What to do if the hypothesis is true? - part 1: job candidates

Last week, I floated a hypothesis that might partly explain why a certain type of philosophy job-candidate seems to struggle inordinately on the market, relative to their level of accomplishments. Very roughly, the hypothesis is that individuals from lower Leiter-ranked PhD programs may be utilizing a counterproductive job-market strategy: the strategy of trying to publish their way into a job through publications in highly-ranked journals. On the one hand, I hypothesized that even if candidates like this publish in top-journals, they may still be non-competitive for research jobs, given prestige bias (for candidates from 'Leiterific programs'). On the other hand, I hypothesized that if candidates like this have publications in highly-ranked journals, they may be non-competitive for teaching jobs, by appearing like a flight risk (or perhaps, as Amanda added, by appearing like someone who wouldn't be happy in a teaching job). Either way, the hypothesis goes, the above job-market strategy may be a bad bet for candidates coming out of lower-ranked programs.

This hypothesis (which I have Amanda to thank for getting me to think about) has gained uptake the past several days, both in the comments section and on social media, where I encountered quite a few people (faculty and job-candidates) who noted the hypothesis seems to cohere with their experience. I also received emails from job-candidates who fit the profile saying the same thing. Still, for all that, it is just a hypothesis. It may be accurate, it may not be. It would be good to find out more definitively, such as through a study similar to Helen's forthcoming study in Ergo. 

In the meantime, there is the question about what people should do if the hypothesis is true. Because we don't know for sure whether it is true, we should probably exercise caution here. Still, I think it may be worth discussing, particularly for job-candidates like Tim who are having trouble getting any interviews as things are. I also think discussing the hypothesis further may help people--both faculty and students--in grad programs that struggle to place people in permanent jobs. So, let us consider two questions:

1. What should job-candidates like Tim do if the hypothesis is true?
2. What should grad students and grad programs do if the hypothesis is true?

I would like to dedicate the current post to the first question, and then return to the second question in a follow-up post.

What should a job-candidate in Tim's situation do? If the hypothesis is right, Tim currently isn't competitive for R1 jobs (in the US, UK?, etc.) because he is competing against candidates from "Leiterific programs"; and he isn't competitive for teaching jobs because he "looks too much like a researcher." Given that he cannot go back in time, there seem to be several options available to Tim:

1. R1 strategy: keep trying to publish in top-ranked journals to beat out Leiterific people for R1 jobs.
2. Teaching-market strategy: take steps to make himself seem like a better fit for teaching schools.
3. Market-expansion strategy: expand his job-search into markets where 'the hypothesis' might not apply as much. 

In the comments section of my post on the hypothesis, several people suggested that Tim might be best off looking for jobs abroad. My sense indeed is that "the hypothesis" might not apply as forcefully to jobs in foreign markets. As a candidate who interviewed at R1 jobs in foreign countries myself, my sense is that they are looking for really good researchers and don't have the same "pick of the Leiterific litter" as R1's in the US, UK, and Australia. So, it seems to me, if he's not doing this already and he's willing to work abroad, there is something to be said for Tim simply continuing to do what he's doing but expanding his job-search into other markets (i.e. Asia, South America, and Continental Europe).

However, what if Tim isn't willing to work abroad or he's already enlarged his search to include international markets and he still isn't receiving interviews? In that case, the only real thing for someone in Tim's position to do, it seems to me--beyond attempting to publish their way into an R1 by brute force--is for him to try to transition to the teaching-market strategy, doing everything he can to make himself a better fit for teaching schools. But how can Tim possibly do that if 'the hypothesis' is true and his R1-looking research record might scare teaching schools off? I don't have a foolproof answer--and this stuff might not work--but I think there are some things Tim can plausibly do to try to make himself look like a better fit for a teaching school. Here are some things:

Have a 'teaching school' CV: one that puts teaching and university service up front, research later. I'm not sure if (as some have suggested) it would be a good idea to only include 'select publications', leaving higher-ranked publications off one's CV. I'm inclined to think it is better to be honest, but to frame the CV in a way that highlights teaching.

Work hard to tailor cover letters to teaching schools: don't go on and on about what a great researcher you are. Start out your letter by focusing on your teaching, what makes you unique as a teacher, and emphasize that although you enjoy research, you see yourself primarily as a teacher. Then make sure you your research, explaining how you would be prepared to teach courses listed in the job ad, as well as other courses in the school's curriculum (go digging on the school's website). More generally, do your homework on the school and department you are applying to, making it clear in your letter why you want to work there and don't see it as "just any job."  

Work really hard on your teaching statement & innovating your teaching: I have read many teaching statements over the years, and I'll be honest, far too many of them make teaching look like an afterthought. I'll be honest: I think this can occur mostly (though not always) unintentionally. People who have never worked at a teaching school can have a hard time fully appreciating just how much people at teaching schools care about teaching, and how much thought and effort people at teaching institutions put into their pedagogy. Trust me, a candidate can say all day in their cover letter that they love teaching--but if they just say in the teaching statement that they "do Socratic dialogue" and "formulate arguments in premise-conclusion form" (and I've mentored multiple people whose teaching statements are like this), they're going to look like someone who has never given teaching much thought. In any case, they're going to look uninventive and not going to stand out from dozens of other candidates who also look like they haven't given teaching much thought. 

Don't get me wrong. Some faculty at teaching schools may be "old-school" Socratic teachers (most aren't in my experience, but some are: I know one). The point is: a good teaching statement needs to work hard make you stand out in some clear and positive way. If you're a Socratic teacher, you had better try to show your reader what makes you a unique and particularly creative Socratic teacher--something that doesn't just make you look like another candidate. Far better yet, I'd say: if you're not already doing it, experiment and innovate as a teacher. My experience is that teaching innovation is pretty much expected at teaching schools--that people like seeing you push yourself and your students to do new and interesting things. So, if you want to be more competitive for teaching jobs, don't wait: experiment. I did...a lot -- and I ended up getting lots of interviews at teaching schools. 

Work hard on your teaching portfolio: Don't just slap together some student evaluations and a few syllabi. At R1 institutions, people appear to want to see whether you are a "genius researcher" (or perhaps, if 'the hypothesis' is right, whether the people in your Leiterific program think you're super-smart and promising). Things are very different at teaching institutions. People want to see you are a professional. Remember, people on the hiring side at teaching institutions are going to be looking at hundreds of candidates' portfolios. Many of them may look thrown together. Make sure yours is the exception--that it is impeccably well-organized, well-formatted, and includes materials (syllabi, assignments, etc.) that make you stand out as a teacher.

Expand your breadth of teaching experience as much as possible: Teaching schools often need their hires to teach particular courses. If you have past experience teaching those courses, you will have a leg up on every candidate who doesn't. Teach the widest variety of courses you can where you are. 

Get involved in student activities: people at teaching schools (particularly administrators) love faculty who go above and beyond to get involved with student activities--coaching Ethics Bowl Debate teams, supervising the undergrad student club. This is especially important, I think, if you are Tim. It's a way to show someone that you want to be at a teaching school working with students, rather than someone who just wants to publish in Phil Quarterly so you can move to an R1 job.

Have a research statement that will make sense to and excite a non-specialist: People at teaching schools do care about research. But you need to appeal to your audience in your research statement at teaching schools. Don't expect people at teaching schools to be super-excited by your work on grounding, or perception, or whatever, "just because" it's a popular topic. Similarly, don't expect them to make heads or tails of what in the world you're talking about when you write super-complicated things about your project using jargon they have no familiarity with. At a teaching school, chances are the people reading your research statement are going to know little to nothing about your research area. Bring your project down to earth, making the project itself and its point as simply and intuitively as you can--in a way that any undergraduate might understand. That will not only be more likely to get the person reading more interested in you as a philosopher; it will also show them that you can simplify complex ideas in ways that will serve you well at their university as a teacher of undergraduates--both of which are very good things.

Network: getting to know people in the profession--including, yes, people at teaching schools--can't hurt. It may very well help. I've seen people from teaching schools ignored at conferences, given the cold shoulder by people who seem to regard teaching school faculty as "below them" (in fact, I've been the subject of this kind of treatment myself). Instead of just talking to "important people" at conferences, try to show interest in and treat everyone you meet at conferences well; try to get to know people on social media, reach out over email (by offering to trade papers, etc.). I know, I know - networking might feel "icky." But try not to think about it that way. Realize that you are a member of a profession, and that other members of the profession are human beings just like you--people who might actually be kind of nice, cool, and interesting you actually spend the time getting to know them. Getting to know people can not only make the discipline feel like a less-lonely, alienating place. It can make you appear more human and less of a faceless job-candidate to them.

Anyway, I think that's all I got. Again, none of these may be sure-fire ways for people in Tim's position to improve their job-market competitiveness if 'the hypothesis' is true. But I am optimistic they may be helpful, and hope they may be of some use to Tim and others in his position. 

Still these are just my thoughts. What do you all think? If 'the hypothesis' is true, what can someone like Tim to do to be more competitive on the market?

Comments

[Alexis Elder]

I'm someone for whom this hypothesis pretty closely matches my experiences. (Note: I'm a woman, so some of Tim's concerns are not active in my case.)

I would like to second the advice to put more attention into teaching materials. I picked up substantially more interviews once I had a really polished teaching portfolio, and for what it's worth, once I was hired into a tenure-track job, I was told by a member of the committee that hired me that my teaching materials were stellar and asked for permission to share them with future job-seekers.

And, I found it very helpful, in developing original teaching materials, activities, and assignments, to look outside the discipline for ideas. Campus-wide teaching presentations and institutional teaching-and-learning offices were an easy way to pick these up. Sometimes, I had to translate (lots of the "flipped classroom" presentations I attended focused on how this was implemented in STEM disciplines, for example), but it was good to get some variety outside of a thousand variations on Socratic method.

I also found that interviews picked up after I added some publications in smaller specialty journals and interdisciplinary journals, in addition to the journals popular in mainstream philosophy. Did this show that I was capable of different publishing strategies, of the sorts expected for different teaching loads and research expectations? I have no idea.

Lastly, one comment on the research-vs.-teaching school (characterized earlier as "SLAC") dichotomy: most of my teaching experience has been at (U.S.) state regional comprehensive schools, and my interviews mostly followed this pattern, with the occasional state R2 (master's program) thrown in. I got the impression from conversations with committees that it was helpful to be able to distinguish state school concerns (including awareness of legislative and budget issues) from private SLACs, even where student demographics and teaching needs overlapped. More reason to pursue teaching experience at a variety of places, and make friends outside of one's graduate school and research communities?

[STOP]

this whole post legitimizes flight risk bias

[Derek Bowman]

"The point is: a good teaching statement needs to work hard make you stand out in some clear and positive way. If you're a Socratic teacher, you had better try to show your reader what makes you a unique and particularly creative Socratic teacher--something that doesn't just make you look like another candidate."

No doubt this is good advice, but it just illustrates the futility of giving general advice. If more candidates start taking this advice, the things that might currently make a candidate stand out will come to be lost in the noise.

I think this also points to a potentially deep problem with what we do as professional teachers. Why assume that innovative or unique approaches to teaching are better? Only if the standard methods suck. If there are reliable methods of good teaching philosophy, and if our job candidates are the experts on this, one would expect some convergence on at least an overlapping core of teaching practices. But under those conditions, one could only stand out by significantly deviating from that expert consensus.

[Tom]

Derek, I'm in complete agreement with you. There's an emphasis in much of the discussion of teaching on what gets called "innovation". Now, maybe I'm misunderstanding what this term is supposed to mean. But it seems to me that innovating for the sake of innovating is stupid. And bad for students. And bad for me as an instructor.

Look, I'm all for trying new things if there's reason to think the new things will be better than the old things. And I try new things out when I teach advanced courses, because in those courses, even if the new thing is a flop, the students are motivated enough to still learn. But when I have good evidence that what I'm doing is working, I don't see a good reason to change.

Again, I'm probably just missing something in this discussion.

(Also: Alexis, your comment is extremely helpful. Thanks! And congrats on the dope-as-fuck gig, too. Hope you're enjoying Duluth.)

[Marcus Arvan]

Derek: In principle, your worry about general advice is right. If a lot of candidates followed the advice, it would be self-defeating. But in my (ample) experience here, most *don’t* follow the advice, and those who do tend to benefit. My aim here is to help Tim and others in his position fare better on the market. Given that not everyone will follow the advice, I think the suggestions will be helpful for those that do.

[jdkbrown]

Standing out in a teaching statement isn't necessarily about innovation. What's important is demonstrating that, whatever methods you use, you've thought carefully about why you use them and worked at developing your skill with them.

What I'm looking for (as a faculty member at a SLAC) is evidence that you take your teaching as seriously as your research and put as much intellectual energy into it.

[Marcus Arvan]

Tom: I think we need to distinguish several things here.

First, we need to distinguish the way the world is from the way we want it to be. Maybe innovation isn’t necessary for good teaching. But that is not the issue here. The issue is how to help people like ‘Tim’ fare better on the market. People like Tim are not getting interviews or jobs, and are suffering greatly from it. I want to help him. In my experience, for better or worse, people at teaching schools tend to care about innovation. Sure, feel free to argue that they shouldnt. But they do. So, if Tim and others want to do better on the market—if that is their aim—it is something they should consider. If they do not want to compromise their pedagogy for the sake of getting a job, I respect that. But this brings me to my second point...

I also think it is important to distinguish innovating for the sake of innovation (which I don’t support) from innovating for the sake of improving one’s teaching. There may well be traditional, chalk-and-talk Socratic teachers who are just amazing. I know some people at teaching schools who do it and value it, and so i don’t think it is a negative *if* you can show in your teaching dossier that you are amazing at it. My concern is with people who present as rather ordinary chalk and talk teachers without anything recognizably distinctive about them. If you are in a pile of 175 chalk and talk teachers, it’s a simple fact that you are going to have a hard time standing out. My point in the post was not to innovate for innovation’s sake, but to make sure that you stand out and look like an exemplary teacher with a well thought-out pedagogy, not just someone who looks like you chalk and talk because you never gave teaching much thought.

[Lauren]

I want to second what jdkbrown says: I think a good teaching statement shows who you are as a teacher, that you've thought about why you do what you do, and that you continue to think about it. It's true that this will make you stand out and if everyone did that, then fewer people would stand out as so much better than the competition. This requires reflection, time, and thinking about what you do in the classroom and why. This probably makes you a weaker candidate for some jobs (who are looking for someone with different aims that you have in the classroom), but it makes it obvious when you are an excellent fit for other types of jobs.

[Amanda]

While I do think this is interesting and helpful in certain respects, it is also a reminder that there is simply far more talent than jobs. As I see it, there is really only a few solutions that will help ALL deserving people. One is to get more TT philosophy jobs, or at least more permanent jobs that come with a decent wage and benefits. (unlikely to happen). Another is to close down grad programs or for grad programs to accept far less students (unlikely to happen.) A third is to get to serious work in respect to finding plausible, rewarding jobs, for philosophy PhDs outside of academia. And preparing these students for such jobs should be part of philosophy grad school. While this is also unlikely to happen, I think it is the most likely of the 3 I mentioned. If grad programs are going to insist on letting in PhD students inspite of all that is known about the market, the very least they can do is work hard to prepare these students for the likely possibility they will have to find work outside the academy.

[Marcus Arvan]

Amanda: I entirely agree. We should advocate for changes in the profession. I just think it is important to not only try to change the future, but also try to help people like Tim who find themselves in a tough position here and now.

[Derek Bowman]

Marcus: I take Amanda's point to be that no matter what you do vis a vis general advice, there will be a large number of talented people who will be in a tough position here and now. Helping people-like-Tim means hurting people-like-those-who-are-currently-beating-out-people-like-Tim.

I'm not sure I'm criticizing that. It's great to want to help people, and it makes perfect sense in terms of one-on-one mentoring and helping people you have direct connections to. But at the systemic level it's just rearranging the deck chairs.

[Asst Prof]

In regards to the topic of innovative teaching, I do think it is—and should be—valued in hiring at teaching schools.

I’m in my fourth year at a lower-ranked teaching school, and in those four years I have changed nearly everything from my previous style of teaching.

These changes have been partly to engage different types of students (some from different cultures, some from different majors, some less motivated, some less prepared for college). They have also been due to institutional factors (demands of the core curriculum, the need for interdisciplinary courses, the promotion of new learning technologies, etc.).

For these reasons, I would highly value teaching innovation and adapatability, were I on a hiring committee.

[Amanda]

Derek basically got my point right. While I get what you want to do Marcus, and I think it is basically good. I also can't help thinking that for all those who listen to this advice, they might be beating out other equally deserving people. After all, while it is (often) good to listen to advice, it doesn't exactly make you undeserving of a job if you don't, or if you are not the type of person to be reading philosophy blogs.

To be clear, I don't mean to suggest we shouldn't have this post. I think we should as it is always good to try and help those who are seeking help, and arguably those who come to this blog are seeking help. However I guess my point is that many people who are not doing well on the market should recognize that at the end of the day they might be doing NOTHING wrong. There are just less jobs than spots, and many talented deserving people will not get them, even if they do everything they reasonably could. I don't say this to suggest people like Tim should not try different strategies, they should. But I say this because I think it is good for people like Tim to keep reality in mind, first because it is good for one's emotional health. And second because it is probably best that anybody on the market or in grad school to be thinking about alt-ac possibilities. (Which, ironically, is good for one's emotional health as well.)

[Amanda]

And also, as Derek said, it is not an issue of the future vs. now, for in the here and now there is only a certain number of spots. I say this mainly for people on the market who might be tempted to hate either themselves, philosophy, the professions, or certain groups in the profession, for what is sadly a simple numbers game of more talent than spots for the talented.

[Post Doc]

I would like to flag (as I did in another post) that I have sympathies with STOP's worry about legitimizing flight risk bias. One good question is: Given that SCs seem to have certain concerns/practices (incl. flight risk), what can candidates in Tim's situation do to maximize their odds of landing a gig? Another completely legitimate question (to me) is whether having flight risk play a role in a SC's deliberation is: (a) ethical, and/or (b) wise. I mean if it is true that there is a widespread bias that will cause more qualified (in some sense) candidates to fall from the profession while retaining candidates who are less qualified but appear like they would be happier in the post, this is perhaps a harmful (for the profession as a whole, and for the people falling through the cracks) bias. Or, if people are in fact bad at judging flight risk it might just be a widespread, but unsuccessful practice. Orthogonal to all of this is that it seems wise to have original, dedicated teaching materials.

[Marcus Arvan]

Post Doc (& STOP): I guess I don’t see how this post legitimizes flight bias. It aims to help Tim and others in his position work around it to get interviews and jobs. If you think flight bias is unfair and wrong, by all means make the case for it. But, in the meantime, I think we do everyone a disservice by pretending it doesn’t exist, and by utilizing job-market strategies that ignore and fall prey to it, leaving people like Tim without jobs because of job-market strategies potentially ill-adapted to the reality of it (fair or not).

[Post Doc]

I was not as clear as I should have been. This is all great & much appreciated advice for making someone more competitive for teaching programs. I was referring to this part: "On the other hand, I hypothesized that if candidates like this have publications in highly-ranked journals, they may be non-competitive for teaching jobs, by appearing like a flight risk." There are two issues in this post. One is that some candidates might have good publication records, but not demonstrate excellence in teaching/ interest in teaching (either they lack experience, innovative practices, etc or they have been unsuccessful at presenting these). I think assessing a candidate for a teaching school by assessing these factors isn't "bias" at all- it's just assessing fit for the culture / qualifications for the job. The suggestion in the quoted passage, is that (perhaps even in the presence of awesome, innovative teaching materials), having too many ranked publications could be disqualifying for a teaching job. That part I am less comfortable with (maybe I'm just naive). It seems like assessing a candidate based on factors that aren't in the dossier (their intentions, preferences, etc.) rather than just the quality of the materials that are. Now, actual Tim-like cases could be some combination of these factors (one, or the other, or both). I think it is important to be aware that these factors both may in fact influence search committee's perceptions. I don't have a sense of whether anyone feels as I do about publications in themselves being disqualifying.

[Going on the job market next year]

I was wondering what difference a person getting their PhD from a lower prestige department but then doing a post-doc at a higher prestige department does and is this a viable strategy?

I ask this because originally this sounded like a good strategy, but then some professors I informally talked to said they mostly paid attention to the phd granting institution anyway since that's where the philosopher was mostly trained. (I tried not to show that I was visibly frustrated)

[Amanda]

Going on the market: I have heard that a postdoc means maybe 1/10 of what a PhD granting place means. Look at Andrew Moon for an example. Sadly if you got your PhD at a low-ranked place getting a prestigious post-doc does not make people see you as having pedigree.

[Going on the job market next year]

Ouf, thank you for that sobering info.