>I think most deans & dept heads (whose depts are facing cut-backs) would be very happy to hear that a few profs have found other employment. It sure beats having to hand someone a pink slip. (which no one wants to do!)</p>
<p>Michigan is on a hiring binge right now.</p>
<p>[University</a> continues plan to hire 100 tenure-track professors | The Michigan Daily](<a href=“http://www.michigandaily.com/content/2009-02-11/u-names-areas-new-hires-seeks-add-more-list]University”>University continues plan to hire 100 tenure-track professors)</p>
<p>Good for Michigan. There are plenty of qualified non-tenured ivy faculty to choose from…</p>
<p>I don’t thjink Penn wanted to lose their top star economist. </p>
<p>Randall Wright — one of the world’s
best known and most prolific researchers
in monetary and macroeconomics —
joined the University
of Wisconsin-Madison
Economics Department
as a Professor of
Economics. Previously,
he was the James
Joon-Jin Kim Professor
of Economics at
the University of
Pennsylvania.
Wright’s research is
widely recognized as
among the very best in
the field over the past
several decades. Nobel
Laureate Robert Lucas from Chicago has
referred to Wright as “an internationally
recognized world leader in all areas of
macroeconomic research.”
Wright is perhaps best known for his
work on monetary theory, yet also
has contributed significantly in labor
economics. He has won several awards
for his research, including
the Harry Johnson
Prize for best article in
the Canadian Journal
of Economics and the
Kenneth Arrow Prize for
best article in the Berkeley
Electronic Press Journals.
Recognition of Wright’s
ability to contribute
to economic policy is
evidenced through
his appointments as a
research associate of the
Federal Reserve Bank of
Minneapolis, the Bank of Canada and the
National Bureau of Economic Research.
He is a fellow of the Econometric Society.
He earned his BA in economics from
the University of Manitoba in Canada
and his PhD in economics from the
University of Minnesota. In 1990, he
was awarded an honorary MA from the
University of Pennsylvania.
Wright joined Penn as an assistant
professor in 1987, after three years with
Cornell University. He served one-year
stints as a national fellow with the
Hoover Institution at Stanford University
and as an economist with the Federal
Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. In fall
1986, he spent a semester as a visiting
assistant professor in the Economics
Department of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.</p>
<p>Alex,
U Michigan announced the hiring plan in 2007 and it’s a 5-year plan. The article you linked to was in Feb '09 and at that point, a whopping 25 had been hired. With a faculty count over 3000, hiring 100 profs over 5 years is hardly reflecting aggressive poaching and, given the economy and the state of Michigan’s particularly dire strait, the school is probably behind target today. Furthermore, the person in charge of the U Michigan hiring program (Terry Sullivan) just left U Michigan for U Virginia.</p>
<p>Hawkette, 25 new faculty in a year when most universities are either lay off faculty or instituting a hiring freeze is nothing to sneeze at. Furthermore, Sullivan did not merely leave Michigan for UVA…she left her post as provost to become the President of the University of Virginia. That is a promotion. You tried to make it sound like Michigan was victim to poaching. It wasn’t. </p>
<p>Prodigalson, Michigan is not going to poach from the Ivy League. Michigan does not need to poach. It has a top 10 faculty in the nation, equal to the faculty at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton and Yale. Michigan is looking to hire young blood and faculty in interdisciplinary fields.</p>
<p>It is amazing how you two react whenever something positive is said of Michigan. You really hate that school for some strange reason.</p>
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<p>You say that the PEER Assessment ¶ score “favors” privates over publics…</p>
<p>What about the POACHING Assessment (the other PA) score??</p>
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<p>I can’t speak for anyone else but I don’t “hate” Michigan, let alone any school. I am just tired of hearing you overstate its “greatness” ad nauseum. Michigan may have been a “top ten” university generations ago, but you really need to stop living in the past.</p>
<p>“Leaders and best,” my eye…</p>
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<p>That was really disingenuous, and not up to your usual standards. Almost all Provosts want to be Presidents. That UVA hired Michigan’s Provost is a positive reflection on Michigan. When we hired Biddy Martin, then Cornell’s Provost, we were not poaching her. It was a logical move for both her and us.</p>
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<p>No, this kind of thing is certainly up to her “usual standards.”</p>
<p>It’s estimated that about half the colleges and universities in the country are now under some kind of hiring freeze or hiring “pause.” A hiring freeze means your faculty is actually shrinking because there will always be some retirements, deaths, leaves due to illness or disability, extended leaves to perform public service, lateral departures, etc. The University of Michigan is not under a hiring freeze, and its 5-year plan to add 100 new full-time tenure-track positions over and above replacement hiring and whatever additional hires individual schools or departments may do out their own funds continues apace. That, it seems to me, is a signal accomplishment in the current economy. And hawkette, it seems to me if you hire 25 people in the first year of a 5-year program to hire a total of 100, that’s pretty good progress. (Although University President Mary Sue Coleman first announced the initiative in November 2007, it naturally took took some months to put out RFPs, review and approve proposals from schools and departments for new positions, and conduct searches and interview candidates, so by the University’s own reckoning the 25 were hired in the first year the program was actually in place). In light of adamant insistence by the responsible University officials that hiring is continuing apace and unimpeded and that despite a modest (by national standards) reduction in legislative appropriations the University’s budget is in far better shape than most of its public and private peers, hawkette’s rank and unsupported speculation that the university “is probably behind target” is risible.</p>
<p>tsdad,
Of course, Provosts want to be Presidents. Who said otherwise? My point wasn’t that she was bailing on U Michigan, but that she was the point person for the school in its hiring of new profs. My interpretation is that this likely slows even further an already slow pace of hiring. </p>
<p>As for Sullivan’s roots, she might now be at U Michigan, but I think credit really belongs to U Texas as she spent 27 years there. She’s been at U Michigan for less than 3 years.</p>
<p>Anyway…UMich, UVa, UT…all great schools!! No need to throw sand in the sandbox. ;)</p>
<p>And, yet, I’m sure they all would like to hire some top schools’ profs…</p>
<p>I mean…where else would they want to look? At schools below theirs? I think not. They would look at schools equal or above their own…</p>
<p>hawkette, Provost Sullivan leaves for UVA in the summer. She has not left the campus yet. This is from President Mary Sue Coleman’s own words below:</p>
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<p>prodigalson, no one here thinks Michigan belongs in the same league as HYPSM. However, it is one of the best universities in the country (and in the world).</p>
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<p>I can’t imagine that’s the case. These particular hires were intended to be interdisciplinary, therefore a little outside the normal school/departmental search process. Sullivan’s job was to set up a competitive process by which various schools and departments could submit proposals for specially funded hires over and above their normal hiring out of their own school/departmental budgets. That process is now set up and from all reprots functioning smoothly. From that point on the provost’s job is to review and approve the proposals (probably through a committee), and to play the usual provostial role in overseeing the appointments of the candidates actually selected. It’s not as if Michigan will be without a provost at any point in this process; Sullivan will do the job until she leaves in July, and by that time a new provost will almost certainly be in place. The suggestion that Sullivan’s departure will somehow cripple Michigan’s hiring effort strikes me as uncommonly silly. Schools lose their provosts all the time, and replace them with new ones—but the enterprise goes on unimpeded. That’s just pretty basic. Good grief, hawkette, what planet are you living on?</p>
<p>"I mean…where else would they want to look? At schools below theirs? I think not. They would look at schools equal or above their own… "</p>
<p>Well, in fact many hires are from “lower schools” moving up to a higher tier. For decades the Ivy schools comes to the top B10 and Pac 10 schools to higher away some of the top talent these “lower” schools developed and nutured. There are plenty of people who would be great additions to any top school. NAS members, people with armfulls of publicatons and numerous major awards scattered through many B10 schools. Many get offers to go Ivy and some go. Many don’t. That’s why the research based rankings are full of top publics.</p>