<p>My interpretation is that this likely slows even further an already slow pace of hiring.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this slows the pace of hiring or not…But I do know this after being involved with 3 out-of-state corporate moves (to Chicago suburbs, to Maryland, to Huntsville):</p>
<p>It is getting VERY HARD to get people to relocate and getting academia to relocate is no different. When people have either lost their jobs or are in serious danger of losing their jobs, it becomes a bit easier to get people to move.</p>
<p>The reasons it has become VERY difficult to get people to relocate are many…</p>
<p>1) Spouses may be entrenched in their present careers and can’t/won’t relocate</p>
<p>2) Child custody orders may not allow a parent to move kids out of state/area</p>
<p>3) Non custodial parents don’t want to move away from their kids</p>
<p>4) Parents of teens don’t want them to change high schools</p>
<p>5) Grandparents don’t want to move away from grandchildren </p>
<p>6) Adults don’t want to move away from elderly parents.</p>
<p>I have seen corporate move attempts completely fall apart when people “en masse” quit when facing a transfer to a new area (one such failed attempt cost the company over $100 million dollars). BTW…Women are the WORST about accepting relocation offers…It’s not their fault, many of their spouses simply refuse. Not ONE female participated in the transfer to Maryland…they all quit.</p>
<p>So…my point is…no matter who is at the helm driving these attempts to hire 100 new profs, it is just VERY difficult to get people to MOVE unless their jobs are in jeopardy.</p>
<h2>My quote: *"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… "</h2>
<p>Barrons quote: 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 [hire] away some of the top talent these “lower” schools developed and nutured. *</p>
<p>Ok…I can see that. But, the point was that UMich wouldn’t be “poaching” any Ivy profs and I just don’t believe that. If there are some desirable Ivy profs (or similar elite school profs) that UMich could hire, I don’t think UMich would blink.</p>
<p>No it’s not. I’ve been on many faculty hiring committees. People in this business move all the time. There are lots of reasons faculty move. More prestige. More money. Better research support. More desirable location, often for spousal/family reasons (e.g., better job opportunities for spouse, better schools for kids, livelier/more interesting community, family ties). Opportunities to work with particular colleagues or in particular labs or research projects. Lower cost of living. More desirable climate. Better chances at tenure (for untenured tenure-track people, the group Michigan is going after). Miffed at president/provost/dean/colleagues over some real or perceived slight. Whatever. Sure, spouses and kids are a complication, but believe me, many (but not all) academics would move at the drop of a hat if the right job offer came along. And when you’re doing a search you only go after the ones who you think might be movable and/or tell you they’re movable; you don’t waste time on those you have no real chance to get.</p>
I can think of several examples of tenured professors who moved from highly prestigious universities like Chicago and Harvard to lesser institutions. As long as they get to keep their tenure and research funding (and perhaps get fewer teaching responsibilities), I suspect a good many professors don’t particularly care where they end up.</p>
<p>Sure,* spouses and kids are a complication**, but believe me, many (but not all) academics would move at the drop of a hat if the right job offer came along. And when you’re doing a search you only go after the ones who you think might be movable and/or tell you they’re movable; you don’t waste time on those you have no real chance to get. *</p>
<p>That’s what I’m saying. And sometimes people are “upside down” on their present homes and if they aren’t compensated for that, it’s a problem.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that people don’t WANT to relocate; I’m saying it’s become increasingly more difficult because of family issues. Economic issues can trump that - I agree. </p>
<p>But, if your spouse has a law practice, medical practice, or successful business in one area - they aren’t going to be too willing to relocate even if you’ve been offered a dream job.</p>
<p>I saw a company literally throw away $100 million dollars trying to arrange a corporate move, and it was a complete waste…no one moved. Our entire families were wined and dined and flown first class as an incentive to move. Everyone gave their notice and the company blinked. The company had to give everyone 1 year salary bonuses to keep them from quitting. Of course, this was in the 90’s when the economy was strong.</p>
<p>When the company tried again two years later, the men moved but the women all quit.</p>
<p>Maybe academia is different. Maybe they have more cooperative (or unemployed) spouses. LOL Maybe more of them are single.</p>
<p>*I can think of several examples of tenured professors who moved from highly prestigious universities like Chicago and Harvard to lesser institutions. As long as they get to keep their tenure and research funding (and perhaps get fewer teaching responsibilities), I suspect a good many professors don’t particularly care where they end up. *</p>
<p>I can see that… If you’re offered tenure, the money, nice research facilities, sabbaticals, maybe an endowed chair, and perhaps teaching small honors classes - all in a town with a lower cost of living…who wouldn’t like that?</p>
<p>It goes without saying that Michigan < HYPSM. But as an undergraduate institution, Michigan is not top ten in the country either. At best it’s top twenty, but probably closer to top thirty…</p>
<p>UMich, UVa, UTexas are all excellent schools. :)</p>
<p>Public institutions shouldn’t really be compared to ivies/elites because publics are pressured/expected/required to admit a large number of resident students who might not have the stats/qualities that those top publics would really want if given a choice. The fact that they do admit those kids and still do a fab job speaks more of them then elite privates who get to cherry-pick who they want (and never have to explain any rejections.).</p>
<p>So, no point in arguing about Umich vs ivies or whatever. Top publics are in a class of their own.</p>
<p>Right. But there are at least as many cases where the spouse is underemployed in some small or stagnant market with few career opportunities. It cuts both ways. And especially in the untenured, tenure-track category that Michigan is going after, it’s often a young single rising academic star or a young couple in which the “trailing spouse” followed the young academic star to some location that turned out to be a dead end for the spouse’s career. That’s not everyone, of course. But there are always some out there, ripe for the plucking.</p>
<p>ilovebagles, I have been meaning to ask you (and this is totally a propos), as an Indian native, shouldn’t you be insisting on using the name Mumbai and not Bombay?</p>
<p>While that’s a possible rationale, I’m not entirely sure that’s the true reason. The fact is, hordes of faculty from Berkeley, MIT and other such top schools leave every year for the simple reason that they failed to be promoted to tenure, or were ‘counseled’ to leave because the department knew they weren’t going to be promoted to tenure. Let’s face it: it is painfully difficult to actually win tenure at the top schools. Less than half of all junior faculty at MIT who are reviewed for tenure will actually receive it, and that doesn’t count all of the other junior faculty who were counseled to leave because they had no chance.</p>
<p>If many tenured, or likely-to-be-tenured, Berkeley and MIT professors were headed to Alabama, then that would indeed be indicative of something important. But if all we’re talking about is the standard tenure process attrition, then that’s nothing remarkable.</p>
<p>So a star economist moved from (according to USNews) the #9 ranked economics department to the #14 ranked department. I don’t see why that would be shocking. Academics don’t really care about laymen’s prestige. They care about departmental prestige, which Wisconsin has. </p>
<p>Now, if a star Penn economist decided to head for, say, Southwest Missouri State, then that would be a different story.</p>
<p>Perhaps I missed something, but I suspect that many (probably most) of these 100 newly hired Michigan profs are not going to be current faculty members, but rather, newly minted PhD’s or post-docs who are entering the academic job market for the first time. I would surmise that it would be trivially easily to convince them to move. After all, they should have all known full well that after finishing their PhD or postdoc, they were going to have to move to wherever an academic position was available, and if they (or their spouse) didn’t know that, then that speaks to risibly poor life planning. Are there really many PhD students or postdocs who truly don’t realize that they will probably have to move upon finishing? What exactly did they think was going to happen? </p>
<p>For those PhD students who truly have spouses with entrenched careers, child custody issues, teen children who don’t want to leave their high schools, grandparent/grandchildren ties to maintain, or any other such family issues, then my advice would be to simply not enter the (non-local) academic job market in the first place. Heck, I would even question why you’re even seriously pursuing an academic career at all. It’s one thing to pursue a PhD for your own personal knowledge or because you want to take a local industry position via perhaps a PhD in engineering or computer science. But if you’re pursuing a PhD because you want a career in academia, then you ought to know that almost certainly involves relocation, and if your personal circumstances render that unfeasible, then honestly, you should consider a different career.</p>
<p>I’m quite certain the University of Michigan could easily find 25 new PhD’s or postdocs every year who would gladly take tenure-track academic positions. After all, even in the best hiring years, many PhD’s/postdocs can’t land any academic positions at all, much less ones at a school of the caliber of Michigan. Nor do I see much danger of diluting the quality of the faculty. If they prove to be poor hires, then you simply don’t renew their contracts and don’t promote them to tenure.</p>
<p>“Perhaps I missed something, but I suspect that many (probably most) of these 100 newly hired Michigan profs are not going to be current faculty members, but rather, newly minted PhD’s or post-docs who are entering the academic job market for the first time.”</p>
<p>That’s correct Sakky. But universities that can hire these days will have first dibs at some of the best young minds in the nation.</p>
<p>We are poaching. But in general, faculty in our field (business) move around a lot, at least the stars do. Everyone is always one foot out the door, those with talent get courted all the time. Usually the fastest route to a pay increase.</p>