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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…</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>I think it’s remarkable, because those same profs would have likely never considered the South if the economy wasn’t so shaky. Yes, it’s hard to get tenure these days, but if the economy wasn’t so awful, most of these non-tenured profs would be seeking jobs in other NE or western schools. They typically consider the middle of the US as “fly over country.”</p>
<p>"They typically consider the middle of the US as “fly over country.”</p>
<p>I don’t know mom2collegekids, some universities in the middle of the US, like Chicago, Michigan, Northwestern and Wisconsin are among the most in-demand destinations for the nation’s leading thinkers. Many other universities in the middle also are very appealing to top professors, including Notre Dame, Rice, UIUC, UT-Austin, Vanderbilt and Washington U.</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>
<p>Oh yes, and likely they have spouses (if married), who have long given up any hopes of having a top career, which might also demand ladder-climbing moves around the globe. When you look at many top execs in almost any field that requires frequent relocation, they often have spouses who just go along for the ride and take care of hearth and home or have jobs that can be found anywhere.</p>
<p>I mentioned the possibility of poaching from the UCs to someone in the Provost’s office. She said that it was difficult because many people in California cannot sell their homes.</p>
<p>I’m not an Indian native, I’m a white American who wanted to do something different (and I got what I asked for, and then some!). I used to call it Mumbai actually until I learned the history of how it was renamed as Mumbai by the Shiv Sena, a bunch of nativist murderous thugs that hate all foreigners and even most Indians (they’re either too northern, too southern, too muslim, or otherwise not Maharashtrian enough). I oppose everything they stand for, and so in my own futile act of protest, will always call the city by the name of her former, more cosmopolitan avatar–Bombay.</p>
<p>In my experience this is quite uncommon among academics. One fairly typical arrangement is the two-professor household—after all, who else are professors going to meet and couple up with if they’ve spent their entire lives in academic institutions? Very frequently one of the two (and it could be either gender) will be much sought-after for a lateral appointment, but part of the price is an appointment for the “trailing” spouse who also typically gets a bump up in salary, prestige, and/or perks. Or sometimes, both are attractive catches in their own right. It’s a costly arrangement for the institution doing the poaching, but these “twofers” happen all the time. Indeed, the less-sought-after spouse’s desire to move up is often the motivating factor behind the “star” of the couple’s willingness to relocate. I’ve even heard of one Ivy League institution that did a “three-fer,” hiring both the current spouse and the ex-spouse of the sought-after academic star, because the ex-spouse had joint custody of the kids and the star would agree to the move only if everyone could come along with a nice career-enhancing package.</p>
<p>Also, there are far more young academic couples than you might think who are on faculties at different institutions, sometimes in different cities or in inconveniently distant corners of major metropolitan areas, who would like to simplify their lives by being on the faculty at the same institution and living in the same community, conveniently close to their workplace. There are also lots of gay and lesbian couples who want to move to be in more gay-friendly communities; college campuses themselves are generally pretty supportive of gay couples, but that’s not always true of the surrounding communities. There are also lots of single faculty (including divorced persons) who are looking to move because the social scene is just too limiting at a school in some remote rural or small-town location. Rumor has it that Cornell loses a lot of younger faculty this way; if you’re a single faculty member in a small town like that, you may not want to date grad students, you quickly run through the other eligible singles on the faculty, and the prospects among “townies” and in the surrounding countryside are limited. I’ve also run into lots of young academics married to young lawyers who have portable skills but are often underemployed in small college towns; for these non-academic spouses, the academic’s lateral move will be to a place where the lawyer-spouse’s career prospects are brighter.</p>
<p>The point is, it takes all kinds, and there are all kinds out there. Many, possibly most academics are not willing to move at any given time. But I think an overwhelming majority do move at least once, often more than once, over the course of their careers, and at any given moment there will be some significant number actively looking, or at least receptive to considering the idea of a move. This is really not anything new or different. The only unusual aspect of the current situation is that at least half of the institutions have shut down their hiring, while the fiscal crises at some institutions have probably pushed a slightly larger-than-usual number of academics into a posture of actively reconsidering their career options. That makes it an extremely attractive “buyer’s market” for the smallish number of schools that have money to do hiring.</p>
<p>This is a problem for people who are “under water” on their mortgages, but for anyone in California who still has positive equity left in their home—and that’s a lot of people—they’ll find that equity will still buy them a lot more house in most of the country. In the Bay Area, at least, there’s been a sharp uptick in both the volume of home sales and in median home sale prices in the last couple of months. Both are still far off their peak, of course, but it’s improving. There are a lot of people out there who could move and might find it financially advantageous to do so.</p>
<p>As per my previous posts, I would argue that a full 100% of all academics would be prepared to move at least once in their careers, or at least should be prepared to do so, for the simple reason that your first academic placement after grad school is extremely likely to require a move. To think that you will be guaranteed an academic placement within the same region as your PhD program and hence never require a move is the mark of either outlandish myopia or plain arrogance. What exactly did you think was going to happen once you graduated? Even finishing your PhD within a education-centric mecca such as Boston does not guarantee that a local school will be interested in your candidacy. </p>
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<p>I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but if you’re a married PhD student who’s nearing the academic job market, then you should have discussed with your spouse beforehand what the implications are of the academic lifestyle, and how far each party is willing to compromise. Either that, or you shouldn’t have gotten married. This is how the academic lifestyle is: you can easily find yourself in small college towns with limited career opportunities for your spouse, and people should understand that up front.</p>
<p>Well, first off, it’s not merely difficult to obtain tenure at top schools ‘these days’, rather, it’s always difficult to obtain tenure at top schools, regardless of the economy. For example, the Harvard sociology department hasn’t promoted a single junior faculty member to tenure since the 1990’s; all of their new tenured faculty have been outside lateral hires. Similarly, tenure at MIT or Berkeley doesn’t become easy to obtain when the economy is strong. </p>
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<p>Well, I’ll put it to you this way. The University of Alabama may not be an elite school. But hey, at least it’s still a flagship state university that run research and PhD programs. That’s still far more promising, from an academic career standpoint, than to be teaching at some NE or West Coast community college or mediocre satellite public university campus where the highest degree offered may be master’s (and sometimes not even that). </p>
<p>But the point is that if Alabama is merely picking up junior faculty from Berkeley or MIT who had simply failed to win tenure, that’s a fairly quotidian turn of events. Berkeley and MIT routinely cast off hordes of junior faculty through tenure reviews or through ‘taps on the shoulder’ to indicate that somebody is likely to fail their upcoming tenure review and hence should be seeking gainful employment elsewhere.</p>
<p>I just wanted to say that the concentration of quality in the job search right now is astounding.</p>
<p>I’ve been able to do some interviewing for hiring here at Brown and the number of quality candidates that we saw was remarkable. I mean really top notch folks.</p>
<p>Junior faculty should also be prepared to move if they fail to win tenure, which is highly probable to happen at the top schools. Anybody who takes a junior faculty position at Harvard ought to know that the odds of winning tenure are low and hence they will need to return to the academic job market and relocate after a few years (and if you don’t know that, well, I would then question whether you even have the intellectual acumen to be teaching at Harvard in the first place). If that’s not acceptable because of your personal circumstances, fair enough, then don’t take the offer from Harvard. The same could be said for most other top schools that have notoriously low tenure rates.</p>
<p>I think most people do enter the academic job market with their eyes open, and make the necessary compromises with spouses or partners. Often, however, the compromise includes the academic breadwinner’s agreeing to consider relocation if and when an opportunity opens up that would enhance career opportunities for the “trailing” spouse. I can’t begin to count the number of potential lateral candidates I’ve interviewed who are interested in relocating in part, or sometimes primarily, due to spousal pressure. It’s not that these people were blind to what life in a small college town would be like for the spouse; they knew it and decided to marry (or partner) anyway with the understanding that if the right opportunities arose, they’d be out of there.</p>
<p>quote] [In my experience this is quite uncommon among academics. One fairly typical arrangement is the two-professor household—after all, who else are professors going to meet and couple up with if they’ve spent their entire lives in academic institutions? Very frequently one of the two (and it could be either gender) will be much sought-after for a lateral appointment, but part of the price is an appointment for the “trailing” spouse who also typically gets a bump up in salary, prestige, and/or perks.
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<p>I agree, and here in my own city, I’m aware of several collaborations between NU and UChicago where one of those institutions wants to get a certain academic and asks the other to help find a place for the “trailing” spouse if one is not available in their own institution.</p>
<p>*I’ve also run into lots of young academics married to young lawyers who have portable skills but are often underemployed in small college towns; for these non-academic spouses, the academic’s lateral move will be to a place where the lawyer-spouse’s career prospects are brighter. * </p>
<p>* I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but if you’re a married PhD student who’s nearing the academic job market, then you should have discussed with your spouse beforehand what the implications are of the academic lifestyle, and how far each party is willing to compromise. Either that, or you shouldn’t have gotten married. This is how the academic lifestyle is: you can easily find yourself in small college towns with limited career opportunities for your spouse, and people should understand that up front. *</p>
<p>Oh I agree… but many don’t think to get such agreements prior to marriage. Many couples don’t think to ask…“hey, if my career takes me to Timbuktu, will you be willing to move with me - even if it’s detrimental to your career?” I know some men would fear asking such a question out of concern that it sounds a bit chauvinistic - especially if many know that they wouldn’t do the same in reverse.</p>
<p>Yes, some companies are pretty good about helping the trailing spouse seek employment. But, after being involved with 3 corporate moves, I can tell you that only works some of the time. No company/university can find adequate employment (with similar income) for the trailing spouse who has a career based on having a clientele. </p>
<p>After our last move, one couple moved back after one year because their income couldn’t take the “hit” from the change to her career. She had a very lucrative and specialized real estate company in her former town. It takes years and years to build up that kind of business/income and name recognition. The same would apply to those who have spouses that are attys, physicians, dentists, business owners, etc.</p>